Piano Man Billy Joel plays Safeco
Thursday brought a tremendous amount of rain to Seattle but on this Friday afternoon the sky cleared up over Safeco field and the most beautiful sunset could be seen in the distance. Excited fans showed up for Joel’s show at the Mariner’s home that had a welcome note for him on the scoreboard. The night opened with Gavin DeGraw which was unexpected as I had not seen it on the event page. He mostly sang covers for his set as well as his own hits “Not Over You”, and “I Don’t Want To Be”.
A little before nine he took the stage seating at the grand piano in the middle of the stage kicking off the set with “Miami 2017”. He paused to say hi to the audience telling us that he performed in Seattle for the first time back in the 1970s joking “it was for sure not as nice as this place!”, “What a nice sunset that was!”. While waiting for the guitarist to tune for the next song he went on another direction and played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”, which was very fitting for the night.
After that he dedicated “The Entertainer” to Donald Trump, followed by the crowd’s choice of “Vienna”, “Zanzibar” and “Movin’ Out”. He was very interactive with the crowd and seemed relaxed in his element as he joked throughout the night whenever he had a chance to. He playfully started to play “Your Song”, saying I was here with the other guy last time. After the lyric “I don’t have much money”, he stopped and said “Bull***t, he doesn’t! he has lots of money!”.
The fans helped sing “She’s Always a Woman”, in a memorable moment of the show. As the night picked up in beat one of his roadies come out and sang a powerful “Highway to Hell” cover, bringing everyone out of their seats. His main part of the set concluded with “We didn’t Start the Fire”, “The River of Dreams”, “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant”, in a magnificent ending with “Piano Man”. The people cheered and cheered as he came back to the stage again to sing favorite “Uptown Girl”, “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”, “You May Be Right”, and finally “Only the Good Die Young”. There is no wonder why this man has been around for the last forty years, he’s one of a kind!