Billy Joel: Fifty Years, You ARE kidding me?

At his Hollywood Bowl concert last night Billy Joel said he'd been in the music business for fifty years.



I would have fallen off my bench, except I was cemented in by those surrounding me all of us shoulder to shoulder.

It's not that I can't believe it has been fifty years. I mean, Billy is jowly and sleepy eyed, and that curly hair of yore has long gone down the proverbial drain. And after all, almost every song he sang was a cut from albums I was spinning in the 1970s at WFUV back in da Bronx from whence I never fail to mention I sprung. That's nearly 40 years all by itself.


It's just that I sat there thinking, "How did it happen? And so fast?"  The entry before this talked about the breath that is life. Last night was another sealer of the reality of the deal. I have my own incipient (or not so incipient) jowls. You should see me when I try to exercise my jaw and neck in a futile effort to stretch and firm. So, Billy, there was no critique on you because of yours and that white beard thing that makes you look vaguely like a Sopranos' cast member. And you don't jump around like you used to (just read today that he had double hip replacement). But who among us does? But those hands, they still swirl on the keyboard and the voice was as solid as on any of my favorites, "Piano Man", "Uptown Girl", "Allentown", you name it. Billy said he is more baritone than tenor these days, but it didn't matter. Terrific he was as a tenor. Terrific he remains as a baritone. And backed up by some amazing musicians, and an eye catching backdrop of electronic photos and light, I felt transported back to my twenties, full of the idea that I'd somehow be in the entertainment business (even if I go ahead with law school) or something equally amazing--and lucrative would be nice too. When he sang "We Didn't Start the Fire" I realized just how much my days have gone through intense rapid fire history. It's amazing any of us are still here standing, it's been of such enormity. And yet, here many of us were, as one tee shirt wearer trumpeted in print, "First Generation Piano Man Fan".

You want to see a little of the concert--just check your Facebook page. I am guessing that one of the people on your Friends list was there. Everybody was recording snippets or more than snippets. I did.

I teared up a little, truth be told, aware of the spinning away of time, in general, and mine in particular.

It wasn't sadness really. A little annoyance maybe that I haven't been paying enough attention to the rhythms and spacing of my own life. And then I see someone like Billy at a concert that brings back very specific memories of times long gone by and I swear to myself that I am not going to waste another moment. Of course, then I waste the next one. "I wasted time and now doth time waste me," said Shakespeare in Richard II.

"Stop it!" I cry. At least I surely can say that it was no waste to spend a couple of hours listening to Billy Joel. And maybe tonight I might as well. Last night, and today, I find myself in a "New York State of Mind" and subject perhaps of another entry down the road (we shall see where the mood takes me), I was happy last night in Hollywood to "Say Goodbye to Hollywood".  With the passage of time comes a change of perspective about where you came from. . . .and where you should be now.

So many faces in and out of my life
Some will last
Some will just be now and then
Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes
I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby
Say goodbye to Hollywood
Say goodbye my baby

Billy Joel hasn't written a song in two decades. He lives an "ordinary" life in Sag Harbor. Thank you for coming to see us at the Bowl. I hope this isn't the last time we'll cross paths and reminisce, me with you, and you with a crowd, and not all Baby Boomers. There is a generation after mine that is following you. Another fifty years?