No Man's Land/Pressure/The Ballad of Billy the Kid/Honesty/ Prelude/Angry Young Man/Allentown/Scenes from an Italian Restaurant/My Life/I Go To Extremes/Shades of Grey/Goodnight Saigon/Lullabye/The River of Dreams/We Didn't Start the Fire/A Hard Day's Night/It's Still Rock and Roll to Me/You May Be Right
On 1/{9,11} for Prelude/AYM, he sprayed salt on his piano, a ritual performed by sumo wrestlers before there bout. On 1/{21,23} this ritual was not performed. He also didn't play Prelude/AYM on 1/24 but instead chose NY State of Mind. I missed it again!
On 1/9 Billy played Movin' Out instead of Shades of Grey. For me Movin' Out was a breath of fresh air from all the other songs he has constantly repeated for the 3 or 4 tours.
On 1/23, he surprised everybody at the Budokan by playing Purple Haze instread of A Hard Day's Night. He dedicated it to one of his road crew who wasn't feeling upto par. Also on 1/24 he covered AC/DCs Highway to Hell.
The info on 1/24 comes from ikebe@sra.co.jp. According to him, a big roadie came out and took over the vocals for Highway to Hell, a special song for the last night. He also smashed his Hammer guitar into pieces just as Hendrix did at the '67 Monterey Pop Festival. Afterwards, he threw the neck into the crowd! A performance only possible on the last night.
Other songs played in whole or in part:
The stage set up at the Budokan looked like this:
rear
______________________
/ P \ GP: revolving grand piano
/ ____________________ \ P: smaller grand piano
/K / \K \ K: turnable keyboard
/ / \ \
/ / \ \ P is placed higher than GP.
| GP | that is, K is on a ramp.
--------------------------------
front
After Pressure ends the GP rises from underneath the stage.
During Pressure, he starts with the keyboard (K) on the left
side, and eventually makes it over to the right (K).
He also used the right (K) for Shades of Grey.
Also after Italian Restaurant the stage turns black with the
spotlight on Liberty performing a short drum solo. Billy
disappears off stage, and before you know it, another piano
(P) is rising from the stage again on the high walkway.
GP is a revolving grand piano that is controlled by Billy with a switch at his foot. On 1/23, the person who sets up this gimmick, messed up and hooked Billy's piano switch to Liberty's drum set. During Honesty when BJ was supposed to be turing, Liberty was going around in circles!!! It was hilarious, and Billy was having fun at it too. He was trying to keep himself from cracking up when singing! At the end of the song, Liberty jokingly threw his drum sticks at Billy!
As you can figure out, the seats to the back of the stage were the best seats. You have Billy playing piano right in front of you. He was also able to shake their hands.
On 1/21, when the stage set was abbreviated, before playing Shades of Grey at GP, he screams out, "can we get a string sound?", and with a few chords, come out the right sound!
As you probably all know, a devastating earthquake hit the Kansai region of Japan on 1/17. Thus the 1/17 Osaka Hall concert was postponed until 1/19. Even so, not many people showed for the 1/18 and 1/19 dates, because of all the damage. Billy donated proceeds from his Osaka concerts to the victims of the earthquake. sugano@mita.co.jp, who attended the 1/18 concert gave an account of the concert: With the help of a translator on stage at the beginning of the show, Billy said that proceeds from the concert will be donated to the victims of the earthquake, and that the concert will go on to cheer up the people of Kansai.
I'm still missing details for the 1/19 Osaka concert and Fukuoka concert. Anybody go? anybody know somebody that went? Write me, please!
Lastly I'd like to thank all the people on the net who provided me with info on concerts in Japan!!