Billy Joel @ Acer Arena,Sydney (06/12/08)

Tue 9th Dec, 2008 in Gig Reviews

Rock history is a curious beast. I have encyclopedias on the subject which don’t devote a single word to Billy Joel over a thousand pages. If you could somehow remove his hefty back-catalogue from the annals of time, it’s hard to see how contemporary music would really be any different or to pinpoint one band that wouldn’t exist if not for his influence.

Yet to ignore his work is pop music’s version of historical revisionism, and denies the realities of popular taste. His Greatest Hits: Volumes I & II has only five albums above it on the RIAA list of best-selling records in the USA, placing Joel ahead of Elvis Presley, ahead of Bruce Springsteen.

Despite having only one released one album of new material since the poorly-received River of Dreams in 1993 (and that was a classical record), his popularity remains as indestructible as it is inexplicable. It’s a fact the singer-songwriter acknowledges as he squints towards the farthest reaches of the cavernous Acer Arena, straining to make out the ant-like figures who paid just under $100 for the privilege. I hope they made use of the binoculars for hire in the venue’s foyer. “Thanks for buying those tickets way up there” Joel says. “Me, I wouldn’t buy tickets up there if Hendrix came back.”

After a meandering, portentous introductory jam, he launches into Angry Young Man – though – œlaunches’ is perhaps not the right word. Another monster hit, My Life, follows, before Joel, nothing if not a crowd pleaser, decides to let the audience decide which song he will play next. There are three choices on offer and the smorgasbord of soft rock sees the crowd plump for Billy and the Kid. It’s a piece of self-mythologising nonsense which Joel goes on to explain, in a very funny line-by-line deconstruction of the lyrics, is “complete bullshit”.

Despite one foray into, gasp, an album track, more hits follow: people do that seated dance only 40-somethings are capable of during the apparently autobiographical The Entertainer, tap their feet to Big Shot and oh, how the crowd goes mild to the ivory-tinkling of She’s Always A Woman.

The only element of danger comes from the white lights above stage, which surely must have come close to blinding somebody, or triggering an epileptic fit, at some point. When he plays River of Dreams, the previously sedate audience is shot into action. Many younger fans sprint down the aisles to the front of stage, overturning cups of drink and forcing security to politely direct the middle-aged stragglers following them back to their seats. As far as rock and roll riots go, it was hardly that Guns N’ Roses show at St. Louis.

Still, nobody goes to a Billy Joel show in search of edgy art. However, the spectacle of a punter beside me explaining to his infant companion what Joel meant by “motherfucker” will go down as one of the stranger moments of the night. Perhaps equally unexpected was Christmas in Fallujah, a protest song against the war in Iraq which Joel penned for a local musician, Cass Dillon. While it’s not exactly The Dead Kennedys, his guitar work brings out much of the bitterness experienced by the song’s narrator, a soldier engaged in the conflict.

More typical, though, was New York State of Mind. It was sunk by his backing band, usually numbering six or seven, which brought an overblown bombast to almost every song they barged into. Particularly galling was the extended saxophone solo here, which would have been ditched from a Kenny G record on grounds of taste.

Often, the better moments are the quieter ones and Just The Way you Are has a stately, old-fashioned handsomeness. It benefits from his supporting players leaving room for Joel’s understated piano and serviceable voice. You can see the seeds here of Dianna Krall’s low-key, sexy reading of the song, and it’s a mood he profitably returns to for the inevitable final encore of Piano Man.

Two further points of curiosity: his two best songs, the catchy, almost chamber-pop stylings of For the Longest Time and the bubblegum fun of enduring hit Uptown Girl were both strangely absent. And the best moment of the night came when a heavy-set roadie named Chainsaw (of course) took the microphone for a rousing rendition of Highway to Hell. Joel may often be derided for his middle of the road tendencies, but did a single person of the 20,000 assembled see that twist coming?