The versatile
music legends and longtime
Friends will share the stage Saturday at Petco Park in San Diego A distance of 3,177 miles separates New York, where Billy Joel was born in the Bronx and grew up on New York’s Long Island, from Newcastle,
England, where Sting was born and grew up. But the two legendary singer-songwriters — who will perform a joint concert at Petco Park on Saturday — share more than a few things in common, no matter how different their musical styles and places of origin. Both have won multiple Grammy Awards, are Kennedy Center honorees and have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Joel in 1999 as a solo artist, Sting in 2003 as a member of the band The Police. Both worked day jobs before being able to devote themselves to music, Joel pumping gas and Sting as a school teacher. Both cut their teeth playing in bars and nightclubs as members of obscure bands, Joel with The Hassles, Sting with the Phoenix Jazzmen and Last Exit. Both went on to become international superstars, with multiple sold-out tours, a slew of hit albums and such classic songs as “Piano Man,” “New York State of Mind,” “Every Breath You Take” and “Fields of Gold” to their credit. Both are avid jazz fans who have collaborated with such greats as Freddie Hubbard, Phil Woods and Toots Thielemans (Joel) and Miles Davis, Branford Marsalis and Christian McBride (Sting) . Both have made highbrow literary references in their songs, including to such esteemed authors as Nabokov, Jung and Shakespeare (Sting) and J.D. Salinger, George Santayana and Jack Kerouac (Joel). Most notably, both are baby-boom-bred heroes — Joel is 74, Sting 72 — who have been an intrinsic part of the pop-music firmament for most of their adult lives. And both now count a new generation of pop stars among their generations-spanning fans. Olivia Rodrigo an ‘Uptown Girl” Multi-Grammy-winner Olivia Rodrigo, 21, joined Joel at his February 2022 Madison Square Garden concert. Together, they performed his 1983 hit, “Uptown Girl,” and her 2021 hit, “Deja Vu,” which includes the couplet: “I’ll bet that she knows Billy Joel / ‘Cause you played her ‘Uptown Girl’ / You’re singing it together.” “Biggest honor ever still crying thank u Billy!!!!!!!” Rodrigo subsequently wrote on her
Social Media pages. Singer-songwriter Jacob Collier, 29, who performs May 18 at SDSU’s Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre, proudly posed for photos with Sting backstage at a 2022 concert in Luxembourg. “When I think of my primary building blocks as a human being; the people who shaped my very essence as a musician, there are few who I hold closer to my heart than Sting,” Collier subsequently wrote on his social media pages. “(Sting’s) creative output as a storyteller,
Singer, bassist and musical shapeshifter have inspired and sustained me since my earliest childhood days. I can remember (his albums) ‘Ten Summoner’s Tales’ and ‘Mercury Falling’ soundtracking my life since before I could even walk,” Collier wrote. Neither Joel nor Sting have had a significant pop hit in two decades or more, although both have had Broadway musicals — Joel’s Twyla Tharp collaboration, “Movin’ Out,” ran from 2002 to 2005, while Sting’s more contemplative “The Last Ship” had a three-month run that concluded in January 2015. With or without any recent hits, Joel and Sting continue to thrive. Both draw capacity audiences to their concerts, where many fans sing along, word for word. Their respective catalogs of instantly recognizable songs are reflected by their worldwide album sales — about 100 million for Sting and 85 million for Joel, who has not released a new pop album since 1993’s “River of Dreams.” Sting’s most recent album, “The Bridge,” was released in late 2021. Joel’s first single since 2007, “Turn the Lights Back On,” was released Feb. 2, two days before he performed the song during the Grammy Awards. Joel closed the telecast with his 1980 hit, “You May Be Right.” “I never wanted to be an oldies act, but I suppose I am,” Joel said in a 2016 Union-Tribune interview. “I never wanted to be a nostalgia act, but I suppose I am. But I listen to Beethoven, and that’s really old stuff. Is that nostalgia? To me, that music is as alive as it ever was.” Music Music’s legendary “Piano Man” on songwriting, his legacy, his short-lived heavy-metal duo, sneaking into a Jimi Hendrix concert, and much more. May 7, 2016 Perhaps not coincidentally, Joel and Sting have both delved into classical music. Joel’s most recent album, 2001’s “Fantasies and Delusions, Op. 1-10, Music for Solo Piano,” features pianist Richard Joo performing a dozen Joel compositions inspired by the work of Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Grieg and others. It topped the U.S. classical album charts and was later reworked into a concerto for live performances. “I only listen to classical music; I don’t even listen to pop on the radio,” Joel said in his 2016 interview. “I find myself listening to (classical) music and decoding what the composer was saying. I do that with Beethoven a lot. And, I suppose, I do it with my own music. I tend to write in sonata form.” Sting topped the classical-album charts in 2006 with “Songs From the Labyrinth,” his album of voice and lute music by the 16th-century composer John Dowland. Concert tour, album a bold move in rocker’s musical journey June 13, 2010 In 2010, Sting released “Symphonicities,” which featured reimagined orchestral versions of songs from his solo career (including “I Hung My Head” and “Why Should I Cry for You?’) and his tenure with The
police (including “Roxanne,” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”). He also did a 2010 North
American “Symphonicities” tour with London’s Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra that included a local stop at what is now North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre in Chula Vista. “There’s this whole universe of music that is simply limitless,” Sting said in a 2010 Union-Tribune interview. “When you think you know everything about music, you discover you can’t get to the end...” New vistas? This year is the first time Joel and Sting have performed co-headlining concerts together, starting with their Feb. 24 show at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium. But it is not the first time they have shared a stage. In November 2014, Sting joined Joel for a duet on Joel’s jazzy 1986 song, “Big Man on Mulberry Street.” Prior to that, Joel guested at seven of Sting’s “Rock for the Rainforest” benefit concerts between 1995 and 2008. The two also did “Mulberry Street” together at their recent Tampa show, along with The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.” Saturday’s Petco Park gig is their second co-headlining date of 2024 and marks Joel’s first San Diego concert since his sold-out 2016 show at the same downtown ballpark. He and Sting will next re-team for a Sept. 27 performance at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Music Pop’s famed ‘Piano Man’ Saturday delivered a crowd-pleasing show, his first San Diego concert since a 2001 double-header with Elton John May 15, 2016 Their upcoming San Diego concert comes in a year that promises many new things in store for both musicians. After their Petco Park show and some additional April dates with his one-woman, five-man band, Sting will launch his “Sting 3.0” tour in May in Europe. A U.S. leg will follow in the fall. Both will team him with his longtime guitarist, Dominic Miller, and former Mumford & Sons tour drummer Chris Maas on what appears to be Sting’s first concert trek in a trio format since The Police’s reunion tour concluded in 2008. That Police reunion tour grossed a reported $360 million. It culminated with a show at Madison Square Garden. Joel first performed there in 1978, a year after The Police band was formed. He began a record-setting monthly concert residency at Madison Square Garden in January 2014. Joel will bring this chapter to a close on July 25 with the 150th concert of his career at the famed
New York City venue. The 100th show of his current 10-year Madison Square Garden residency took place March 28 and will air next Sunday night as a TV special on CBS. As of early last year, Joel’s decade-long gig at the Garden had grossed more than $200 million and been attended by more than 1.6 million people from all 50 states and more than 120 countries. Those tallies seemed to even awe Joel last June when he announced this year’s wrap-up of his decade-long Madison Square Garden run. “I’m kind of flabbergasted that it lasted as long as it did,” he said in a statement at the time. “My team tells me that we could continue to sell tickets, but 10 years, 150 shows — all right already! “I do remember the first time we played Madison Square Garden (in 1978), it was the pinnacle of my career. I thought: ‘My God, I’m headlining Madison Square Garden.’ Everybody in the world knows when you play The Garden, it’s not just New York.” According to Billboard magazine, Joel’s concert ticket sales since 1986 have earned him a staggering $1.05 billion, with 14.2 million tickets sold. Last year’s announcement of the Garden residency wrap-up came just weeks after reports that Joel was putting his 26-acre waterfront property on Long Island up for sale for $49 million. It includes a 20,000 square-foot main house, a 3-bedroom beach house, a pool, a bowling alley, a putting green, a helicopter pad, a temperature-controlled wine cellar and a two-story fireplace. Sting, as of 2005, owned at least seven homes — one in New York, one in
Los Angeles, two in
London, two in the English countryside and a 20-room, 600-acre estate in Tuscany,
Italy. In 2022, he sold the rights to his songs for a reported $300 million to Universal Music Publishing. A devoted road dog, Sting performs so often that Saturday’s concert here with Joel will be his third San Diego show in the past 16 months. Joel, conversely, is content to perform an average of two concerts a month. It remains to be seen if that number goes up or down after he concludes his Madison Square Garden residency this summer. Music The veteran solo star and co-founder of The Police sounded thoroughly engaged in his two-hour performance with his one-woman, five-man band. His son, Joe Sumner, opened the show and returned to lend vocal support to his dad on two songs Oct. 5, 2023 The wealth that Joel and Sting have amassed would easily have allowed both to retire years (make that, decades) ago, had either been so inclined. That they continue to perform and make records indicates their passion for doing so has yet to be diluted by their sky-high bank accounts. Here’s hoping that continues to be the case for a good time to come. The Jimi Hendrix connection Billy Joel and Sting have both cited Jimi Hendrix as a key musical inspiration. Here’s what they said about the late electric guitar innovator in previous interviews with the Union-Tribune. Music Bruno
Mars and Jack Johnson are not scheduled to perform as part of the 2017 edition of the annual “Experience Hendrix” tour, which stops Saturday at The Events Center at Harrah’s Resort Southern
California in Valley Center. Feb. 26, 2017 Sting, 1991: “I must’ve been 14 and Jimi Hendrix played at the Club A-Go-Go in Newcastle. I’d never seen a Black man before, let alone a Black man who was 6 feet tall with an Afro haircut and a sort of 17th-century
MILITARY costume. I’d never seen anyone play left-handed guitar or destroy his amplifier and his guitar during a song. I’d never seen anybody play like that. It was terrifying, traumatic, an epiphany! I said, ‘This is what I want to aspire to. I’ll never be Jimi Hendrix, but I can do something.’ “The Jimi Hendrix Experience was the first, what we call in England, ‘muso’ band; they were real virtuosos. Seeing Hendrix got me into jazz, into looking beyond Hendrix. ‘Where did this virtuosity come from?’ So, it was quite a natural transition for me to try to discover the roots of this music.” Billy Joel, 2016: “I would have liked to do what Hendrix did with a piano. But I didn’t ... I went to see Hendrix back in the late 1960s. He was playing at what is now Flushing Meadows
Tennis Stadium, where they have the U.S. Open. I went with a friend and made believe I was one of Hendrix’s roadies. I had on a
baseball cap and wrapped some (electrical) cable around my shoulder. I started to try to talk with an English accent: ‘Jimi’s got these cables I need to take to him.’ I made my way closer and closer inside the venue, and I finally got close to backstage. “Then. Jimi’s famous roadie, Keith Robertson, motioned to me, and said: ‘You, come over here! You’re pretty good. Now, I’m going to put you to work.’ He had me lug Hendrix’s huge Marshall (speaker cabinets) onstage. ... I spent the entire concert on the edge of the rotating stage, watching Hendrix perform — and watching my friends in the audience. I couldn’t believe it, and neither could they! I did that (phony roadie) thing a number of times.” Billy Joel and Sting When: 7 p.m. Saturday Where: Petco Park, 100 Park Blvd., downtown Tickets: $69.50-$349.50, plus service fees Online: ticketmaster.com george.varga@sduniontribune.com