Billy Joel honors Gordon Lightfoot at MSG residency show

Billy Joel, who on Tuesday posted a video of himself performing Gordon Lightfoot’s "If You Could Read My Mind" in tribute to the recently deceased singer-songwriter, remembered Lightfoot again in his Madison Square Garden residency concert Friday.  

“You might know him from the hit records he had,” the Hicksville-raised Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, who turns 74 on Tuesday, told the crowd. He then performed the first two stanzas of Lightfoot’s 1974 No. 1 single about the titular woman who infatuates a man.

“Anyway," he said afterward, "I want to say thank you and rest in peace to Gordon Lightfoot. And I was thinking of him singing this next song that I wrote. This is called ‘The Downeaster “Alexa”,’ ” he said, launching into the 1989 song inspired by the boat he had named after his eldest daughter.

Lightfoot, who died May 1 in his native Canada at age 84, recorded hits that also included "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and "Carefree Highway."