Dear Diary: Billy Joel Rules
This post is dedicated to my high school friends. And also Calvin Hennick.
OK, people. Because I love you, and because some of you, like me, may have recently watched the new Billy Joel documentary, AND because I apparently love humiliating myself, I’m going to tell you about the first concert I ever went to: Billy Joel. The Storm Front Tour. 1990.
Actually, I’m not going to tell you about it. My fifteen-year-old self is. Because she wrote about the experience in excruciating detail, taking up a full six-and-a-half pages in her diary, including the inside back cover, plus a sort of valedictory (to the diary), Billy-Joel-themed word art piece:
I am already totally embarrassed. If you want to unsubscribe, I understand.
Those aren’t necessarily my favorite Billy Joel songs up there, mind you. I actually kind of hate “Goodnight Saigon.” It was really just meant to be a sort of razzle-dazzle, visual montage of abundance. Imagine animated graphics with the song names popping out here and there over concert B-roll. You seeing it now? Yes? Welcome to my 15-year-old mind.
So, um, yeah, I was a big Billy Joel fan in high school, to put it mildly. As were a lot of my fellow teens. (I would absolutely need two hands to count the number of my classmates who used “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than die with the saints” as their yearbook quote.)
I am still quite a fan, even though my husband makes fun of me for it. I get it though. Billy Joel is an incredibly talented songwriter and performer, and a few of his songs are among my very favorite songs, period. (She’s Got a Way, anybody?) BUT there is something iredeemably uncool about the guy, which taints his music with a little bit of ick.
Oh sure, he can wear sunglasses and jump off of pianos, he can pretend to be a working class rogue (Uptown Girl), he can do a weird tough-guy voice (Big Shot) or try to make us think he rides a motorcyle (Movin’ Out). But he never quite pulls it off. And yet, you get the sense he thinks he pulls it off. Which is one more reason he is not and will never be cool.
But I like his music, dammit. And I refuse to be ashamed. If I were to be ashamed of anything, it might be my rhapsodic, blow-by-blow description of his January 1990 performance at the Hartford Civic Center.
I would never subject you to the entire diary entry. But here are a few choice, representative excerpts.
We begin thusly:
We went to the concert. I’m depressed now. My life is so meaningless. Actually, I’m less depressed than I was the 1st and 2nd days afterward. Anyway. During school the day of the concert I was so excited. Kurt K. in math class was telling me all about it and how great it was. After school I rushed to do some homework. Then I got ready - changed into my white & red striped shirt, jeans, boots, fake pearl necklace & earrings. I packed money enough for 2 t-shirts and dinner, my ticket, and a comb into the inside pocket of my jacket. At 3:45 I left for Joanna’s. Me, Jane S. and Joanna sat in the front seat of their van, Meg, Harry and Heather in the back, Meg’s sister Kara in the front.
Are you not riveted??
Apparently I wanted to relive every single detail of the experience through the journaling process—and also give myself the opportunity to revisit that magical night whenever I wanted. (Omigod, remember how you BROUGHT A COMB?? And how you and your friends were all IN VARIOUS SEATS IN THE MINIVAN??)
Also, let’s hear it for the fake pearls.
Other important pre-concert details I covered:
We had dinner at Wendy’s
I bought two concert t-shirts at $20 each, one for me and one for my brother
My friends and I bought lighters to wave during the slow songs
I bought a peanut butter Twix
Keith and Dave made fun of my bangs — probably the fact that they were, per usual, shellacked within an inch of their life with hairspray, such that they were essentially a single feathery sideswiped bang unit.
I also provided this handy diagram to indicate where each person in our group sat. Because someday I would want to know this.
But enough with the build-up. Let’s get to the account of the concert itself, shall we? Because here’s where things get really intense. And cringey.
I gotta say though? The writing itself is pretty good. Although I do a weird thing where I alternate between referring to Billy Joel as “Bill,” “Billy,” “Billy Joel” and later, “Joel.” Like I’m a Russian novelist.
All the seats gradually filled. Then smoke started pouring from behind the stage. Thunder sounded. The lights went off - we could just make out Bill & the band. They turned on the lights first on the band, then on Billy Joel sitting at his grand piano. The saxophonist ‘phoned for a while. He did ‘Storm Front’ first - it was hard to believe it was actually him! [Ed: Substack doesn’t let me underline, so I’m using italics instead. Not quite the same effect.]
He talked to the audience, which was great, everyone applauded & screamed no matter what he said. He even announced the lottery numbers! He then talked about how the Sound was polluted, giving fishermen trouble & sang Downeaster Alexa.
I should have added that song to the attempting-to-be-cool list: Billy Joel pretending to be a down-on-his-luck Long Island fisherman. (It is a catchy tune, tho. Like all of them.)
Let’s skip ahead a little bit now, to the part where it gets practically orgasmic. If you ever needed incontrovertible proof that the intensity of experiences is heightened in the teenage mind, here it is:
When ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ came on everyone stood up. No one in our section was standing [ed: What?] so we did and sang every single word! From then on we were up - Uptown Girl, Big Shot, Still Rock & Roll, Only the Good Die Young, I go to Extremes. Jane, Heather & I were going nuts! We kept just screaming the words and screaming & clapping & dancing. The lucky people in the front row were grabbing at his feet - a beachball was getting bounced around the audience and on stage where he’d kick it and spin it around. He danced - or tried to - but it was so cute & everyone loved it no matter what he did!
Oh ye gods! Take me back to that time when all was new, and life shone with the light of a thousand suns, and a beachball being kept aloft in a crowd was worthy of delighted mention in one’s diary!
We never knew we could want more than that out of life.
Ah, but there is a downside to it all: The sucking void in one’s soul that remains after the rapture has ended.
When I got home at 1:00 am the house was deafeningly silent. I slept in for period 1 the next day. That day & the next when I was at home I just listened to Joel’s music. [Ed: see?] It was so depressing! All the excitement, the noise, all these people all together - 10,000 of us loving Billy Joel, singing along, hearing him actually singing all these famous songs. It left this unfillable void in me. Jane S., Jo & I all felt this way, convinced that nothing could make us happy now. That was it, and now there was nothing to look forward to. Just the dull monotony of our existences.
I suspect this feeling of existential emptiness lasted at least until the weekend, when we most likely all got together in someone’s finished basement and ate Doritos and watched whatever we’d rented at Blockbuster.
Still…thinking back over the thirty-five years since that concert, I wonder: have I ever experienced that specific, rhapsodic sort of joy again? Have I ever felt quite so giddy, or so swept up in the collective effervescence of a crowd?
I don’t know that I have. I think maybe it’s only possible when you’re fifteen.
Thanks, Mr. Joel, for helping to make it happen. From one uncool person to another.
All posts on my Substack are free, but writing is how I attempt to make a living. Plus I’m saving up for Billy Joel concert tix. If you like what you read, please consider leaving me a one-time tip or upgrading to a paid subscription to support my work. Or, consider buying my book. Thank you as always for reading!
