‘This One’s for You’ | Memories of Elton John
Elton John and Billy Joel announced a stop in Salt Lake City during their 2009-10 Face to Face tour and I wanted to go soooo bad. I didn’t have a lot of extra money though; I was a young professional earning meager wages as a features writer at a local newspaper. So, perhaps like any 25-year-old at the time, I took the question to my Facebook friends. Should I figure out a way to go? I got some responses - I believe all in favor - but I remember one specifically that said something like, “Buy the tickets. Life is short and rock legends don’t live forever.”
It was exactly the push I needed. My parents already had tickets to the show and I decided to buy a seat on my own and travel with them to the arena that day. We could grab dinner together and I’d have a good time, even if my seat wasn’t next to theirs. I called my dad and presented the idea and he sounded happy on the phone, excited that I wanted to attend the concert. He and my mom had introduced me to Elton John and Billy Joel when I was a kid; a solo Billy Joel concert was one of the first big shows I saw, my parents scoring tickets when the 1993 River of Dreams album was popular.
More than a decade later, my dad agreed he’d buy a ticket for me and we’d have a great time seeing the Face to Face tour together. To save a little money, my dad said he'd stop by the ticket office so we could avoid online service fees, and I said I’d pay him back. When he called later to say he got the ticket, he added a surprise: I could bring a friend. “Don’t worry about paying me back,” he said. “I don’t want you to sit alone. You’ll have more fun with a friend. We can all still meet up, go to dinner, and it will be a great time.”
It was an amaaaaazing time.
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One bright 2017 summer day in McCall, Idaho, my mom and I were on a lake cruise on the beautiful, blue Payette when Elton John’s “Your Song” started playing. I gasped and said I couldn’t believe it as my mom’s eyes teared up and she replied, “I can.” Reminders of my dad, who’d passed away two and a half years earlier, found us all the time as heart rocks and or geese flying overhead and, that day, it was Elton John. My gift is my song and this one’s for you. The breeze blew our hair the same way the tune plays on radios - gently - as we smiled and took in the sun and the song.
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Three months before that day in McCall, my mom joined me in Albuquerque for an Elton John concert that was scheduled for the day before my dad’s birthday. When I saw the date, I knew I wanted to ask my mom to fly down. We could have a Dad’s Birthday Weekend - go to the show, go to a spa, go to a local festival. She agreed, and we purchased the tickets. Life has a way of aligning dates and times and the weekend ended up being a mixture of so much joy, and some sadness, too. The day of the show was the same day our longtime family friend Mark Hatch passed away. “Not Mark Hatch,” I thought. “Not the dad of my childhood best friend who made Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes on weekend mornings and built slides out of snow for us in the winter so we could sled down the yard. Not the man who accidentally shut my fingers in the car window and teased me for years for being so polite about asking him to roll the window down again for me. Not the man with the kind laugh.” In the parking lot before the Elton John show that night, my mom and I found a heart made out of tar. I picked it up and took a picture of it inside Tingley Coliseum with the crowd in the background. A heart for my dad, for my mom, for me, and Mark Hatch who would be so very missed.
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My friend Stevi and I still talk frequently about the 2010 Face to Face concert. My parents, Stevi and I carpooled and went to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, took pictures in the arena lobby, then separated into our seats. What a show it was, with Elton John and Billy Joel taking turns at the piano and singing some of their greatest hits as duets. I had binoculars in my lap so I could see their fingers sweep across the keys. Elton John wore a black coat with a design that flashed in the spotlights in the dark. Billy Joel brought his humor to the stage. It was a long show - one that you hope never ends. My parents, Stevi, and I talked about it all the way home. I love memories like this, when my family was still whole and my dad and I shared something special.
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My first memory of Elton John is from when I was 13 and he played “Candle in the Wind” for Princess Diana’s funeral, which was coincidentally on my birthday. It’s interesting the memories we keep, and for some reason I kept that one, even though I didn’t fully understand the significance of Princess Diana and I didn’t actually watch her funeral. But I do remember it was on TV in the early hours of my birthday and I have fuzzy memories of knowing that Elton John had been part of it. His new recording played everywhere and Diana was represented as a Beanie Baby bear that we had in our house. I watched a video on YouTube this week of Elton John playing “Candle in the Wind” for Diana at Westminster Abbey and was amazed that he could get through it. The lyrics are so beautiful. I’m sure he could not have imagined his legendary friend would be gone in an instant.
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The last time I saw Elton John perform was in 2019 with Travis’ parents. We were in Utah for a week soon after Travis’ mom told us she had breast cancer for the second time. She didn’t want to dwell on that, and it was nice to make memories during a transitional time. We went to the Bees baseball game with the whole family, had both sides of the family over for my birthday at my mom’s house, and for one evening, Travis, Irma, John, and I got to listen to Elton John perform as part of his final tour. He was magic, as always, making the stadium sparkle like his glasses as his voice and piano keys enveloped the stadium and, for a few hours, carried away fears we had about Irma’s diagnosis. Over the next two years, cancer would take everything from her. After she passed away, Travis’ stepdad would come across his favorite photo of her - a picture of her somewhere outdoors with shades on and a brilliant smile. “She looks like a movie star,” he would say. When we played a photo montage of her for my mom, she said Irma was radiant. She was a another legend in our lives. I’m grateful for the memories we made with her, including the Elton John concert. I have “I’m Still Standing” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on a playlist I made to remind me of her.
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Elton John is 78 now and continues creating and releasing music, most recently with Brandi Carlile in a 2025 album, “Who Believes in Angels?” I watched several interviews of the pair discussing their friendship and the album. He is aging and losing eyesight and he’s still bent on supporting other artists and sharing his talent. The last song of the album, “When This Old World Is Done With Me,” acknowledges he won’t be around forever. In an interview I watched, he said he doesn’t think about that too much, but I’m glad he said it in a song.
When this old world is done with me
Just know I came this far
To be broken up in pieces
Scatter me among the stars
When this old world is done with me
When I close my eyes
Release me like an ocean wave
Return me to the tide
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It turns out my dad’s birthday and Elton John’s birthday are only three days apart. My mom and I learned this during the concert in Albuquerque when he said he was about to turn 70. The crowd erupted and sang happy birthday to him. Elton John shimmered in purple during that show, stood up at times to pound the keys and dance with the piano. My mom and I cried a little during a couple of songs as we remembered my dad. Then, somewhat mysteriously, Elton John’s “Your Song” kept playing in unexpected places as my mom and I made more memories. It streamed over the intercom at a nail salon and a live entertainer sang it at a Chocolate and Coffee Festival while my mom and I drank deliciously thick chocolate with marshmallows. That weekend, my mom also shared a journal with me that my dad kept for a short while when my brothers and I were little. I took pictures of some of the pages where he mentioned me. I was about three or four when he wrote the following passages. What is clear, is that I thought my dad was a legend when I was that young. I’m glad we kept buying tickets, because I didn’t know then that legends don’t live forever.
