BILLY JOEL: LIVE AT SHEA STADIUM (2011)
1) Prelude/Angry Young Man; 2)
My Life; 3) Summer, Highland Falls; 4) Everybody Loves You Now; 5) Zanzibar; 6)
New York State Of Mind; 7) Allentown; 8) The Ballad Of Billy The Kid; 9) She's
Always A Woman; 10) Goodnight Saigon; 11) Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On
Broadway); 12) Shameless; 13) This Is The Time; 14) Keeping The Faith; 15)
Captain Jack; 16) Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel); 17) River Of Dreams/A Hard
Day's Night; 18) We Didn't Start The Fire; 19) You May Be Right; 20) Scenes
From An Italian Restaurant; 21) Only The Good Die Young; 22) I Saw Her Standing
There; 23) Take Me Out To The Ballgame; 24) Piano Man; 25) Let It Be.
In 2008, they decided to tear down Shea
Stadium, and three guesses who was selected to play the venue's last couple of
shows... nay, not even Sir Paul McCartney, although he does make a guest appearance. Up to date, Live At Shea Stadium has been Billy's last live album, and with at
least two others under his belt from the new millennium (the previous one was 12 Gardens Live, once again from
Madison Square), it will really be sort of pathetic if he tries out yet another
one, what with the setlist generally repeating itself over and over.
At the very least, this is a tighter, better
controlled affair than the half-drunk slop of The Millennium Concert, but there are disadvantages to this as
well — everything is a bit too strict this time, and the songs are played the
way Billy's live audience at the stadium wants to hear them, not the way a
skeptically minded live album listener would. Tight band, good singer (adapting
the songs to his ever-lower range and not trying to pull any weird stuff like
the «constipation blues» coda of ʽNew York State Of Mindʼ on Millennium), what else?
Well, a few guest stars couldn't hurt, and this
is where the CD edition makes some bad choices: the first CD features singing
duets with Tony Bennett (appropriate for ʽNew York State Of Mindʼ, perhaps, but
multiplying the song's cheese factor by two) and Garth Brooks (on ʽShamelessʼ,
which was never even that good a song to begin with), as well as new generation
guitar hero John Mayer adding bland blues-pop licks to ʽThis Is The Timeʼ. With
these three guys close together in the setlist, it's like he had to have a
special «quota on bad taste» to fulfill, and this is a little sad considering
that Steve Tyler and Roger Daltrey were also among the invited guests on those
nights, singing, respectively, ʽWalk This Wayʼ and ʽMy Generationʼ — even if
they were out of vocal shape, I'd rather have a hoarse Daltrey than a perfectly
well-calibrated Garth Brooks.
At the end of the show, Sir Paul McCartney is
being dragged out by the breeches to sing ʽI Saw Her Standing Thereʼ and ʽLet
It Beʼ — how come it was Paul McCartney as a guest of Billy Joel and not vice
versa is still a mystery to me, but then, why should Paul McCartney ever
consider adding Billy Joel as a guest? These are decent performances, anyway,
except that Billy's guitarist is so stiff that he can't even grasp the art of
spiritually igniting the solos on these songs. Oh, and there is another stiff
Beatles moment when Billy inserts ʽA Hard Day's Nightʼ in the middle of ʽRiver
Of Dreamsʼ where it has no reason to belong.
Stage banter is kept to a minimum this time, if
you don't mind Billy giving the people a little bit of mundane advice every now
and then — for instance, at the end of the show: "drive safe, not like me,
and don't take any shit from anybody!" Whatever you say, O Great Champion
of the People — 50,000 fans have presumably never taken any shit from anybody
ever since (whether they all still drive safe, though, is an unresolved issue).
The setlist does include a few relative «rarities» from the old days, like
ʽEverybody Loves You Nowʼ, but not a lot, and you'd do much better with Songs From The Attic for those
purposes.
The one classic moment worth experiencing here
is when the band launches, without announcement, into the rock drive of ʽI Saw
Her Standing Thereʼ, and then... "ladies and gentlemen, please welcome,
Sir Paul McCartney!" and the whole stadium explodes in a way that no Tony
Bennett or Garth Brooks could ever have dreamt of — no Billy Joel, for that
matter, either. I am not saying that «Paul stole the show»: he's not that long
on the stage, and Paul's own band would have performed the songs in a livelier
manner than Billy's — but the roar over the tribunes certainly brings on
analogies with the Beatles' classic performances in 1965-66 at the same
location.
Is it symbolic that they brought in Billy to
draw the curtains on one of the most famous landmarks of 20th century pop art
(especially if you also add sports to pop art)? Probably not, but it is still
curious how the man is constantly used to close the door on something, be it the old millennium or
simply fifty years of baseball and rock'n'roll. The irony is that Billy Joel
does not really belong in the new millennium — where «intellectual» styles of
music have long since advanced to unreachable (for him) heights, and «popular»
styles of music have mostly sunk to unthinkable (for him) lows. These are good
old-fashioned simplistic family values celebrated here, from the good old boys
of ʽGoodnight Saigonʼ to the unemployed factory workers of ʽAllentownʼ, sung to
old-fashioned chords and with old-fashioned words, and as corny as those songs
used to be in the 1970s and 1980s, now there is a certain «relic from the past»
aura around them that might, for a few moments, make even a veteran Billy Joel
hater come to terms with the man and his values. (Even if it only takes Sir
Paul McCartney a few seconds to show who's really
timeless here.)
Check "Live At Shea Stadium" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Live At Shea Stadium" (MP3) on Amazon
Not to disagree with the verdict on Billy Joel, but what exactly are the alleged '"intellectual" styles' of music in the new millennium? LCD Soundsystem? Osvaldo Golijov?
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