Brow already glistening two songs in, after a frantic
rendition of Prelude/Angry Young Man,
Billy Joel turns to the forty-thousand-plus crowd piled into Wembley, shrugging
off their ponchos as the drizzle abates. “Y’know, last time we were here, I
think we played to about five thousand in Hammersmith,” he quips, with a wry
self-deprecating smile. “And now we’re in this freaking stadium… a
Frankenstadium!” He gestures to himself. “And I don’t have anything new for you
either.” A beat. “Just the same old shit.”
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| Billy Joel performs at Wembley Stadium, September 10th 2016. (Credit to theguardian.com) |
At first, half an hour before the scheduled start, there is
a concern that Joel has overstretched himself with his step up to Wembley
Stadium, his debut at the venue after years of playing the neighbouring arena; half
the seats are still empty, echoing similar poor turnouts for Rihanna and Beyoncé
earlier in the year. But by the time he begins, bathed in a single spotlight as
he picks out the elegiac introduction to Miami
2017 (See the Lights Go Out on Broadway), the stadium is virtually full, a
full-throated roar of approval bouncing around the national stadium. For the
following two-and-a-half-hours, they are treated to a finely tuned mix of hits
and rarities that, perhaps surprisingly, connect superbly for the most part,
thanks in no small part to Joel’s ability to make Wembley feel like an intimate
bar-room knees-up rather than a modern monolithic structure.
In part, it lies with his dry wit and patter. Dressed in
black at his revolving baby grand piano, Joel exudes the charm of a natural raconteur.
At the end of Just The Way You Are,
he makes passing reference to former friend Elton John, referring to him as “the
other piano player”, before he teases a few bars of Your Song. When namechecking Donald Trump before The Entertainer gets him a chorus of
mock-groans, he wags his finger cheekily and simply says “Brexit”. He has a
cold, which he blames on the British weather, and a fly swatter so that he “doesn’t
swallow one of the bastards”. Stagehands bring him an endless supply of tea; he
burns his mouth once and hops around a bit. When he cedes the stage, in an odd
turn, to his roadie (fabulously named Chainsaw) for a rendition of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, he introduces the man
as having been “found by God” with a church organ backing. He takes refuge in
audacity and it makes for a wonderfully hilarious show. Perhaps the most
enjoyable element is what he terms as “fielder’s choice”, where he calls out
two song names and gets the audience to choose one, effectively tailoring the
setlist for themselves; duly, they choose Zanzibar
and Vienna over Big Man on Mulberry Street and Summer
Highland Falls.
But for the rest of his set, Joel’s choices read as a
love-letter to American romanticism and a tribute to the British artists who
inspired him. New York State of Mind,
The River of Dreams and Scenes from an Italian Restaurant are juxtaposed
with snippets of With a Little Help From
My Friends, Sympathy for the Devil
and A Hard Day’s Night by Joel and
his impressively tight band, who deliver near-faithful renditions across the
night. Late cuts of We Didn’t Start the
Fire, Uptown Girl and Only the Good Die Young are infused with
Beatlesque harmonies behind them. And, as Joel closes out his encore with You May Be Right, the heavy sound of Led
Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll works its
way into the melody.
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| Billy Joel performs at Wembley Stadium, September 10th 2016. (Credit to thetimes.co.uk) |
But the high point of the evening was never in doubt; at
the end of the main set, Joel turns and winks to the audience, before he breaks
into the harmonica-and-keys intro of Piano
Man, still as great a song as it was when it first put the man on the map
four decades ago. It evokes the most poignant singalong of the night, on the
eve of 9/11’s fifteenth anniversary, and Joel swells with pride, eyes
glistening as he conducts the crowd through a last refrain unaccompanied by
music. There’s no telling when Joel will return from his residency at Madison
Square Garden again; based on the evidence, there’ll be many who hope it’s
sooner rather than later.
