Elton John - BBC Sessions, Volume 8: Playhouse Theatre, Edinburgh, Britain, 9-17-1976

Here is what I presume the last of the Elton John BBC albums from the 1970s (unless something unexpected pops up). This album took place in 1976, which in my opinion marks the end of his peak years of massive success. Disco was king for the rest of the 1970s, and John didn't do well during that time, both personally and musically. But he regained success at the start of the 1980s, and kept it for decades after that.

Anyway, I think this concert may be the best of the BBC ones I've posted here. What sets it apart is that is was performed entirely solo, with just Elton John on the piano. So that makes it a different beast than all the others. I could be wrong, but I believe it was the very first concert he played solo. There's a bonus too. Because of the solo format, he played a few songs he'd rarely or never played in public before, because he thought they didn't work with a band.

The sound quality is fantastic. That said, there were some problems I had to fix. The entire show was broadcast live by the BBC. Unfortunately, some BBC DJs tried to talk between the songs. Luckily, they only did this a little bit, mostly before the show started, during the long applause between encores, and at the end. I took all those out.

A more difficult problem was that a few of the songs had glitches. For instance, "Love Song" started in mid-song, with a BBC DJ talking over it. I suspect there was some sort of short commercial break. About half of the middle of "Tonight" was missing. There were so sound problems on a couple other songs, such as a burst of static during "Candle in the Wind." Luckily, I was able to find video footage of those exact performances on YouTube. The sound quality for those was equally great, but they generally lacked the banter between songs and some of the ending applause. But I was able to use those versions to seamlessly patch in fixes for all the problems. Now, the recording should be just about perfect!

The concert is an hour and 53 minutes long.

01 talk (Elton John)
02 Skyline Pigeon (Elton John)
03 talk (Elton John)
04 I Need You to Turn To (Elton John)
05 talk (Elton John)
06 Sixty Years On (Elton John)
07 Border Song [Holy Moses] (Elton John)
08 talk (Elton John)
09 Daniel (Elton John)
10 Love Song [Edit] (Elton John)
11 talk (Elton John)
12 The Greatest Discovery (Elton John)
13 Candle in the Wind [Edit] (Elton John)
14 talk (Elton John)
15 Benny and the Jets (Elton John)
16 talk (Elton John)
17 Rocket Man [I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time] [Edit] (Elton John)
18 talk (Elton John)
19 Tonight [Edit] (Elton John)
20 talk (Elton John)
21 I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself (Elton John)
22 talk (Elton John)
23 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
24 talk (Elton John)
25 Better Off Dead (Elton John)
26 talk (Elton John)
27 Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word (Elton John)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 Someone Saved My Life Tonight (Elton John)
30 talk (Elton John)
31 Sweet Painted Lady (Elton John)
32 talk (Elton John)
33 Your Song (Elton John)
34 talk (Elton John)
35 Island Girl (Elton John)
36 talk (Elton John)
37 Don't Go Breakin' My Heart (Elton John)
38 talk (Elton John)
39 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Elton John)

https://www.imagenetz.de/fDdqC

The cover art photo definitely comes from the concert in question. Thanks to the YouTube videos mentioned above, I was able to confirm him wearing the same outfit.