Ladies and gentleman, we have stumbled upon a gold mine: Brand new Elton John live recordings from his 1986 North American tour! Thanks to a very kind person by the name of "Elizabeth J. Rosenthal," we now have access to many shows that were previously thought to not have recordings! The following new shows from this tour will be shared over the next few weeks: Detroit, Cuyahoga Falls, Chicago, Hartford, the last MSG show of the tour, and Oakland! Each show has many surprising moments, and has thrown myself and other Elton live fanatics for a loop! We can now paint a clearer picture on events that happened on the tour (specifically Elton's vocal troubles)! I'd like to also thank Jack Suslak for giving us previews of the shows over Skype, and TSS_Killer for enduring hours of Elton's music to transfer the cassette tapes over to digital formats! This recording is about 75% complete (the recording starts at "Philadelphia Freedom"), and has decent quality!

Since this is the very first show of the North American tour, it deserves a huge description! Elton has dropped "Highlander, "Cry To Heaven," "Song For Guy," and "Wrap Her Up" from the set-list! He has replaced those songs with "Levon" (which wasn't played until Kansas City), "Love Song," and "Daniel" (which also got introduced later in the tour). "Your Song" also has a permanent place in the set-list!

Elton was originally supposed to start the tour on August 15th (in Detroit), but he canceled that show due to "vocal problems." The show after that (August 17th in Clarkston), was also canceled. I talked to an Elton fan months back, and she gave me a back-story on those events (she had tickets for the first show): She said that everybody arrived at the show, and was announced that Elton canceled the show at the last minute. The concert announcement said that everybody can either get refunds, or hold on to the tickets (for a rescheduled date). She also told me that the show at Pine Knob got canceled (that's the Clarkston show), and that the concert promoter was working on a new concert date. The next night (August 18th), was the legitimate first concert of the tour, and the fan said that Elton "sounded great, and didn't sound like he had vocal problems!"

After reviewing the audio for this show, I can safely back up her statements about Elton's voice: He's in great voice overall, and sounds almost identical to his European 1986 voice! This can also debunk bullshit claims about Elton's voice being in bad form for the North American tour, and can also debunk false statements about him losing his range and/or falsetto at this stage of shows. Every song sounds great, and has no signs of the failures at shows like Saratoga, Worcester, 2nd Philadelphia, MSG (9/14), Los Angeles, Melbourne, Sydney, etc. "Philadelphia Freedom" sounds like a European version, "Burn Down The Mission" is great (last version where Elton nails every note), "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" is one of the most surprising live performances of Elton's career (despite sounding slightly rough and flubbing a line, he aces every C5 in the outro), "The Bitch Is Back" is excellent (clean B4s and C5s), the medley sounds great, "Paris" shits all over the album version, "Restless" is fantastic (one of the best version from 1986), "Bennie And The Jets" has Elton hitting one of the "magazine" B4s, and hits strong falsetto at the end of the song (proves many morons wrong about him losing his falsetto), "Love Song" is the best ever live version, "Sad Songs (Say So Much)" is great (despite Elton not knowing what album it's from), "This Town" is awesome, "I'm Still Standing" is great (hits most of the notes clean), "Nikita" has oversinging in the song, but sounds great, "Candle In The Wind" is one of the last truly excellent versions from this era (he still has his signature soft tone with the dynamics intact--he will lose this as the tour progresses), "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" is a short version--but it sounds good, and "Can I Get A Witness" sounds excellent (his opening speech is also very "interesting" for a lack of a better word)!

Note 1: I was negative 4 when I attended this show. I have many fond memories of this show, and this recording has helped me out!

Note 2: The crowd is very enthusiastic on this show!

- Greg, GregsynthWizard