Billy Joel doesn't tour often, and when he does, he rarely bothers with venues the size of the Apollo. Not for this 150m-selling songwriter the false modesty of "intimate" gigs: the last time he played such a small UK show was 30 years ago. Having decided to get close to his fans for an evening, though, he exerted every sinew and corpuscle, as if he still had everything to prove.
Joel stopped making pop records in 1993, citing boredom (you've got to love the honesty), but he had a lot of catalogue to choose from for his performance. Fortified by frequent blasts of throat spray (to little avail; the high notes of Uptown Girl left him clutching his neck in pain), he hit the ground running. Hit followed terrific hit: My Life, Movin' Out, She's Always a Woman, even the first half of the Beatles' When I'm 64. He threw that one in because, well, he is 64. He looks it, too, the bald head and facial crevices make him a dead ringer for a pop Alfred Hitchcock.
But once he began rolling them out, singing at the piano in front of projections of New York factory yards and bridges, it was obvious that he has been the victim of an injustice. The restless bridge-and-tunnel teenagers in Movin' Out and the divorced Long Island couple in Scenes from an Italian Restaurant felt as regional and real as anything by his contemporary across the Hudson River, Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen, though, doesn't play shows in a polka-dot tie and josh about getting his ass pinched at Elton John's birthday bash, which may be why he is unassailably credible and Joel is perceived as schlocky.
Schlocky? The sight of fans singing along to an impassioned Piano Man sets that record straight. "Wholly underrated and due a reappraisal" is nearer the mark.
• Did you catch this gig – or any other recently? Tell us about it using #Iwasthere
