MUSIC
Billy Joel ★★★★
Melbourne Cricket Ground, December 10
The straight-shooting guy from the Bronx gave us the good news/ bad news gag up front. He hadn’t released anything new in 30 years, so tonight would be “the same old shit you heard the last time”. If anyone in attendance was disappointed, they were drowned out by the other 76,299 of us.
Billy Joel performs to a sold-out crowd at the MCG on Saturday.Credit: Martin Philbey
Tickets to the state government-sponsored Australian exclusive disappeared fast in June, when music gatherings of this size were still a slightly surreal prospect. Come the perfectly balmy summer evening, there were few masks and no evident reluctance to throw heads back and bellow a couple of dozen smash hits of the ’70s and ’80s to the sky.
The piano man arrived in his usual black suit, black shirt and tie, swinging a less-expected electric blue Fender guitar for A Matter of Trust: a kind of prayer, maybe, that the immense demands of the next two and a half hours would leave him standing.
Again, he was comically upfront about the fact that he wasn’t expecting to be singing this stuff at 73. The medicinal throat spray was never far from his hand. But even the high notes he warned us about in An Innocent Man managed to ring with gusto above his eight-piece band.
Billy Joel performs A Matter of Trust at the MCG. Credit: Martin Philbey
Billy Joel’s tradition straddles the pop charts and the classic bandstand style of American jazz, featured players stepping forward for the trumpet solos of Zanzibar the lead guitar breaks in Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song); a saxophone ensemble here, or a counterpoint flute there.
Some players took bigger star turns. Guitarist Michael DelGuidice sang a rousing Nessun Dorma and a verse or two of Led Zeppelin; percussionist Taliefero Crystal a sky-splitting River Deep Mountain High. Tina Arena returned too, after her comfortable opening act in baggy cricket whites and spangly epaulettes, to take the pressure off the high notes of Uptown Girl.
Part of that tradition is the entertainer who knows how to offset his blunt disinterest in cricket (boo!) with an offhand rendition of Waltzing Matilda (yay!); a guy who can do a passable Mick Jagger impression when necessary and knows exactly when to bring his gorgeous little daughters Della and Remy onstage to say hello.
For all the flawless showbiz though, Billy Joel’s longevity is about his songs. They’re songs of substance with flawed characters and wry viewpoints, as bleakly topical as Allentown, The Downeaster “Alexa” and We Didn’t Start The Fire; as deceptively cynical as Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, Piano Man and It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me.
Billy Joel’s tradition straddles the pop charts and the classic bandstand style of American jazz.Credit: Martin Philbey
Even his greatest love song, She’s Always A Woman, aims way beyond sentimentality to grapple with a more complex character. He wasn’t letting the smooch factor overwhelm the real-life subtext of Just the Way You Are either. “And then we got a divorce,” he quipped after that one.
It’s fair to say the maestro was sounding a little spent by the time he slammed into the finale of You May Be Right. Even after two and half hours, he’d left a handful of long-ago classics on the shelf for his next visit. Let’s hope he doesn’t screw up by releasing any new shit in the meantime.
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