From Stephan Heimbecher
Dear Elton,
they say you will turn 60 today. I say you will turn 60 again.
Only a minute after your birthday, you had the first 60 to celebrate: 60 seconds! And less than an hour later, it was time to revel your 60 minutes on this planet. Within another two and a half days you broke the 60 hours barrier. Things naturally slowed down a bit after that as you had to wait until May 24, 1947 to acclaim your 60 days anniversary - the same day Bob Dylan turned seven years old. And a bit less than a year later, on May 18, 1948, it was time to commemorate 60 weeks, while Trini Lopez Trinidad probably started looking for a hammer on his 11th birthday. For anyone with a little bit of mathematical talent it won’t come as a surprise that 60 months were reached on your 5th birthday (March 25, 1952) - by the way, also the 10th birthday of Aretha Franklin.
So here we are now celebrating your 60 years lifespan, but there were a lot more 60 milestones in between: 60 million seconds, for example, you’ve reached on February 16, 1949. But don’t even think about getting to the 60 billion seconds mark as that won’t happen before July 20, 3848. If we take a look into the minutes space, things look a bit more promising, yet challenging: You’ve reached 60,000 minutes on May 5, 1947, but it will take you roughly another 54 years from today to also get to 60 million minutes on April 21, 2061 - you would be 114 years old by then. Looking at 60,000 hours, you coped with that on January 27, 1954. 60 million hours would put us into the year 8796, so let’s try 600,000 hours instead, as that’s will be on September 4, 2015 - a Friday.
You are performing your 60th show at Madison Square Garden today at your 60th birthday. What about if you try to reach the 600 show hours at the Garden mark by the time you turn 600,000 hours? Assuming an average show length of 3 hours that would give the fans another 140 shows at the Garden within the next eight and a half years. Isn’t math great - I am putting September 4, 2015 in my calendar right now!
But joking apart and enough of the numbers gimmick. In the following, you will find congratulation messages from fans from all over the world. In addition to that, some of your fans have put together special video clips to send their congratulation message to you. These can be found on special 2-DVD set which I have delivered to your hotel in New York on March 24, 2007. Some of the material on these two DVDs can also be found here.
Wishing you a very Happy 60th Birthday!
