Watford's rock star super-fan Sir Elton John delivers Glastonbury gold

The Hornets’ Honorary Life-President and former club chairman performed two hours of musical mastery, belting out hit after hit to a crowd estimated to have been around 120,000 people.

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Dressed in a gold suit, wearing red tinted glasses and sat behind his black piano, the 76-year-old may have – intentionally or not – spent the entire evening giving a nod to his football club. Either way, there were plenty of Watford shirts and flags in the huge crowd at Worthy Farm.

He had never played Glastonbury before, and as the crowd chanted ‘Elton, Elton’, the star said: “I never thought I’d play Glastonbury, and here I am.

“I’m so happy to be here. I won’t ever forget this.”

Gold suit, black piano, red glasses . . . (Image: PA)

Although it had been billed as his final live performance in the UK, the star himself dropped a hint that might be the case after all when he said: “It's a very special and emotional night for me as it may be my last show in England, in Great Britain.”

Many fans had queued overnight to get close to the stage, and then stood in the tremendous heat all day long to ensure they kept their prized spot.

That wasn’t lost on Sir Elton, who said: “I'd better play well and I'd better entertain you because you've been standing there so long.”

Many fans waited for hours, and went to a lot of trouble (Image: PA)

He opened the show with Pinball Wizard from The Who’s rock opera, Tommy, which was on his 1974 album Caribou. It was a song that Sir Elton said in an interview just before his show that he hadn’t performed on stage for about a decade.

Inside the first half an hour he had performed six UK Top 20 hits, including Philadelphia Freedom and I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues.

Many people had been trying to guess the four guests Sir Elton had said would be joining him on stage, and names such as Britney Spears, Chris Martin and Harry Styles had been bandied around.

However, the superstar has always been a fan of supporting up and coming artists whose music he likes, and so three of the four acts that joined him fell into that category.

Jacob Lusk, vocalist with US soul group Gabriels joined him on Are You Ready for Love, while Rina Sawayama took the ‘Kiki Dee role’ on Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.

The only non-EJ song came when he introduced American singer/songwriter Stephen Sanchez to perform his own track, Until I Found You – a track familiar to many younger fans as it’s been widely used on TikTok.

The crowd watching Sir Elton on the Pyramid Stage was estimated to be 120,000 (Image: PA)

Your Song – a classic from 1970 which many Watford fans would like to adopt as a club anthem – and the ever-emotional Candle In The Wind preceded the only guest that didn’t fall into the ‘rising star’ category: Brandon Flowers.

The Killers' front man joined Sir Elton to sing Tiny Dancer, a song from Madman Across The Water that was released in 1972 but gained most of it’s acclaim in more recent times. On this occasion, it prompted a proposal in the crowd which was picked up by the BBC TV cameras.

As the set started to draw to a close there was a triple blast of hits to jump around to as Sir Elton performed Crocodile Rock, Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting and I’m Still Standing.

He then took a moment to reflect that it was the 60th birthday of the late George Michael, one of his great friends who grew up in Bushey.

The pair famously duetted on Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, and so fittingly that was the song which came next with Sir Elton saying: “He was my friend, an inspiration, and today would have been his 60th birthday - I want to dedicate this song to his memory, and all the music he left us with which is so gorgeous."

The final song of the night was an extended, often haunting, often uplifting version of Rocket Man, as fireworks filled the sky around the Pyramid Stage.

Fireworks filled the sky as Sir Elton signed off with Rocket Man (Image: Yui Mok, PA Wire)

The final line was ‘I think it’s gonna be a long, long time’, poignant and fitting if this was, indeed, his final UK show ever.

His Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which began in 2018 and has included more than 300 shows, still has seven dates to run but is already the highest-grossing tour of all time with box office receipts of almost £700m.

Sir Elton is back on stage in Paris tomorrow night for the first of two shows. Then there are two dates in Zurich, one in Copenhagen before the first two shows in Stockholm on July 7 and 8.

Plenty of time, then, for a family holiday before the new football season starts. What chance we see the great man at Vicarage Road on August 12 for the first home game of the 23/24 campaign?