Billy Joel fans are going to want to tune in to Showtime later this week as the pay-cable channel is set to air The Last Play at Shea, a documentary that looks behind the scenes of Billy Joel’s final performance at Shea Stadium before the baseball arena was torn down.
Having grown up on Long Island, I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that Billy Joel is something of a local musical hero for a lot of people from the area. In fact, it wasn’t until I reached adulthood that I became aware that a love and fairly extensive familiarity with Joel’s music wasn’t entirely universal. I thought everyone knew all the words to every song on The Stranger regardless of whether or not they were even alive when the album came out. Joel’s love of New York is fairly well known and documented in his music and that also seems to come through in the preview video below.
Narrated by Alec Baldwin, The Last Play at Shea not only looks at Joel’s final performance at the Mets’ old stadium, but it will also look back on the iconic New York landmark. The video below makes great use of some of Joel’s classic hits, including getting things started with the excellent momentum-building prelude to “Angry Young Man.” It also includes “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” and “New York State of Mind.”
Last Play at Shea premieres Friday, November 11th at 9:30PM ET/PT on Showtime.
