Billy Joel sets 93rd Madison Square Garden residency show
Tickets for Billy Joel's August Madison Square Garden residency show go on sale Feb. 10. Credit: Getty Images / Ethan Miller
As Madison Square Garden announced on Thursday that Billy Joel will play his 93rd consecutive residency concert there in August, the Piano Man himself could also take pride in his and others' successful lobbying to place Warren Zevon on this year's list of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees.
Joel's newly set Aug. 29 concert will mark the 139th lifetime show at The Garden for the Hicksville-raised star, who was inducted into the Rock Hall in 1999. General-public tickets go on sale 10 a.m. Feb. 10 at Ticketmaster.com.
Joel, 73, was among those this year who wrote to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's nominating committee urging them to nominate Zevon, the iconoclastic singer-songwriter who died of lung cancer in 2003, at age 56. Long considered a musician's musician, Zevon crafted such highly original songs as "Werewolves of London," "Excitable Boy" and “Lawyers, Guns and Money," spinning tales of demimonde denizens like mercenary soldiers-of-fortune, murderous psychopaths and, more personally, alcoholic tortured souls. As a songwriter, he penned such hits as Linda Ronstadt's "Poor Poor Pitiful Me."
Eligible for the Hall of Fame since the 1990s, Zevon's absence as a nominee until now has often been cited as a blind spot for the organization, which on Wednesday released this year's slate of 14 contenders.
“I just wanted to put in my two cents of supporting Warren Zevon to be included,” Joel told the Los Angeles Times in a story published the day before the nominations were announced. “If anyone deserves to be, he does. He was a real original, and I don’t know if that’s appreciated enough.”
He added, “The first minute I saw him, I was knocked out. He was like the crazy brother I never had. He was fearless, and it stuck with me. I never thought he got the attention he deserved.”
Warren Zevon, seen performing at The Omni in Oakland, Calif., in 1990. The "Werewolves of London" musician died in 2003 at age 56.
Credit: Getty Images / Clayton Call
Zevon, Joel believes, has been underappreciated because "he was a piano player, and we all tend to get lumped into this thing of ‘They’re not real rock guys’ — which I don’t think is fair, but I understand why it happens. Piano is perceived to be this middle-of-the-road instrument only played by dorks. But when I saw Warren, he was kind of breaking the piano to pieces, little by little, which I thought was an interesting style," Joel said, clarifying the "breaking" as "metaphorically, but physically too. … He banged it, and he banged it good. Even without amplifiers, he was getting the most volume he could get out of that thing.”
Music fans can vote through April 28 at vote.rockhall.com, with inductees to be announced in May.
