Elton John - Philadelphia Freedom
Live at the Pine Knob Music Theatre in Clarkston, MI
August 17, 1986
In the selection I posted from the April 24, 1986 Rotterdam concert, we noted that Elton's vocal timbre had somehow completely changed in the span of just 23 days, and had gone from a clean, bright tenor sound to a deeper, huskier baritone. We established this was likely due to him experiencing some kind of vocal scarring/trauma due to his excessive pot smoking.
Elton then had 4 months off, during which he recorded an album--the infamously bad "Leather Jackets". Elton's voice is unpleasant on the album, to say the least, and it was clear his condition was not improving.
On August 15, Elton was all set to open the American leg of his "Ice On Fire" tour, but almost instantly there were problems. He had to cancel the first two shows due to what they called 'laryngitis. Truth is, his vocal nodules would've already been developed in some form by this point. We can come to that conclusion because, contrary to the story they've stuck to over the years, he was actually diagnosed in early September following the infamous 9/8/86 Philadelphia show.
Interestingly, even though he had 4 months off touring, he returned in worse shape than he left off--which is not something one can usually say for a singer. He sounded a bit more haggard than April, and his falsetto was getting a bit thinner/more airy sounding.
Despite these problems, this first show back is really one of the only shows on this leg of the tour where he "goes for it" on a lot of high notes/falsetto notes that would start being removed within less than two weeks. This song in particular would become a major and continuous rough spot on the tour as soon as two days later, and the infamous "Yes I DO!" ending on a falsetto D5 would be gone (as far as we know) as much as 10 days later.
That said--this is the only performance on the USA leg (that was documented) where all the high notes he was singing as of the end of the European leg in April were intact. He hits all the 'shine a light' falsettos, and he does the D5 on the first 'Yes I DO' (the remainder he ends on a Bb4--the phrasing he ended up using when coming back from his throat surgery).
Now this version in particular is one of my favorite versions of the song to listen to--the band goes at a bit of a faster pace (the whole show is like that and if reports of the show are true, Elton spent the show being noticeably upset/frustrated about his voice so he was likely eager to get it over with so he could leave and probably smoke weed so he could cause the nodules to get worse and develop more...but boy howdy if he was mad when his voice was like this he was in for a hell of a time when he got to Saratoga). But anyway, I just wanted to share this version because it's one of my current top favorite versions to listen to...it's definitely number one right now but its usually tied with October 10, 1986. Have fun!