Just because Billy Joel is movin’ out of his Madison Square Garden residency doesn’t mean the lights are going out on Broadway.
The Piano Man keeps making plans to perform, on tour and throughout New York, after wrapping up his decade-long run of monthly MSG concerts on Thursday night with his 150th lifetime show there.
And he knows the Garden is not going anywhere.
“We can absolutely go back, and we’re aware of that,” Joel told the Daily News a few days before the show. “That’s always in my pocket. We probably will at one point or another. There are a lot of other places that we’re going to try to play before we do that.”
Thursday’s 26-song set marked the 104th and final performance in Joel’s record-setting residency, which began in January 2014 and only grew in popularity in the years that followed.
Jimmy Fallon, Axl Rose and Joel’s younger two daughters joined him on stage at different parts of Thursday’s concert, adding to the energy of a red-hot event for which resale tickets started at more than $600.
Joel, 75, soaked in the atmosphere between his performances of hits such as “New York State of Mind,” “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” and “Piano Man.”
It served as a fitting finale for a residency that became a staple of the New York City entertainment scene.
“I never expected it to go 10 years,” Joel said. “I have this nagging feeling of don’t outstay your welcome, don’t stay any longer where people are gonna get tired of it. I know we’ve had a lot of repeats. There have been people in the audience who have been to a number of shows. I don’t want to just be on automatic pilot and do the same show over and over and over again.”
Joel toured throughout his residency, though an exclusivity clause in his Garden contract limited his stops at other New York City venues to a few special one-offs.
He has concerts planned throughout the U.S. and beyond into 2025, and while nothing is locked in locally, Joel is now available to headline some of New York’s other top spots.
“We played Yankee Stadium back in 1990,” Joel said. “That was a great gig. And we also closed Shea Stadium [in 2008]. There are other places that we’re talking about.”
Joel had already released five albums — including “Piano Man,” “The Stranger” and “52nd Street” — by the time he performed his first concert at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 14, 1978.
Still, the gig felt like a “watershed moment,” says Joel, who was born in the Bronx and grew up on Long Island.
“The first time I was there, I was about 4 years old, and it was the old Garden, not the present Garden,” he said. “I went with my parents to see the circus. It was a Christmas show, and I saw Gene Autry singing ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’ I’ll never forget it. … When I headlined the Garden [in 1978], I thought about that. I said, ‘I can’t believe I’m actually Gene Autry tonight.’”
Michael Putland/Getty Images
Billy Joel at home in New York City on Jan. 25, 1978.
Joel is among the best-selling artists of all time, renowned for his piano prowess and ability to paint a vivid picture through his lyrics. He has received six Grammys, including the Recording Academy’s Legend Award, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.
But when his booking agent first presented the idea of an MSG residency, Joel was skeptical it would be possible. He had turned down offers in Las Vegas, saying he did not want to spend the requisite time living in Sin City.
The idea started to feel more feasible, Joel says, after he took the MSG stage at the star-studded 12-12-12 benefit concert following Hurricane Sandy.
“The act that went on before me was Kanye West,” Joel recalled. “I didn’t really hear his show. I just heard noise from my dressing room, and apparently he was not really getting to the crowd. [Paul] McCartney came into my dressing room and he said, ‘Billy, they’re all leaving. You’ll have to go and get them back.’
“We hadn’t played for about two years because I had hip replacement done,” Joel said. “I needed a lot of medical work, and we came back and played. The crowd went absolutely berserk, and we were shocked. … We got such amazing feedback that we thought, ‘Maybe we can do a residency.’”
The residency proved to be a sensation, regularly making headlines as Joel welcomed big-name surprise guests such as Howard Stern, Paul Simon, Miley Cyrus and Olivia Rodrigo.
The monthly shows propelled Joel to the record for the most MSG performances of any artist. All 150 have been sellouts.
Despite that prevailing popularity, Joel says the COVID-19 pandemic offered a reminder that everything comes to an end. The pandemic interrupted Joel’s concerts for 18 months. His return in November 2021 served as a symbol of New York City’s fortitude.
In June 2023, Joel announced his residency would end the following summer, giving fans a year’s notice to attend one — or more — of his remaining shows.
Thursday’s finale delivered another highlight in a banner year for Joel, who in February released his first new song in nearly two decades with “Turn the Lights Back On” and performed it at the Grammys.
“I only wrote some of the music in that recent single,” Joel said of the song, which was co-written by Freddy Wexler, among others. “I haven’t really sat down and written new songs yet. I’ve been writing instrumental music for the last couple of dozen years because that’s where my interest is right now. I haven’t put the harness back on to write songs.
“Maybe I just wrote myself out. If I get an idea for a new song, I’m not gonna stop myself from writing it, but I haven’t felt compelled to do that.”
For now, Joel is looking forward to his first-ever concert in Cardiff, Wales, on Aug. 9, followed by stadium shows in Cleveland, St. Louis, San Antonio and Las Vegas. He is also set to be among the first performers at Los Angeles’ Intuit Dome, the soon-to-be home of the NBA’s Clippers, which opens next month.
“I intend to keep working. I mean, what else am I gonna do?” Joel said.
“Now, to be clear, if I can’t do it well anymore, I’m going to stop. I love the game too much to not do it well, but somehow or another, I’ve been able to keep singing the songs. I kind of re-found my voice. I don’t know how that happened. I didn’t do anything in particular to try to save it, but it’s kind of come back. I can hit high notes that I wasn’t able to hit maybe 20 years ago.”
And while he acknowledged feeling “some sadness” about his residency ending, Joel says a standing invite to return to the Garden makes its conclusion “not as traumatic as people are thinking.”
“It’s kind of a good cap on the career,” Joel said. “It’s not the end. What does [Winston] Churchill say? ‘This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’ That’s what it kind of means.”
