Elton John

May 1984: the Rose d’Or

Elton John first discovered Montreux in 1984, for the Rose d’Or, the town’s great television festival, and its pop strand, the Golden Rose Pop Festival, which each May gathered the stars of the moment before the cameras of Télévision Suisse Romande, broadcast across Europe.

On 13 May 1984 he rubbed shoulders there with Queen, who, the day before, had mimed “Radio Ga Ga” at the Petit Palais, Rod Stewart, the Pretenders and Spandau Ballet. Like the others, he performed in playback for television. His arrival by helicopter, caught by the cameras, says much about the global-star status that was already his.

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September 2007: a concert in Vevey

In September 2007, Elton John returned to the Riviera, this time for a full concert of his own: he performed in Vevey, on the Place du Marché, the vast lakeside square that also hosts the Fête des Vignerons. That evening more than 18,000 tickets were sold; outside the enclosure, in the streets, on the terraces and at the windows, three thousand more people listened to the concert. In all, some 21,000 spectators cheered the pop star.

Backed by five musicians, Elton John revisited some twenty hits drawn mostly from his 1970s repertoire. Shortly before 8 pm he appeared on stage in a black sequined suit over a bright red shirt and opened with the instrumental “Funeral for a Friend” (1973).

There followed “Daniel”, “Rocket Man”, “Sacrifice” and “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word”, before livelier numbers, “I’m Still Standing”, “Crocodile Rock”, “Saturday Night’s Alright (for Fighting)”, and two ballads as a farewell: “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and “Your Song”.

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29 June 2019: the farewell at the Stade de la Saussaz

In 2019 Elton John was in the midst of his farewell tour, “Farewell Yellow Brick Road”. The Montreux Jazz Festival scheduled two concerts at the Auditorium Stravinski, but demand soared and his production was too large for the hall. The festival chose to bring everything together in a single giant open-air concert, the first in its long history.

For want of a big enough venue, it tracked down, using Google Maps, the Stade de la Saussaz, Montreux’s football ground, in Chailly. On 29 June 2019, in crushing heat, Elton John played there for more than two and a half hours before fifteen thousand three hundred people bussed in from Vevey and Montreux. It was his only appearance at the festival, and one of the biggest concerts he ever gave in Switzerland.