Review: Joel offers classic, but not classical, repertoire

By the time you read this, Billy Joel will be gone. The unwitting VH1 tent pole has all but given up writing rock music; his enthusiasms now run toward classical compositions, some of which may see release when he feels up to letting them go.

It's a brave move for Joel -- a man who has laid out more hits than Ali -- albeit one tempered by a greatest hits tour designed to give his audience one last chance to "view the body" (thank you, Lou Reed) before he vanishes into the symphony.

It's a shrewd move. With his greatest hits set at the Joint at the Hard Rock Saturday night, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee truly put the shine to his crooked halo. There was a time -- not long ago -- that you could simply turn on the old FM radio and get a Billy Joel hit (before the dark, dark reign of Hootie). With this tour, Joel has ensured that further generations of Angry Young Men and Uptown Girls will get the Joel experience, even as the man himself noodles with Haydn.

The 49-year-old singer-songwriter was in fine musical form, chunking out the funky piano breaks of "I Go To Extremes" and "Angry Young Man" with energy to spare. His vocals were as raspy and distinguished as his salt-and-pepper beard, and it was a real joy to hear him pull off the yearning and heartbreak of "An Innocent Man," the earnestness of "She's Got a Way" and the disaffection of "Pressure" with the force of will that made the songs work almost two decades ago.

If only he exercised that control with his stage patter. Some of it was funny, like his reaction to a shouted request -- "That'd sound like (expletive)! We'd hafta rehearse that one" -- and his allusions to 'ex-wives one and two." And the "wild west" monologue he used to introduce "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" -- dedicated to actor Paul Reiser, out in the crowd someplace -- was even touching, in a dese-dem-dose kind of way.

For every witty remark he made, however, there were at least two duds. Worst offenders were his self-deprecating shilling for the merchandise stand ("it's all crap"), his Latin lover gibberish ("I am ... Julio") and his cliched gibes at the expense of the town -- think Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra impersonations. Joel thinks he's being ironic by playing the part of a Vegas showroom performer, probably because he has no idea how close he came to becoming one.

But these are trifles in the face of a performance that, for all its flaws, really impressed. Joel belongs to the people now, belongs to the air -- an omnipresence that punk band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes proved for Joel a few years back with an accelerated cover of "Only the Good Die Young." The Joel who played Vegas Saturday night could have kept pace with the punk version, and even pulled ahead in the stretch.

It's almost a shame that it's Beethoven, and not Lagwagon, that's getting the best of the rest of this bright-burning icon. Angry young men die hard.

archive