Billy at Shea

Billy Joel plays two concerts this week at Shea Stadium, to commemorate the ballpark's final year, and Dan Barry had a good piece in Sunday's New York Times about the singer:

Someone must sing a proper song of farewell for Shea Stadium, the nice try of a coliseum in Queens, as its dismantling draws near and a new ballpark rises just yards away. But that someone must be able to convey emotions specific to the place, emotions beyond the sadness of many lost Mets summers and the euphoria of two World Series championships. There is so much more.

The romantic idealism and the yeah-right realism. The quickness to mock and to take offense. The need to prove oneself better than any Upper East Side twit and the guilt from having conceived such a hollow ambition. The restlessness, angst and ache of the striver. The Long Island of it all.

Of course the meeting of Shea muckety-mucks to discuss who should sing this farewell probably lasted as long as it took to say: Billy Joel.