WITH hits like Piano Man, We Didn’t Start The Fire, She’s Always A Woman and Tell Her About It, Billy Joel’s back catalogue is a great resource for any musician.
Actually, there are around 120 songs at his disposal, so how did Elio Pace shape the Billy Joel Songbook tribute show?
“The Billy Joel back catalogue is ridiculously awesome, and I want to keep introducing people to it,” says the man who started performing Joel’s songs 30 years ago. “There’s loads of songs there that you just don’t hear, yet they’re incredible.
“A great friend of mine, Matt Daniel-Baker, an amazing mind reader, is another massive Billy Joel fan. I said to him I was putting a show together, and could he help me.
“We paced back and forth listening to every song, for hours, days, weeks, going on long car or train journeys, just to be able to get away from everything else and focus on the music. From that, we fashioned a set list.
“We went through every single song, looking for the opening number, the closing, first act close, every moment of the show. We wrote that set list in 2014, and it’s not changed since.”
While all the big hits feature in the show that’s coming to Woking next month, there’s an album track which plucks at Elio’s heartstrings far more than any other.
“If I could only play one Billy Joel song forever more, it’s Lullaby (Goodnight My Angel),” he says. “It’s a powerful moment in every show. It’s not just my favourite Billy Joel song, but my favourite song of all time.
“It comes from Billy’s very last album, River Of Dreams, in 1993, but it wasn’t until 2009 that it really took the place in my heart, when my daughter Marcella was born.
“When I became a father to her and listened to that song again, I couldn't breathe. Billy Joel wrote it to his daughter when he was splitting up from her mother, to tell her he wasn’t going far.
“As soon as I felt that love as a father, that song took on a whole new meaning. It floored me.
“In the show, it’s the calm before the storm. It’s the last song before we go into the final 20 minutes, when it’s hit after hit after hit to send everyone out on a party high.”
As a true musician, Elio’s emphasis withThe Billy Joel Songbook is always first and foremost the music.“I just have this absolute bee in my bonnet about getting this under-rated genius out there to get the credit he should, and that’s why we do this,” he says
Elio Pace brings The Billy Joel Songbook to the New Victoria Theatre, Woking, on Sunday 4 September.