‘Tonight is the final night’: Elton John says goodbye to over 50 years of touring with last show on his farewell tour
(CNN) — The Rocket Man is retiring from the road.
Elton John performed what he says was the last show on the final tour of his career Saturday night.
The iconic, award-winning musician took the stage for purportedly the last time ever as a touring artist in Stockholm, Sweden, according to his website.
In the caption for a video posted to his official Instagram Saturday, the British music legend wrote, “What a journey this tour has been and now we find ourselves at the end of it. Tonight is the final night.”
The video includes a clip from a 2018 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in which the musician announced his retirement from touring. “It’s the last time that I will be touring and traveling the world,” John says in the clip.
The five-time Grammy winner’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour” kicked off in 2018 and was originally meant to end in 2021 but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The tour has been publicized as his last after more than five decades on the road.
The tour featured more than 300 shows and was attended by more than 6 million fans across the world, according to John’s Instagram video. The 76-year-old musician headlined the Glastonbury Festival as his final UK stop on his farewell tour.
During his 2018 interview with Cooper, John attributed his retirement from life on the road to his decision to focus on his family. The musician has two sons with husband David Furnish.
“We had children and had changed our lives and in 2015, we sat down with their school schedule and we said I’m going to miss too much of this,” he told Cooper at the time.
He said at the time that although he was done touring, he would continue working on new music.