If monuments were vibrations, any trip would be incomplete without hearing the musician you associate a city with
Billy Joel performs at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Pic/getty images
Here's the thing about concerts: you can get lucky sometimes. I'm talking about the music, of course. And for every band/musician you've loved over years, there's always that one track, usually far more special to you than others, that you hope to hear live. The fact that the song often isn't as popular makes this about luck by chance!
The best gig I'd been to (until last week, by the way) was U2 on Elevation Tour in the US in 2001. Bono was in top form - he jumped from stage, literally on to us, walked over my shoulder, and enthralled us every second of the way. While it doesn't get bigger than that, I sort of knew he wouldn't play 'Playboy Mansion', my personal fave (from the album 'Pop'), since it's just not the crowd-puller - 'One' is (and of course, we all love it just as much).
Unsurprisingly, what we were discussing the night before catching Billy Joel at the majestic Madison Square Gardens (MSG) in New York City (where Mr Joel has pretty much been the resident pianist for around 40 years), is if he would play 'Downeaster Alexa' (our No. 1 track), and if he would actually do the whole 'We Didn't Start The Fire' - yup, that one, which the world has been 'bajaoing' the crap out of at every frickin' retro-karaoke bar there is.
First off, yes, he does 'We Didn't Start The Fire', from start to finish, with all major 20th Century events and people from the lyrics, sliding on the huge screen. And, would you believe it - especially if you're a Belieber - singer-songwriter Joel (68) has no reason to lip-sync.
Even more, what could possibly be better than entering a concert, when you've just about found your seat off the aisle, and you hear the familiar, explosive whacks on the drum and the booming voice belting 'Downeaster Alexa', sailing you into the sea already? Got my money's worth; done.
This is quite the reverse of going to gigs of one-hit wonders by the way. God knows, we've all, at some point, walked in late to gigs of several such - Toto, Apache Indian types (okay, I have) - having already missed the only track you know them for: 'Africa' (Toto), 'Chak De' (Apache Indian), etc. You don't know what to do after!
One of the things you realise at a Billy Joel concert - especially if you're an Indian who's lived through the '90s, when our entertainment stock was relatively rationed - is the sheer number of songs of the poet-pianist we've all grown up with. Music is memories, isn't it? I guess a track is often as good as how long you've lived with it. It just progressively starts becoming our own as memories continue to pile up.
And music can flow from any direction. I suspect our brush with the good ol' Billy really began with a stunning black-and-white Lakme commercial, back in the Doordarshan days of coloured television, where the image of the model Sharon Clarke, her hair blowing in the wind, and the seductive song, 'She's Always A Woman To Me', would simply stand out from everything else during ad breaks. That's how almost every Gupta or Goel first made acquaintance with Billy Joel.
Which of course wasn't the case for Glenn Medeiros, whose version of the George Benson number 'Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You' used to be on so many desi lips, thanks to the Monte Carlo ad, but there was little else of his to check out, and so we quickly moved on.
It's hard to move on from Billy Joel, I notice, looking at two teenaged couples on a date-night standing in front of me, singing along with two boring oldies stuck to their seats to my right as MSG collectively erupts to instant sense of recognition as Joel goes from 'Uptown Girl' to 'Piano Man', gentle poetry in the air ('Old man sitting next to me / Making love to his tonic and gin') as he breaks into 'River Of Dreams' interspersing the hit track with the Beatles' 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand', and then slamming his piano for a top-notch instrumental prelude-piece to Eric Clapton's version of 'Layla'. If there was ever an all-time 'India Top 10' gig, it'd be close to this.
Checking out landmarks of cities we visit is part of most people's tourism. But if modern monuments were vibrations, the thing to never miss would have to be popular musicians we somehow associate cities with. For me, for some reason, New York City has meant Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel (in the same way Bono is so quintessentially Dublin; Liverpool equalled The Beatles; or Rahman is so adorably Chennai).
Don't know about 'New York State Of Mind', but simultaneously humming songs in my head as I list them in this piece, I'm definitely in a 'Billy Joel state of mind'! La, la-la, la-la-la-la (set to the tune of 'Piano Man') -hey, you can hum along too! (Surely you're humming in your head already).
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
