Billy Joel ended his historic Madison Square Garden residency on a high note.
The Piano Man entertained a sold-out crowd of fans who scored the hottest ticket in New York City on Thursday night with a 2.5-hour set featuring surprise cameos by Jimmy Fallon, Axl Rose, and his two younger daughters.
The show was the 104th and final edition of the monthly residency Joel began at the Garden in January 2014, as well as his recording-setting 150th lifetime concert at the famed Midtown arena.
“It’s time,” Joel told a spirited crowd toward the beginning of the night. “None of us knew we were gonna be able to do this for so long. This has been the most amazing gig we’ve ever done.”
Joel, 75, began the concert with a rocking rendition of “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” and ended with a similarly high-energy performance of “You May Be Right.”
Fallon joined Joel onstage to raise a blue-and-white banner reading “Billy Joel: Most Lifetime Performances By Any Artist” into the MSG rafters.
Joel’s 8-year-old daughter, Della Rose, then sang and danced from the front of the stage for “My Life” as 6-year-old Remy Anne sat atop the piano.
Rose arrived to sing a cover of Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” with Joel before they broke into a duet of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” At the end of the night, the Guns N’ Roses frontman returned for “You May Be Right.”
The Garden floor shook as the capacity crowd danced to “Only the Good Die Young.” Fans sang in unison throughout the night, but never more than to “Piano Man,” which was Joel’s fitting final song before he returned for a nearly half-hour encore featuring five more hits.
Much of the audience never sat.
“I spent the first four, five, six songs, like, super emotional,” said Bill Klingbeil, 60, who traveled from Pittsburgh with his fiancée. “I’m trying to sing along and I’ve got tears running in my eyes.”
The emotional night arrived after a year of anticipation that began when Joel announced in June 2023 that his residency would end just over a year from then.
Tickets were in extreme demand, with the get-in prices on resale websites such as StubHub and SeatGeek exceeding $600 in the hours before Thursday’s concert.
“It wasn’t just like, ‘Let me drop in to see Billy Joel.’ You had to really want to come,” said Simmi Degnemark, 55, of Carroll Gardens. “I think it brought in real fans.
“What I really loved is the fact you could actually sing and nobody’s gonna look at you. Everybody stood up. Everybody was singing. I was singing with other people, strangers I didn’t know. We were all just singing together. It was so cool. Experience of a lifetime.”
Many of the diehards in attendance were part of a regular crowd that had shuffled in for plenty of previous concerts. Jessy Weinberg, 31, of Albertson on Long Island attended her 10th Joel concert and brought with her a sign asking Joel to sing at her wedding next year.
“I love his music,” said Weinberg, who attended with her sister Lindsay, 27, and their dad. “I love him. He puts on such an amazing show. Interactive. Fun. He knows what the crowd wants.”
While Thursday marked the end of an era at the Garden, Joel is set to continue performing. His next concert is scheduled for Aug. 9 in Cardiff, Wales.
