For a lot of musicians, getting to play the Super Bowl halftime show is an experience they wouldn’t think of turning down, but it sounds like Elton John may have done just that.
In an interview with The Wrap, Elton’s husband and manager, David Furnish, discusses why Elton decided to go with a live, rather than taped, performance for his Disney+ special Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium — and seemed to let it slip that they were once offered the Super Bowl gig.
Noting that for Elton “everything he does with his band, is always 100% live,” Furnish revealed, “We looked at the Super Bowl at one point, and the reason we decided to back away from it is that elements of the Super Bowl show, they don’t allow you to do live.” He said they expected Elton to play live along to prerecorded instruments.
Furnish says he has full confidence in Elton and his band’s live abilities, sharing, “There’s nothing he hasn’t encountered in his 50-plus years as a performer that he hasn’t been able to handle and that his band hasn’t been able to maneuver around.” He says for the the Disney+ special “going 100% live just felt like the magical right thing to do. And it felt like more of an event, too.”
Finally, he offers, “Doing a livestream to 150 million people felt like an opportunity too good to pass up.”
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