ELTON JOHN LEWIS!
£7m ad winds backwards through singer’s life – from superstar to enchanted little boy unwrapping his piano on Christmas morning
ITS heartwarming festive TV adverts featuring cute animals have become firm family favourites
But this year John Lewis has found a different way to step into Christmas – by joining forces with Elton John.
The store’s promotional film The Boy And The Piano, the full version of which lasts two minutes 20 seconds, shows the singer through the ages.
Sir Elton, 71, takes the starring role, singing Your Song. Five actors, some transformed into lookalikes using prosthetics, play him from boyhood to superstardom. The advert begins with the singer at an old stand-up piano reminiscing about his life, including the time as a boy that he was thrilled to play for his mother Sheila, who died just before Christmas last year.
It winds back through time, recreating scenes including a spectacular US stadium concert from the 1970s and a performance on a TV show.
The young Elton – or Reginald Dwight, as he then was – is seen performing in a pub as a teenager, playing at a school recital and setting sights on a piano as a young child in his pyjamas on Christmas morning.
The theme is that ‘some gifts are more than just a gift’, in this case suggesting that receiving a piano for Christmas transformed Sir Elton’s life. This is, however, a sentimental version of the truth – Sir Elton learnt to play on a piano owned by his grandmother, who lived next door.
John Lewis denied claims that the advertising campaign had a £10million budget with half going to Sir Elton. It said the cost was £7million, most of this covering the price of screening it on TV and in cinemas.
Part of the singer’s fee is being donated to the Elton John Charitable Trust. Sir Elton said: ‘The ad is absolutely fantastic and I’ve truly loved every minute of being a part of it.’
The advert – which comes ahead of the release next year of Rocketman, a film based on the singer’s rise to stardom – will first be screened at around 9.15pm tonight on ITV1. Scenes from it have been recreated in John Lewis’s flagship Oxford Street store, where a musical light show is being projected from the windows.