Happy Birthday Billy Joel: Performing ‘The Stranger’ LP Live

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Billy Joel has reached age 67 as the piano man celebrates a birthday today. Since his start as a solo artist in the early 1970s, Joel’s written and recorded song after song that’s firmly planted the quintessential New Yorker among the top of the craft. For his 67th today, here’s a look back at his hit-filled 1977 LP The Stranger through a collection of decade-spanning live performances.

Nearly each of the nine tracks making up The Stranger became well-known on the radio and on Joel’s live concert setlists. Below you can watch Billy play “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” while accepting the Gershwin Prize in 2014 and the album’s title track at New York City’s Carnegie Hall the year it was released. There’s also a 1983 rendition of “Just The Way Your Are” from Nassau Coliseum in Long Island and “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” from Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 2013.

The live version of “Vienna” comes from a performance in Germany in 1995, while “Only The Good Die Young” and “She’s Always A Woman” come from the 2008 closing of the New York Mets stadium Shea Stadium in Queens. Finally, audio only of “Get It Right The First Time” from Nassau Coliseum in 1977 and “Everybody Has A Dream” – it’s debut performance – from Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk, New York in 1991 close out the collection below.