"A waiter immediately arrived with a glass of champagne," says a mutual friend. "Then, a bottle. Billy sent the bottle back. And he left. The next thing he knows he's drowning his sorrows in the papers. It's ridiculous."

You know, it is ridiculous. I'm trying to decide why Billy Joel - friendly, affable, never rude, always polite, incredibly talented - has become a celebrity target. I am told he returned to Nello's yesterday and complained about being used for publicity. Right on, Billy.

Joel may not know this, and Nello's patrons may have forgotten as well, but Balan's business partner is a more interesting story than anything to do with Billy Joel. The man in question is Dennis Kozlowski, the wildly self-indulgent, free-spending ex-head of Tyco. When Balan opened his SoHo restaurant last year, Kozlowski was right at his side, living it up and boasting to one and all about his investment. I'll bet the Tyco investors who lost their shirts will now queue up for a free meal and maybe one of those free bottles of champagne that Billy Joel turned down.

As for Billy, he's working on songs that may become a new album. John David Kalodner, the production whiz who restored Aerosmith's glow, has been assigned to the project at Columbia Records. And Joel is feeling more and more confident about "Movin' Out," the Broadway show featuring his songs and choreographed by Twyla Tharp. After a shaky start in Chicago, "Movin' Out" is said to be movin' up to the proper quality level and will surprise everyone on opening night.

"I've always liked Billy's music," says Ms. Tharp, in a telephone interview from New York.

"I listened to all of Billy's songs and CDs over one weekend. I immediately saw I could read his songs, put them into a context, and make them into an epic."

So she wrote a scenario - weaving in hits like "Uptown Girl," "Just The Way You Are," and "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" - that paralleled both Joel's rise to prominence and the transformation of American society from 1967 to 1987.

This was a period that Tharp believes started "when things were happier, when things were broken and we could fix them," she says. "Then came the Vietnam War, and I think the culture realized that we're broken and we're not going to fix it so easily."

The plot focuses on three young men and the women they love. When the men go off to fight in Vietnam, the relationships change. At final curtain, "we survived for better or worse; we sloughed our way through it," says Tharp.

The modern-dance choreographer was determined to tell the story without the use of dialogue. "What were we doing before language evolved? We were communicating by movement," says Tharp, "so when you can link into a subject where you get substance you're speaking to people in a much more deeply emotional way."

The cast was picked by raiding the ballet and modern dance troupes: Keith Roberts, John Selya, and Ashley Tuttle from American Ballet theatre; Elizabeth Parkinson of the Joffrey Ballet, and Ron De Jesus of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, among others. She also found Michael Cavanaugh, a charismatic young singer-pianist who sounds enough like Joel to be his double. Mr. Cavanaugh sings more than two dozen of Joel's songs while suspended on a balcony above the stage, with a nine-piece orchestra backing him. The lyrics suggest the action but do not form a specific narration.

"Movin' Out" opened in Chicago for a 10-week tryout period last summer, following the path of previous Broadway musicals, notably "The Producers," which proved an instant hit, and "Sweet Smell of Success," which did not. Cavanaugh won rave reviews, even though the critics reception of "Movin' Out" was mixed. He is sure to please Joel fans who throng to see the pop composer's work in the context of a theatrical production. No doubt dance fans will swoon over the caliber of the dance performances.

"What has been unfortunate is that I've been reviewed along the way [to New York], on my first draft. Hello! Nobody said that it was ready to be seen. It never should have been full ticket price and never had an opening night," Tharp says in response to the tepid reviews. But she also notes proudly that each of the 77 performances in Chicago drew a standing ovation.

Working hard in traditional tryout manner, where the cast rehearses a new version during the day but performs the existing material at night, Tharp revised the narrative thrust of the first act - which had caused most of the confusion - by the close of the Chicago run. She says she'll make a few more changes before the October 24th, 2002 New York opening, but "on the hoof" (meaning the cast won't need rehearsal time in the studio to insert the additions).

Does Tharp think she set herself too difficult a challenge? "No, I wouldn't have a writer if I did it over again," says Tharp. "The word 'choreography' means to write with movement."

"I'd be proud to represent Long Island, absolutely," Joel said. "I've maintained that I am a Long Islander, first and foremost."

Even though Joel said he has "mixed feelings about asking more people to come out to the Hamptons for the summer," he understands how important tourism is to the economy. "They do need the business, as well as the rest of Long Island right now, especially in this economy. I don't mind helping out at all."

He said he is hoping people will discover all of Long Island, though not necessarily the same way he is. "I take a motorcycle ride and I try to get myself as lost as I can," he said. "I don't take a map, I just go and I just follow a road...I can spend a day doing that. Of course, I don't have a regular job like most people."

Hollander said the spots will air starting in March on stations as far afield as Florida, California, Canada, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania - and maybe even in New York City, where Joel sees a need, too. "It amazes me how many people there are in New York City who don't know anything about Long Island," he said.

"Who is that guy?" they buzz. "He sounds just like Billy Joel!"

Chicago critics called the 29 year-old Midwesterner "phenomenal" - the show, currently in previews, opens here on October 24th, 2002 - but Cavanaugh doesn't like being called a sound-alike.

"That's fine if they think that," he says from rented digs in New Jersey, his voice raspy from the night before.

"But there's already a Billy Joel, and he's amazing - to try to be him is a losing battle."

Cavanaugh's always been a fan. Growing up in the Cleveland suburbs, he had his first piano lesson at 7½, after he was already picking out tunes.

"Play something," the teacher said, and Michael promptly pounded out 'It's Still Rock and Roll To Me' " - the first song, coincidentally, in "Movin' Out."

By 10, Cavanaugh had his own band. At 12 he was playing nightclubs, parents in tow so he could stay out past curfew.

A couple of years ago, he and his band were in Las Vegas covering Joel, Bon Jovi and Aerosmith tunes when Cavanaugh came face-to-face with "The Master."

"I found out about half an hour before we went on [that Joel was coming]," he says. "It completely freaked me out.

"I think the first thing I said to him was 'Mmmuerrere' " - an incoherent mumble.

Since signing on to do the show - a narrative-free ramble through the lives of Brenda and Eddie and their friends through the '60s and Vietnam - he's had the benefit of Joel's tutorial.

"I had a couple of lyrics I was singing wrong - I'd gotten them off the internet," he says.

"And Billy's like, 'Man, I hate to bring it up, but this lyric is different.'"

Since the show came to New York, Cavanaugh says, Joel stops by frequently - both at rehearsals and performances.

But Joel isn't worried about being rendered obsolete.

"The guy singing my material doesn't sing like me," he told The Post's Dan Aquilante.

"He's a lot younger than I am and he's attacking the material in his own way.... He's being true to himself."

Cavanaugh hopes to move on after "Movin' Out" - composing and performing his own songs. But he's not about to forget the man who inspired him.

"I'm a bigger fan than I've ever been. It's amazing," he says, recalling the time he and his wife camped out in the snow for tickets to a "River of Dreams" concert.

"And they weren't even good seats," he says. "I told Billy that and he said, 'You shoulda called me.'

He laughs. "It wasn't so easy back then."

"Like so many people in the world," Tharp recalls, "I thought, 'Huh - this guy can really write a melody.' Then I thought, 'This guy should be doing a show.' And then I thought, 'Well, I should be doing a show.' "

More than 25 years and many successful projects later, Tharp, with Joel's blessing and support, is about to see her dream realized on Broadway. "Movin' Out," a collection of interpretive dances inspired and accompanied by 28 of Joel's songs and compositions, began previews last week at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where it opens October 24th, 2002.

Having had its world premiere at Chicago's Shubert Theatre in July, "Movin' Out" joins a fall theatre line-up dominated by splashy new musicals based on established works. But Tharp and Joel are reluctant to label their Broadway baby as such.

"I'm hesitant to use the word 'musical,' " Joel says backstage at the Richard Rodgers, sitting beside the woman who conceived, choreographed and directed Movin'. "Twyla had a very strong vision of what I think could be a new genre."

Tharp agrees. "It's not a traditional musical, in that we don't have book scenes or dialogue. ...Without Billy's language, we don't have the arc of the story or the character identification."

"Movin' Out" follows a group of friends, developed from characters in Joel's songs, as they encounter the kind of social and romantic turbulence that defined the baby-boom generation. Cuts and other changes have been made since Chicago, but the basic premise remains.

Michael Cavanaugh, a young singer and pianist whom Joel discovered performing in Las Vegas, and a live band deliver Joel's material from a platform above the stage as the hoofers flesh out a plot that Tharp extrapolated from tunes such as "Goodnight Saigon," "Prelude/Angry Young Man," "James," and "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant."

"When I met Billy, I said I had a simple question. I wanted to know if Brenda and Eddie talked to each other 20 years later," says Tharp, alluding to the ill-fated couple in Scenes. "He said, 'I don't know — let's see.' "A few days later, after listening to all of Joel's albums, Tharp had outlined a story that used his songs chronologically, involving three pals, a love triangle and the Vietnam War.

"The show begins with what I call post-World War II optimism," Tharp says. "Then (Vietnam) came, and with it, destruction and divisions in our culture that we could no longer mend. That essentially is what Act 1 is about, and I heard it very clearly in the string of Billy's music. He's writing about specific individuals in graphic detail, which is one of the things that makes him such a good storyteller. But there is a bigger context to his lyrics that he's not always given credit for."

When asked how Joel initially reacted to her take on his work, Tharp smiles. "Can I tell the truth?" she asks the rock-star, who nods.

"He wept. That was what I needed, because I wanted to convey emotion visually the way his songs do."

Joel adds that Tharp's choreography gave him new insights into those songs. "It was like seeing your kid get married. All of a sudden I was finding out different things about my children through action and movement. And I was very moved by it."

The progressive-dance icon and the pop hero from Long Island may in theory make an unlikely mutual-admiration society. But in person, Tharp, spry and hyper-animated at 61, and a nattily attired Joel, 53, reveal an easy rapport and a profound appreciation for each other's craft. "My mother was a concert pianist, and I was winning piano contests when I was 4 years-old," Tharp points out.

No Male Dancers 'Prancing Around'

Joel admits that his love of dance, particularly ballet, came later in life. "Like a lot of people, I had this picture in my head of a bunch of male dancers prancing around. But there's a lot of athleticism in this show. It's not pretty in the stereotypical sense of, say, Swan Lake. (Tharp) really picked up on things from my own experience, things most guys who grew up in New York or on Long Island can relate to. You see these three buddies hitting each other, playing these stupid games, just like we used to do."

Tharp chuckles. "Listen," she tells Joel, "I haven't gone to a gym for the last 15 years for nothing."

She wasn't the first person to approach him about a stage venture. "I've always loved theatre, and I've always been intrigued by doing a Broadway show," he says. "But people would send me scripts that were really cornball. I'd get stuff like the "Piano Man," with this clichéd story built around a guy in a piano bar.

"I was skeptical at first when Twyla said she wanted to show me some things, but she proved to me that my music can have a life beyond pop music."

Not that pop music has been Joel's primary focus lately anyway. His last studio album as a rock artist was 1993's "River of Dreams"; since then he has composed classical instrumental music, some of which is featured in "Movin' Out."

Last June, Joel's personal problems took the spotlight when a drinking binge landed him in Connecticut's Silver Hill Hospital for 10 days.

Whetting His Musical Appetite

Today, a sober and trimmed-down Joel is eager to reassure fans that his physical and creative health are sound. "I feel great. A lot of people may be under the assumption I'm not writing, but that's not true. I write all the time, even if I don't report it to everybody."

Having recently toured with Elton John, who provided music for the Broadway hits "The Lion King" and "Aida," Joel says he wouldn't rule out writing an original musical in the future. "I've been working on all sorts of fragments and themes and ideas that I could put to use for a project like that."

For now, though, Joel is channeling his musical energy into "Movin' Out." Several members of his touring family have joined him, including sound designer Brian Ruggles and guitarist Tommy Byrnes, who is leading the show's band, a posse of rock veterans.

"Not to denigrate Broadway musicians, but I wanted some road dogs - guys who had been out doing rock and roll for a long, long time," Joel says. "So none of the songs sound radically different. But I hope people won't come expecting to hear an exact replication of the way Billy Joel does songs, because it isn't that."

What "Movin' Out" is, Joel and Tharp hope, will defy preconceived notions about the disparities between their art and their audiences.

"I assume that anyone familiar with Twyla's work or my work has an open mind to begin with," Joel says. "We want to go beyond that, to reach people who may not be aficionados of what either of us do but simply want to see a good show.

"Let them figure out what it is - and let them enjoy it."

"It's Twyla's vision, and you really can't argue with someone else's vision, especially with someone like her, because she is so passionate," Joel says. "The best thing you can do is get out of the way. I saw it in New York at the first of the previews, and I loved it. But a part of me again was saying, 'How objective can you be, Bill, these [songs] are your kids, and they're not in your house any more, they're in somebody else's.' They're doing their thing, and they're independent from me."

Seeing his songs in this new setting has even made him appreciate them more. "I've thought 'Just The Way You Are' is clichéd," Joel says. "But the way the piece is presented, the way she saw the romance in that piece, I see it differently."

"Captain Jack" has grown in a similar way. "It could've been a cartoon if, say, she had the song re-enacted by the members of the Hicksville Marching Band or something," he says. "The way she's done it, it becomes something else entirely."

The whole experience has led Joel to consider doing a Broadway musical of his own.

"I've been developing a story in my head," he says, adding that he's interested to see how people react to "Movin' Out" before he makes his decision. "People have always asked me to write for movies or musicals, and I've stayed away because it was always somebody else's idea. It's always adding another layer to someone else's painting. I want it to be my painting. I'm developing a story. It could be for Broadway, because one thing I've learned from this is that my songs live very well in a theatre environment. It wouldn't be all that strange. Even the reviews that haven't liked the show have said good things about the music; they're sort of bulletproof."

"You go into a special realm when you do great dancing," she says. "Words are not spoken there."

So Brenda and Eddie, Anthony and James and the other Long Islanders she has plucked from 30 years of Billy Joel albums are played by powerhouse dancers - the "angels" who have been working with Tharp for years - rather than a cast of Broadway singer-dancer-actor types. The song lyrics are delivered by pianist Michael Cavanaugh, fronting an onstage rock band. It's not that Tharp underestimates the power of speech. "Talking is how you communicate with people," she says. "But it's also the easiest way to lie."

Dance is a language that doesn't lie, and for four decades, Tharp has been using it to carve out a unique place in American culture. As an upstart dancer-choreographer in the '60s, she cheerfully challenged even avant-garde conventions. In the '70s, she let pop-music - Fats Waller and the Beach Boys, among others - invade the sacred groves of modern dance. With the '80s, she dissolved her successful troupe to concentrate on working with ballet companies. Came the '90s she was choreographing in-depth explorations of the music of Brahms and Beethoven. And now, she's used the people and themes she found in Joel's music to construct a two-act, dialogue-free tale of love and war.

It isn't her first time trying to stretch the boundaries of the dance circuit. Tharp presented two of her works, "When We Were Very Young" and "The Catherine Wheel," at Broadway theatres. She embraced television, winning two Emmys. She choreographed movies, among them "Hair," "Amadeus" and "White Nights." And she directed and choreographed the 1985 Broadway production of the classic film musical "Singin' In The Rain." But this time, she wanted to do a Broadway show her way. "What I wanted to do was tell a story that would require being told in movement," she says. "In other words, violence and sex - this is where I can trump language."

Violence and sex may not be the first things that come to mind when surveying the Tharp career - she is best known for freewheeling romps, such as "Deuce Coupe" and "Push Comes To Shove," and brainy, complex constructions such as "The Beethoven Seventh." But she maintains that violence and sex - at least in subliminal form - are at the heart of everything she does, even if "it's not out-and-out kill and out-and-out fornication."

In "Movin' Out," which opens Thursday at the Richard Rodgers theatre, it is out-and-out kill - there's an extended battle sequence. And there are some intensely sexual duets that will probably surprise even the most knowledgeable of her fans. The biggest surprise for the dance audience, however, will be that "Movin' Out" has a story, just like most Broadway musicals. It follows three guys from Hicksville as they leave high school, get drafted and work out their relationships with two women left behind. And it also tracks American society as it struggles through the Vietnam War period and beyond.

Tharp sees the conflict in and over Vietnam as the culmination of America's can-do, post-World War II ethic: "If things were broken, we fixed it," she says. "That's how we were. That's the nation we were. And then the war came, and it divided this country." She could hear the change in the songs, which she listened to in chronological order. "In Billy's early music," she says, "there's a lot of sweetness. It has an innocence about it. And the war takes that away."

She was not the first person to suggest to Joel that his music could be the basis for a Broadway show. "A lot of times," he says, "I was sent books or scripts that seemed contrived, or cornball. I didn't think it was a good idea to cobble my songs together and try to create a forced scenario." But he wasn't averse to the possibility of bringing his creation to the stage in some way. He cites Broadway show tunes among his influences as a songwriter, and he was, he says, "kind of writing little musicals when I was writing albums. It's not that much of a stretch for me to perceive these pieces done as theatre."

When Tharp approached him with her idea of knitting the songs into a dance musical that would take his characters into the '70s, '80s and '90s, he was intrigued. They were, he says, based on real people, "and I never knew what happened to them after they left high school. I didn't stay in touch with Brenda and Eddie and Anthony and the others. So for me, this