Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden review: For two high school friends, he's still rock and roll

Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan on Tuesday,... — Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan on Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014. Credit: Bruce Gilbert

By ERICA MARCUSerica.marcus@newsday.comNovember 26, 2014

Billy Joel plans to play monthly shows at Madison Square Garden for as long as the public is interested. Follow his first year of this groundbreaking music-industry experiment by looking at his shows through a variety of viewpoints -- from critics, musicians, celebrities and fans. This month, it's Newsday food reporter Erica Marcus.

'They say that these are not the best of times, but they're the only times I've ever known."

Thus did our senior class president quote Billy Joel's "Summer, Highland Falls" in the graduation issue of our high school newspaper.

"You're going to regret that, Susan," I told her at the time. "No one's going to listen to Billy Joel 10 years from now."

I was wrong. And on Tuesday night I took Susan to his show at Madison Square Garden to apologize. It's been 34 years since we graduated high school, and Joel has emerged as one of the most enduring pop acts of the 1970s. The concert proved why.

Joel started strong with "Miami 2017," the mock-apocalyptic tribute to New York that is even more poignant now after the Sept. 11 attacks, then segued into "Pressure." Dressed as if for a bar mitzvah in a dark coat and tie, Joel sat at his rotating Steinway. Above the stage loomed an elaborate video presentation that interspersed screen-saver-ish visuals with shots of the band, the audience and the maestro's virtuosic ivory tickling.

Joel's voice was in fine form, strong and flexible, hitting highs and lows with the same ease with which he delivered interstitial patter. "And then we got divorced," he deadpanned after heartfelt renditions of the love songs "Just the Way You Are" and "Always a Woman," both written for his first wife, Elizabeth Weber.

SEE PHOTOSSee photos of Billy Joel, then and now

The audience was given two "fielder's choices" where it selected, by clapping, one of two proposed songs. "All for Leyna" soundly defeated "Zanzibar," and "The Downeaster 'Alexa' " trounced "Summer, Highland Falls" even more decisively. No surprise that this audience would prefer the dramatic Long Island fisherman's lament to a Hudson Valley idyll, but Susan and I were gratified when, later in the show, Joel sang "Summer, Highland Falls" anyway. In fact, we were brought to tears.

While we were dabbing our eyes, Joel introduced a special guest, Sting, to reprise the tribute rendition of "Big Man on Mulberry Street" that the British rocker delivered a week ago when Joel received the ASCAP Centennial Award. No doubt Sting was also promoting his foundering Broadway show, "The Last Ship." "If you get a chance," Joel told the audience, "you should go see it."

Sting sounded like a million bucks and looked impossibly lean and lithe for a 63-year-old man. (Insert joke about tantric sex here.) I'm not sure why John Mellencamp showed up a bit later to sing his "Crumblin' Down," but it only lasted a few minutes and then Joel was back with "River of Dreams"" and "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant." At the first chord of "Piano Man," there was an audible sigh from the crowd, and I don't think I was imagining that Joel sang a little softer to better let us hear how we knew every breath and cadence of his first hit.

Joel briefly left the stage but returned for four energetic encores for which he abandoned his piano. During "Uptown Girl," he made an appealingly lame attempt at doo-woop-style hand gestures, making a fist ("She'll see I'm not so tough") and tossing imaginary hair ("She's looking so fi-i-ine"). "It's Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me" inspired him to pick up the mic stand and spin it around, Roger Daltrey-style -- but slower. The audience was fairly shouting along with "You May Be Right": "OH! But it just may be a LOOOO-na-tic you're looking for."