When Elton John heard information of Queen Elizabeth II’s dying within the UK, he didn’t cancel his Thursday present in Canada. As a substitute, the singer devoted a efficiency of Don’t Let the Solar Go Down on Me to the royal — and eulogised her earlier than a crowd.

“She was an inspiring presence to be round,” John informed his viewers at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, as reported by Billboard. “She led the nation by means of a few of our biggest and darkest moments with grace, decency and a real, caring heat. I’m 75. She’s been with me all my life, and I really feel very unhappy that she received’t be with me anymore.

“However I’m glad she’s at peace, and I’m glad she’s at relaxation. And she or he deserves it. She’s labored bloody laborious. I ship my like to her household and her family members, and he or she will probably be missed. However her spirit lives on, and we have fun her life tonight with music.”

John, who’s at present within the midst of his Farewell Yellow Brick Street tour, earlier paid tribute to the Queen on Instagram. He wrote he was “deeply saddened to listen to the information” and that the queen “has been an enormous a part of my life from childhood to today, and I’ll miss her dearly”.

This wasn’t the primary time that John devoted a musical efficiency to a member of the British royal household. He carried out a model of Candle within the Wind on the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana, an expensive good friend.

The Rocket Man singer additionally famously chronicled witnessing Elizabeth slap Viscount Linley, her nephew.

Within the 2019 memoir Me, John recalled watching “her method Viscount Linley and ask him to look in on his sister, who’d been taken in poor health and had retired to her room”.

“When he repeatedly tried to fob her off, the Queen evenly slapped him throughout the face, saying ‘Don’t’ — SLAP — ‘argue’ — SLAP — ‘with’ — SLAP — ‘me’ — SLAP — ‘I’ — SLAP — ‘am’ — SLAP — ‘THE QUEEN!’” the singer recounted.

John grew to become the primary overtly homosexual musician to be knighted by Elizabeth when he obtained the distinction in 1998 for his philanthropic and inventive work. He has met with a number of members of the royal household through the years.

Elizabeth died on Thursday at her Scottish residence of Balmoral Fortress. She was 96.