Billy Joel - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: From a Piano Man... to an Innocent Man, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-8-1984

As I delve deeper into the mountain of BBC recordings out there, I'm discovering that practically every famous musical act played for the BBC at one point or another. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you'd be surprised. I know I've been.

A case in point is Billy Joel. As an American, he's an unlikely subject for the BBC. But it turns out he did a 1984 concert in London that was broadcast on BBC TV at the time. I really like when concerts are broadcast by the BBC, because it's a virtual guarantee that the sound quality will be excellent. That's the case here with this unreleased show.

But the timing of this concert is also great. If I had to pick one year for a Billy Joel concert, it would be 1984. His 1983 album "An Innocent Man" finished a long run of commercially successful and critically acclaimed albums. He would release three more studio albums after that, but they're not as good as the rest. If you look at the crowd-sourced ratings of his albums at rateyourmusic.com, all of his prior albums got better ratings than his last three. So that means this is "all killer, no filler," with nearly every song a hit.

There aren't any surprises here, but it's a well played bunch of lively, classic songs. Personally, I think this is better than any of his five official live albums, again mainly due to the timing. (Three of those live albums were recorded in the 2000s.)

There were a couple of sonic problems, but I fixed them. The song "Scenes from an Itallian Restaurant" had multiple digital glitches, probably something going wrong with file copying. I found a different version of the same performance (on YouTube) and patched it in. "Tell Her about It" had multiple drop-outs, where the sound got quiet for a few seconds each time. I fixed those issues by boosting the volume the right amount each time. Another issue was that one of the stereo channels was much louder than the other one, but I fixed that, song by song.

You can watch this entire concert on YouTube. If you do, you'll notice that its official title is shown at the start of the show: "From a Piano Man... to an Innocent Man." So I've included that in the title.

The video footage of this is is sold in DVD format under various names, but I've checked on Wikipedia and none of those appear to be official, authorized releases.

This concert is an hour and 51 minutes long.

01 Prelude - Angry Young Man (Billy Joel)
02 My Life (Billy Joel)
03 talk (Billy Joel)
04 Piano Man (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Don't Ask Me Why (Billy Joel)
07 Allentown (Billy Joel)
08 Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
09 Pressure (Billy Joel)
10 talk (Billy Joel)
11 Leave a Tender Moment Alone (Billy Joel)
12 An Innocent Man (Billy Joel)
13 talk (Billy Joel)
14 What's Your Name (Billy Joel)
15 The Longest Time (Billy Joel)
16 talk (Billy Joel)
17 This Night (Billy Joel)
18 Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel)
19 Scenes from an Italian Restaurant [Edit] (Billy Joel)
20 talk (Billy Joel)
21 Sometimes a Fantasy (Billy Joel)
22 It's Still Rock and Roll to Me (Billy Joel)
23 Uptown Girl (Billy Joel)
24 Big Shot (Billy Joel)
25 Tell Her about It [Edit] (Billy Joel)
26 You May Be Right (Billy Joel)
27 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel)  

https://www.imagenetz.de/i9rcP

The cover photo may not be the best, due to his facial expression. But I used it because it comes from the exact concert featured here.