Talk softly or carry a drumstick

SUSAN ALREADY had seen Billy Joel's concert at Madison Square Garden, but from a vantage point better suited for inspecting ceiling stains, so when her friend Gail mentioned she had access to Nassau Coliseum concert tickets where, Gail said, ". . . we'll pretty much be in Billy Joel's face," Susan said, "Count me in."

They met in East Meadow on a wintry Saturday night. The party consisted of eight Long Islanders, the youngest from the (Lynbrook) high school graduating class of 1963. Among them were a lawyer, a psychologist, a physician, a school nurse, an operating room nurse and a few teachers. Armed with their $75 tickets, they took seats three rows from the railing and behind the only immediately visible piano. "It appeared that Billy Joel and the band would have their backs to us," recalled Susan. "But having been to the Garden, I know that he works with two pianos. A second piano comes up through the floor, so that sometimes he's maybe ten feet away from us. There's a catwalk in back of the piano, and when he leaves the piano he walks the catwalk, talks to the people and is just, like, right there. In the Garden, all I could see was this little guy in a black suit banging on the piano. So I am really ready for this. I'm gonna love this.

"In the row in front of us is this guy in his twenties, clean-cut guy, with his girlfriend, who is sitting in front of Gail. This girl is getting ready for the time of her life. She's whooping and hollering, waving her arms. Nothing is even happening yet, and she is gettin' ready, revvin' her engines. The row directly in front of them is the first row, with the railing next. And those people also are sort of neatly dressed, sort of preppy-looking people, ready to enjoy themselves. This is a Billy Joel crowd. This is not like a heavy-metal crowd, where the people in the parking lot scare the hell out of you. Directly in front of this whooping, hollering girl and her boyfriend is this quiet, sort of stout guy, a little corpulent, nice face, nicely dressed, kind of leaning back in his chair, getting comfortable, settling in for the performance. The lights go out. Everything goes black. All of sudden, there he is, and the place goes wild. It was the best. The people are between ten and seventy, different people enjoying it different ways. Some jump up and down and know the words to every song. Others just sit there and enjoy the musicianship and not carry on, and some enjoy watching the other people enjoy the concert. I noticed also that the corpulent, neatly dressed gentleman was enjoying the concert the same way I was, even more so, almost as if he were a musician himself. He never got up, never got enthusiastic the way other people were, but he had a grin from ear to ear.

"But all of a sudden, at one point, he turns around, over his right shoulder, to the girl in front of Gail, the one who was whooping and hollering, and he has ahold of her left arm, and he's pulling her toward him and yelling something at her. Gail heard it. He said, `If you scream in my ear like that one more time, I'm gonna take you and throw you right over this railing!' Well, now the boyfriend is up and in the guy's face. The language is from the street, bleeping this and bleeping that, and the girl is the leader of the bleeps. She's, like, 'You fat bleep! I'll bleeping scream as bleeping loud as I bleeping want, you bleep! You bleeping keep your bleeping hands to your bleeping self! Don't you bleeping put your bleeping hands on me again!'

"The boyfriend is screaming the same way. Meanwhile, Billy Joel has finished the song and is now sitting down and calmly talking to the audience, while this madness is going on fifteen feet behind him. He's talking about growing up on the Island, dating girls on the South Shore and the North Shore, doing his first recording session around the corner in East Meadow, while this thing, and this screaming is happening right behind him, and in front of us. I, of course, am convinced that any second now, Billy Joel is going to stop talking, turn around, look directly at me and say, `Yo, Susan, what's the problem? Can't you shut these people up?'

"Next, a security guard in a yellow shirt comes with a security guard in a blue shirt, and they ask the big guy to come with them, and they take him and talk to him. The girl is piping mad. She and the boyfriend recount the entire incident, again and again, with the bleeps. `You bleeping believe that bleeping guy? He bleeping grabbed my bleeping arm! Bleep, bleep bleep.'

"The big guy comes back. The concert continues. She's whooping and hollering and carrying on. The boyfriend lights up a cigarette and is now on red alert. Every time she screams, he glares at the big guy in front. The whole rest of the concert, he watches this big guy; the big guy just watches Billy Joel. She goes to the ladies room; the boyfriend watches the big guy. The boyfriend is not at the concert any more. He's on Big Guy watch.

"Toward the end of the concert, the band is having a great time. Everybody's enjoying themselves. The drummer starts tossing drumsticks into the crowd. People are going nuts. I'm daydreaming about catching one of these things and bringing it home to my kids, who would have to cut it in four pieces, when the drummer turns around and flips a stick toward us. All hands go up. The whooping-bleeping girl is, like, leaning over the big guy, reaching, and the big guy's hand goes up, and guess who catches the stick? Him. And I can see his expression. He's just on the verge of turning around and handing the stick to the girl, when the girl turns to the boyfriend and says, "You bleeping believe that? The fat guy got it!'

"And the big guy turns back around, closes his eyes, hangs on to the stick and grins."