"Movin' Out" creators Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp won Tony Awards for orchestrations (with Stuart Malina) and choreography, respectively. The show, which opened October 24th, 2002 on Broadway, launched its National Tour from Detroit's Fisher Theatre, January 27th, 2004.

The bookless show, currently residing at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre, uses Joel's song lyrics and Tharp's choreography to tell the story of five friends and lovers across three decades through love, war and loss. There is no dialogue and all songs are performed by the pianist-singer, who sings non-stop and heads an on-stage band during the show.

The song-list includes many of Joel's hit songs and even interpolates some of his classical work. "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" functions as a sort of overture, introducing the characters. The story kicks off with "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" and moves through other songs as the popular "We Didn't Start The Fire," "Big Shot," "Uptown Girl," and "Captain Jack," as well as more obscure early work like "James," "Summer, Highland Falls," and "Prelude/Angry Young Man."

"Twyla hit a home run with this one," said Kim Craven, supervisor of the National Tour. It is Craven's job to make sure Tharp's choreographic vision and Joel's music are executed with the same precision and passion on the road as they are on Broadway.

"Movin' Out" is a unique two-hour long dance/music piece choreographed by Tharp and danced to 26 Billy Joel songs, played by a 10-piece band led by vocalist and pianist, Darren Holden, also known as the "Piano Man." There is no book per se, but there is a narrative, created around characters from Joel's songs.

The action follows themes in many of Joel's tunes, beginning with post-World War II era optimism, moving into the political and social upheaval of the Vietnam War era, and ending with the disillusionment and cynicism fostered by the '70s recession and the greed-driven '80s. It's ultimately about American survival.

The six main characters are Brenda & Eddie, from "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant"; Tony & Sergeant O'Leary from "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)"; James from the more obscure Joel tune, "James"; and Judy from "Why Judy Why."

The 27 dancers perform without speaking, but Holden and the band start the fire in song.

Billy & Twyla

By now, the story about the genesis of "Movin' Out" is familiar to dance aficionados and Joel fans.

Tharp called Joel and pitched the idea of making a Broadway musical based on his songs.

Coming from different ends of the entertainment spectrum, Joel and Tharp didn't know each other and Joel, who had been approached previously about doing a Broadway show, was skeptical at first.

He heard Tharp out and she compiled a video of some of her dancers performing to his songs and showed it to Joel, who was intrigued.

Tharp had been listening to Joel since his first album, "Cold Spring Harbor," was released in 1972. She liked his storytelling, his characters and his passion. Mainly, she liked his melodies. His songs were energetic - like her dance style - and she had been dancing to Joel's music privately for years.

Soon after Joel saw the video, he sent her recordings of all of his songs and gave her the green light to create "Movin' Out."

Danced in two acts, "Movin' Out" traces the love lives of Brenda, Eddie, Tony, Judy, and James and the affect of the Vietnam War on all of them. Eddie, Tony and James go to Vietnam, but only Eddie and Tony return, disillusioned and trying to lead normal lives. Eddie turns to drugs for solace and flashes back to a fictional Judy guiding him. In the end, the friends reunite and learn to survive.

"Piano Man"

The narrative is driven by familiar Joel songs, including "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "Just The Way You Are," "The Longest Time," "Uptown Girl," "We Didn't Start The Fire," "The Stranger," "Big Shot," "An Innocent Man," "Only The Good Die Young," and "Keeping The Faith." There are lesser-known Joel tunes in the show, too, including "James" and "Big Man On Mulberry Street."

In "Movin' Out," Holden sings nonstop for two hours while he and the band are on a platform suspended above the dancers.

"I tell the story through Billy Joel's songs," he said. "There's no dialogue whatsoever, so I'm singing for two hours straight (with a 15-minute intermission)."

Holden had just finished a three-year stint as a lead singer with the Broadway and touring productions of "Riverdance," when he got a call to audition for the "Movin' Out" tour.

"They had been auditioning people from all over the country and couldn't find anyone," he said. "I went in, sang two songs, and they called some more people in, and I sang one more song and got the job."

At 32, Holden has already had an eclectic musical career. Born in County Kilkenny, Ireland, Holden was a founding member of the band Tweed, which he formed at the age of 16. He has had top 10 hits in Ireland with "After Tonight" and with a cover of Leo Sayer's "More Than I Can Say." His debut solo CD, "Suddenly," was released in Ireland in 1998. He released a CD of original country songs, "Live & Learn," recorded in Nashville and released in 2003.

Holden was an understudy to Michael Cavanaugh for the original "Movin' Out" at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York, but he said he isn't a carbon copy of Cavanaugh or Joel.

"I have great respect for Billy and Michael, who is very, very loyal to Billy," he said. "But, when I play in the show, I put my own stamp on it. I definitely pay homage to Billy Joel and that New York/East Coast attitude.

"People come up to me after the show and say, 'I love Billy Joel and I love your take on it,'" he said.

Holden grew up in a household with older brothers, who were hooked on the music of '70s pop artists like Joel and Bruce Springsteen.

But, for Holden, Elvis is king.

"I love Elvis above everybody else," he said.

In November 2003, he was filling in for Cavanaugh at the Richard Rodgers Theatre when Joel made a surprise appearance at the curtain call and came onstage to accompany him on "New York State of Mind."

"He's shown up and done this about 10 times," he said.

Holden is awed by the work of Tharp; he had not seen her ballets before "Movin' Out."

"Twyla is magic," he said. "The choreography is mind-blowing. It's more like gymnastics than dancing."

'Class Is Class'

Because the show is so physically demanding, Craven, a trained dancer, also performs in the ensemble a couple of times a week to give other dancers a rest.

"I got this job, but I'm not ready to stop dancing," said Craven, 37, a dancer for five years with the Pennsylvania Ballet Company in Philadelphia.

"It's high-energy dancing with lots of spinning and twirling. They are dancing a Tharp vocabulary, so the dancers are out there killing themselves every night," she said. "It's so demanding that the principals are double cast."

Audiences, she said, are often surprised by the merger of two of New York's vastly different artistic voices.

"I think some people come expecting a Billy Joel concert," she said. "At first, they don't know what to expect, but, by the third number, there's this breakthrough moment. The music is loud and gorgeous and the dancing is gorgeous and passionate. It's not a quiet, pointe shoe, tutu ballet."

"Movin' Out" and "Mamma Mia!" (a musical set to songs by Abba) started a trend of rock and roll musicals that Holden finds encouraging. He cited the musicals, "Tonight's The Night," based on the music of Rod Stewart, playing in London's West End, and "Good Vibrations," based on music by the Beach Boys, which recently opened on Broadway.

"I love rock and roll theatre as long as long as the story lines are strong," he said. "Class is class in any era."

"Movin' Out," which opened Tuesday night at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, is indeed a full-length ballet, but rock fans shouldn't let terminology keep them from the show.

They will be amazed at how well singer-pianist Darren Holden and band perform Joel's music - probably better than Joel himself these days - and how brilliant a high-flying leap to a crunchingly loud power chord can be.

Brenda & Eddie, the "popular steadies" of "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," were memorably performed by Laurie Kanyok and Brendan King.

Kanyok is the unattainable sexy beauty of every suburb, hips swiveling in turquoise pedal pushers as she jive dances while the gang drinks beer around Eddie's broken-down sports car, then high-steppingly glamorous in a little red dress and stiletto heels in "Uptown Girl."

She is an absolute daredevil of a dancer, tossed around by the men of the ensemble in "Big Man On Mulberry Street," yet she was also touchingly sad in her solo to an Irish air.

King is that rare thing, a tough but graceful male dancer, communicating a kind of James Dean charisma in his muscular pirouettes, acrobatic backflips and even a clownish pratfall in "Keeping The Faith." Eddie's bonding with buddies Tony (Corbin Popp) and James (Matthew Dibble) is one of the strongest themes. Tharp seems to understand men better than most male choreographers.

The more formal, lyrical dancing of Julieta Gros, as Judy, is a striking counterpoint to the pell-mell energy of the other characters, as in her solo in black to "The Stranger." There is so much going on in Tharp's choreography, with each dancer seemingly doing his or her own thing yet totally unified with the whole in a number like "An Innocent Man."

Dance does have its limits, of course, and there are times that the narrative of "Movin' Out" barely holds together, but for the most part, it is a riveting creation. The draw of Joel sells a lot of tickets, but as great as his music is, in a lot of ways he's just along for the ride. This is Tharp's show.

"We pick out classic rock and roll songs, say, something by Led Zeppelin or Elton John," says pianist/singer Darren Holden.

And then the band, who are on a high platform stage rear, pulls out all the stops and starts jamming.

The dancers start jumping around together. "It's pretty amazing," says dancer Brendan King, who portrays Eddie in "Movin' Out." (Yes, the same Eddie of "Brenda & Eddie" who were "the popular steadies and the king and the queen of the prom.") "I've never had this energy on stage with people, ever. People are jumping, clapping, stomping, yelling! The band is playing, jamming. The music is pumped out to the audience. We'll pick songs that are typically played in a stadium. Everyone's jumping up and down, running back and forth."

"The energy goes down to the dancers, and the dancers go crazy," is the way Holden describes it. "We're getting our own show before the show starts. When the curtain goes up, it's charged from the very start."

"We get everyone's energy going, and then keep it for two hours," King says.

That energy grabs the audience from the very start and pulls it in in an exuberant embrace.

The show starts with "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," goes into "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" and for the next two hours, the ensemble dances to 24 Billy Joel songs, sung by Holden and backed by an eight-piece band. Songs in the show include "Just The Way You Are," "The Longest Time," "Uptown Girl," "We Didn't Start The Fire," "She's Got A Way" and "Captain Jack."

Although Holden's sitting for two hours when he's performing, he says he finds the show so energizing that he's "buzzing for two to three hours afterwards. It's so exhilarating," he says.

Award winning choreographer/director, Twyla Tharp, who's choreographed dances to music by The Beach Boys ("Deuce Coupe"), David Byrne ("The Catherine Wheel") and Frank Sinatra ("Nine Sinatra Songs") among many others, came up with the idea of designing a Broadway extravaganza of dance around Billy Joel's songs. (Tharp also choreographed the dances for the movies "Hair," "Ragtime," and "Amadeus.") She came up with the idea in the summer of 2000, and by October 2002, the show was on Broadway.

"Movin' Out" builds a narrative arc out of Joel's songs, taking them out of chronological order to tell a story. Covering two decades, the show follows the lives of a group of high school friends as they struggle with an adulthood that includes Vietnam, alienation, drug addiction, death, break-ups and love.

The show was popular with critics and audiences alike. In 2003 Joel received a Tony Award for Best Orchestration and Tharp received a Tony Award for Best Choreography.

"I call Billy Joel the working man's songwriter," says Holden. "He did short stories. They could've been based on any individual's life. I think that's why his music was such a success, and that's why when all the songs are put together, this story and this show is such a success. His lyrics really reach people. Everyone's been through the experiences he sings about at some point."

Holden, who is a well-known in Ireland as a singer, previously performed in "Riverdance" on Broadway, and then on tour. He's pleased, though to be traveling across America now in a "rock and roll show," as he puts it.

"Billy has this knack of writing stuff that you almost immediately respond to," Holden says. "Personally speaking, the first time I heard 'The Stranger' album, I was blown away. I hadn't heard anything like that before."

Holden had been more of an Elton John fan while a teen. But when he heard Billy Joel, he thought, "Oh my God, who is this guy? In 'Scenes From An Italian Restaurant,' Anthony's wanting to get out, wanting something else," Holden says. "Everyone related to that. Everyone wants to go that extra mile and do something. He's putting that message out there: Don't settle for something just because you think you can't do something else."

When Holden learned he'd landed the role of singer in "Movin' Out," he determined he "didn't want to be a clone or an imitator" of the five-time Grammy Award-winner. "I have his attitude and style and phrasing, but also sing it with my own personal stamp," he says. "There is a Billy Joel, already. He's fantastic, he's amazing. I have to be Darren Holden. I have to create my own style. I do pay homage to Billy in certain parts of the show, singing things the way he would've sung it."

Dancer Brendan King, who portrays Eddie in "Movin' Out," feels he can relate to his character because Eddie grew up on Long Island and King grew up in New Jersey. He describes Eddie as "a quintessential, Jersey/Long Island kind of guy. Eddie is more like the leather jacket, biker mechanic kind of guy," he says. "A little older than everyone else, a little tacky. I think he likes to think he likes himself more than he actually does."

His character runs the gamut of emotions throughout the show.

"You go from being the happy, cocky guy to wanting to flip out and kill somebody, to the happiest guy on earth," King says. "That's one of the major reasons why Twyla stresses the acting. If that doesn't come across, then it doesn't really work."

The dancers in "Movin' Out" have no dialogue; the only words are Holden singing Billy Joel's lyrics. The dancers have to put across the story using only motion and facial expressions.

According to King, the dancers sometimes had to go through the entire story in rehearsals without dancing, in order to hone their facial expressions.

"She really, really stresses acting in dancing," he says. Tharp also had them read about the Vietnam War and post traumatic stress syndrome. The men also had to go through a mini-boot camp to learn how to realistically respond to a drill sergeant's orders, how to stand at attention, walk and turn as a unit of men.

When asked who was more demanding, the drill sergeant or Tharp, King laughs.

"They're pretty close," he says. "She does everything to the extreme. Audition was a marathon. ...We learned half the show. She definitely wants to know that whoever's being chosen is what she wants."

King was recently seen in the animated film "The Polar Express." He and another dancer danced the parts of the waiters and pastry chefs on the train.

"We wore motion-capture suits; they captured every movement that we did," he says. "They used our motions and used someone else's face. We wore outfits like leotards with little white balls on them that reflect light to LED cameras on the ceiling. It's just insane - they made this movie (on a computer) out of little white dots we wore on our bodies!"

Now King and his fellow dancers are bringing Billy Joel's music to life with Twyla Tharp's award-winning choreography.

"Of all the jazz dance I've ever done, I've never worked with as hard a group of performers, people who seriously give every piece of their body to the stage, every single night," King says.

Though he sees the show eight times a week from behind his piano, Holden is still in amazement.

"For Twyla Tharp to suddenly get this vision to put choreography to Billy Joel's music, it must have come from above, because it's phenomenal," Holden declares. "Twyla is almost indescribable to me. She's so amazing. Her choreography goes the extra mile. These dancers are out of this world. She picks the best. It's almost like gymnastics, what she's done. It just grabs the audience and drags you up on stage with them, emotionally."

"I always thought that it was a great tradition during the '20s and '30s that these guys would go into Wall Street via Long Island Sound and the East River," Joel said at Webb.

With his new boat, to be christened Vendetta and docked in Oyster Bay near his Centre Island home, he added in a later interview, "I think I'll be able to get to Manhattan within a half an hour at cruising speed. I go in to the city more and more these days because I live closer to the city, my daughter goes to school in the city, I'm going to have an apartment in the city and I'm newly married and my wife has her interests in the city, too."

Sense of Tradition

While speed is important in the new boat, Joel told the Webb audience, so is a sense of style and tradition. He said he didn't want a muscle boat "you can hear...coming from Connecticut" that looks like "a Clorox bottle."

He didn't want his new boat to be overly plush, either. "I don't need deep-pile carpeting; I don't need TV sets," he said.

"Vendetta," like the two previous boats Joel had built for himself, started out with his rough sketches that he made on the drafting table in his home. "I probably get more into the design and building aspect of the boat than I do in the use of the boat," he said.

In 2000, he approached Doug Zurn of Marblehead, Massachusetts, his naval architect on his previous boat design, with the idea of the commuter. "He has great ideas and he listens well," Zurn said.

After the plans were completed, the hull was fabricated in Maine and shipped to Coecles Harbor Marina & Boatyard on Shelter Island for finishing work. While the marina has built boats for years, its construction operation really took off in 1996 when it began to produce the "Shelter Island Runabout," a 38-foot "picnic boat" based on Joel's initial order. Thirty-nine of the Runabouts, which start at $356,800, have been ordered so far, and Joel gets a commission on each sale. The orders have helped keep 15 to 20 workers employed and boat-building alive on Long Island, which was Joel's intention.

"Billy and I figured maybe there was a life of two boats a year, tops 10 total," said Peter Needham, the Coecles Harbor vice president who oversees the construction. But they greatly underestimated the demand.

"These boats were flying out the door," Joel said. "We had a hiccup when the economy took a dump."

His Own Competition

Joel decided to order "Vendetta" from Coecles Harbor to keep the work force intact during the slump. "I've seen too many boat businesses disappear."

When the economy rebounded and a spate of new orders came in for the "Shelter Island Runabout," each of which takes three months to build, Joel found himself competing with himself. He'll make money off the new 38-footers, but workers had to be pulled off "Vendetta" to build them. The fall launch date for "Vendetta" was pushed back until spring.

Joel was in the market for the commuter because he ended up selling his prototype "Shelter Island Runabout" to a buyer who refused to wait for another boat to be constructed.

"Vendetta" looks like a PT boat, and its twin 1,300-hp. diesels are expected to propel it to a top speed of 60 mph. Needham said "Vendetta" will cost more than $2 million, as would any future copies. (The boat's name reflects Joel's fondness for the phrase "living well is the best revenge.")

Drawn To The Water

Although he grew up landlocked in Hicksville, Joel, 55, has been drawn to the sea and boats as long as he can remember. When he was very young, he looked at boats when his mother drove him to Oyster Bay and Cold Spring Harbor for family outings.

As he got older he took a bolder, more hands-on approach. "I used to 'borrow' boats," he confided to the Webb audience. "I would just unclip them from the moorings, motor them around, bring them back and clean them up. It's a good way to learn how to be a good boater because you don't mess up with somebody else's boat."

Later, in 1971 when he was living in Hampton Bays and his first solo album, "Cold Spring Harbor," had been released, he joined the ranks of boat owners. "My first boat was a rowboat," he said. "I bought it in Hampton Bays. It was an 18-foot wood lapstrake whaling dory. It was a heart attack rowing this thing, so I got a little money and bought myself a kicker, a 10-hp. Evinrude outboard."

Joel sold the dory after one summer and moved to California, where he began playing in a piano bar under the name "Bill Martin" to escape an onerous recording contract.

When he returned to Long Island in 1975, he rented a place on Oyster Bay and bought a 17-foot Boston Whaler. By the early 1980s, with his career soaring and a house on the waterfront in Lloyd Harbor that he shared with then-wife Christie Brinkley, he owned a 20-foot Shamrock skiff.

As more gold records lined his walls in Lloyd Harbor and later in Amagansett, his boats got larger. There was a 33-foot cruiser named Sea Miner he used to fish offshore and a custom-built, 38-foot sportfishing boat named "Sea Major." He traded up to a 46-foot Jarvis Newman sportfisherman with a tower and a flying bridge that he named "Alexa Ray" after his daughter.

As his career got more complicated, Joel decided to simplify his nautical life. Seeking a craft he could take out by himself, Joel and Needham came up with the design for Alexa, which was a 36-foot fiberglass hybrid of a swordfishing boat and "a lobster boat with no frills." He still has Alexa after 13 years.

Inspired By The Sea

Joel has said that salt water is so important to him that he can't compose out of sight of it. "It has some kind of primeval impact on me," he has said. While all of his 16 albums that have sold more than 100 million copies have been inspired by the sea and make reference to it - and his personal management company is called Maritime Music, Inc. - it's his boat "Alexa" and his help for East End baymen that gave rise to his most seaworthy song: "The Downeaster 'Alexa'."

"'Alexa' I'll probably never sell because that's my good all-around, all-purpose boat," Joel said while seated at the table in the two-story kitchen of his Centre Island mansion. "I mostly use 'Alexa' now for taking people out for cruises."

After he built "Alexa," Joel added "Half Shell," a 28-foot Ellis brand cruiser, to the fleet, and then "Catsass." "I didn't name that boat," he was quick to point out to loud laughter from his Webb audience. The latter was a 27-foot workboat owned by a lobsterman friend, Dave Neilsen, who lived near his vacation house in Menemsha on Martha's Vineyard. After Neilsen died fishing during a storm, "I didn't want that boat going to strangers, so I bought the boat from the family. And I sold it last summer after keeping it in Sag Harbor for four years."

Next in the batting order was Joel's most unusual boat, "Red Head," which he describes as a "65-foot mini-cargo ship or pocket freighter" he found in Florida.

But after six years and a major overhaul, he sold "Red Head" last year to a nonprofit nautical organization in Florida. Joel had used the boat for trips to Maine and Florida and loaned it to nonprofit groups, but he added, "I didn't use 'Red Head' enough. I would use the boat maybe half a dozen times a year."

I also have a landing craft," Joel said at Webb. He got the 28-foot aluminum catamaran a year ago to serve as a launch to get out to his other boats. "Where I live in Centre Island, you can't have a dock. You can't put a piling in the water because it will disturb the ecosystem. But you can ram this thing onto the beach and crush every living thing, and that's OK," he quipped to more laughter.

A Model Interest

Although Joel has eschewed concert tours for more than a year and a half, he said he still doesn't get to spend as much time as he'd like on the water.

"Between renovating the interior of the new house and all the planning that was done for the wedding and the work that was done to promote the Broadway musical ["Movin' Out"], I got out about once a week this past summer."

But even if he's not on the water, there are plenty of nautical reminders around.

On the second floor of the small building between the house and garage is the space Joel calls the chart room. Nautical prints and photographs of East End baymen cover the walls.

This is Joel's boat-design space, and on one end of the room is a drafting table. Cabinets with large flat drawers hold boat blueprints and sketches and nautical charts for cruising areas. The top of the cabinets is the anchorage for a fleet of ship models.

The nautical motif continues inside the brick Georgian Revival main house occupied by Joel in 2002. It's a house that's more about boats than rock star memorabilia; his gold records are relegated to the basement while the rest of the house is awash in nautical trappings.

The only room devoid of such furnishings is the kitchen because "it's Kate's command post," he said of his new wife, Kate Lee. But he added that she, too, enjoys the water. "She loves it," he said. "She's from West Virginia, so it's a new thrill for her."

The library contains a model of the ocean liner "Queen Mary," an ivory scrimshaw model of a catboat sailboat, a cocked admiral's hat on a stand and a brass ship's running light. The hall outside is lined with maritime paintings and a model of the tall ship "Pride of Baltimore."

In his office, there's a painting by Joel's daughter, Alexa, of the two of them on her namesake boat done in 1992, an Edward Hopper watercolor of a sailboat and other nautical artifacts.

In the basement, the walls of the after-dinner smoking room are decorated with antique posters of ocean liners. The downstairs pub is filled with "Titanic" posters and memorabilia.

Also in the basement is the piano room, a large space that once contained an in-ground pool until Joel covered it with a hardwood floor so he could place a grand piano there.

Sailing On

These days Joel uses the piano to write what he calls musical sketches that might turn into songs, instrumental pieces, a Broadway show or a movie score. But whatever becomes of the new music, he said, "there's a lot of nautical themes. They're reminiscent of 19th Century chanteys that sailors would sing on whaling expeditions."

The other prominent fixture in the piano room is a 14-foot White Hall gaff-rigged sailing rowboat. It was made for him four years ago by the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport, Rhode Island. It was initially mounted on "Red Head" but when he sold that boat, he kept the rowboat.

"I built it for my daughter, but she only used it once or twice," he said, adding that he has gone sailing a few times and enjoyed the quiet.

"Once we get the sailing rig up, I'm going to take it out and I have a suspicion I'm going to like it. Then I'm in trouble. I'll have to get a big sailboat."

"He's kind of a jack-of-all-trades," Joel said.

Joel's utility centerfielder grew up around the water but never got seriously into boating until 1981, when he began to spend his summers during college on Nantucket. "The water always drew me there because I could live on a boat and get a job on the water. I was a mate on a day-charter sailboat during the day and at night I was a waiter in restaurants," Pelland said.

After a succession of jobs cleaning and crewing on boats, Pelland moved up to delivering boats for customers, including offshore trips to the Caribbean. After graduating from college, he moved to the Caribbean, earned his Coast Guard captain's license in 1986 and worked taking cruise ship passengers on snorkel trips and on a salvage boat. During summers, he came north and worked as a captain on cruising and racing sailing yachts.

When Joel bought 'Red Head,' Pelland piloted it up from Florida. "I kept a little log where I made some suggestions. He read it and called me up and said, 'Would you like to do these things?'"

While the work was going on, Joel asked Pelland to become his full-time captain. Joel explained that although he has a captain's license, "it was obviously way too much boat for me to handle. And I really didn't want to be cleaning it and painting it all the time."

Gradually Pelland took over the care of Joel's fishing boat, "Alexa," and his other craft, which no longer include "Red Head." And when the singer/songwriter decided to build a 57-foot commuter yacht four years ago, Pelland became the project manager.

When Joel moved from Amagansett to Centre Island, Pelland supervised renovations at the new house and other chores there. "It was a natural progression from the boats," the captain said.

Then Joel made a suggestion to Pelland that didn't seem like a natural progression: to come along on his concert tours. "I said, 'What am I going to do on tour?'" He became tour carpenter, taking care of construction of the stage, and also ran the stage air-conditioning system.

Another role Pelland grew into was representing Joel on community projects such as the effort to persuade Nassau County to place Nunley's Carousel on the Oyster Bay waterfront. "It's good for me because I never had this type of land-based roots," said the captain, who is single and lives in a rented house in Oyster Bay.

Pelland said Joel is a great boss. "There's never any pressure," he said.

And Joel called Pelland the perfect employee. "He's indispensable to me right now," he said.

Pelland said other captains who warned him not to work for a rock star have changed their tune.

"People tell me, 'Let me know when you want to retire'," he said.

"That's basically how Twyla Tharp created the whole show," says dancer Holly Cruikshank, who plays Brenda in the touring production coming to Charlotte next week. "She started asking, 'Well, who are these people? What happens to them after the song?'"

"Movin' Out" follows Brenda, Eddie and three other high school friends from their youthful innocence in the 1960s, through the Vietnam era and into the 1980s. If you know "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," you know that Brenda and Eddie eventually split up - but other scenes in the show depart from what Joel's fans might expect.

The simple love song "She's Got A Way," for instance, carries us to Vietnam, where Tony, a depressed and lonely GI, is clinging to a bar girl; back at home, meanwhile, Brenda has become a go-go dancer and is enduring the attentions of a sleazy customer.

"I remember hearing it ('She's Got A Way') years ago, and it was just this nice ballad," says Darren Holden, the show's "Piano Man" and lead vocalist. "Then I saw that there could be this whole other story to it."

Overcoming listeners' expectations, in fact, has been Holden's biggest challenge. Growing up in County Kilkenny, Ireland, in the 1970s and 1980s, Holden taught himself most of the Billy Joel catalog by ear; when he was hired for "Movin' Out," after nearly 400 other piano-playing hopefuls had failed, Holden had to go back and relearn the music as Joel performed it, chord by chord and note by note.

"Obviously, there will be some Billy Joel fanatics in the audience," the musician says. "I try not to just sound like Billy, although I do play homage to Billy at certain parts in the show" - particularly the brash, New York-sounding hits like "Big Shot." With other tunes, he says, "you've got more room to experiment."

Tharp, of course, took that room and ran with it - and the result continued a series of hit shows fusing popular music and cutting-edge dance.

"Yes, it's the most random combination, but it works," Cruikshank says, laughing. "It's just a new way of telling a story."

"It's a building that had a prominent visual impact," he said. "When you rode into the village, there was no way you could...it. If you gave directions, you'd say, 'Well, come down Route 106 and turn at Nobman's.'" 

"With all the solvents and flammable things in there, my guys had a tough time getting into the basement," he said, adding, "We have no idea what caused it."

Fearing that the roof would collapse, Ozol said he was forced to pull all his firefighters from inside and atop the two-story wooden building.

The store's second floor was rented by the Oyster Bay Civic Association and Joel's management office, Maritime Music.

"Everything in those offices was destroyed," Ozol said.

But he said adjacent businesses, such as an antique store, deli and ice cream parlor, were saved, though they suffered some smoke damage.

Despite freezing temperatures that made the ground extremely slippery and left firefighters coated in ice, there were no serious injuries.

"I'm really proud of my guys, considering how cold it was. In this weather, the water hits the pavement and becomes black ice instantly," Ozol said.

"We had a lot of guys slipping and falling," he said.

Joel, who was in Florida this weekend attending Donald Trump's wedding, was not able to get into the building and could not assess the damage, said his spokeswoman, Claire Mercuri.

She did not know if any of the Grammy Award winner's rock and roll memorabilia was inside his office.

"Thank God no one was hurt," Joel said through his spokeswoman.

"Movin' Out" creators Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp won Tony Awards for orchestrations (with Stuart Malina) and choreography, respectively. The show, which opened October 24th, 2002 on Broadway, launched its National Tour from Detroit's Fisher Theatre, January 27th, 2004.

The bookless show, currently residing at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre, uses Joel's song lyrics and Tharp's choreography to tell the story of five friends and lovers across three decades through love, war and loss. There is no dialogue and all songs are performed by the pianist-singer, who sings non-stop and heads an on-stage band during the show.

"I had produced a few noteworthy plays by the 1960s, and I played ball in Central Park each Sunday with a group of young hoodlums - Jimmy Goldman, Frank Gilroy, Robert Redford, and Neil Simon," notes Azenberg. So when Simon was looking for a Broadway producer for his plays, he went right to his favorite shortstop - Azenberg.

The dazzling collaboration that resulted between Azenberg and Simon included "The Sunshine Boys," "Chapter Two," "They're Playing Our Song," "Brighton Beach Memoirs," "Biloxi Blues," "Broadway Bound," and "Lost In Yonkers."

His current production of "Movin' Out" is as thrilling as anything he has ever produced, says the dapper Azenberg, now in his 70s. The energy that results from the choreographing of Billy Joel's legendary melodies like "The Longest Time," "Uptown Girl," and "We Didn't Start The Fire," is remarkable."

For the past 19 years Azenberg has taught a theatre-arts class at Duke University. Although he infuses his students with a passion for theatre, Azenberg tells them that he is not optimistic about the current status of American theatre. "The great heyday of the theatre was from the 1920s to the 1970s," he says. But then a show like "Movin' Out" comes along. Suddenly the theatre's magic and power grips and transforms the audience. There is hope yet."

"Movin' Out"'s Broadway lead vocalist Michael Cavanaugh and National Tour frontman Darren Holden will swap piano gigs in the Billy Joel-Twyla Tharp musical in February, according to Holden's publicist.

Holden, who was understudy to Cavanaugh and has performed with the touring show for more than a year, will rejoin the Broadway cast at the Richard Rodgers Theatre for 10 performances, February 9th, 2005 - February 20th, 2005. His Tony Award-nominated counterpart Cavanaugh joins the tour to play his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio at the Palace Theatre from February 8th, 2005.

The National Tour for "Movin' Out," the new Broadway musical collaboration between pop legend Billy Joel and choreographer Twyla Tharp launched from Detroit's Fisher Theatre, January 26th, 2004.

Producers of the Broadway run - James L Nederlander, Hal Luftig, Scott E Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, Clear Channel Entertainment & Emanuel Azenberg - also present the tour.

The bookless show, currently residing at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre, uses Joel's song lyrics and Tharp's choreography to tell the story of five friends and lovers across three decades through love, war and loss. There is no dialogue and all songs are performed by the pianist-singer, who sings non-stop and heads an on-stage band during the show.

Following a tryout at Chicago's Shubert Theatre, the show officially opened on The Great White Way October 24th, 2002 following previews since September 30th, 2002. The new show took home the Tony Awards for Best Choreography (Tharp) and Orchestrations (Joel and Stuart Malina).

The songlist includes many of Joel's hit songs and even interpolates some of his classical work. "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" functions as a sort of overture, introducing the characters. The story kicks off with "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" and moves through other songs as the popular "We Didn't Start The Fire," "Big Shot," "Uptown Girl" and "Captain Jack," as well as more obscure early work like "James," "Summer, Highland Falls," and "Prelude/Angry Young Man." As a final curtain coda, Cavanaugh belts out the apropos "New York State of Mind."