Elton John & Leon Russell - BBC Sessions, Volume 16: Electric Proms, the Roundhouse, London, Britain, 10-28-2010

I've posted a ton of Elton John BBC albums, but I generally lost interest in the early 2000s, because most of his concerts consisted of his same old hits that he'd done plenty of times before. But this concert is different. John's music is heavily based on piano playing, and he was heavily influenced by the piano playing of Leon Russell, who had a peak of popularity in the early 1970s. In early 2010, John and Russell released an album together, "The Union." This concert heavily draws on that album, and features them in nearly equal measure, both in solo spots and together.

By the time of this concert, Russell was near the tail end of his music career. He looked like a wizard, with long white hair and a beard, and he walked with a cane. He would die a few years later, in 2016. But both he and John were creatively revitalized by working together. On "The Union" album, the vast majority of songs were written by some combination of John, Russell, and John's long-time lyricist Bernie Taupin, who wrote a bunch of songs with Russell. And despite Russell's health issues, he still had no problem singing and playing piano with vigor.

The sound quality is excellent, despite this being entirely unreleased. However, boy, did I have a problem with the recording. It turns out there were microgaps through the entire thing. Generally, there were less than half a second long, but that was just long enough to notice a brief silence. So I had to carefully listen to the whole thing for the gaps, and then fix them one by one. Most songs had at least one such gap, and some had four or five. I've marked some of the most problematic ones by putting "[Edit]" in the titles, but really, I edited the vast majority of the songs here. 

But there was another problem. Occasionally, the BBC DJ spoke, for station identification or to tell the listener at home what was happening on stage. Most of the time, that talking took place between songs, and I was able to edit it out. But for about three or four songs, it overlapped with the starts of songs. In one case, it even kept going over some of the singing. So I had to do more editing of that. Luckily, in the one case where it overlapped the singing, the song started with a chorus, so I was able to patch in the vocals from a later chorus. 

But... sigh, this one was a real pain in the ass to fix. On the plus side, everything should sound great now. I may have missed a microgap here and there, but I'm pretty sure I got the vast majority of them, if not all of them.

This album is two hour and 35 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On May 22, 2024, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I changed the title from Volume 15 to Volume 16 after discovering a 1977 BBC concert I had missed.

01 talk (Elton John)
02 Burn Down the Mission (Elton John)
03 talk (Elton John)
04 Levon (Elton John)
05 Tiny Dancer [Edit] (Elton John)
06 talk (Elton John)
07 Ballad of a Well-Known Gun (Elton John)
08 talk (Elton John)
09 I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues (Elton John with Plan B)
10 talk (Elton John)
11 Delta Lady [Edit] (Leon Russell)
12 A Song for You (Leon Russell)
13 This Masquerade (Leon Russell with Rumer)
14 talk (Elton John & Leon Russell)
15 If It Wasn't for Bad (Elton John & Leon Russell)
16 Eight Hundred Dollar Shoes (Elton John & Leon Russell)
17 Hey Ahab (Elton John & Leon Russell)
18 talk (Elton John & Leon Russell)
19 Gone to Shiloh (Elton John & Leon Russell)
20 Jimmy Rodgers' Dream (Elton John & Leon Russell)
21 talk (Elton John & Leon Russell)
22 There's No Tomorrow (Elton John & Leon Russell)
23 Monkey Suit (Elton John & Leon Russell)
24 The Best Part of the Day (Elton John & Leon Russell)
25 Dreams Come True (Elton John & Leon Russell)
26 talk (Elton John & Leon Russell)
27 I Should Have Sent Roses [Edit] (Elton John & Leon Russell)
28 When Love Is Dying (Elton John & Leon Russell)
29 talk (Elton John & Leon Russell)
30 Hearts Have Turned to Stone (Elton John & Leon Russell)
31 Never Too Old [To Hold Somebody] (Elton John & Leon Russell)
32 talk (Elton John & Leon Russell)
33 In the Hands of Angels (Elton John & Leon Russell)
34 Tight Rope (Leon Russell)
35 Prince of Peace - Out of the Woods (Leon Russell)
36 Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms - Stranger in a Strange Land [Edit] (Leon Russell)
37 Your Song [Edit] (Elton John)
38 Take Me to the Pilot [Edit] (Elton John)
39 Sad Songs [Say So Much] (Elton John)
40 The Bitch Is Back [Edit] (Elton John)
41 talk (Elton John & Leon Russell)
42 Hey Ahab (Elton John & Leon Russell)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mqbND

For the cover, I wanted to have a photo of John and Russell together in concert. But both of them played pianos that were far apart on stage, so there weren't any good photos like that. So instead I found two photos from this exact concert, and positioned them to both fit on the cover.