Just a little over three weeks after celebrating his 70th birthday at Madison Square Garden with help from surprise guest Peter Frampton, Billy Joel returned to the New York arena on Sunday evening and brought Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott along for the ride. He came out onto the stage right after “She’s a Woman” to sing his 1987 classic “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Check out video of the moment right here. They previously did the song at Boston’s Fenway Park in August 2018.
Joe Elliott is the latest in a very long line of guests that have played with Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden since he began his monthly residency there in 2014. Previous guest have included Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Miley Cyrus, John Fogerty, Sting, John Mayer, Tony Bennett and John Mellencamp. “That’s what’s good about playing in New York City,” Joel told Rolling Stone last month. “Somebody’s always in town while you’re in town and if they ask, ‘Can we come to the show?’ I say, ‘Yeah bring your ax.’ If they don’t want to, they don’t have to, but they’re always invited.”
Joel is the first artist to ever play a monthly residency at a venue as large as Madison Square Garden. Every show is a virtual sell-out and in the summer he goes out and plays stadiums all over America. Earlier this year, he became the first musician to get a “stadium residency” when he signed a deal with Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park to play there every year. He later signed a similar deal with Fenway Park.
“I don’t know if I’d go see me in a stadium, but a lot of people do,” he told Rolling Stone last month. “I’ll be sitting in the stadium looking out at 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 people, thinking, ‘What the hell are they all doing here? Why now?’ I guess, in a way, I’m an anachronism. There aren’t that many of me left. There’s a rarity to it, which gives it value.”