Billy Joel BST Hyde Park evaluate – The Piano Man remains to be the good Entertainer

At the outset of a sensational present, Billy Joel warns the gang that he has good and unhealthy news. The unhealthy news is that he hasn’t obtained any new materials, the nice is we cannot need to hearken to any new stuff.

In reality, there’s just one large shock, he says. “I’ve played all over the world over many years and this is the brightest sun I’ve ever faced… And it’s in England!”

An ecstatic crowd basks within the golden rays as a balmy solar slowly units on a person whose profession reveals completely no signal of following go well with. 

Following Bruce Springsteen final evening is a tall order however a masterful Joel opens with two huge singalongs, a euphorically defiant My Life adopted by Moving Out.

The shock is watching youngsters and twenty-something’s singing alongside, phrase for phrase, each right here and all through the present. This is music which transcends generations and passing tendencies.

Dressed within the denims, black t-shirt and black jacket he is worn for the previous a long time, the 74-year-old is an artist who resolutely is aware of who he’s.

The third track of a jam-packed two-hour set could not be extra becoming: The Entertainer. No lavish units, dancers or particular results are required. Just a world-class singer-songwriter with a wonderful again catalogue.

He’s matched by a classily well-drilled band of multi-instrumentalists who even thrillingly unleash three saxophones at key, spine-tingling moments. 

So wealthy is his again catalogue, Joel provides the gang the selection between Just The Way You Are and Vienna. The vociferous true followers up entrance truly pluck for the lesser-known latter… And then are handled to an excellent deeper lower, Zanzibar.

It’s the third time I’ve seen Joel in live performance and he is in very good vocal type, and clearly in infectiously good spirits. When he comes out from behind the piano, ladies scream within the crowd and he tells us, “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I’m no Mick Jagger.” And then Joel and the band breaks into the Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up, full with the frontman delivering a hilarious Jagger prancing strut.   

He wipes his forehead when he hits all of the excessive notes in An Innocent Man, and all of us joyfully be part of the doo-wapping harmonies on The Longest Time.  Goosebumps tingle as that piano riff ripples throughout the gang and all of us sway as we slide into A New York State of Mind. It ends on a sultry extended flirtation between the piano man and his lead sax participant for over 30 years, Mark Rivera. Pure artistry.

There’s actual magic when an acoustic Always A Woman has all the crowd gently crooning alongside, respectfully quiet, whereas the large screens flash up pictures of beaming and crying ladies within the viewers.  But it isn’t lengthy earlier than the boogaloo piano and jiving saxophones have us all leaping with pleasure on Only The Good Die Young.

The wonderful centrepiece, as all the time, is the rapturous journey of the multi-part Italian Restaurant, topped and tailed by our massed 1000’s, belting out, “Bottle of red, bottle of white…”. 

The complete crowd is even louder on a tremendously spine-tingling Piano Man. Joel speaks for all of us as he sings, “And it’s me they’ve been coming to see, to forget about life for a while.”

There’s the compulsory clearing of the stage for the encore. The crowd chats, “Billy, Billy!” after which flames race throughout the massive screens and we’re prepared and raring for We Didn’t Start The Fire.

There is a barely random visitor look from Joe Jonas, who appears to be like slightly misplaced on Uptown Girl. It’s the one misstep on a flawless evening that builds into Still Rock ‘n Roll to Me and a rocked-out Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night.

Joel wraps it up with the lip-curled angle of You May Be Right, prolonged right into a fantastically bombastic prolonged outro with the entire band letting rip and the piano man hammering away on these ivories.

Fifty years after his Piano Man album was launched, the boy from The Bronx stays one of many biggest entertainers of all time.