Elton John, who vowed he would never tour again after his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour concluded in July 2023, is returning to the road for at least one night.
The legendary singer-songwriter will perform May 9 at Petco Park, where he will headline the 2025 Concerts for Cures to raise funds for Curebound, the San Diego nonprofit whose previous benefit concerts here have featured Alicia Keys and Ed Sheeran. John is himself a cancer survivor. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2017, received treatment, then began his farewell tour in 2018.
Curebound is a 501c3 organization that raises and invests funding for innovative adult and pediatric cancer research in San Diego. The nonprofit has raised more than $8.5 million with its two previous Curebound benefit concerts since launching here in 2021. It has funded more than $45 million in cancer research for 140-plus study grants for more than 20 types of pediatric and adult cancers.
“Music has the power to unite people together behind a shared cause,” said Curebound CEO Anne Marbarger, in a statement released Monday. “Every person in the world has been impacted by cancer and by working together, we will accelerate better prevention, detection, and treatment options for patients and families. The funds raised at Concert for Cures will help bring us one step closer to our vision of cures in our lifetime.”
John’s most recent San Diego concert was in November 2022, when his “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: The Final Tour” show took place at Petco Park. Getting him to perform a full concert again, let alone in a stadium, is a major coup for Curebound. Since retiring from touring, the pop superstar has given only a handful of performances over the past two years, and — with only two exceptions — has done just a few songs at them, not a full concert.
The most recent exception was a benefit concert last December at Orange County’s Segerstrom Center that raised $19.2 million for the nonprofit arts center. But Segerstrom only has a capacity of 3,000. John’s farewell tour concert at Petco Park on Nov. 10, 2022, drew a sold-out audience of 40,000.
John’s two-hour-plus Petco show featured 23 songs, starting with “Bennie and the Jets.” It concluded with “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” the song that inspired the name of what was billed as the final concert tour of his now 56-year-long solo career.
Ticket sales for John’s May 9 Petco Park show go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. on March 7 at: mlb.com/padres/tickets/events/curebound. A pre-sale will begin Monday at curebound.org/concert-for-cures.
Ticket prices have not yet been announced and the Curebound website does not list prices. A representative for the San Diego Padres, which helped Curebound book John’s May concert at the stadium, told the Union-Tribune on Monday that prices will be announced next week.
Source: American Military News
