Elton John Announces Sydney Concert, November 16

Chugg Entertainment today announced that Sir Elton John will perform a 2nd Sydney Concert on Friday 16 November at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. This concert is the ONLY Elton John SOLO performance in Australia and the concerts' 2nd unique feature, is the only performance when Pnau join Elton on stage to do tracks from the recent Elton John VS Pnau album. Tickets for this show will go on sale on Friday 21 September at 9am.

This tour coincides with the brilliant success that Elton is currently riding with the release of Good Morning To The Night, a collaborative album with Australian electro-pop duo, Pnau, that rocketed to #1 on the UK Album charts upon its release.

Sir Elton John said “About five years ago when I was on tour in Australia I went to a record store in Sydney where I found the Pnau album. I bought it and fell in love with it, so I got in touch with Nick and Peter from Pnau and met them for coffee the next day. Some time later they left Australia and came to London, and now my company manages them. As soon as they arrived in England we started talking about Pnau doing a remix album using my early material. Basically I gave them free rein to go through all the master tapes and select whatever they wished.”

“Like all these things it’s about waiting for the right combination of circumstances. We didn’t give Pnau any sort of deadline on this project, but this summer seemed like a great time to release the album. And obviously it was, because the album went straight to Number One – my first UK number one album for 22 years!”

“In July I was invited to appear with Pnau at the Ibiza Rocktronic 123 Festival. Although it was an incredibly young audience, I was very surprised and happy to hear them all singing along to Your Song before we had even started playing the dance music. That set the tone for entire show and it was an amazing night. I am hoping members of the Sydney audience will be equally enthusiastic when they come and see me play Good Morning To The Night with these two very talented Aussies.”

With the release of Good Morning To The Night, comes the second official single from the album - the ironically upbeat and blissfully melodic Sad. Hitting the Top 15 in the UK Airplay Chart on it’s release, Sad includes elements from no less than five different Elton John classics, including the #1 hit, blended with a distinctive genius that can only be described as PNAU. The album’s lead single Good Morning To The Night was handpicked as one of five official songs for the London Olympic Games.

Forty years ago, during April 1972, Elton John's single Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long Long Time) was released around the world. This concert tour will commemorate the 40 years since the release of Rocket Man as well as being a celebration of Elton’s greatest hits. Fans can expect to see this timeless entertainer take them on a journey through his mutli-decade career.

The single, Rocket Man, was a global success, breaking records in multiple territories around the world and achieving the highest chart positions ever held at that point by any Elton John single.

Rocket Man also held with it a cultural and historical significance that remains unrivalled by any other song. Elton's American record company connected the release of Rocket Man to the launch of Apollo 16, and took out press advertisements saying 'On the morning of April 16, 1972, Apollo 16 was launched into orbit on a journey to the moon. A few mornings earlier Uni Records launched a new Elton John single into a world-wide orbit. WHAT A TRIP! Both launchings bound to set new records.'

On 28 April 1972 Elton and the band played a concert at Hofheinz Pavilion, University of Houston, Texas, the second date of their 1972 American tour. Ahead of the show, the Rocket Man met the 'Rocket men' at the Manned Space Centre in Houston, Texas, where Al Worden, Apollo 15 command module pilot, took Elton, Dee Murray, Nigel Olsson and Davey Johnstone on a conducted tour of the NASA headquarters.

In April of this year, Elton was told that European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut André Kuipers had made a special point of playing Rocket Man over the airwaves of the International Space Station (ISS) on the song's fortieth anniversary. André said, "This song has been an inspiration to many people who are interested in space, and especially those who wanted to become astronauts, including myself. It is certainly one of the most played songs here on the ISS, and we know it will accompany more astronauts into space in the future."