Review: Billy Joel embraces the glitzy, goofy, sober at MGM Grand
Forty years ago, he predicted that he’d be long forgotten by now, considering the circumstances.
He did so in a song whose message is akin to plucking the wings from a butterfly, deconstructing something beautiful — in this case, success, adoration — in order to demonstrate the fleeting nature of its gifts.
“I may have won your hearts / But I know the game, you’ll forget my name / And I won’t be here in another year / If I don’t stay on the charts.”
Billy Joel hasn’t been on the charts in over two decades.
And yet, at a packed MGM Grand Garden on Saturday, he defied the very standards that he set forth in the song in question, “The Entertainer,” originally recorded in 1974, which he played three numbers into his two-hour performance.
So, Joel was wrong.
Big deal.
It wouldn’t be the last time.
But four tunes later, after a tongue-clucking rendition of “The Ballad of Billy the Kid,” Joel methodically cataloged all the lyrical inaccuracies of the pseudo-country song.
“So, don’t listen to me,” he said afterwards, “because I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
So, why are we still listening, then?
Well, on the most basic level, it’s not just what Joel says, but how he says it — he could howl his way through a manual on garbage disposal maintenance and plenty of diehards would show up to sing along.
But more significantly, Joel has remained a arena-filling draw for as long as he has because he’s so willing to part the veil on his stardom, to be both embrace and scoff at his own celebrity, to be as self-effacing and goofy as he is cynical and sincere.
As such, there was plenty of light-heartedness during Joel’s set on Saturday, when he donned a pair of gaudy gold sunglasses and an Elvis drawl for “Viva Las Vegas,” performed Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussycat” while dropping the “cat” from the lyrics and brought out a crew member nicknamed Chainsaw, who looked kind of like Robert DeNiro after a 10-year bender, to belt out a raucous cover of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”
After performing the earnest, plaintive folk of “She’s Always a Woman,” Joel noted dryly that the relationship in question ended in divorce.
But, at the same time, Joel also gave voice to factory workers on the losing end of a shifting American economy during “Allentown,” captured the raw feelings of a lovesick 16-year-old on “All For Leyna” and imagined his native New York torn asunder by financial ruin on “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway).”
None of those songs have happy endings — survival is their only reward.
Even when clutching a rose, Joel mostly just feels its thorns, as he professed on the spare, stinging ballad “And So It Goes,” which he performed without accompaniment, as alone on stage as he is in the song.
“Melodrama’s so much fun,” he sang knowingly on “Zanzibar,” having made a career out of as much.
True fun, as it relates to melodrama, is the act of exorcising it, shouting it down, sweating it out.
Joel has made this an art form, backed piece band that muscles through his catalog by emphasizing fire over finesse once they take the stage. Together, they heightened the percussive rumble of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” punched up “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” with three saxophones playing in unison and turned a climactic “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” into a show centerpiece, the song beginning and ending on a low simmer, like a sauce being cooked in said restaurant, the remainder of the tune being spent with the band pushing hard against its seams.
There’s plenty of equivocation and uncertainty inherent in Joel’s songs — even his stage banter — but none whatsoever in the actual performance of those songs.
Joel takes obvious pride in as much.
After “My Life,” he flashed a look of triumph at the crowd, like a basketball player glaring at the opposing team’s bench upon sinking a big shot.
The audience roared.
They knew a game winner when they saw one.
Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.
