Elton John’s “secret” concerts in Czechoslovakia

Two concerts in Slovakia took place in the spring of 1984 as part of the band’s European Express Tour. Elton John drank with them from Maarsk and continued to Poland. She agreed on roughly two and a half years to come out. At that time, the details were arranged by zpvk pmo in Prague.

Elton John was not only a world music star, but also a member of the English football club Watford FC. He played two games with Sparta in the fall of 1983 in the UEFA Cup. One in November on a British lawn, the other by arrest in December in Prague at Letn, where he was drinking to support his team. By the way, Sparta won both matches (first 3:2, second 4:0).

At the time, the agency Pragokoncert had a monopoly on foreign concerts. Finding out details about the organization of Elton’s concert after a thousand years is difficult. Nobody from that Pragokoncert works here, and the whole Pragokoncert is actually a completely different company today than it was back then, so I probably won’t be able to help you with this, Martina Beneov, the company’s current spokeswoman, told iDNES.cz.

Marketing manager Tom Brejcha came out similarly from the Congress Center, then the Thumb of Culture, where he had the first of two concerts. I tried to find the required materials. Unfortunately, I was not asleep, he answered the question whether any archives, such as photos, had been preserved. At least one photo of the bag exists. The Congress Center previously published it on its Facebook page.

I don’t know if the concert was advertised or not. I think that the concert was very secretive, according to music columnist Milo Skalka. Indeed, the links traceable in the contemporary press could be found on the fingers of one hand.

Skalka also remembered how the Pragokoncert workers couldn’t cheer up the skin, em nunici. In Slovakia, this communist regime did not suffer from similar ignorance. The Comrades have repeatedly had Elton John perform without poop. The bag did not suit them. He had fun with it, the publicist smiled.

According to other sources, the functionaries of that time also had a problem with how they behaved during the concert. Elton John, absorbed by the music and emotions, suddenly threw away the chair and sat down on the floor. He didn’t hesitate to jump on the piano, walk on it or dance on it.

Elton John admirer Jitka Zelenkov suddenly received a message in December 1983 that the musician wanted to meet other artists in Prague at Sparta. When she set out to see him, she had no idea that her co-worker had played a prank. How did it end up? Check out the video:

Good old rock and roll

The Prask concert in the sold-out Sjezdov hall of the Thumb of Culture began with a brief memory of the murderous John Lennon’s Beatles song I Am The Walrus, which suddenly died in the middle of the night. After a moment of silence, the organ played and the song Funeral For A Friend played. Then the band and zpvk appeared.

The idol was here, sat down at the piano, which had turned rainbow-colored, and began to play and play and play. Since then, the piano has never been played. The lighting was perfect. The entire global set-up was illuminated in those groups above the scene by a computer, which was activated by one hunter with just two light presses of a button. The play reflector and fog cannot be described, it has to be seen, wrote documentarian Ale Sobotka in the magazine Melodie at the time.

At the concert, he wanted to shoot with a film camera, but his manager John Reid forbade cameras and cameras. The performance by Thodinov was in many ways different from what music fans in Slovakia were used to. a day of long breaks, a day left for the first day, a day of guests, a day of dancers. Just a song, a backing band and good old rock’n’roll music.

The concert continues. In a fast pace and in a raw, rock style, not as you can hear from the records. One song is known as the other. Zatek is composed of songs from the seventies. Aranm are one, prey. Many of the songs are two-times, three-times their recordings on the records. Others are the same length, but not smooth. Rock’s speech is the most honorable of all, Sobotka described.

According to him, Zpvk almost didn’t get attached to the piano. He just announced the name of the song, got up, hopped up, bowed to the board and reached his waist, took a drink, sat down at the piano and started playing some of his hits Bennie And The Jets, Daniel, Blue Eyes, Kiss The Bride, Im Still Standing and ada far away In the wild, the team followed the four-hour-long parade punctuated by thunderous applause.

A sad sonnet about the death of Song For Guy, which Elton John composed in 1978 on the same day when Guy Burchett, a 17-year-old member of his publishing company, tragically died on a motorcycle, was played at the farewell.

The Havov concert was sold out, where eight thousand people attended on April 25, according to the list in the city chronicle. Among them, the eleven-year-old girl and future model Simona Krainov, whom he took there together with his sister tta. On social media, Krainov ped ace shared a photo with the tickets of that time, on which the price of 60 Ks is indicated.

According to memories, Karel Gott, Petr Janda or his big fan Jitka Zelenkov did not miss Elton’s concert in Prague.

A few days later, on April 28, 1984, he also angered his comrades in Poland when, in Gdańsk, where he was performing, he sat down with a well-known personality to protest against the communist regime and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Wasa.