Friday Night’s Alright for Elton Fans

For Elton John, putting together a concert that encompasses his career must be like assembling an elaborate puzzle.

His two dozen top 10 hits include sentimental ballads, blazing rockers, relaxed rhythm and blues strolls, disco beats and Broadway pomp, and they are strewn across every phase of his nearly 30 years of stardom. A fair representation of each period and style--giving his general audience most of the songs it comes to hear, unwrapping a few less heralded nuggets for the fanatics who have all the albums, and paying lip service to a new album, “The Big Picture”--might take all night.

It took nearly that Friday at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim: Opening a two-night stand, John and his superb band played for more than 2 1/2 hours. Some pieces of the puzzle didn’t fit, and several were crammed in as filler during a long, sluggish stretch of the second half. But the show was memorable and highly pleasing, not so much for how John managed to weave it together--it was going to be an unwieldy sprawl, no matter what--but for how devoted he continues to be to his songs.

He sang plaintive numbers with the conviction of a vow-taker and found joy in the rockers and romps, sometimes jumping from his piano bench and pumping his arms to celebrate and to urge on the crowd. Admirably, but less rewardingly, John also struggled like Atlas under the weight of ponderous big-pop moments that sometimes encumber his still successful and occasionally still inspired ‘90s repertoire. Unfortunately, he sang nothing from “Made in England,” the 1995 album that offered a rare glimpse of a hit artist approaching near-peak form more than 25 years after he began.

With “Levon” and “Rocket Man,” brilliant highlights played early in the show, John’s commitment paid off in the biggest favor a Hall of Fame rocker can do for his listeners: He extracted old faves from the classic-rock trophy case and made them live anew, not as beloved oldies, but as immediate, utterly relevant slices of emotional life.

For at least 12 years, John has had to accommodate to his substantial but nevertheless manageable loss of vocal range. But sometimes that limitation gave songs added impact. In “Levon,” with his voice a little grainy and torn, John brought wrenching sadness to Bernie Taupin’s lyric, which can be read as a parable for the baby boomers and their Depression-raised parents. John sketched a family dissolving over three generations due to a father’s warping materialism and his son’s consequent shame and disgust. For most of the show, he ducked the high notes he used to soar on in the ‘70s; but on the refrain of “Levon,” he made a ragged leap that expressed more than his shiny flights of old.

“Rocket Man,” another parable of emotional estrangement, was a marvelous epic. John’s longtime guitar sidekick, Davey Johnstone, provided the Doppler-effect slide guitar representing the vertigo of a man who may not be lost in space but is lost to his family and his deepest-feeling self. The song stretched out through exciting dips and bends, building toward a gospel-tinged climactic release, but falling back into an unsettled, restless ending.

Rather than eat up a lot of time with chat and theatrics (aside from a few saunters along the stage apron to press the flesh), John made room for some satisfying extended instrumental stretches. He showed his flair as a pianist based in traditional Southern R & B and early rock ‘n’ roll--notably on the playful bawdyhouse keyboard dance of “Honky Cat,” the Jerry Lee Lewis pounding of “Great Balls of Fire” and the showmanly gymnastics of “Bennie and the Jets,” which capped a generally no-nonsense evening with John lying on his back and soloing frantically with a stretched-out right hand. Johnstone and second-chair guitarist John Jorgenson, an ace player formerly with the Desert Rose Band, colored the sound with versatile flourishes, adding mandolins, a banjo and a Jorgenson saxophone to all manner of accomplished guitar bits.

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Like Noah, John tried to shepherd his sprawling program into some semblance of order by pairing things two by two. The animal kingdom linked “Circle of Life” (complete with video sequences from “The Lion King”) and “Grey Seal” (a track from the album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”); “Roy Rogers,” another non-hit track from “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” was pulled out in honor of the singing cowboy’s recent death; the next song, “Crocodile Rock” was similarly a fond look back at youthful pleasures. “I’m Going to Be a Teenage Idol,” a sardonic look at the game of pop stardom, led into “The Bitch Is Back,” a swaggering celebration of same.

“Circle of Life” was a mistaken nonstarter of an opening number, bloated and out of place when what was called for was a rocking entrance. If John needed to insert a hit from “The Lion King” for completeness’ sake, it would have made more sense to weave “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” into his solo-acoustic piano ballad segment. A glowing “Your Song” led off the solo interlude, but John stayed in ballad mode throughout the sequence, missing an opportunity to rock a little on his own--say with “Amoreena,” from “Tumbleweed Connection,” arguably his finest album but utterly ignored in this set.

Bombastic, overheated ‘90s ballads like “The One” and “Something About the Way You Look Tonight” (one of two tracks culled from “The Big Picture”) call into question whether John, at 51, has the will to rock anymore as a recording artist; like Paul Simon, he is apparently Broadway-bound in a collaborative project with his “Lion King” lyricist, Tim Rice.

His Pond show proved that he hasn’t lost the knack for rocking; but John always has thrived on making hits, and he may think his rocking side exists now only to ignite concert retrospectives, and that the contemporary pop charts want only ballads and pomp from him. Let’s hope “The Big Picture” isn’t a sign of him losing sight of the big picture he engagingly displayed in concert.