What do you do when 28,000 fans are waiting to hear you play, but your instrument has a mind of its own? Ask Elton John, who had that expericence on Saturday July 11, 2009 at Nationals Stadium. He and Billy Joel were set to give the sold-out crowd an evening of rock 'n' roll excitement, when Elton's pedal on his grand piano got stuck on their second number. While looking at the Jumbotron, audience members noticed something was amiss when Elton shouted across stage to Billy during the opening bars of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me."
Elton stopped the song, and said that the damper pedal on his piano was stuck. He could not go on with the show until it was fixed. After an unsucessful attempt by a technician to free the sticky pedal, fellow musician Billy Joel took off his coat and got under the piano himself to try and fix it. When there was no easy fix in sight, Billy, in trouper fashion, quickly called his musicians to the stage, and went on with the show.
The audience readily responded as they sang along to Billy's songs, knowing that Elton's team would fix the problem. After a delightful set of Billy's songs, Elton's piano rose from below stage to the audience's cheers. The piano men were back in business. Elton played a wonderful set of his own songs. They finished the night off joyously playing together Billy Joel's "Piano Man," as the crowd sang along. Only fireworks could have made the evening better!
According to the Washington Post, the performance was "predictable and unimaginative." I would like to know how the Post found this predictable. Watching two professionals recover from a near disaster was entertainment in itself.
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I find it hilarious how ignorant that sounds. There's no chance that they could have predicted technical difficulties and an outstanding recovery preformance by two legendary preformers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Gabrielle. No one know's when anything is going to happen. In this case Elton John and Billy Joel never would have guessed they would experience technical difficulties and like I said it could happen to anyone. And I would also like to know how th Post thought this was predictable. This kind of stuff definitely is not predictable at all.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me, and I cannot prove or spport this: that the post made up its story BEFORE the event, or zoned out for a long perod of showtime.
ReplyDeleteI must confess I am highly impressed with your writing style Becky, It felt like I as actually reading from a proffessional reporter.
Thanks guys for the comments!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you all, I don't understand how they could expect something like that to happen, but then call it "predictable."
And thanks Will I really appreciate you nice remarks. To tell you the truth, I have never actually blogged, so I wanted to make my first one fun.
I hope you all enjoed it!