Billy Joel in Frankfurt – A collective sigh – Süddeutsche.de

Billy Joel’s songs were once Lamentations from the suburbs. Now they are swan songs
 from a lost world – and so successful that it occurs in the Frankfurt Waldstadion.

Concert Review of Andrian Kreye

Billy Joel’s biggest challenge has always been that his songs that he had written in the spirit of a piano bar, must also function in a stadium. Therefore, it was amazing how the named after a major bank in Frankfurt Waldstadion has the illusion of the third song “Just The Way You Are” that since approximately fifty thousand people from all over Europe to sit around a piano and feel at home. What does one hand to do with the fact that Joel wrote a relatively manageable oeuvre of songs 1973-1983, which are not all become hits, but all to standards, and he literally has published anything new since 1993rd There is therefore no risk that mediocre late work is played. On the other hand, are its songs for a basic feeling that many share.

The charm of the lounge entertainers

Technically generated Joel this mass intimacy still with the charm of the lounge entertainers he optimized for large-scale events. This includes not only that he leads a band that can be adjusted perfectly to its dynamism, but also that he told jokes and anecdotes – and that he can pick the audience songs. he has trained as a teenager, when he became nightly appearances in a piano at home on Long Iceland the school vergeigte because the reward of his single mother was not enough this ability. And later, when he played in Los Angeles shortly before his breakthrough half a year in the Executive Room on Wilshire Boulevard. Wherever he turns his song “Piano Man” composed, with which he managed this breakthrough and he played on Saturday in Frankfurt as a last song before the encores. And because he “One Piano” since now 43 years almost always the last number before the encores plays white audiences in Frankfurt, what it means when the harmonica belting himself, with which he plays the theme.

There are not many pianists who can. And because he only plays pieces from the past, we must declare it with the past. Musically, this is clear. 1973, when “Piano Man” appeared, was the “Peak Rock” -year. 1973 of grand gestures monumental claims. Pink Floyd released the operatic key work “The Dark Side of the Moon”, Led Zeppelin reached with “Houses of the Holy” its zenith, and David Bowie cemented his HyperStar status with “Aladdin Sane”. On the other hand indicated that the peak would soon be exceeded. The New York Dolls and the Stooges debuted as a precursor of punk, later reggae god Bob Marley released his first international album.

The eureka moment of recognition

Billy Joel was a counter model. He did not play riffs and beats, there was no poses, gestures and certainly no Fury. His songs were based on piano motives, how she was used to from the “Great American Songbook” of the twenties and thirties. you can hear the difference when he plays, for example, the opening chords of “New York State of Mind” or “Always A Woman To Me”. There goes a collective sigh through Waldstadion, which they can take immediate and motives vary once, across the bar pro who still flays with such pirouettes a little time before he gives the audience the eureka moment of recognition. With a guitar riff can not. This is in space and remains. But as was the musical zeitgeist of 1973, when hard rock bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Aerosmith filled the stadiums.

On the other hand Billy Joel is contrary to the grassroots to claim the rock, which states that technology and virtuosity must not be a criterion. One should not be deceived by choruses that continue to function when they are of a stadium full of Europeans healthy. With a little karaoke experience, know that Billy Joel tunes are a cliff just in the verses that you can not take with amateur voice. What he himself incidentally copes well with the mature tenor of his 67 years with a deceptive ease.