Billy Joel is 74 and not shy about it. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” he cautions as he steps out from behind his grand piano for the first time, “I ain’t no Mick Jagger”. He struts comically through a burst of Start Me Up to prove the point. Later, he watches himself on the screen and gasps: “Oh Christ, it’s my old man. Hello Dad.” Joel looks like a mob boss who came up the hard way and talks like a standup comedian riffing on the career of Billy Joel. He wasn’t always this relaxed. Back when he was the most unhip of megastars, he couldn’t pretend that the critical sneers weren’t bugging him. Thirty years ago, he quit releasing new songs all together. Now, though, nobody cares what Rolling Stone considered cool in 1982. Since 2014, his triumphant Madison Square Garden residency has turned the writer of New York State of Mind into the musical equivalent of the Empire State Building. The residency has produced a precision-tooled entertainment machine, from covering A Hard Day’s Night to bringing on Joe Jonas for Uptown Girl.
Billy Joel — from unhip megastar to precision-tooled entertainment machine
Published on: July 9, 2023 11:49 AM