This has been a good time to be a Billy Joel fan in South Florida.
First, there's Movin' Out, that terrific narrative dance Broadway show based on his songs, now playing Broward Center for the Performing Arts through Jan. 15. Next, a six-night run at Miami Beach's Jackie Gleason on Jan 24.
Saturday evening Joel, who has also bought property in Miami Beach, opened the first of two standing-room-only concerts at Sunrise's Your-Name-Here Arena to an adoring audience.
(It's the BankAtlantic Center but given how often the venue adopts a new corporate handle at this rate who knows if that will be its name when Joel performs his second show there Jan. 15).
For Movin' Out, choreographer Twyla Tharp brought together two dozen Joel classics to fashion a Vietnam-era tale. In concert Joel, 56, gathers his old songs, too, but it's hard to figure for what purpose. He has no new CD to promote. In fact, he famously retired from writing pop songs, penning his last one at the age of 43, all of which makes lines he wrote for 1983's Keeping the Faith seem prescient and damning.
If it seems like I've been lost in let's remember / If you think I'm feeling older and missing my younger days / Oh, then you should have known me much better / 'Cause my past is something that never got in my way.
Except, of course, Joel's past is in his way and it's what he's celebrating on this tour. Yet his voice is in sturdy shape; his hard-driving band, always top-notch, remains so, and this time included a fine horn section, enlivening tunes like Big Man on Mulberry Street, Zanzibar and New York State of Mind.
Few pop stars have built such a reliable catalog and time hasn't dulled the pleasures of most of these songs. We still hope Virginia shakes the shackles of her Catholic upbringing and dallies with the singer. We feel the pain of the unemployed in Allentown. We're glad Joel doesn't bow to political correctness and keeps the lyrics of 1978's slicing Stiletto intact.
Joel also seems engaged by his music and thankfully isn't reduced to offering rote versions of his hit singles the way his sometimes touring mate, Elton John, has been guilty of on recent tours.
Joel may be playing the ''let's remember'' game but he earns major points for bravado on this tour by studiously avoiding his hits, opting instead for album tracks from deep within his catalog. ''I don't know if I'll remember some of these songs,'' he warned. For more than an hour, after opening with the Top 40 Piano Man, Joel sang nary a major hit single. From Glass Houses the casual fan might expect the smashes You May Be Right and It's Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me. Instead, he delivered All for Leyna, Sometimes a Fantasy and Sleeping With the Television On. Joel even dug out obscurities such as Laura, The Great Wall of China and The Night Is Still Young, prefacing the latter with the hopeful, ``I hope we don't [expletive] this up.''
He didn't. This was a show for the real fan and no doubt many others will complain the radio favorites were missing, but, c'mon, haven't you heard My Life enough in your life?
Opening night of this tour wasn't without its bugs, however. The lighting director clearly irritated Joel by seldom shining the spotlight on the drummer, whom Joel needed to see for his song's intros. Instead, blinding white lights were aimed squarely into the audience's eyes, which made watching large parts of this concert akin to driving while the idiot behind you has his brights on.
Joel may also want to fold in a few hits into the set's first 75-minutes -- just a few would do -- to keep everyone's attention. Where's the Orchestra? may be a bit too obscure.
The video monitors, in center hall, were not adequate for everyone to see what was happening on stage. And given that Joel must remain seated since he's the pianist, someone will always be staring at his backside. At least he had a good sense of humor. ''Sorry you're seeing the back of my head,'' he said to one side of the arena, rubbing his now balding head, ``but nowadays you can see yourself in it.''
On allmusic.com, a great Web site I check out daily - okay, hourly - there's an awesome review of an 1970 heavy metal album that featured Billy Joel, who performs Thursday at the St. Pete Times Forum.
To be fair, the album predates Joel's phenomenally successful solo career as a singer-songwriter. Attila is the name of the album and the band, composed of Joel, who played organ, and his buddy Jon Small, who played drums.
Joel never was a darling among most critics, even in his heyday in the '70s and '80s. But Attila was another matter entirely. Check out this excerpt from the allmusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine:
Many critics, fans, and college students have spent hours debating the serious question of what the worst album in the history of rock actually is. One listen to Attila would provide them with a definitive answer.
Attila undoubtedly is the worst album released in the history of rock & roll - hell, the history of recorded music itself. There have been many bad ideas in rock, but none match the colossal stupidity of Attila.
There's a reason why they're the only heavy rock organ-and-drums duo in the history of rock & roll - it's an atrocious combination.
By the end of the album, it feels as if a drill has punctured the center of your skull - it's that piercing, painful, and monotonous.
Which means that if it came out today, yours truly would be stuck reviewing it for the Times.
We won't get into the album cover, which featured the diminutive Joel, long-haired and bearded, wearing a Hun outfit and standing in a meat locker. (All right, so I guess we just did get into it. Whoops.)
But, hey, young artists can make sizeable missteps. And give Joel credit: He freely acknowledges how awful Attila was on its first - and, not coincidentally, last - album.
Among his comments about the band's performances was this winner:
"The more we played, the more people left."
Big points for candor, Billy.
Excruciating as Attila was, Joel turned right around the following year and released his solo debut Cold Spring Harbor, featuring his first big single, She's Got a Way.
It's not likely Attila would have continued under any circumstances, since Joel had an affair with his bandmate's wife, Elizabeth, and they ultimately married.
Funny how Joel made such beautiful music with her after making such horrible music with her husband.
Joel's fans shouldn't worry that he'll be breaking out any Attila tunes in concert any time soon. But it's relevant because last month Joel released a new retrospective, My Lives, which actually contains one Attila track, Amplifier Fire.
(I think just Amplifire would have been a better title, but what do I know?)
My Lives also includes two tracks apiece by two other bands Joel performed in, the Lost Souls and the Hassles.
Regardless, for his first solo rock show in years, expect Joel to stick with a selection from his dozens of hits.
No matter whether Joel's your typical cup of tea, songs such as Just the Way You Are, Only the Good Die Young, You May Be Right and It's Still Rock and Roll To Me are undeniable.
But I'll hold out hope that Billy's ready to reach back into the past and entertain us with one of those infamous Attila tracks.
Maybe the disc's opener, Wonder Woman? The closing track, Brain Invasion? How about the cut called Godzilla, Pt. 1?
What do you say, Billy?
Maybe it's time for Godzilla, Pt. 2.
IF YOU GO
Billy Joel performs at 8 p.m. Thursday at the St. Pete Times Forum, downtown Tampa. Tickets are $39.50-$75. Call 301-2500 or 287-8844
A surprising, one-time-only coda to Tuesday's opening night performance of Movin' Out at the Broward Center propelled an evening's worth of artfully plotted energy -- feelings that had melded from romantic to tragic to hopeful -- into an altogether different dimension.
After the company of athletic, sexy dancers had taken the audience on a journey devised by Twyla Tharp, one set to the theatrically revelatory pop hits of Billy Joel, after all the bows had been taken and the show's fierce rock band had encored with New York State of Mind, guess who usurped the talented Darren Holden's place on the piano bench? Yep. The creator of all the evening's music, Billy Joel.
Joel, who has big concerts at the BankAtlantic Center on Saturday and Jan. 15, stopped by for a two-song ''show'' of his own, belting You May Be Right and Only the Good Die Young.
And the previously enthusiastic but well-behaved opening night audience transformed into a rock crowd; people as middle-aged as Joel himself, people who matured to the ''soundtrack'' of his hits were dancing in the aisles.
But Joel doesn't make a habit of turning up at Movin' Out, of course, so how about the show itself?
Tharp's 2002 Broadway hit is a moving, sometimes dazzling piece of narrative dance. Weaving together Joel's songs with movement instead of dialogue, she imagines what happened to Brenda and Eddie, the couple in Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, through the personally and societally traumatic years after their breakup.
She suggests that Long Island pals Eddie (Brendan King), Tony (Sam Franke) and James (Matt Dibble) go off to Vietnam, but only two come back. Brenda (the amazing Holly Cruikshank) had already taken up with Tony, but the Vietnam years messed with both their lives. The pretty, proper Judy (Julieta Gros) becomes a too-young widow. And all the friends must figure out how to heal and begin living again.
Fans of Joel's chameleonic music will love the way Holden and the band deliver it, finding the jazzy passages, the big pop hits like Just the Way You Are and Uptown Girl, the despair of Captain Jack, the redemptive warmth of I've Loved These Days -- well, they're all evocative of the Joel originals.
Joel fans who also happen to be dance-phobic (guys, you know who you are) can relax already. The sensual interplay of the show's sexy women and macho men raises the temperature in the theater almost as much as Joel did.
POP QUIZ CLASSIC: BILLY JOEL
By Aidin Vaziri - San Francisco Chronicle
This interview was originally published in early 2001, just two years after Billy Joel announced his retirement by declaring, "I'm 50 years old. It's the millennium. I just got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. How am I going to top that? Where do I go from here? The moon?" Now he can also check off the list, "I've crashed my car three times." The songwriter, who had just gotten into composing classical music, spent most of the interview justifying why he changed his mind about quitting rock music and decided to go on tour with fellow piano man Elton John. Joel once again breaks his promise with a tour this year in support of his new five-disc rarities anthology, "My Lives."
Q: Weren't you supposed to retire?
A: I never said I wasn't going to play anymore. I don't know where that came from.
Q: Probably on the account of you said it.
A: No, I said I wasn't going to play long grueling tours. When I'd go out on the road for my own tours, we'd stay out for nine months to two years. That's a long tour. The last time we did that was the last tour we did. I said I'm not going to tour like that. I don't know why people thought I was retiring. This is a sissy tour. This is four weeks. This isn't even a rehearsal; by the time we get good we're going to have to stop. This is like a Madonna tour. It's not even a Billy Joel tour. It's a Billy and Elton tour, so I'm only doing half the work onstage.
Q: So you do half the work for all the money.
A: More money!
Q: How much more?
A: You want to give people a reason to hate my guts more? I'm making more money. It's one of those equations where one plus one equals 10. It doesn't make sense. It's like Simon & Garfunkel. If they go out together, they'll sell out stadiums. But Paul Simon goes out on his own and he sells theaters. Now, who's the talent in the group? Paul Simon wrote all the songs, played the music. Garfunkel just stands there and sounds like a vanilla ice cream cone. But them together, it's the big kahuna.
Q: Why does Billy Joel need more money?
A: That's a good question.
Q: Doesn't it all go to the ex-wives anyway?
A: Hopefully, they got as much as they're going to get. But there were some ex-managers who cleaned my clock pretty good. So we're still filling in the hole that they dug. Although, after I sold my house to Jerry Seinfeld, we kind of evened up the score there. You know, it's not just for the money. If it was, then I would stay out on the road and do long tours. This is kind of just to keep my hand in.
Q: Do you think you're all into classical music now because you're having a midlife crisis?
A: That might be part of the reason I'm writing the music I'm writing now. There's a certain longing in it. There's a certain desire for a romantic relationship. There's a certain sadness because things didn't go the way I wanted them to go. I find this to be a great source of inspiration. Nothing turned out the way I thought it would. That made me a completely new person. I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 -- to meet women.
Movin' Out-Moves into South Florida!
By Beau Higgins - broadwayworld.com
THE HIT BROADWAY MUSICAL CONCEIVED, CHOREOGRAPHED AND DIRECTED BY
TONY® AWARD-WINNER TWYLA THARP BASED ON THE SONGS OF TONY® AWARD-WINNER
BILLY JOEL KICKS OFF 2006 AT THE BROWARD CENTER JANUARY 3 – 15, 2006
FOR BROADWAY IN FORT LAUDERDALE AND RETURNS TO SOUTH FLORIDA AT THE JACKIE GLEASON THEATER JANUARY 24 – 29, 2006 AS PART OF
BROADWAY IN MIAMI BEACH PRESENTED BY FLORIDA THEATRICAL ASSOCIATION Fort Lauderdale / Miami Beach --- MOVIN’ OUT, the Tony® Award-winning new musical conceived, choreographed and directed by Twyla Tharp and based on 24 classic songs by Billy Joel, kicks off 2005 at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for Broadway In Fort Lauderdale presented by Florida Theatrical Association January 3 - 15. MOVIN’ OUT will return to South Florida at the Jackie Gleason Theater January 24 – 29 as part of Broadway In Miami Beach. Tickets are on sale now.
