On Sunday, Sept. 29th, singer and pianist Billy Joel performed at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri, in what may or may not be his final time performing at the city. The concert was originally scheduled for the night of Friday, Sept. 27, but due to weather concerns, the concert was postponed to two nights later.
Joel was born May 9th, 1949, in New York City and grew up on Long Island. He was passionate about music from a young age and began piano lessons at age four. His other instruments are vocals and harmonica. After high school, Joel set out to pursue a music career. In 1966 he joined a rock music group called The Hassels, and was their lead vocalist and keyboardist until the group disbanded in 1969. After that, Joel and Hassles drummer Jonathan Small formed a new rock group by the name of Attila. The group consisted of just Joel and Small, but only lasted one year. After that, Joel and Small went their separate directions. That was where Joel set out to pursue his solo-musical career.
Since then, Billy Joel has sold more than 150 million records and ranks as one of the most popular recording artists and entertainers in the world. He has had 33 top 40 hits and 23 Grammy nominations in his career. He has released 14 albums throughout his career, with 11 of them being certified platinum or even multi-platinum. Joel has generated more than 40 chart-listed single hits, including “Piano Man,” “Just The Way You Are,” “Only The Good Die Young,” “It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me,” “Uptown Girl,” and “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”
Busch Stadium was a packed house that night, and it all started with traffic on the streets, to long lines going into the stadium, and even longer lines in the stadium for concert attire. The show was kicked off being featured by former Police lead singer Sting, and lasted for close to one hour. Sting started with his song “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” and eventually finished with “Every Breath You Take.” Both songs Sting did during his time with The Police. Sting eventually during the concert even came back to perform “Big Man on Mulberry Street” with Billy Joel.
Billy Joel eventually arrived on stage, and opened with his 1977 hit “Movin’ Out.” That excited the crowd from the very beginning and lasted all through the rest of the concert. Billy Joel’s most popular songs in the concert would’ve been Joel’s 1973 hit and most popular song “Piano Man,” as that song had the most fans singing to it of all the songs through the show, and Joel’s 1989 hit “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” which seemingly brought the most energy from the audience. The concert ultimately concluded with Joel’s 1980 hit “Still Rock and Roll to Me,” and the concert as a whole lasted around a total of four hours. The crowd was engaged the entire time too. It is unknown whether this will or won’t be Joel’s last ever performance at St. Louis, but if it is, it turned out to be one of the biggest St. Louis events of the year, and the fans seemed very pleased and thrilled with what they got from it.
