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"A Moving Experience"
Award-Winning Tharp/Joel Dance Musical Comes To Town
By: Kathleen Allen
(September 2nd, 2004)

Twyla Tharp had a few questions for Billy Joel. Whatever happened to Brenda and Eddie in his song "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," she wanted to know. And Anthony from the grocery store in "Movin' Out" - what was his fate?

They were questions she had as she pondered creating "Movin' Out," her dance musical set to Joel's music, which opens in Tucson next week.

The suggestion for the play came from her son, Jesse Alexander Huot.

"He said, 'You love Billy Joel,'" the choreographer and director recalled in a phone call from New York City.

She had choreographed the movie "Hair," fashioned a ballet to Beach Boys music and used Frank Sinatra's music as a launching point for one of her works.

Why not a dance to Joel music, her son asked.

She liked the idea. But there was a hitch, of course: She didn't know Joel. She didn't know how to contact him.

"But these things can be done," she said. "You always know somebody who knows somebody."

Before she called him, however, she took six dancers, choreographed some dances to his music and made a 20-minute video.

Then she dialed his number and invited him to her apartment, explaining she wanted to show him something.

Now, Tharp is an internationally known choreographer, a MacArthur Fellow and a much honored artist. Joel knew who she was and was intrigued. He accepted her invitation and watched that video.

"He liked it," Tharp said.

"He was surprised. He said, 'I never imagined that my music could look like this.' I think that basically he had seen dancing on his videos, but that was pop dancing, which is fine. But he's a serious composer and he has a sense of a bigger framework than the pop culture. And I think the fact that his music sustained that kind of serious approach had been gratifying to him."

That was when she asked him about what happened to Brenda, Eddie and Anthony. He had never thought about it, he said.

"Well, that's the point," Tharp recalled in her book "The Creative Habit." "I want to do a show using your songs to tell a story. I don't know what it is yet. But first I need your permission."

She got it before he left her apartment that day.

"He asked what I needed from him and I said all his music, and he said 'OK' and he sent it all to me the next day," she said, sounding as though she still savored the memory.

"Over the weekend, I listened to it all in chronological order, and called him on Monday morning and said, 'OK, I have it.'"

Her launching point was two of Joel's songs, "Goodnight Saigon" and "Prelude/Angry Young Man," she said.

"I said, 'I think the spine of the show is the following - "Sing to me muse of the rage of Achilles," the opening line of the 'Iliad.' It's about war, and the rage of Achilles is the generation of American men who went to Vietnam. From the other songs, I was able to draw the community that would represent the Eddies, the James, the Brendas - and construct it from those points in his narrative. Each of his songs is a short story, so all I did was take a whole selection of short stories and make a novel."

The musical, which is all Joel music (played by an onstage rock and roll band) and all Tharp choreography - no talk - has a thin story line that nevertheless works in a way that creates a moving and poignant tale.

"Movin' Out" tells the story of six friends during the 1960s, their loves, their lives, the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

It's told through the rock and roll power of 26 of Joel's songs and the astounding and athletic choreography of Tharp.

As "Movin' Out" took shape, Joel came to a rehearsal.

"It was so exciting," recalled Holly Cruikshank, who was in the original cast and plays Brenda in the road show.

He saw the rehearsal, she said, and "he started crying."

"It's really hard to see your songs go," said Tharp about Joel's reaction.

"Like he said, they are his children and he was letting them out. It's not easy to disengage. Billy's songs are very personal to him, and he's performed them a lot. And to suddenly see them in another context is not easy. But also to see that others are moved by them, it's not easy. It was a new experience for him."

Everyone involved was high on the show. But when it opened in Chicago before a possible Broadway opening, the reviews were dismal.

It was back to work for Tharp.

"There were huge shifts in the story," Tharp said. "Over half of the first act was completely redone. A new opening was put on, several songs taken out, another put in, all for clarity."

A Broadway opening brought rave reviews for this new kind of musical.

"It was such a relief," recalled Cruikshank. "We found out at the opening party that it got good reviews, and it was relief to everyone."

It also won awards - Tonys and an Outer Critics Award, among them.

But an honor Tharp recently received is one she is most proud of - the Vietnam Veterans of America's President's Award, presented to her for outstanding artistic accomplishments, including "Movin' Out."

"The time had come and the wound was healing and we could give honor to these guys without it being controversial," Tharp said of the Vietnam vets. "That's why I made it."

She went to Nashville to accept the award and found the experience particularly profound.

"They are so moving and so brave," she said of the vets. "They have been so ingenious and so courageous with what they've had to go through to return to this culture. It was a very moving experience to be able to say, 'Hey, here's a tiny, tiny little gift of thanks.' Which is what I always intended 'Movin' Out' to be. That they received it as such, I feel very privileged."

"Billy Joel & Alice Cooper Offer Up Culinary Secrets"
(September 8th, 2004)

Billy Joel & Alice Cooper are offering up their culinary secrets in a new celebrity cookbook.

The rockers are among the stars who have opened up their recipe books for charity tome Star Palate, which will benefit the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Joel offers his recipe for Marinated Skirt Steak while "School's Out" rocker Cooper gives up his Almond Chicken Salad dish details.

The book will hit stores in October 2004.

"Mishap For Joel's Daughter"
By: George Rush & Joanna Molloy
(September 16th, 2004)

Billy Joel and his ex-wife Christie Brinkley raced to the side of their daughter, Alexa, yesterday when she cut open her head after fainting on an elevator in New York University.

Medics responded to a 911 call at 11:04am from inside a West Fourth Street building at NYU, where the 18 year-old is a freshman.

Joel's spokesman, Claire Mercuri, told us Alexa was rushed to Cabrini Medical Center, where the Grammy-winner spent the day with her.

Mercuri said she didn't know what caused Alexa to pass out, but that "she was treated and released. There are no complications. She's absolutely fine."

Alexa spent the evening recovering with her mother.

"A Rock-Star Boat"
By: Timothy K Smith
(September 20th, 2004)

These are the fruits of your labors, friends. Or at least they should be. After all, the stock market's gains seem to be holding. The housing market hasn't tanked yet. Maybe you even got a decent raise recently. It's time to have some fun - and intimidate others while you're at it.

There are plenty of reasons for the average white-collar stiff to be resentful of Billy Joel. There's the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing. There's the piles of money thing. There was the married-to-a-supermodel thing. There's the waterfront mansion thing. Galling as all those things may be, at least they are comfortably remote for most of us, beyond the range of ordinary covetousness. But now Joel is closing in on an achievement that may be almost universally irritating: Starting a few months from now, he is going to have the world's greatest commute.

Joel is about to take delivery of a screamingly fast, custom-built commuter yacht he's helping design that will take him the 28 miles from his home on Long Island's Oyster Bay to Manhattan in about half an hour. Fifty-seven feet long, with surface-piercing propellers beneath a voluptuous torpedo stern, the boat is expected to cruise at 40 knots and hit a top speed in excess of 50. It is a breathtaking, no-compromises vessel, the fruit of a lifetime's careful study of watercraft. It will enable him to blow past the drivers stuck in rush-hour traffic on New York City highways, waving gleefully at them as he goes by.

Not that he would do such a thing. He may be a rock star, but he turns out to be a self-deprecating, courteous, funny, even studious man, damn it.

Before we go any further, let's take a break right here and let everyone make his Billy-Joel-at-the-helm jokes, shall we? Yes, he's had a little trouble navigating on land lately. Three car accidents in the past two years. But, hey - the last time he drove into a house, he was at the wheel of a 1967 Citroën Deux Chevaux, and any Frenchman will tell you that those cars are easily possessed by demons.

Besides, it's on the water - saltwater - that Joel is really at home. He is the kind of boat nut who draws sheerlines on napkins because he can't help himself. Asked what percentage of each day he spends thinking about boats, he says, "A good 25%. I woke up this morning - that was the first thing I was thinking of: the boat, the building, the design, the lines, the placement of instruments. Do I want to move the controls a little bit that way? Do I want the wheel to tilt?"

The new boat is an atavism, really, a conscious throwback to the golden age of powerboating - the commuter-yacht era between the two World Wars. In cities with waterways, wealthy businessmen would thunder to work in long, lean, ungodly expensive wooden boats built by legendary yards like Lawley, Chris-Craft, Hacker, and Herreshoff. Many of the boats were in the 50 to 100-foot range, but they could be as long as 300 feet. In his history of commuters, Yachts in a Hurry (WW Norton, 1994), author C Philip Moore describes the start of a typical workday thus:

The quiet of a September morning on Manhasset Bay is broken by the sudden deep roar of a large, aircraft-type marine engine, accompanied like cannon fire by a burst of smoke.... Soon a maroon and black V-16 Cadillac phaeton glides up to the pier where the long, low, white-hulled beauty waits, reverberating with the promise of speed. An older gentleman in a gray suit alights with ease from the running board of the car and crosses the lawn to the dock. With a slight nod to the uniformed crew, he steps aboard and surveys the hazy harbor. The lines are cast off, and the owner settles into the after cockpit, shaking out the New York Herald Tribune. A light breakfast on a silver tray is set before him. At a slight gesture, the captain comes aft, and they both confer. The long white hull moves out with a smooth increase of engine tempo.

Cruising slowly to the head of the bay and into the open water of Long Island Sound, the white boat is followed by another, this one sleek and black, her Wright Typhoon engines rumbling and the day's first sunlight flashing on her brightwork. As the two boats reach open water, their exhaust notes increase to an unharnessed roar. The race to Wall Street is on!

The New York Yacht Club had a pier at 26th Street on the East River, and on weekdays it and other landing stages around the city would be crowded with commuters. The boats varied considerably, but they shared certain attributes. They were manned and maintained by professional crews. They had cabins to protect their owners from the weather - often with wicker furniture, to save weight - but interior space was largely taken up by engines. Financier Gordon Hammersley's 70-foot Gar Wood had five V-12 Liberty aircraft engines and could hit 45 knots. Boats that big and swift could be something of a public menace. William K Vanderbilt's 153-foot Tarantula (which had a gun on its afterdeck) drew a lawsuit over the damage caused by its wake.

War and rising income taxes pretty much put an end to that extravagant chapter in powerboating. These days, when millionaires want to transcend commuter traffic, they take a helicopter.

But not Billy Joel.

"What we're trying to do with this thing is basically combine a PT boat's speed and durability with the look and feel of a '30s-era commuter, with a low profile like a rumrunner," Joel says, pointing to a model of each. He's explaining the project in a room of his mansion that might be called his boat study, with a drafting table to one side and dozens of model boats on shelves, cabinets, tables, and ceiling beams. Almost all of them are work boats, broadly defined - that is, boats that evolved for some purpose other than getting their owners laid. The view out the window is of Oyster Bay, where Joel, a Long Island native, worked on an oyster dredge for nine months when he was a teenager.

"Nobody wore gloves, and my hands were cut and bleeding, and these old Italian guys just loved busting my chops," Joel recalls. "They'd go, 'Oh, the poor piano player, his hands are bleeding.' I met one of them a couple of months ago. He goes, 'Hey, you were that guy who was always bitching about your hands. How'd the piano thing work out?'"

The piano thing worked out well enough so that a decade or so ago Joel could contemplate commissioning a state-of-the-art commuter. He discussed designs with a naval architect, but they were going to be terribly expensive to build. So he decided to build something simpler first - he wanted to go fast, but he didn't want a stock speedboat like a Baja or a Fountain (he calls them "gold chain boats," or sometimes "deadline extensions," although he doesn't use the word "deadline"). He turned to Peter Needham, co-owner with his brother John of Coecles Harbor Marine on Shelter Island, who had worked on boats Joel owned, including a big sportfisherman and a couple of lobster boats. "I said, 'Does a boat that goes 45, 50 knots-plus have to look like a Clorox bottle?'" Needham assured him that it didn't.

The two drew up a list of specifications for a traditional-looking runabout that would go fast in a chop. They shopped it around to a dozen naval architects and picked Douglas Zurn, a young designer in Marblehead, Massachussets. He drew a boat that would have looked familiar to a rumrunner: a narrow, 38-foot vessel with a warped-vee hull, a springy Down East sheer, and a traditional - looking superstructure. With a pair of 300-horsepower Mercruiser engines, it would reach a top speed of about 55 knots. Needham went to work, and in 1996, Joel's boat, the Shelter Island Runabout, as they called it, was born.

Suddenly, though not for the first time in his life, Joel had a hit on his hands. "We figured there might be a market for it, so we took it to the boat shows," Needham recalls. "The phone started ringing off the hook. We had to hire people, train them, and start a bona fide boat-building business."

It helped that there was nothing quite like the runabout on the market, save perhaps for the wildly successful 36-foot Picnic Boat just introduced by Hinckley. It also helped that the stock market bubble was beginning to swell. A Microsoft executive flew in from Seattle and wanted a runabout immediately, Joel says. "He looks at my boat, and he goes, 'Whose boat is that?' I said, 'That's my boat.' And he goes, 'Well, are you in the boat business or not?' So I actually sold my original boat. But it was good for the company."

Needham has just completed hull Number 36. Joel didn't invest in the business but owns the design and the tooling, and he collects a royalty on every runabout sold - the base price is $340,000. Needham says that another singing boat nut, Jimmy Buffett, nearly bought one. "He was 99% there. But at the last minute he said, 'I can't do this - it's like sitting on another man's throne.'" (Buffett went instead to the renowned Florida builder Rybovich Spencer and collaborated on a fast, 42-foot sportfisherman called the Margaritavich, but that's another story.)

"It feels good because what I tried to do was revitalize an industry that was pretty much gone during my youth," Joel says. "You used to have these crazy mom-and-pop boatbuilders all over Long Island, and little by little after the war the big production guys bought 'em all up." Good feelings aside, Joel still didn't have the fast boat he wanted. He would commute to New York City from time to time aboard his beloved 'Alexa,' a 36-foot "stick boat" (rigged with a long bowsprit for harpooning) built on a Maine lobster-boat hull. "She'll go 25 knots, I'll get in in an hour-ten, an hour-fifteen," Joel says. "That beats the hell out of driving." But what if he could cut that time in half? He started dreaming about a commuter again.

At some point he saw a picture of the legendary "Aphrodite III," built in 1937 by the Purdy yard for John Hay Whitney. "This was the spark," he says.

"Aphrodite" was the product of that reliable motivator, in-law rivalry, Moore writes in Yachts in a Hurry. Jock Whitney's sister Joan, eventually the owner of the New York Mets, married a man named Charles Shipman Payson, and the families lived on adjacent estates on Long Island. Shipman had a 69-foot commuter named Saga, and he consistently beat Whitney's "Aphrodite II" on their daily races to and from the office. So Whitney commissioned the 74-foot "Aphrodite III," with a pair of V-12 Packard engines, specifically to humble his brother-in-law. The plan worked, and the boat had a glamorous career ferrying Whitney's guests, who included Fred Astaire, Henry Ford II, and Katharine Hepburn. A birthday party for Shirley Temple was held onboard. The day after Pearl Harbor, Whitney offered his boat to the government, and the Coast Guard used her to speed President Roosevelt to and from his home at Hyde Park on the Hudson River.

Visually, the most striking aspect of "Aphrodite" was her rounded, sloping stern. Joel was already enraptured by the shape - as used in work boats, of course. "It actually started with the Chesapeake oyster boat," Joel says, pointing to another model in his boat study. "A lot of them have this kind of stern - a draketail or canoe stern. I just thought it gave the boat an extra little thing to have the tail kind of disappear into the water." He asked Zurn to design a fast commuter with a stern like that, and commissioned Needham to build it.

Now Joel's dream is nearing completion in a shed at Coecles Harbor. It's a little beamier than most of the old commuters because Zurn had to make room for the two massive, 1,300-horsepower MAN diesel engines that will drive it. The surface-piercing propellers - a type commonly used in raceboats - are tucked up in tunnels, which eliminates the drag of propeller shafts and struts and may provide some protection from the floating debris that gives urban boaters nightmares.

Like the work boats Joel admires, this one is designed strictly to do a job. It is not a cruising boat - amazingly, for a 57-footer that will cost between $2 million and $2.5 million, it has no staterooms and no galley. And you wouldn't want to try to swim off that stern. "We're leaving the interior stripped bare," Joel says. "We're putting a head in, we're putting some hanging lockers and some basic bunks in, and that's about it. If I want some nice woodwork, I can always add that later. That's going to add weight, though."

Joel leaves the shape below the waterline to the experts, but he fusses over other design details in the frequent faxes he receives from Zurn. The sheer originally had a bit of a powderhorn shape, but it has been straightened out. The deckhouse and cabin top have grown curvier. The effect is, in a word, rakish.

Before long, perhaps by late fall or early spring, Joel will be recreating one of the greatest thrills that the business life has ever offered. There will be a couple of differences, however, between his commute and that of a '30s tycoon. For one thing, he won't be able to stroll down the dock to his yacht - his property has no dock, and environmental restrictions prevent him from putting one in. (Joel addressed the problem by buying an aluminum landing craft to ferry guests to his beach. "You can't drive pilings in for a dock, because it will disturb the ecosystem, but you can take a 30-foot landing craft and shove it up on the beach and drop the ramp and crush every living thing underneath you, and that's okay," he says wryly.)

There will be one other difference between Joel and the maritime commuters of yore. He doesn't have an office in the city. That's right, he can work anywhere he wants. So he'll just be commuting whenever he feels like it.

Damn it!

"Movin' Out"
By: Joel Hirschhorn
(September 19th, 2004)

A James L Nederlander, Hal Luftig, Scott E Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, Clear Channel Entertainment and Emanuel Azenberg presentation of a musical in two acts. Conceived, directed and choreographed by Twyla Tharp. Music and lyrics by Billy Joel.

Choreographer-Director Twyla Tharp, whose adventurous works have covered everyone from Beethoven to the Beach Boys, David Byrne and Frank Sinatra, claims, "Violence and sex...are at the heart of everything" she does. These qualities, joined with Billy Joel's bursting intensity, make "Movin' Out" a consistently driving and physical experience that drips passion from every pore.

The story of five small-town New York teens who struggle through relationships and the Vietnam war was assembled by piecing together songs not originally designed for a book show, and the blend is sometimes less than seamless. But when Tharp's dancers leap, spin and streak across the Pantages stage, "Movin' Out," to paraphrase Tony in his song, keeps movin' up to a mind-blowing plateau.

Joel, a 1999 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame winner, has a penchant for rhythmic and melodic variety, along with a gift for storytelling lyrics, making him an ideal theatre composer. Darren Holden, the singer chosen to interpret Joel's material on opening night (he alternates with Matt Wilson) is a first-rate choice. The difference in vocal tone - he's not a Joel sound-alike - allows the show to be a theatrical vehicle rather than a concert. Holden further distinguishes himself with outstanding piano accompaniment.

Watching Eddie (Ron Todorowski) and long-legged Brenda (Holly Cruikshank) whirl their way into becoming Brenda and Eddie, prom king and queen and "the hit couple of the Parkway Diner," is uplifting, and their moves neatly convey a couple breaking up. In soars Tony (David Gomez), a dynamically sensual young Brando type romancing Brenda on the rebound. Also an integral part of the group are James (Matthew Dibble) and Judy (Julieta Gros), a couple who transform the familiar sentiments of "Just The Way You Are" into something rapturously romantic.

Gene Kelly often said his aim was to make dancing something "a guy on the street could identify with," rather than an elitist art form. Tharp's mentor, Jerome Robbins, influenced her in this direction, and "Movin' Out" is a muscular modern representation of that approach, with believably funky street-corner costumes by Suzy Benzinger and the kind of moves that prize-winning neighborhood dance contests might provide.

Joel varies the program with instrumental interludes. All work effectively and one stands out: "Elegy: The Great Peconic" (from the solo piano "Fantasies & Delusions" CD), with its mournful brass suspensions and a richly orchestrated theme in the tradition of such Golden Age film scorers as Steiner and Korngold.

Tharp's staging of combat is grimly arresting, as the soldiers storm Santo Loquasto's mound simulating a hill and James dies.

War's enforced separation and its threat to parted lovers is examined in "She's Got A Way," during which Gomez and Cruikshank dance a poem of love to each other while fighting off seductive attempts by strangers. Cruikshank demonstrates amazing extensions, planting one leg on the ground and kicking the other up alongside her head with remarkable agility.

Eddie's plunge into self-destruction and drugs ("Captain Jack," "Prelude/Angry Young Man," "Pressure") is too long, despite raw, jet-propelled staging, although it contains the evening's emotional peak through a chorus of "Goodnight Saigon" ("We said we'd all go down together"). Parallels with the current Iraq conflict give Vietnam scenes an affecting timeliness.

"Shameless" is a song of naked physical desire, and Gomez and Cruikshank wrap around each other and turn up the heat. "The River of Dreams," featuring Todorowski and ensemble, offers a vibrant, toe-tapping release, ushering in "I've Loved These Days." This sequence, with Gomez, Cruikshank and Todorowski, has an appropriately bittersweet joy, acknowledging youth is a struggle but worth cherishing for all its pain.

Sound by Brian Ruggles and Peter J Fitzgerald rates special kudos, maintaining the excitement from Joel's hand-picked band and still achieving enough balance to make every lyric audible. Donald Holder's three tiers of blood-red lights encircled by smoke introduce the highly charged dramatics of "We Didn't Start The Fire," and from here the plot takes a tragic turn into a Vietnam battlefield.

"The 'Piano Man' Gets His Star!"
(September 20th, 2004)

After decades of entertaining the world with his music, Billy Joel will finally see his name on the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame. The "Piano Man's" star is unveiled today in front of the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Joel's Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, "Movin' Out," recently opened there and will be playing through October 31st, 2004. A trained classical pianist from a very early age, Joel released his first album, "Cold Spring Harbor," in 1972 and went on to create such favorites as "Allentown" and the renowned "Piano Man." He has also contributed to philanthropic causes through the years, like the "Make-A-Wish Foundation" and "Save The Music."

"Billy Joel Gets Star On Walk of Fame"
(September 20th, 2004)

Billy Joel wrote the song, "Say Goodbye To Hollywood." On Monday, he joked he'd never leave.

"It looks like I'm always going be here," Joel said after his sidewalk star was unveiled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. "I have to tell you that I had not considered this when I wrote 'Say Goodbye To Hollywood."'

Joel's plaque was placed on Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Pantages Theatre, where the Tony Award-winning musical based on his songs, "Movin' Out," is playing through October 31st, 2004.

Joel, 55, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, lived in suburban Santa Monica early in his career. The pianist, singer and composer recalled walking along Hollywood Boulevard and "looking at all these names and not having a clue that I'd be here doing this."

Joel has had more than two-dozen Top 10 hits in his career, including his signature 1974 song "Piano Man," which he said he wrote in California.

"Pop Singer Receives Star On Walk of Fame"
(September 20th, 2004)

The man who wrote the song "Say Goodbye To Hollywood" was back Monday for the unveiling of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Billy Joel's plaque at 6233 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of the Pantages Theatre, is the 2,262nd on the famed venue.

The Pantages Theatre is where the Tony Award-winning musical "Movin' Out," based on 24 of Joel's songs, will play through October 31st, 2004.

"I have to tell you that I had not considered this when I wrote, 'Say Goodbye To Hollywood,"' Joel quipped, as he looked down at his star. "Because now it looks like I'm always going to be here."

The 55 year-old singer, pianist and composer, who formed his first band at 14, has said he was inspired to pursue a career in music after seeing The Beatles perform on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964.

His many hits include "Allentown," "Just The Way You Are," "She's Always A Woman" and "Uptown Girl."

"Rocker Billy Joel Makes His Mark On Hollywood"
(September 20th, 2004)

Veteran rock star Billy Joel, who penned the song "Say Goodbye To Hollywood," was permanently enshrined there when he was awarded a star on its legendary walk of fame.

Joel won his bronze star, embedded in the pavement of Hollywood Boulevard along with those of thousands of other luminaries, 30 years after launching his solo recording career.

"I have to tell you that I had not considered this when I wrote, 'Say Goodbye To Hollywood'," Joel, 55, said at the unveiling ceremony. "Because now it looks like I'm always going to be here," said the New Yorker.

The singer/songwriter, best known for such 1980s smash hits as "Piano Man," "You May Be Right," "Uptown Girl" and "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" first soared to fame in the 1970s.

The pianist and composer, who formed his first band at 14, has said he was inspired to a musical career after seeing The Beatles perform on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964.

Other notables numbers that Joel has made famous include "Allentown," and "She's Always A Woman."

Joel's star is laid in front of Hollywood's Pantages Theatre, the ornate site of several Oscars ceremonies which is currently hosting the Tony Award-winning musical "Movin' Out," based on 24 of Joel's songs.

"Billy Joel To Marry Next Month"
(September 20th, 2004)

Billy Joel will marry his girlfriend Kate Lee next month, the rocker has confessed.

Joel was overheard revealing the happy news to veteran broadcaster Barbara Walters during a recent night out in New York.

According to PageSix.com they will tie the knot "sometime in October".

The couple, who share a 28 year age-gap - he's 54, she's 26 - got engaged in January 2004 after Joel proposed while they holidayed on the Caribbean island of St. Bart's.

The "Uptown Girl" hitmaker was previously married to Elizabeth Weber from 1971 to 1982 and model Christie Brinkley from 1985 to 1994.

"She's Got A Way That Moves Him"
By: Liz Smith
(September 20th, 2004)

At a busy and intensely noisy lunch at Michael's, there stands a perfectly tailored, dignified, middle-aged guy in a fine gray business suit. He spies Barbara Walters as he is leaving, waves, then is beckoned over.

Why, it is the great musician and creator of Broadway's "Movin' Out," Billy Joel. He is with a beautiful young brunette named Kate Lee! They tell Barbara they are getting married "sometime in October." When told how good he looks, Billy just points to Kate and says, "Yes!"

He then comments on Barbara's leaving and "retiring." She laughs, "I'm not retiring, I'm only leaving '20/20' - I'll still be working." Billy shrugs, "There's nothing wrong with leaving. I left rock and roll."

"'Movin Out' Isn't Quite Movin' Up"
The Musical Is A Good Time for Billy Joel Fans, But A Disappointment for Those Who Follow Twyla Tharp
By: Laura Bleiberg
(September 20th, 2004)

The Hollywood opening of "Movin' Out," Twyla Tharp's danced-through musical to Billy Joel pop hits, turned into a rockin' party Friday during an unexpected encore.

The surprise guest was the "Piano Man" himself, and he launched into cookin' renditions of "Only The Good Die Young" and "You May Be Right" with the musical's nine-piece band. The crowd hollered and danced with glee. The ovation even lifted the Pantages Theatre's art deco ceiling. (Not really; it just felt that way). It was fine and pure.

Don't expect, though, to see Joel in "Movin' Out," which opened in New York two years ago to unanimous gushing. He's not a cast member; this was just a one-time publicity treat.

But chances are, it'll be fans of Joel's music who will most enjoy this overrated Tony Award-winning musical. Dance aficionados who insist on seeing for themselves what the hype was all about will at least be rewarded with introductions to five truly outstanding principal dancers. (There are two different principal casts and I only saw one.) But this longtime Tharp fan - who has hung with her through the decades and her metamorphoses from brilliant modern dancer and choreographer to today's high-priced dance-maker for hire - was dismayed.

"Movin' Out" doesn't even match Joel's lightweight brand of rock and roll. It's more flimsy, and lacks his heart-on-its-sleeve authenticity. Nor is its format so original as its creators would have you believe. It's one more step along the depressing de-evolutionary path of milquetoast, shallow blockbusters such as Joffrey Ballet's "Billboards" and Susan Stroman's "Contact."

No one expected Shakespeare. But Tharp is an artist. She's following in the footsteps of other artists, such as Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins. Tharp was the pioneer of pop music mixed with concert dance. We had high hopes, and "Movin' Out's" first 30 minutes do feature clever introductions. After that, it reverts to sitcom melodrama, repeated formula and lowest common-denominator choreography: music-video fast cuts, T & A, phrasing on a classroom diagonal and gymnastic or balletic tricks.

The premise was simple. Take 24 songs by Billy Joel, which, because they were already programmatic, could be made into a libretto. No dialogue needed. It's the late '60s on Long Island. Our three male and two female working-class heroes have just graduated from high school. The boys, feisty but enthusiastic, go off to the Vietnam War. The sweet married boy is killed there. His wife-childhood sweetheart is heartbroken. Her "liberated" girlfriend dances in a sleazy bar. Everyone goes through a rough patch - drugs, petty theft, girlfriend beating, S & M - but then, by the late 1980s, they manage to pull themselves together and live happily ever after. The end.

"Movin' Out's" dancers and musicians are its real artists and they deserve their due. (That's one thing that's never changed about Tharp: She can pick the most talented dancers and rehearse them to ultimate achievement.)

Holly Cruikshank, a tall knockout brunette with gorgeous legs and a nose-skimming kick, portrayed the independent Brenda. David Gomez was Tony, a sexy good-guy who danced strong and sensitive. He whipped off any physical challenge. Ron Todorowski was Eddie, and he was an athletic, dancing powerhouse. He made Eddie detestable and sympathetic at the same time. Among his specialties: a string of turns with the leg held to the side. Then there was an impossible move that's just that hard to describe - continuous front-walkovers in place.

Matthew Dribble's James was kind and sweet without being saccharine; likewise, beautiful Julieta Gros' Judy had a kewpie-doll face and a lovely lyrical line. Their roles were the most classical, yet another cliche.

Darren Holden was the Billy Joel stand-in, singing lead vocals and playing the piano. He had a warm, engaging style and he never made the mistake of trying to imitate Joel's low rumble. He and the other musicians were visible on a catwalk about 15 feet above the stage. The sound was loud, but not too.

Minimal scenic elements rolled on and off (designs by Santo Loquasto), the most effective being a triangular mound representing Vietnam. The backdrop lighting (by Donald Holder) was frequently flashed in our eyes to blind us. Suzy Benzinger's costumes were skimpy and attractive.

Perhaps the key word here is "attractive." If you need a dose of attractive, empty nostalgia, this show's for you.

"Billy Joel: Life After Rehab"
(September 22nd, 2004)

Billy Joel is singing a new tune these days. And people are singing his older tunes in the Broadway musical "Movin' Out." Tonight, "The Insider's" Pat O'Brien sits down with the piano man to chat about being clean and sober, his impending nuptials, and more!

At the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, where "Movin' Out" is currently playing, Billy tells Pat about his decision to seek help for his alcoholism. "I had to stop doing this. I had to check myself in," says Billy. "I just had to get a cold splash of water on my face because I was on a binge. So, I went and then I stopped and I stopped binging."

Despite his past troubles with the bottle, the singer/songwriter sets the record straight about two recent auto accidents that many assumed were alcohol related. "There was no alcohol involved in any of these," insists the hitmaker. "No speed limits were broken, and thank goodness, nobody was injured."

In fact, the second incident occurred on a strip of road that had a nickname not known to Billy. "I was told later, 'Oh, dead man's curve.' Why didn't anyone tell me before? It was an icy night and I didn't know it was dead man's curve."

Fortunately, the road that the Grammy winner finds himself on these days is a lot straighter and very much alive. For the last couple of years, "Movin' Out" has been lighting up the Great White Way and is now touring the country. Based on and featuring about two-dozen of Billy's biggest hits, it's choreographed and directed by famed dancer Twyla Tharp.

And he was immediately hooked on the concept. "Twyla came to me and said, 'I have an idea. I want to show you some video that I shot. I've choreographed some of your songs,'" recalls Billy. "And I said, 'yes.' I always liked musical theater. When I was a little kid, my favorite film was 'Yankee Doodle Dandy.'"

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is also getting lucky in love again. He recently proposed to his girlfriend, Kate Lee, and they're planning an October wedding. "She looks out for me," says Billy. "She's protective."

Another topic close to Billy's heart is his newly published children's book titled "Goodnight, My Angel: A Lullabye," based on a lullabye that he wrote for his daughter, Alexa, when she was 7 years-old.

The lullabye "was inspired when she asked me a question about what happens when you die," says Billy. "It's very traumatic for children to realize that life is finite. And I tried to explain with this song that essentially when you die, you go into someone else's heart, and if you love that person, and they love you, you never really die."

And a lot of love was clearly in the air when the man who, ironically, wrote the song, "Say Goodbye To Hollywood," received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame earlier this week. "It looks like I'm always going to be here," joked Billy.

"'Leave A Tender Moment Alone'"
By: Lloyd Grove
(September 22nd, 2004)

Some money-grubbing miscreant, claiming to be an invited guest to next month's Billy Joel/Kate Lee nuptials, has been offering to sell surreptitious photos of the private ceremony. "I am interested in what pictures from the ceremony might be worth," the entrepreneur e-mailed. "Please send your last, best and final offer." Joel's spokeswoman Clare Mercuri declined to comment. But I hear the wedding guest's photos might be worth zilch because the couple plans to release free pictures of the event.

"Following Dad's Tracks"
By: Ben Widdicombe
(September 24th, 2004)

Call her the "Piano Girl."

Billy Joel's talented daughter, Alexa, is in the studio laying down tracks for her first album.

"It's singer-songwriter, ballad-y stuff," says my source. "And she's really good."

The younger Joel, 18, does not yet have a record deal. "But she wants to do it on her own, without her dad just making it happen," says my snitch.

A spokeswoman for her father confirmed to me, "She is a musician, she plays the piano and sings, and she has been working on demos."

Alexa Ray (whose middle name is a nod to the late Ray Charles), an NYU student, is Joel's only child with former wife Christie Brinkley.

"Side Dish"
By: George Rush & Joanna Molloy
(September 27th, 2004)

Billy Joel's wedding to Kate Lee is Saturday, we hear. The 56 year-old rocker will marry his 26 year-old fiancée in front of friends who include Donald Trump and Alec Baldwin, but not ex-wife Christie Brinkley. Daughter Alexa will be the maid of honor, and Lee will wear an Oscar de la Renta gown...

"Billy Joel To Get Married On Saturday"
(September 28th, 2004)

The wedding bells are ringing again for the "Piano Man."

Billy Joel is getting married on Saturday to 22 year-old Kate Lee - a cooking student who's four years older than his daughter.

Joel, 55, will tie the knot with Kate at his estate on Long Island.

The two met last year and he popped the question during a Caribbean vacation soon thereafter.

Joel's daughter Alexa Ray, 18, will be his maid of honor. His ex-wife Christie Brinkley will be one of the guests, as well as Donald Trump and Alec Baldwin.

"Billy Joel To Marry 22 Year-Old Girlfriend Saturday"
(September 29th, 2004)

The "Piano Man" will soon be hearing wedding bells again.

"Access Hollywood" reports that singer Billy Joel will marry his girlfriend Kate Lee on Saturday at his estate on Long Island.

Lee, 22, is also only four years older than Joel's daughter, Alexa Ray, who will be the maid of honor. Joel is 55.

Joel met Lee, who's a cooking student, last year. He proposed during a trip to the Caribbean, according to "Access Hollywood."

This will be Joel's third marriage. Joel's second ex-wife, Christie Brinkley, will be one of the guests.

A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Joel has recorded such hits at "Piano Man," "Just The Way You Are," "Big Shot," "You May Be Right" "Uptown Girl" and "The River of Dreams."