I’ve seen the lights go out at Madison Square Garden.
Darkness filled the iconic venue after Billy Joel walked off stage for the final concert of his residency, concluding a decade-long run where the regular crowd shuffled in each month.
It ended with the Piano Man’s 104th concert of the residency and 150th of his career, all of which have been sell outs.
“This is our last night of the residency that we’ve been doing here,” Joel told the crowd, drawing boos. “I know, I know. We don’t want to go either, but, it’s time. It’s 10 years. None of us knew we were going to be able to do this for this long. This has been the most amazing gig that we’ve ever done.”
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The 75-year-old Joel kicked off the concert with the very song that opened the historic residency on Jan. 27, 2014: "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)."
He mixed the usual classics with appropriately-titled tracks for the occasion like “This Is The Time” and “Movin’ Out” and special appearances by Axl Rose and Jimmy Fallon.
“We are witnessing history here tonight,” Fallon told the crowd before revealing a banner commemorating Joel’s 150 lifetime shows that was raised to the Garden’s iconic roof. “I remember we talked when you first started the residency, saying, ‘How long are you gonna do this?’ This is not like a little club in the East Village, this is Madison Square Garden in New York City. No one does this!”
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Rose, the lead singer of Guns N’ Roses, joined Joel on stage to perform “Live and Let Die” and AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” The 62-year old then returned to help Joel close the show, and the residency, with “You May Be Right” interluded with Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll.”
The night’s loudest ovation belonged to Joel’s youngest daughters — 8-year-old Della Rose and 6-year-old Remy Anne — who hopped onto the piano during “My Life.” Della than began working the stage, clapping, dancing and hopping on the mic to thank the Garden crowd.
“How do you follow that?” Joel asked. “I guess it’s ‘Her Life’ now.”
Joel’s life will no longer include the once-a-month trip to midtown Manhattan to perform as the house band of Madison Square Garden. His focus can shift to spending time with his family at his primary residence in Florida and playing other venues near and far.
Joel announced in June 2023 that the Garden run would be coming to a close.
That led to a surge in ticket demand, with StubHub telling NBC that sales for Joel's final MSG residency concert was 41% higher than sales of his second best-selling show of the decade-long run, the penultimate performance on June 8. Hours prior to the start of Thursday's show, the lowest price for a single ticket on StubHub started at nearly $500. Fans from 21 countries purchased tickets to the concert, per StubHub.
Other fans didn’t have to travel quite as far to forget about life for a while.
Once a month, Joel has taken his seat at his piano stool at the Garden. And once a month, some of the same fans have taken their seat in the stands.
Cindy Stellato and Mark Gagliardi of Peekskill, New York said they have attended nearly all 104 concerts of Joel’s residency — with Stellato missing one and Gagliardi missing two.
“My whole life has been centered around coming here,” Gagliardi said. “We haven’t taken a vacation in 10 years because we had to afford to buy Billy Joel tickets every month. So now that he’s ending, we figure maybe we can actually afford to take a vacation to Italy.”
They were both unable to attend the August 2018 show while in Florida for Gagliardi’s martial arts tournament, and Stellato brought a stand-in for the June 2019 show when Gagliardi underwent hip-replacement surgery.
“She wasn’t gonna miss the show with me having surgery,” he said. “So, she brought her 98-year-old mother.”
“Her first Billy Joel concert,” Stellato added.
For Joel’s 150th concert at the venue on Thursday, Madison Square Garden marked the occasion by unveiling a "Defining Moments" exhibit dedicated to Joel on the sixth-floor concourse. It included memorabilia from his legendary run; a “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" themed concession stand that even offered cannolis; some interactive Joel-related photo ops and a merch pop-up.
Joel has regularly invited A-list performers to make surprise appearances during the residency.
At Joel's 100th residency show in March, he was joined by comedian and fellow Long Islander Jerry Seinfeld, as well as Sting, who performed duets on Joel's "Big Man on Mulberry Street" and The Police classic "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic."
For Joel's 100th career show at the Garden in on July 18, 2018 - an occasion that was declared “Billy Joel Day” in New York - Bruce Springsteen made a cameo to perform his hits "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Born to Run."
Olivia Rodrigo in 2022 performed her song "Deja Vu" - which references Joel in the lyrics - and then partnered with him on "Uptown Girl." Paul Simon and Miley Cyrus joined Joel in 2017 for an unlikely collaboration on "You May Be Right." Brian Johnson, the lead singer of AC/DC, shook the Garden with Joel during a 2014 performance of "You Shook Me All Night Long."
Other guests have included John Mellencamp, Tony Bennett, Patty Smyth, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, Foreigner’s Lou Gramm and Mick Jones, John Fogerty, Elvis Costello, Bryan Adams, John Mayer and others.
There have been on-stage celebrity appearances by Jimmy Fallon, Howard Stern, Kevin Bacon, Mark Messier, Jon Stewart and Kevin James, and performances by Joel's eldest daughter Alexa Rae.
Joel - who was born in the Bronx and raised in Hicksville, Long Island - played his first career concert at Madison Square Garden at the age of 29 on Dec. 14, 1978 after the success of his album "The Stranger."
He has the most lifetime performances by any artist at the venue, with his total of 150 concerts comfortably ahead of Elton John (76 performances), Phish (68) and the Grateful Dead (52).
Will Joel eventually add to his total at Madison Square Garden? He told the crowd that he will one day turn the lights back on.
“I want to mention a couple of things we’ve done,” Joel said. “We were the first group that played in Yankee Stadium. We were the last band to play at Shea Stadium. We played in Berlin the night the Berlin Wall came down. We were the first American full-fledged performance in the Soviet Union. We were the first band after Castro came to power to play in Cuba. We played in front of the Colosseum in Rome for a half a million people, and the food was great. And out of all of them, this is the best. There’s no place like it. The band loves it. The crew loves it. We’ll come back.”
