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Billy Joel Joined by Axl Rose for ‘Highway to Hell’ as He Hits the Highway Out of Madison Square Garden With a Rousing Residency Finale: Concert Review
Billy Joel wrapped up a run of 150 shows at Madison Square Garden with a rousing residency finale, including cameos by Billy Joel and family members.
From Elvis at the International to Adele at Caesars Palace, other artists have staked their claim to a single spot out with lengthy residencies out west, but no one’s become as legendary for doing it back east as Billy Joel with his regularly scheduled shows at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. After a handful of deep cuts that included a rollicking “The Entertainer” (“No one bought that album,” he said of 1974’s “Streetlife Serenade”), a zig-zagging, Steely Dan-like “Zanzibar” (“He’s actually a real jazz musician” Joel said of soloing trumpeter Carl Fischer) and a sweetly delivered “Vienna,” out popped Jimmy Fallon. The Drifters-inspired falsetto of “An Innocent Man” and the Four Seasons-like “Uptown Girl,” the ethnocentric cheerful complexity of “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” and “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” and the flighty jazz of “Only the Good Die Young” — all of these familiar choices allowed Joel, age 75, a parting shot at impressing the Garden with his supple vocal prowess, while breaking some hearts with his goodbye-for-now.
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