Billy Joel Sells Out the Hamptons
Lest anyone worry that Billy Joel's show in East Hampton on Saturday
night wasn't a total hit, I can reassure you: It was.
The show was part of the now infamous $3,000-a-ticket Social at the
Ross School series, which began with Prince, then Dave Matthews and
next week brings in Tom Petty followed by James Taylor.
Show insiders tell me that offering the whole thing up front as a
$30,000-a-couple series was too much even for the Hamptons. Sales were
slow. But now, individual shows are being sold, and Joel's was so hot
that 200 more seats than the 1,000 allotted for where actually sold.
"We had 1,200 people," said a source. Another source says that Joel
was paid $2 million for the night.
It was worth it.
In front of a crowd that included ex-wife Christie Brinkley with their
singer-daughter Alexa Ray; plus Jon Bon Jovi, Alec Baldwin, Lorne
Michaels, Edie Falco and a skinny but smiley Renee Zellweger, Joel
turned out a rockin' two-hour show that was flawless in every way.
Indeed, he had to battle high humidity and intense heat to pull it
off.
But Billy didn't miss a beat, knocking out hit after hit from "My
Life" to "Summer Highland Falls," "She's Always a Woman," "The
Entertainer," "Zanzibar," "Big Shot," "Piano Man," "Allentown,"
"Downeaster 'Alexa,'" "Don't Ask Me Why," "Keeping the Faith," "It's
Still Rock and Roll to Me," "We Didn't Start the Fire" and his popular
tour de force, "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," among others.
He threw in a rare oldie from his first album, "Everyone Loves You
Now," and the still very moving, "New York State of Mind."
Of course, it's kind of easy for Joel to have success in the Hamptons.
He's the hometown boy made good to the people on the east end of Long
Island. He is to them what James Taylor and Carly Simon are to
Martha's Vineyard and Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi are to Asbury
Park. Billy Joel is a hero.
That's why Sunday's story in the New York Post seemed so gratuitously
mean and unearned.
The writer of the piece made a snide comment about Joel being so
unhappy about the Social ticket sales it would drive him to drink.
Ouch! Talk about misreading your audience. Not nice.
However many times Joel has battled substance abuse, his audience is
always there to defend him. And with good reason. Joel has been a
mensch to Long Island fishermen, and has stood up for countless
underdogs.
Billy's songs indicate that. They are nearly all fully realized
vignettes, featuring characters and emotions to which his audience can
relate. They are all based in melodic hooks, and easily sung along to
- certainly more so than 95 percent of the drivel that p***** for pop
music today.
Billy did make some jokes from the stage, mostly about his age - 58.
"This isn't Billy Joel," he said. "I'm his dad."
He gave a shout out to wife Katie Lee Joel, who chose the menu for the
delicious buffet supper that was served and used a lot of her own and
Billy's recipes, including a steak marinade that was out of this
world.
Her cookbook comes out next year from Simon & Schuster. Trust me, you
will like her fried chicken!
As for Christie, I am told that her divorce from "architect" Peter
Cook remains itchy and scratchy with no calamine lotion around.
Brinkley - the Hamptons equivalent of a siren or reigning princess -
didn't bring her two younger children to the show, even though Billy
is son Jack's godfather.
Sources say that Cook refused to let stepson Jack (whose biological
father is Rick Taubman but who is in shared custody with Christie and
Cook) or daughter Sailor (Cook's biological child with Brinkley)
attend the show despite many pleadings from both children.
"It was his weekend, and he wouldn't give in," an insider who knows
the former couple told me.
You may recall that last year, Cook was revealed to be having an
affair with a 19-year-old behind Christie's back. Brinkley only found
out when the girl's father confronted her in public.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292219,00.html
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