He stepped into the wings knowing this was not surrender, but authorship: the right to choose when the curtain falls. That last bow in Stockholm didn’t silence the roar; it simply released him from the endless carousel of flights, dressing rooms, and countdown clocks. He walked away with a heart full of names and faces, of strangers who stitched his lyrics into their most private moments, of young musicians who saw his unapologetic costumes and realized there was space for their own colors.

When “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” dissolved into memory, what lingered was not loss, but a widening circle of connection. His songs will keep turning up at weddings, hospital bedsides, midnight highways, and quiet kitchens. He exchanged stadium thunder for the small, fierce music of family and chosen nights. The tours are over. The dialogue continues, carried now by every voice that ever sang along.