What Disney can learn from Elton John

to hand it to Sir Elton John. Not only is he the only musician ever to have top-ten hit singles in Britain for six decades in a row. He is also a rare septuagenarian megastar who knows how to bow out in style. On November 20th at a relatively tender 75 years old, he performed what he said would be his last ever concert in America at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. One of the showstoppers was “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, the theme song for graceful retirements. If only Disney, who live-streamed the event on Disney, had been listening.It wasn’t, because shortly before the performance started, a bombshell landed. Its hospitality tent at the stadium was convulsed by the news that Bob Iger, the Walt Disney Company’s own Rocket Man, was coming out of semi-retirement, aged 71, to retake control of the firm he left only 11 months previously, leaving Bob Chapek, his handpicked successor, out on his ear. It was startling. It shouldn’t have been. After all, as Jeffrey Cole, a communications expert at Annenberg puts it, “Disney has had a 40-year succession problem”. During his decade-and-a-half as , Mr Iger postponed his retirement four times, elevating and nixing potential successors. His predecessor, Michael Eisner, expensively jettisoned possible replacements twice during his 21-year reign, before finally settling on Mr Iger. Disney’s board has now given Mr Iger two years—a deadline unlikely to be set in stone—to have another go at finding a suitable heir.