Throwback

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — On a recent Friday night, I saw Harvard Yard in a way I hadn’t seen it since my freshman year. There were no harried, sleep-deprived students hustling to class; no stumbling revelers on their way to the River, braving the New England winter in hopes of forgetting a week’s worth of stress. There were only dimly-lit walkways surrounded by trees and history, a picturesque tableau that someone with an engaging and fulfilling college career ahead of them would find easy to imagine.

Of course, I’m going to be a senior in a little over a month, and the promise that the Yard held for me three years ago was dampened that Friday night by the prospect of having just one year left to make up for lost time before being exiled into the barren wasteland that the “real world” has become.

Feeling old and washed up, I needed a cure for my little quarter-life crisis. The only thing I could think of: watching a couple of guys in their 60’s rock out on the piano as if it was still 1975 and they had just blown a few lines in the dressing room. Luckily, my best friend Danny and I had tickets to see Billy Joel and Elton John play at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. the following night.

I have to admit, at first the scene at Gillette didn’t provide much more than further proof that a Constitutional ban on white people dancing might be enough to end the recession. It was still light out when we arrived, and while the two performers started the show combining on classics like John’s “Your Song” and Joel’s “My Life,” the crowd—mostly aged middle and beyond—seemed more concerned with finding the bathroom than listening to a pair of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. As for the Hall of Famers themselves, they were belting out tunes with the enthusiasm of the house band at the resort in the Catskills my grandparents took me to when I was a little kid.

I began to vaguely wish that instead of sharing my musical taste with my mom, I knew who MGMT was or gave a crap about Ratatat, like a lot of my much cooler friends.

But as darkness began to envelop the stadium, the crowd's collective restless bladder suddenly became more manageable and the old men on stage suddenly remembered who they were, or at least who they once were. Soon Joel left the stage and John launched his audience through a frenzied stretch of songs in which he became Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and his younger self all at the same time, fingers blazing across the piano in electrifying performances of “Saturday” and “Crocodile Rock.”

Defiantly and accurately proclaiming, “I'm still standing," John strutted around the stage like a fabulous hobbit, decked out in a black coat emblazoned with the sparkling image of a yellow brick road on the back. Through a thrilling display of rock and roll at its finest, climaxing with a thunderous rendition of "Rocket Man," Sir Elton showed why he is music royalty.

Joel had a tough act to follow in his solo portion of the set, and he rose to the occasion. While his pianist and showman skills can’t rival John’s, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better opening number than "Angry Young Man," in which Joel exploded through the pitch black in a burst of light and fury, maniacally pounding the keys as he announced his arrival. But flashiness isn’t Joel’s game. Unlike the aristocratic Elton, whose immense individual skill outshines everything else in the stadium, Billy’s at his most entertaining when he’s featuring those around him. That Saturday, he left most of the face-melting solos to his talented band and made sure to get the crowd involved, rambling between songs like someone’s drunk uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. It’s easy to take Joel lightly, especially when he’s attacking bugs with a giant yellow fly swatter, putting on an awful mock-New England accent, and commiserating with the people in the nosebleeds (“You probably paid way too much for those shitty seats”). But as Danny pointed out, Billy’s laid-back attitude is carefully constructed, just like his songs. In numbers like the epic “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” and the working-class anthem “Allentown,” Joel made clear why he’s lasted so long: He’s an incredibly gifted storyteller with a knack for playing a diverse range of music that has appeal across generations.

Eventually, John returned to the stage and the duo wrapped up the concert in style, finishing with two of Elton’s songs before playing (what else?) Joel’s “Piano Man” for the encore.

I’d like to say that I left Gillette Stadium that night with a new sense of clarity about my uncertain future, but I didn’t. In the end, it was just a concert. But after seeing two sexagenarians—both of whom have hit rock bottom enough times for multiple lifetimes—prancing around the stage like the glory days never ended, I think I’ll be able to view my next trip to Harvard Yard with a little less melodrama, and a little more perspective.


Loren Amor ’10, a Crimson sports chair, is a history and literature concentrator in Kirkland House.