Happy Birthday

Music legend and “Piano Man” Billy Joel turns 75

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07.05.2024 09:00

It's the end of an era for Billy Joel: a few months after his 75th birthday on Thursday (May 9), the US musician will give his last concert for the time being at New York's Madison Square Garden in July - after ten years, 150 sold-out concerts and more than 1.6 million tickets sold.

For ten years, the superstar climbed into the helicopter outside his villa on Long Island near New York once a month, sang his hits for almost three hours in the famous arena in Manhattan and then flew back again. According to his own statements, he has recently taken the suburban train.

Cutting back a little
The long-running concert series at the Garden has been a success story for the organizers and for Joel - but the musician said at a press conference last summer that it should now come to an end. "I'm pretty amazed that it's gone on for so long. My team tells me that we could still sell tickets, but ten years, 150 shows - that's enough." The fact that he is now 75 seems to him to be a "good number" for this step. He wants to sell his property on Long Island. "But I'm not leaving New York. I'm just spending more time down in Florida, like old Jewish men from New York do."

Joel doesn't want to retire from music, however - quite the opposite. The musician has just released a new song for the first time in decades with "Turn The Lights Back On" and performed it at the Grammy Gala. Further individual concerts, for example with fellow musician Sting, have already been announced for the rest of the year.

Success against the critics
The multi-award-winning "Piano Man" singer was born William Joel in 1949 to a German Jewish father and a British Jewish mother in the Bronx, New York. He took piano lessons as a child, soon played in bands and recorded his first albums. He made his breakthrough in 1973 with the album and song of the same name "Piano Man". In the 20 years that followed, he released ten more albums with successful songs such as "Uptown Girl", "River Of Dreams", "She's Always A Woman To Me", "It's Still Rock'n'Roll To Me", "We Didn't Start The Fire" and "Tell Her About It". Critics often ridiculed his Americana pop, but the music sold extremely well with the public.

In his private life, Joel struggled with depression for a long time, which he later spoke about publicly. Three marriages failed. Since 2015, he has been married to Alexis Roderick, who is more than thirty years his junior, and the couple have two children. Joel brought Roderick and their two young daughters to the press conference at which he announced the end of his concert series at Madison Square Garden. He performed at the Garden for the first time in 1978 and still describes the concert as "the highlight of my career." In the meantime, the musician has long since broken the record for the most concerts there.

King of New York
Joel is an "ambassador for everything that is great about New York", said Mayor Eric Adams at the press conference - and revealed that the first thing he does every morning after getting into his official car is listen to "New York State Of Mind" on his headphones - Joel's anthem to the metropolis of millions from 1976. "New York is the most important city on the planet, which makes Madison Square Garden the most important venue and Billy Joel the most important artist."

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