The story of how Billy Joel stunned an entire bar and did this

A pleasant surprise.
Billy Joel performs live in Toronto
Billy Joel performs live in Toronto | Michael Hurcomb/GettyImages

I was never able to attend one of the legendary Face to Face concerts, performed by Elton John and Billy Joel. But I have heard a lot of stories about them. Those stories paint a picture of two very different artistic temperaments that somehow merged to create a magical musical experience.

It helped that John and Joel both had scads of popular songs in their catalogues. It helped that they were both seasoned pros who had been entertaining audiences with their pianos for many decades.

And that disconnect in their personalities may have helped as well. Contrast creates interest. A New York street kid who shunned rehearsal and just liked to play vs the London dandy who mapped out every last detail of his elaborate performances and was known to blow a fuse when things didn’t go just right. Together, they were compelling performers.

Billy Joel played music for the sheer love of it

I’ve heard plenty of third and fourth-hand stories about Elton John, and I never know how much to believe them. But I know one great Billy Joel story from a firsthand account, and I think it highlights something very fundamental about him.

It was 1988. A friend of mine was working as a hostess at an upscale Washington, DC hotel lounge.

A little before closing time on a slow weekday night, the piano player was on break. The manager told my friend she could take off early if she wanted. He would watch the front in case any latecomers wandered in. He asked that she just wait ten minutes while he took care of some work in his office.

She was waiting for the manager to return when a latecomer did, in fact, wander in. It was a man, all by himself. She went to greet him. He said he didn’t want a table. He just wanted to play the piano.

My friend asked him to wait and hurried back to the manager’s office. She told her manager that despite their strict rule prohibiting guests from touching the piano, he was about to hear just that. A guest is playing the piano. As her manager was about to get mad, she told him, “It’s Billy Joel.”

“You’re not leaving early, are you.”

She didn’t leave early. She stayed and enjoyed about 45 minutes of one of the most well-known pop musicians in the world playing an impromptu concert for a handful of lucky guests finishing their late drinks in a DC bar. The resident piano player returned from break, and he and Joel played together for a while.

Joel was in DC because his wife at the time, the model Christie Brinkley, was attending some event. Joel either wasn’t invited or chose not to attend. Instead, he went out in search of a piano.

That story confirmed something I had long suspected based on everything I ever heard about those Face to Face shows. Elton John played piano because he loved being a rock and roll star.

Billy Joel played piano because he loved playing piano.

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