Only the good keep going
Mon, May 7, 2007
Billy Joel puts his Heart and Soul into last night's show.
By JAMES REANEY, FREE PRESS ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST
Billy Joel playing the piano and singing his songs last night at the JLC to a very appreciative crowd. The Piano Man didn't need no special effects to play a jammed John Labatt Centre as if he owned it.
"That's it for the special effects. The piano goes this way. The piano goes that way," U.S. superstar Billy Joel said just seven songs into last night's terrific two-hour show. It was his long-awaited London debut.
Joel and his grand piano had just been rotated by stage machinery. It made the keyboard and singer able to face one part of the crowd and then continue the circle to face fans on the other side.
Joel had already sung Angry Young Man, This is My Life, a 1971 item called Everybody Loves You Now, The Entertainer, Allentown and Zanzibar before admitting to the boomer-heavy crowd of 9,500 fans that the piano moving around its circular mini-stage was the only "special effect" he had for them. The piano man did have another trick, as it turned out.
The 1970s superstar with 33 Top 40 hits started 20 minutes late at 8:20 p.m. Six minutes later, Joel had his first standing ovation for Angry Young Man. He had enough heat late in the main set to finish with a spectacular four-song run starting with We Didn't Start the Fire and ending with You May Be Right.
Last night's Joel, Joel, Joel extravaganza finally ended with Joel playing plenty of harmonica on The Piano Man, the encore finale. He turns 58 on Wednesday, something Joel mentioned to cheers.
Joel talked a lot and added little Canadian touches throughout the show. There was a flicker of O Canada in the piano intro to My Life.
There was a funny, brief reprise of The Entertainer as it might have been sung by Gordon Lightfoot -- "one of my heroes," Joel said.
He also referenced another great Canadian singer-songwriter with a little bit of Helpless, delivered in a faux Neil Young warble from a bad, bad karaoke night.
Joel referred to the seats behind the stage and its ramps as "Windsor" and he and his fine band made sure those fans had some face time, too.
The seats at the far end of the arena were "the Yukon Territory." Joel didn't have big video screens in his own setup for them, but in an arena first for a concert, the video images were carried on the video board in the arena's scoreboard. It is surprising no other act has tried this before.
That "special effect" worked well even if meant that, as viewed from Section 105, the piano man's hands were often seen in huge closeup near the Jiffylube motto "Oil change in mins."
Joel's concert last night called up memories of the show by British superstar Elton John last November, the best of 2006 in London and also a debut in this market.
I will say the American did try one effect Sir Elton didn't.
Joel's piano disappeared into the stage, the star strapped on a guitar, and out came a roadie to sing AC/DC's Highway to Hell.
It drove the crowd crazy and energized Joel to the point he tossed around the mic stand as he strutted -- sans piano -- for a few songs.
He moves a bit like Kevin James in King of Queens, but he's cool about it.
Then Joel's sleek keyboard rose to the stage surface once more and the amazing drive to The Piano Man was on.
We'll just have to see if Sir Elton tries to top that.
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