Billy Joel performs 'Los Angelenos' for first time in more than 40 years
In his 90th Madison Square Garden residency concert Tuesday, Billy Joel performed a song he said he hasn't done onstage since the 1980s — and afterward also treated the audience to a bit from TV's "The Honeymooners."
After chatting about a past concert in Los Angeles, Joel, 73, captured in an audience member's video, told the crowd, “Speaking of Los Angeles, this next song is about Los Angeles. We never do this song. We haven’t done this since the '80s, I think, so we’ll give it a shot. This is called 'Los Angelenos.' " After performing that cut from his 1974 album, "Streetlife Serenade," Joel thanks the audience for their applause and quips, "That's what I thought, too. Yeah, it's OK."
He then does a common, familiar piano riff, and when the audience cheers, he responds, "Oh, Ed Norton," the character immortalized by Art Carney on the 1950s sitcom classic "The Honeymooners." Joel then makes florid, Norton-esque hand and arm gestures and replicates a bit from the episode "The $99,000 Answer," in which Norton plays a moment of the Stephen Foster standard "Old Folks At Home" before segueing into that same common, familiar piano riff.