Billy Joel will bring his one-show-a-month residency at New York's Madison Square Garden, which started in January 2014, to an end tonight.
The final show raises his overall total of Garden performances to 150, and 116th in the residency.
Joel says ending the residency will free him up to play other venues in and around New York City. “We can play stadiums. Yankee Stadium, Giants Stadium, Citi Field, where the Mets play, so there’s plenty of that lined up. I’m not going to stop doing shows. That’s what I do. We have a whole schedule laid out into 2025, where we’re going to be playing.”
And, despite turning 75 in May, he has no plans to retire. “What else am I going to do? Stop doing shows and sit around, and watch TV, and turn into a vegetable? No. I don’t want to do that."
Throughout the course of his MSG run, Joel has sold more than 1.6 million tickets, and was joined by numerous special guests — including Steve Miller, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Johnson, Tony Bennett, Paul Simon, Billy Gibbons, Elvis Costello, and Foreigner's Lou Gramm and Mick Jones, who he inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013.
Joel, who has performed at the venue more than any other artist, played first show there on December 14th, 1978 in support of his fifth album, The Stranger.
In 2006 he did 12 consecutive shows there, which set the venue’s record for “most consecutive performances by any artist.” To commemorate the historic moment, a banner stating “Joel – 12” was raised to the Garden’s rafters, making him the first entertainer to join the city’s Knicks and Rangers NBA and NHL franchises.
Check out the original post about it here from Billy's official Instagram.