Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 14:45:31 -0500
Message-Id: <199407251945.OAA22165@chaos.bsu.edu>
From: CarlW1106@aol.com
To: joel@chaos.bsu.edu
Reply-To: CarlW1106@aol.com
Subject: Text of NY Times Concert Review
Sender: joel-request@chaos.bsu.edu

X-Author: CarlW1106@aol.com
Here is the entire text of the NY Times review of Friday's FtF show held at
Giants Stadium:

CONCERT REVIEW: ELTON JOHN AND BILLY JOEL: SO ALIKE, SO DIFFERENT

By NEIL STRAUSS 

c.1994 N.Y. Times News Service 

   When Elton John and Billy Joel performed together last Friday night at
Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., in the first of five sold-out shows
ending this Friday, the concert began more like a diplomatic meeting than a
pop music performance. A drapery emblazoned with a Union Jack hung on the
side of the stage from which Elton John stepped out; an American flag drapery
hung on the other side for Billy Joel, who emerged to a recording of ``Yankee
Doodle.'' 

   The two piano men exchanged formal greetings - ``Good evening, Billy,''
``Good evening, Elton'' - before sitting at their grand pianos to perform
Elton John's ``Your Song,'' followed by Billy Joel's ``Honesty.'' Each
regularly acknowledged the other's accomplishments with scripted salutes,
nods and bows. 

   Even before Joel, 45, approached John, 47, with the idea for the ``Face to
Face'' tour, the similarities between the two musicians were clear. Besides
the fact that both have first names as last names, the two pianists are
baby-boomers who grew up in planned suburban tract homes with fathers who
were for the most part absent. 

   Musically, the two gifted, idiosyncratic artists exist in the nether world
between pop and rock, where Broadway show tunes, classical compositions,
ragtime, gospel and rock-`n'-roll mingle freely. 

   Verbally (though Bernie Taupin wrote many of John's songs), both are
obsessed with mortality and history, the purity of rock-`n'-roll and the
corruption of human beings. 

   If the two are ambassadors for their countries, it's only because they
represent the stereotypes often associated with England and the United
States, in particular the repression and manners of the former and the
freedom and brazenness of the latter. 

   On Friday, Elton John seemed glued to his seat. Billy Joel was all over
the stage, twirling microphone stands, somersaulting off the drum riser and
howling at the full moon. Elton John tended to spice his songs with sweet
blues vamps; Billy Joel improvised long atonal romps. Elton John had a voice
like pure ivory skin; Billy Joel sounded like the next day's stubble. 

   The nearly four-hour show, for an audience of 56,000, was more of a
greatest hits retrospective than a showcase for new material. 

   Elton John, who is likely to tour on his own early next year after his
next solo album comes out, played only three recent songs, ``Can You Feel the
Love Tonight'' from ``The Lion King'' soundtrack and ``Simple Life'' and
``The One,'' from his last solo album, ``The One.'' 

   Billy Joel, who wrapped up his ``River of Dreams'' tour last spring,
performed only two songs from that album, the title track and ``Lullaby (Good
Night, My Angel).'' 

   The concert had four sections, with Joel and John onstage together in the
beginning, followed by John and his band, Joel and his band, and, for an
encore, both musicians and their bands together. 

   But in each pianist's own set there was a lot of overlap. Elton John, who
was just a shadow of his former, flamboyant self, performed Billy Joel's
``New York State of Mind,'' and Billy Joel played a very formidable version
of Elton John's ``Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.'' 

   In Elton John's set, Billy Joel came out to perform ``I Guess That's Why
They Call It the Blues,'' one of the few songs in which his voice didn't have
the depth that Elton John's music requires. John faltered only on ``You May
Be Right,'' in which his voice lacked the punch of Joel's. 

   During the encore, the pair demonstrated the expressive power of their
chosen instrument by rocking out on Little Richard's ``Lucille'' and Jerry
Lee Lewis' ``Great Balls of Fire.'' 

   The metaphorical meaning of the song that followed, John's ``Candle in the
Wind,'' a reflection on Marilyn Monroe's death, was heightened by the wind,
which swept through the stadium, extinguishing most of the lighters raised to
the sky. 

   Predictably, the set closed with Joel's ``Piano Man.'' And it was here
that the essential differences between Elton John and Billy Joel emerged. The
song is Joel's vision of the piano man: an underpaid, underappreciated
tunesmith in a smoky barroom distracting the outcasts of society from their
perpetual misery. For John, the piano man is a grand, jewel-fingered
entertainer indulging in command performances for royalty. 

   Joel's piano player comes on like a pint of beer, and John's like a cup of
tea. But on Friday night they discovered that they'd both been working
different rooms in the same piano lounge all along. 

JULY 25, 1994 

 Copyright (c) 1994 The New York Times Co.