Despite ominous skies warning that a real storm front is fast approaching, Joel seems anything but nervous. It’s a week later, and Billy Joel is doing his best Jimmy Cagney imitation 1500 feet above an icy Boston Harbor, as he looks out the window of the helicopter transporting him to Worcester, Massachusetts, where in just a few hours he’ll kick off the Storm Front tour. “Remember, folks,” he says firmly, “little people have little ears, and you have to be careful.” After watching a roadie place a pair of headphones on the head of one girl, Joel gets back to business as the cops smile at the concern of their new, if unlikely, pal. And he’s also developed a reputation for using the bully pulpit of the stage to strike back at the various rock critics who have dismissed his work as calculatedly commercial.īut as Joel approaches the mike, it’s to inform his fellow parents in the room that their children ought to be wearing something to protect their hearing from the loud sounds he and the other adults onstage are making. After all, he’s been known to do harm to the occasional piano when pissed off, as he did famously during his 1987 Soviet tour. This being Billy Joel, there is some reason for concern. As he and his band smooth out the kinks, they play a loose set that matches Joel’s own material with off-the-cuff covers, most notably a twisted seasonal medley that joins “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” and “O Come All Ye Faithful” with Guns n’ Roses’ “Paradise City” and Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator.”īut halfway through a rendition of “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” Joel orders the band to stop and glares out into the audience. The moms clap the most after his first hit single, 1974’s “Piano Man,” while the daughters go for “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” his twenty-eighth. As a half dozen policemen try to look busy, Joel’s new band (drummer Liberty DeVitto, guitarist David Brown and saxophonist Mark Rivera – all veterans – are joined by new members percussionist and backup singer Crystal Taliefero, multi-instrumentalist Mindy Jostyn, keyboardist Jeff Jacobs and bassist Schuyler Deale) works out a grittier, more soulful sound than that of the old group Joel disbanded before recording his latest album, Storm Front.Īn ever-growing number of clean-cut policemen’s wives and kids stop by to check out the local hero. On one of the final days of rehearsal, Joel practices his craft onstage in the academy hall, which resembles an airplane hangar – except for the fake pizza parlor and real-estate office where police trainees investigate mock crimes to perfect their own craft. He wanted to stay as close as possible to his wife, Christie Brinkley, and their three-year-old daughter, Alexa Ray, before heading out for a road trip that could last more than a year, and he also wanted to pump cash into the local economy.
Of course, Joel’s reasons for hanging with the authorities were not simply therapeutic. Reader’s Poll: The Best Billy Joel Songs of All Time “It’s someone telling me, ‘Billy, you’re not following the rules.’ It’s being told what to do. “My single biggest fear in life is being called down to the principal’s office,” says Joel. Sure, he may have successfully invaded Russia with rock & roll, but for Joel, who proudly confesses to having “one big problem dealing with authority,” it takes nerve to spend a month warming up for a world tour by playing for a uniformed audience bearing firearms.
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There, for most of November, he played the toughest series of gigs in his life – at least since the tour he did in the Seventies opening for Olivia Newton-John. Joel is referring to the four weeks he’s just spent rehearsing at the Suffolk County Police Academy, in West Hampton, Long Island. “I’ve been a groupie for years, just touring with him, riding in the van, putting out,” she quipped before beginning the real story.‘If someone had told me twenty years ago I’d be spending this much time with cops, I would have punched him in the goddamn face,” says Billy Joel with a laugh. But talk quickly turned to another memorable Schumer dance, when she and pal Jennifer Lawrence danced barefoot on the piano at a recent Billy Joel concert, with video footage of the incident quickly popping up online.Īfter Seacrest played the clip, Schumer explained how the moment came about.
The four-time Emmy nominee brought her sister, Kim, up on the podium with her as she danced and did a bit of singing. Amy Schumer was an early guest on E!’s pre-Emmys red-carpet special, stopping to talk with co-host Ryan Seacrest.