He walked on stage in sunglasses, an earring glittering in one ear. The days of jumping on piano benches were presumably behind him. Still, in 16 songs that lasted over 90 minutes on Wednesday evening, Sir Elton John offered a robust private concert to a relatively intimate audience gathered under a tent in an estate in the Hollywood Hills on a cool California evening.

The cause for this fund-raiser -- extravagant even when measured against Hollywood events -- was the legal fight to overturn Proposition 8, the California voter initiative that banned gay marriage. At the end of the night, as the crowd headed to a long line of waiting limousines and shuttle vans, Rob Reiner, the director of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, announced that the event had raised $3 million.