new Elton John Christmas ad

Who doesn’t like Elton John? I grew up with him. I have a vivid memory of me and my gal pals cruising around our Toronto suburb on Friday and Saturday nights. Sandy had her mother’s car, a gigantic boat-like Pontiac, a Grand Prix I think it was. Massive. It was the 1970s and I was a teenager. We’d drive around all night, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes mixed with pot and singing at the top of our lungs. The 8-track cassette in the tape deck was Elton John Greatest Hits, the song of the moment Bennie and the Jets.

Be-Be-Be-Bennie and the Jets. Remember?

Of course, there was also Rocket Man, Your Song, Daniel, Tiny Dancer, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, and oh, so many many more. Around midnight we’d meet up with the local boys at Ice Queen and gorge on double cheeseburgers, fries and chocolate shakes. We thought we were the coolest ever. In the moment.

Anyway, fast-forward four decades and John Lewis department store in Britain has crafted a heart-warming Christmas ad this year.

From The Guardian newspaper –

The John Lewis advert is bookended by the singer performing Your Song at his first piano in what is supposed to be the sitting room of his London home. The middle charts his path from school and pub gigs in the London suburb of Pinner to pop mega-stardom, complete with technicolour outfit changes that include a stars and stripes sequinned suit and pink mohican.

With a little poetic licence the ad traces the singer’s musicianship back to the Christmas gift of a piano in the early 1950s, when the then Reginald Dwight was growing up under the watchful eye of his mother and grandmother. One scene, which re-enacts him nervously playing at a school recital, is expected to bring tears to the eyes of thousands of parents of would-be musicians.

“I hope audiences will watch this and really enjoy the national treasure that is Elton John,” said Craig Inglis, customer director at John Lewis & Partners.

 

 

5 thoughts on “new Elton John Christmas ad

      • I just bought Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on vinyl. His very best album — which I can happily play all day — is Tumbleweed Connection, which (fttiingly) I bought in a used CD shop in Flagstaff, AZ and played on my drive to the Grand Canyon.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s