Billy Joel Recalls a Quarter-Century of Hits

“I wrote this song for my second ex-wife,” Billy Joel said, introducing his Drifters-esque 1983 hit “An Innocent Man” to an adoring audience at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim on Thursday. Mocking his reputation as a sincere love balladeer in the face of his romantic failures, he added: “Some of you are wondering, ‘Why am I listening to this guy? Because, obviously, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ But it was heartfelt at the time.”

Judging from the cheers in the nearly full arena, that was enough reason for fans to love the 49-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, who has scored hits for more than 25 years by celebrating the trials and triumphs of ordinary Americans.

It certainly mattered little to them that the two-hour-plus show only underscored how far Joel has gotten by borrowing from such brighter lights as Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen, making his own silly love songs and epic working-class anthems but adding little substance to the forms.

Backed by a seven-piece band, Joel sang and played piano and occasionally electric guitar, performing on an elaborate stage that allowed him to turn his piano 360 degrees to face various parts of the arena. Swiveling electronic keyboards stationed at either side also let him play directly to more people, much to their delight.

Though he offered hits and other favorites from throughout his career, the set concentrated on such ‘70s and ‘80s staples as ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” “New York State of Mind,” and “My Life.” Yet he eschewed such obvious choices as “She’s Always a Woman” in favor of the more recent ballad “And So It Goes,” one of the few numbers to get a solo-piano treatment.

He yakked and mugged effusively between songs, but his casualness rarely rang true. At least the haphazard stops and starts during a retrospective pop medley (from Frank Sinatra to the Police) that clumsily led to the insufferably smug baby-boomer anthem “We Didn’t Start the Fire” felt genuinely spontaneous, unlike Joel’s frenzied stage-prowling and mike-stand stunts during “You May Be Right.”

He might have eased the sense of calculation had he offered a real emotion or two, rather than the shallow gloss that passes for introspection in his work. Even such potentially powerful messages as the underlying point of his paean to Vietnam veterans, “Goodnight Saigon”--that war is the same scary, depressing grind on both sides of the trenches--were negated by the musical bombast that served in part to conceal the fact that Joel’s music has no soul.