Elton John - Philadelphia Freedom
Live at Madison Square Garden in New York City, NY
September 11, 1986
After the disastrous show on September 8, 1986 in Philadelphia, Elton got a much needed two day rest before his upcoming four-night stand at his favorite venue, Madison Square Garden in New York City. He'd open on September 11 and play through the 14, doing four consecutive nights.
During his two day rest, Elton visited a throat specialist. He had visited one prior to the start of the American "Ice On Fire" tour, but it's pretty clear this either wasn't a specialist, or he didn't have his vocal cords checked as they would've found the nodules forming and could've taken better treatment measures earlier on.
Unfortunately this was not the case, and on either the 9th or 10th of September Elton received the unfortunate diagnosis of why he had been having such difficulty the entire tour leg so far. The nodules were there, and by this point there was little that could be done to intervene. He really only had three options either way, cancel the entire rest of the tour in both the USA and Australia and therefore cancel the shows with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra--which had been worked on for ages, or he could cancel the USA leg and hope for the best in Australia, or soldier on for the rest of the year and deal with the vocal cord issue once he completed the Australian shows.
He likely had to consider the fact he had an album to promote, a incredibly huge commitment to the MSO, and he should've likely been informed there was little that could be done about the nodules in the state they were in, so as we all know he went with option 3. The repercussions of this choice would be disastrous to his voice, which would result in him needing surgery on his vocal cords to get any remnants of his prior vocal abilities back.
That said, he opened on September 11, 1986 with a rather miraculously and unusually quickly healed voice. There is a theory Elton was given steroid treatment for the remainder of the USA leg to try and get his voice through it and hopefully control any further significant damage to his already damaged vocal cords. Hearing shows like this one and the following three certainly give credence to that theory.
His vocal range is restored as is his falsetto. He is definitely very careful in many spots--after 9/8/1986 he sounds very hesitant to go all out in certain moments--but as he gets a sense of his abilities thru each song he starts doing more and more additional higher and harder bits and turns in a very consistent show overall. He'd loosen up far more over the next two nights.
At any rate, this is a good performance. He only pulls back on "whippoorwill OF freedom", skipping the Bb4. But this is a significant performance as it contains the final time that Elton would ever attempt the D5 phrasing on the "Yes I DO" in the finale of the song. Enjoy!