Elton John is coming to Tribeca. He’s going to play a free show with Leon Russell in Tribeca on April 20th to launch the Tribeca Film Festival. The concert will follow an opening night screening of Cameron Crowe‘s documentary, “The Union,” about Elton and Leon’s album collaboration of the same name. Who better to have made such a doc? As I told you when Elton and Leon played here at the Beacon last fall, Crowe was shooting his movie back then. “The Union” is an amazing album that came out after the Grammy deadline was over. But it’s my favorite record of 2010 by far. Crowe, of course, has a long association with Elton John. He covered him when we were in high school back in the 1970s, for a magazine called Rolling Stone. (It’s different than the one that comes out now.) And in Crowe’s wonderful movie, “Almost Famous,” a group of characters memorably sings along to Elton’s “Tiny Dancer,” one of the most timeless scenes in all of moviedom. That April 20th show will follow an April 14th show, by the way, where Sir Elton and guests will be performing at the Pink Ball for breast cancer research. It does sound like the 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival is going to be great if this is their opening night!
PS If you don’t have “The Union” CD, you must get it. The song “If It Wasn’t for Bad” has my favorite line of the year in it: “If it wasn’t for me you’d be happy.” That says it all!
