With all of the COVID postponements, you could be forgiven for thinking that Elton John might still be on his extremely lengthy Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour — or that he may hit the road again for the actual last time — for real — sometime soon. But there's no Saturday night fighting it: after finally wrapping up the 330-show stint in Stockholm, Sweden, last July, the legendary singer-songwriter has confirmed that he's done touring for good.
In a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, John set the record straight — with an assist from his husband, David Furnish — when the outlet's Rachel Smith asked the artist about the possibility of returning to the road.
"We've got our sons, you know, they're getting into their teenage years now," Furnish said of the couple's kids, Zachary and Elijah (aged 13 and 11, respectively). "We don't want to miss anything. We want to be present for that. It's sort of a key decade, I think, in a child's life."
"He's been doing it for 60 years," Furnish added. "So it's nice to have that time to spend at home with family."
John stands in agreement: "The last show in Stockholm on the farewell tour after Glastonbury, I got in the car and went: 'Yes! Yes!'" he explained, "We went out on the biggest high, just the way I wanted to, and there's no going back [after] that."
The iconic singer-songwriter is still riding that high, too, having recently attained EGOT status and been honoured with the esteemed Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song alongside his longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin. John's tour memoir will be published in September — when a documentary about his career, Elton John: Never Too Late, will also premiere at TIFF.