Elton John - Philadelphia Freedom
Live at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, CA
October 10, 1986
Original ending of the song restored/intact (03:48-04:48)
As we established, the USA "Ice On Fire" tour could be divided into sections, section one would be "The Inconsistent But Mostly Acceptable" phase of 8/17-8/29, section two would be "The Tragic Downfall and Disaster" phase of 8/30-9/8, section three would be "The False Hope" phase of Madison Square Garden 9/11-9/14, then section four would "The Unpredictable Mess" phase of the entire rest of the tour.
This show falls into that unpredictable mess period. The tour was ending in a matter of days, Elton had been diagnosed with nodules about a month prior, and his voice was all over the place ever since, with it never returning to a consistent shape and his abilities diminishing over time. Songs were continuing to be altered and it was a gamble night to night if he'd hit certain notes when he went for them, or if he'd sing an alternate melody. And even on his better nights, his vocal timbre was becoming more and more ragged.
These two shows we have from LA in his final run of shows in the USA leg are interesting. We had theorized that Elton may have been receiving steroid treatment in the remaining stretch of the tour just to get him through, and if thats true then he certainly would've received a dose before this 10/10/86 date...plus a healthy serving of his, um, "special coffee".
I say this because this is one of the first shows in a while where he's truly going "all out", and I mean...like...totally all out. The show starts out a bit rough but after the first few songs he shifts into overdrive. He's completely vocally disinhibited, singing with ridiculous force, embellishing like crazy, belting high notes he'd been cutting, and even embellishing and adding high notes in random spots. There was no falsetto to speak of, but what he DID do was overdriven to the max. I highly doubt this would've been possible without some sort of medical intervention especially considering the shows that came before it.
I assume, had he gotten steroid treatment, it was timed to coincide with the recording of this and the following show for the King Biscuit Flower Hour so he could at least turn in serviceable vocals to be salvaged for broadcast. He definitely turned that in at this show...but it's notable that the broadcast, for some reason, seems to have pulled mostly from the 10/11/86 show the next day...which was, well, a bit inferior by comparison to say the least.
Despite it's vocal shortcomings, it's a really fun show with a lot of really fun moments from Elton in incredibly high energy and about as good of voice as he could be at this point. As we know, it was a steep downhill fall from here...
A few years back, Wolfgang's Vault released soundboard recordings of two of Elton John's concerts from his run of shows at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles in October, 1986. They recorded at least two shows of the run to broadcast on the King Biscuit Flower Hour--these being the October 10 & October 11 shows.
Although it went unnoticed for years, it turned out that the October 10, 1986 soundboard tape had gone through a couple of strange edits. The most apparent being the complete replacement of the final minute of "Philadelphia Freedom", replacing it with the audio from the October 11 show. Listening to the real ending, there appears to be absolutely no apparent reason for this being replaced--even more confusing is the fact that the ending is far superior and more energetic to what they replaced it with!
So anyway--here for the first time on KZread is the true actual performance of the song cut together from two different tapes. All but the final minute of the song come from the original soundboard recording, and then cuts to another source where the soundboard cut to the 10/11/86 tape.
Enjoy!