A terrifying brush with death was the wake-up call that finally got Billy Joel – a man haunted by booze addiction and failed love affairs – to enter rehab and seek treatment before it was too late, say sources.

On June 12th, 2002, two days before his ex-fiancée Trish Bergin tied the knot with another man, the troubled songwriter and singer of such hits as "Uptown Girl" and "Only The Good Die Young" slammed his 1999 Mercedes into a pole in East Hampton, LI.

According to the police report, Joel, 53, lost control of the car while trying to make a turn. The air bag went off, saving him from serious injury. Police said alcohol was not a factor in the accident. But a bloody gash to his head was enough to convince the star to check into the Silver Hill Hospital June 14th, 2002, say sources.

Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp need work. And now they've got it.

Joel, his last hit album almost a decade behind him, has been more in the news lately for what he is not doing - hanging on to a girlfriend, staying healthy enough to make all his concerts, controlling his drinking.

The Troubadour and the Dancing Queen: Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp are trying out a dance-musical based on his songs. Tharp, the celebrity choreographer who set Mikhail Baryshnikov pirouetting to pop tunes, collaborated with David Byrne on the 1981 "Catherine Wheel" spectacular and who has choreographed five Hollywood movies, in recent years has been out of the limelight except for her unsuccessful attempt to build a permanent home for her dance company in Brooklyn.

Yet last week's Entertainment Weekly called the unlikely pairing of the 53 year-old crooner and the 60 year-old dance diva the "IT song & dance team."

To see why, audiences have been filling the Shubert Theater here, where "Movin' Out," choreographed by Tharp to 24 Joel songs, started previews June 25th, 2002 for a 10-week Chicago run before a scheduled October 24th, 2002 opening on Broadway.

Nonetheless, the show's public relations firm gets nervous when questioned about the $8 million production, with sets by Woody Allen regular Santo Loquasto and backers ranging from the Nederlander Theater dynasty to Joel himself.

Rehabbed Billy Joel stuck to Perrier at Saracen in Wainscott the other night. His supportive friends also didn't let liquor touch their lips. The slimmed-down "Piano Man" did leave with a large doggy bag...

Some Chicagoans goin' to see Billy Joel's "Movin' Out" think Billy's in the show. He isn't, but the perception is helping ticket sales.. "Movin' Out" producers toying with the idea of pushing the heavy-on-dance, light-on-story show as Special Theatrical Event rather than New Musical at the Tonys next year...

After the endless stories about Billy Joel and his real estate maneuvering in the Hamptons comes word he is in a New York City state of mind, property-wise. The bearded balladeer is now combing Gotham for a pad on the Upper East Side and was spotted perusing a $10 million condo at The Westbury on Madison and 69th Street earlier this week.

Let's consider the new Billy Joel-inspired piece of Broadway-bound entertainment on display here, titled "Movin' Out," for what it is not.

It isn't "Mamma Mia!" Despite the fact that choreographer-director Twyla Tharp conceived of and built the show around 30 existing Billy Joel tunes, including such hits as "Uptown Girl" and "Big Shot," "Movin' Out" is nothing like the mass market "Mamma Mia!," which was constructed around 22 hits recorded by the Swedish pop group ABBA.

It begins with doo-wop-style dancing set against a chain link fence, as a long-limbed girl in a short skirt slithers over the hood of a convertible, and guys in jeans and varsity jackets try to keep up. It ends, two decades later, with everybody on track - jogging happily in casually stylish running gear, before falling into a reunion of kissing, hugging and making up. And, oh yes, somewhere in between there just happens to have been the life-changing war in Vietnam and the emotionally scarred and isolated veterans of that war - episodes played out in the kind of slow motion shoot-and-tumble moves and broadly alienated social behavior that are sure to be fodder for the satirical "Forbidden Broadway."

Where, oh where, is "Miss Saigon" when we need her most?

To be sure, no one would ever mistake "Movin' Out," the danced-through musical conceived, directed and choreographed by Twyla Tharp, and set to the ever-seductive rock and roll songbook of Billy Joel, for being anything other than a quintessentially American story told in unmistakably cartoonish terms. Innocence is trampled by experience, yet there is a sunny ending in store as the pursuit of happiness knows no bounds.

That there is a massive assemblage of dance and musical talent on the stage of the Shubert Theatre, where "Movin' Out" received its pre-Broadway world premiere Friday night, is undeniable. But sadly it has been applied to a stupefyingly cliched and almost embarrassingly naive piece of nonverbal (and often confusing) storytelling that mixes melodrama and nostalgia, and condenses history to the point of meaninglessness. This is a pop ballet with a flamboyant but anachronistically classic dance vocabulary that has both the cool flash of MTV and the redeeming heat of live performance. It's a hybrid form that supplies plenty of sensory stimulation but leaves you strangely hungry for emotional involvement.

Think of it as a dance drama (as opposed to a "Fosse"-style dance revue) set to a live soundtrack. Perched upstage on a massive balcony is a dynamite nine-piece band, with the phenomenal Michael Cavanaugh singing and accompanying himself. The lyrics are the only "script" in the show, and in a marathon turn, Cavanaugh (all too often in darkness) performs two dozen Joel classics to powerhouse effect.

On the stage below him are the dancers - an elite group of soloists and a slick ensemble who enact a generic tale of youthful love, early marriage, disenchantment and the sudden deployment of three friends to Vietnam. In a crucial but confusing war scene, one of the men dies and another is saddled with the blame. The two who return home become outcasts, each filled with rage. Only many years later are they all reconciled to both themselves and each other.

Elizabeth Parkinson dances Brenda, the hot pre-Raphaelite beauty who leaves her first big love, the fiery Eddie (John Selya, a bravura, charismatic dancer), to go off with the boyish Tony (Keith Roberts). Ashley Tuttle is Judy, the sweet and innocent blonde (decked out in pointe shoes to emphasize these traits), who is madly in love with the sweet and clean-cut James (Benjamin G. Bowman), whose wartime death she, like Tony, blames on Eddie.

Classically trained dancers of the first rank - who have variously appeared with American Ballet Theater, the Joffrey and Tharp's own company - they are all brilliantly expressive technicians capable of bringing an almost superhuman perfection to everything from the most lyrical pas de deux to acrobatically ferocious Apache dancing, break-dancing and moon walks. Yet in watching them for nearly two hours a feeling of exhausting relentlessness sets in. Aside from a few quiet moments - Parkinson, alone and near tears as she reminisces, and Tuttle in stiff grief - Tharp seems wary of letting either her characters or her audiences feel anything much deeper than the numbing rush of adrenaline.

Set designer Santo Loquasto's industrial strength set evokes Joel's middle class Long Island roots, while Donald Holder's lighting is heavy on blinding laserlike blasts of color. Suzy Benzinger's costumes are Bloomingdales-like glosses on period looks.

For those enamored of the "Piano Man" the show will bring musical contentment. And for dance lovers, there are plenty of fireworks, if little subtlety. As for those in search of a heart-wrenching story, you had better be movin' on.

As Billy Joel stood sipping a Diet Coke at the post-opening party for "Movin' Out" at the Hotel Allegro late Friday, the songwriting legend seemed amazed by what he had just seen. Although Joel has been in Chicago much of the past week to check out previews (and then the official premiere) of Twyla Tharp's musical ballet based on his music, he still had "a hard time just sitting still in that theater. I'm not used to just doing nothing...but it was great watching all those kids up there doing all that work - and boy do they work!"

Joel revealed that while he did not know Tharp - prior to her approaching him with the idea of creating "Movin' Out" - "I of course was very familiar with her work and immediately said yes when she asked for my permission.

If Oliver Stone did a Broadway dance musical - and truly, I'm not suggesting it - it might come out like the more risible passages of "Movin' Out," the Twyla Tharp/Billy Joel collaboration that opened its Shubert Theatre pre-Broadway tryout Friday after several weeks of previews. It is a strenuous, chaotic, occasionally exhilarating dance-play, in which America's war in Vietnam gets blue-bagged for one more pop-cultural recycling.

Dicey buzz about his Twyla Tharp collaboration "Movin' Out" - "The dance quotient alone may be enough to alienate a lot of Joel fans," the Chicago Tribune said - wasn't enough to dampen Billy Joel's mood at the opening-night cast party in Chicago on Friday.

Commenting on his svelte appearance, Joel told a Chicago Sun-Times reporter: "I've lost 40 pounds, but most of that was before I went to rehab. I lost 34 pounds before and six pounds while I was there."

Joel, who spent a week last month in Connecticut's Silver Hill Hospital, also took a swipe at the world-famous clinic. "I kept reading about my being in the 'posh' Silver Hill. Boy, was that a crock! The place was a dump! And the food was terrible. That's why it was easy to lose another six pounds. I actually lost most of the weight on what I call my 'Red Wine Diet.' I've been telling people that's the way to do it. Drink nothing but red wine, and then go to rehab!"

The producers of Twyla Tharp's unusual and honorably ambitious attempt to fuse a bookless, but not storyless, Broadway show from the diverse Billy Joel backlist had better start rifling through their emergency Rolodexes under "W" for writer and "D" for director.

For despite top-notch dancers, a brilliant young vocalist fronting a sizzlin', boomer-friendly rock band and some occasionally gorgeous and even thrilling choreography, "Movin' Out" won't start any fires on Broadway unless several serious problems get a fast fix.

For starters, the music and dance need to be unified; the wildly uneven narrative requires immediate extrication from the world of cartoons and overblown archetypes; the main characters desperately need to be more empathetic; and the overly intense show could use a jot of humor and irony.

All that said, it's a mistake to underestimate the potential popularity of a Broadway show based around Joel's music. And especially when Tharp finally lets herself go in the last three numbers of the show, her classy yet accessible choreography is typically rich and tremendously invigorating.

It may be considered outmoded pop by some, but Joel's music actually is a remarkably diverse and stylistically complex body of work that's well suited to dance and theater. And, of course, Joel's work has a built-in audience of fans, all of whom will be greatly impressed by the quality of the live musical interpretation of his numbers (organized by Joel's people, the band goes well beyond a "Mamma Mia!"-style pit group).

Equally enjoyable for a mainstream crowd is the dancing of Tharp's illustrious group, which showcases the splendidly expressive likes of Elizabeth Parkinson and Keith Roberts. But those factors, in themselves, will not be enough for boffo B.O. without clearer storytelling.

The concept here takes some explaining. Tharp, a choreographer with a long-standing interest in iconic popular music, listened to Joel's body of work and decided to meld the songs into one long narrative. The songs are sung by Michael Cavanaugh (located, with the band, on a platform above the action), not by any of the characters.

Tharp pulled the premise of the show mainly from "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" (in which Brenda and Eddie, King and Queen of the Parkway Diner, marry and then hit the rocks) and "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" (in which Anthony works in a grocery store and one Sergeant O'Leary moonlights as a bartender). In Tharp's show, which employs some cross-Joel mating practices, Brenda dumps Eddie and hooks up with Tony from a different song.

After introducing this quartet of lower-middle-class Long Island children of the '60s, and then adding two other characters from more obscure Joel songs into the mix - James (from "James") and his wife, Judy - Tharp throws everyone into a Vietnam quagmire.

Dumped Eddie, who has a rough time all night, blames himself for James' death in 'Nam, and, late in the second act, finally gets Judy's (and his own) forgiveness. Meanwhile, Brenda and Tony fight off the demons of the early 1970s - war, drugs etc. - as they try to forge a relationship.

Although there are only a couple of words of dialogue, all of this stuff flows with varying levels of ease from Joel songs - the Vietnam sequences, for example, come from "Goodnight Saigon" and the post-war angst is expressed by "Pressure." Some of the numbers are used inventively (such as the brilliant treatments of "Big Shot" and "Just The Way You Are"); others feel awkward ("We Didn't Start The Fire").

It was good enough for rehabbing celebrities like Joan Kennedy, Elton John and Michael Jackson, but the world famous Silver Hill clinic in Connecticut was a real bummer for Billy Joel. "I kept reading about my being in the 'posh' Silver Hill," Joel says. "Boy, was that a crock!" Billy, who spent 10 days there last month, claims the place was a "dump" and that the food was quite "terrible."

The "Piano Man" was chatting with the Chicago Sun-Times the other night after the out-of-town opening of the show "Movin' Out," featuring more than two dozen of his songs and directed by Twyla Tharp on its way to Broadway.

Billy says he dropped 34 pounds before he checked in and 6 pounds while he was there. "It was easy to lose the weight," he said, referring to the diet they had him on. Joel finally gave a hint about what he was doing in rehab. He said he'd been on what he calls his "red wine diet," during which he claims he drinks nothing but red wine.

The show itself sounds like "Mamma Mia!" with better songs. Producer Terry Allen Kramer tells me the lead singer, Michael Cavanaugh, "does Billy Joel better than Billy does."

The "Piano Man" doesn't seem to mind having a voice-double out there, and it could be a marvelous career-extender for someone who has moved into classical music.

Maybe Joel's jokey explanation of being in Silver Hill has some truth to it. Two nights before he entered the clinic I bumped into him in Bridgehampton's World Pie and he seemed happy and relaxed if a trifle overweight. Whatever, he's now back in the Hamptons and ready to resume a full schedule of charity events.

A hallmark of Twyla Tharp's genius is her ability to inject hints of theater into her short works: the vaudeville of "Push Comes to Shove," for instance, or the abstract drama of "The Fugue."
Conversely, a drag on her career has been her efforts to marry theater and dance. "The Bum's Rush" was her most notorious flop, while with American Ballet Theatre.

While flush with many of the foibles that inherently plague the full-length dance-theater effort, "Movin' Out," to the songs of Billy Joel, is nonetheless Tharp's personal best in this crusade so far. Choreographically, despite setbacks and mistakes, she does for Joel, at times brilliantly, what she has managed more consistently in the past for Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys and Philip Glass.

Throughout, "Movin' Out" lacks narrative clarity. But even Tharp's stumbling Act 1demonstrates she can react to Joel's vernacular with intricate, natural responses more respectful and layered than anything in the best music video. In a deft male trio (always a great form for Tharp), John Selya kicks an invisible football and apes a referee's touchdown signal. When Benjamin G. Bowman rests a momentary leg on Selya's shoulder, there's an instant snapshot of male bonding and naive Americana.

But much of the Act 1 dancing is luminous only in fits and starts: willowy Ashley Tuttle's balletic widow, for one. Tharp ends with a dud, freezing the dancers in an ineffective tableau. In Act 2, Tharp reacts more simply to Joel's work. The results rush forward like a Niagara cascade.

She unleashes the biggest guns in her balletic arsenal, Keith Roberts and Elizabeth Parkinson, for a series of duets, progressively angry and then lyrical, that brilliantly redrape classical pas de deux with Joel's contemporary cloth.

Though there are cheesy gestures, notably a few Bronx cheers, who but Tharp can take the word "spastic" in a lyric and tartly, tastefully inject it into the dance?

In a medley including "The River of Dreams" and "Keeping The Faith," Tharp revisits the energy of her best work, including "In The Upper Room."

Using the choral lift as a metaphor, with dancers rushing on and off in bewildering clusters, she manages an explosive, cathartic ode on the great paradox of dance and dancer: Solo rehabilitation transformed into communal joy.

Tharp always finds the best dancers and gets the best from them. (Blink and you'll miss Tony Award-winning Scott Wise.) Selya, who jumps and spins as if immune to gravity, combines delinquent street looks with satiny execution. At one point, he delivers a stunning series of whipping leg turns, known in the trade as tours en l'air, only to segue smoothly into a break-dancing somersault.

Gifted with long, shapely legs, Parkinson uses her extensions as weapons as well as engines of grace.

And Roberts, like so many under Tharp's spell, performs with a charisma heads above his ABT days, threatening to drill through the floor with his spins or tackling sinewy, jittery riffs as if using every muscle in his body.

Sobered-up songwriter Billy Joel may no longer need rehab, but his Broadway-bound show sure does.The $8-million "Movin' Out," a "Contact"-like dance play inspired by Joel's catalog of hit songs, received mixed to negative reviews here, and will have to undergo intensive retooling before opening in New York in October, production sources say.

Among the problems: The entire first act, which The Chicago Tribune called a "quagmire" riddled with "misjudgments."

The misjudgments, it should be noted, are not Joel's: Even such shop-worn songs as "Just The Way You Are" and "The Longest Time," newly orchestrated for the stage, sound fresh and vibrant. They are melodic and character-driven, and make you wish Joel had spent some time writing for the musical theater before becoming a pop star.

The problems rest squarely on the shoulders of Twyla Tharp, who conceived, directed and choreographed "Movin' Out."

She rifled through Joel's backlist to come up with a storyline on which to pin his songs.

The story, told almost entirely through dance, spans 20 years and follows a group of baby boomers from Hicksville, Long Island.

Their carefree teenage years are abruptly ended by the Vietnam war, which leaves one of them dead, one of them widowed and two of them in such emotional pain, they fall victim to the drug and sordid sex culture of the '70s.

The '80s are brighter, however: The characters give up their bad habits, take up jogging and repair their damaged friendships.

Chicago critics hammered the first act, complaining that the story is muddled and takes too long to get going.

This came as no surprise to the producers or to Tharp, who as early as yesterday was already working on a new opening number.

Where can they go from here? That's the question I've been asking myself since seeing "Movin' Out," the theatrical ballet (and I use the word "ballet" in its broadest sense) that opened at the Shubert Theatre last Friday.

The show, set to two dozen of Billy Joel's hit songs from decades past, and featuring a dialogue-free "scenario," direction and choreography by Twyla Tharp, has no shortage of talent at its disposal, but it also has major problems. And you have to wonder how (or even if) its creative team is going to fix them before an already-slated Broadway opening on October 24th, 2002.

The problems are many and multi-faceted, and they have nothing to do with the music. In fact, Joel's songs, sung in virtuosic style by Michael Cavanaugh, are lush and vibrant, and remind you anew of just what an appealing songwriter he is. In fact, you may well leave the theater hoping he tries his hand at an original musical - preferably one with a solid book and three-dimensional characters.

Nor is the problem the dancers; they are dazzling and capable of anything. But they can't camouflage or compensate for Tharp's disastrous attempt at storytelling.

And that begs a crucial question: Who is telling the story here?

The dancers neither sing nor speak, so it's up to Joel's lyrics, and they often get lost amid all the activity onstage. And there is a visual disconnect between the songs and the performers.

The show also suffers from a truth in labeling problem. Very different expectations come with a full-evening dance work as opposed to a Broadway musical. Susan Stroman got away with a dialogue-free evening (barely) in "Contact," a show that, despite its success, I found pretty flimsy. But at least Stroman knows how to create a sense of nonverbal narrative. British choreographer Matthew Bourne successfully brought his theatrical update of the "Swan Lake" ballet to Broadway several years ago, but he succeeded largely because everyone was expecting a ballet and that is more or less what they got.

Tharp seems to want it both ways. She is clearly lured by the big budget and high profile of Broadway, but she hasn't made the leap from full-length dance work to musical. And marketing cannot hide lack of substance. Even a small change - like subtitling "Movin' Out" "a ballet for Broadway" rather than "a new musical" - might at least clarify audience expectations and come closer to the truth.

The much larger problems with the show are its uneven tone and simplistic content. The inane, cliche-ridden story, which never fully fleshes out the characters and moves thuddingly from Long Island high school days, to a comic-book breakup of an early marriage, to an appallingly dim take on the Vietnam War and then on into the early 1980s, is awkward in its suggestion of the passage of time and unclear in establishing crucial relationships and plot turns. The alternately minimal and clunkily generic scenery ("West Side Story" meets the barricades of "Les Mis") and the heavy-handed lighting don't help.

So who should be called in for emergency repairs: A writer (not to supply dialogue, but to improve the pacing)? Another director (to help unify all the different unconnected elements of the show)? Or a choreographer (Bourne, Stroman, Tommy Tune) who can sharpen the storytelling via dance?

Small adjustments won't do the trick, but major ripping and patching will destroy the fabric. More and more you realize just how difficult it is to create a coherent "new" musical.

I have some good news for a change: Billy Joel is back and better than ever.

Looking trim and tan, Billy spoke yesterday afternoon at the very moving memorial service held for Billboard editor Timothy White. White died June 29th, 2002 suddenly from a heart attack at age 50.

Billy's presentation was a complete change from his appearance back in February at the NARAS MusiCares dinner in Los Angeles.

Yesterday, Billy spoke clearly and cleverly. He recalled to an audience that included Bill Murray, screenwriter Mitch Glazer (who brought his wife of 10 years, actress Kelly Lynch, and chatted with his former wife, TV actress Wendie Malick), and performers Phoebe Snow and Jonatha Brooke that he liked to introduce his dates to the much-beloved White.

Broadway musicals usually employ multiple singers. But from a platform above the stage, the young vocalist Michael Cavanaugh sings the entire score for "Movin' Out," Twyla Tharp's dance-oriented show based on the music of Billy Joel.

The reviews for "Movin' Out," which plays a pre-Broadway engagement at the Shubert Theatre, 22 West Monroe Street, through September 1st, 2002, have been mixed. But it seems that everyone is impressed with Cavanaugh, a hitherto unknown "Piano Man" from Cleveland with the uncanny ability to sound just like Joel. On Cavanaugh's day off after opening weekend, he still had enough voice left to talk.

Question: How on earth did you get this gig?

Answer: It all started at "New York New York" in Las Vegas where I was playing piano in a bar. My manager is friends with Max Loubiere, who happens to be Billy Joel's tour manager. Max was in Vegas because Billy and Elton John were appearing at the MGM Grand. Max came to hear me play. And, later, he decided to surprise me by bringing Billy to my show.... He called me about 20 minutes before to tell me Billy was coming. I nearly had a heart attack. It was insane.

Question: So what happened when Joel showed up?

Answer: He came in and watched me play for about an hour. I was trying not to do any of his songs, but that was all the crowd wanted to hear. So I leaned over to Billy and told him the crowd was screaming for him, not me. So he did a couple of songs with me. Later on, Tommy Burns, Billy's musical arranger called...I guess they had decided I could be their guy.

Question: Are you actually obsessed with Joel? Or is this just a job?

Answer: He has been my musical idol since the age of 7. At my first piano lesson, I played "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" for my piano teacher and sang it for him from the piano. When I was really young I was into Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne, but my dad put "Big Shot" on the stereo and told me to listen to that. I thought it was so cool. And I've been into Joel's music ever since. When I was about 15, I was in a Top-40 band. We did Paula Abdul and other '80s stuff, but I always got my Billy Joel songs in. They started calling me "Young Joel."

Question: So are you impersonating Joel or doing your own thing with his songs?

Answer: To me, this is not an impression. I'm trying to sing the songs with the same attitude as Billy Joel. I try to phrase things like him, but using my own voice.

Question: Come on, you sound just like him.

Answer: I'm not crazy about being called a Billy Joel sound-alike. When I'm compared to him, I don't think I can ever look too good. But I'll take that as a compliment. Maybe his music is so much in my blood, it just comes out that way.

Question: Isn't that what they wanted for the show?

Answer: They told me to sing things my own way. But the more I'd sing it like Billy, the happier they would be. People come to the show to hear Billy's music. They want it to be true to what it is. I don't want to lose my own identity, but I understand that.

Question: Aren't you worried you'll get stuck doing Joel?

Answer: I guess I think about it sometimes. I write my own songs, and I would like to release my own music some day. But if I can get people to enjoy the way I perform and enjoy watching me on the stage, then that's a good start.

Question: You look very young on stage. How old are you?

Answer: Do we have to go into that? Upper twenties. Very upper. I don't want to advertise my age.

Question: Why not?

Answer: In the record business, everyone's 14. With this show, people keep telling me how young I look on stage. I tell them they would not be saying that if they were from Columbia Records.

Question: So how involved has Joel been in what you're doing onstage?

Answer: Well, there were a couple of places where I was singing the wrong lyric. "Shameless" was one of them....I guess I got the lyrics from, like, Billy-Joel-is-Great-Dot-Com. And it was just a matter of a couple of words, but he leaned over and said "you're doing great, man, and I hate to bring this up, but..."

Honestly, he's been very supportive and very happy with everything I've been doing since the beginning.

Question: Do you find Joel songs easy to perform?

Answer: Playing and singing his songs at the same time is very challenging. It's like walking and chewing gum. Billy was always very good at separating his hand skills and his voice. A lot of his songs sound simple, but then you try to play them...

Question: So you admire his work technically?

Answer: His lyrics are so clever. They take twists and turns, they're always out of the ordinary and they're never cliches. And his music has so many different styles. When he wrote "An Innocent Man," he was thinking of The Drifters. When he wrote "Uptown Girl," he was thinking of Frankie Valli. When he wrote "You May Be Right," he had The Rolling Stones in mind.

Question: Joel just got out of rehab. Are you worried about emulating that part of a star's life?

Answer: I'm aware of it. I've dreamed of making it my whole life, but I'm glad this success is happening now rather than later. My wife and I are from Ohio. We have a child. The most important thing to me now is my family.

Question: You must be killing your voice.

Answer: Actually, it's not that different from what I'm used to. In Vegas, I did three one-hour shows a night, doing Joel, Aerosmith, The Beatles. So I'm used to beating myself up every day and trying to stay alive. I sound hoarse every morning, but luckily it doesn't come out when I sing. I drink gallons of water. I vocalize every day. I do a lot of things to make sure I don't lose my voice. I'm doing six shows a week [an understudy usually performs Saturday afternoons and Sunday evening]. I wanted to do eight a week at first, but it was better for the show that I not try to be Superman.

Question: Don't you like younger artists? Isn't this geezer music?

Answer: You want to hear the truth? When I was in Vegas, we'd get college kids in every weekend from California. All they wanted to hear was Billy, Elton - and Elvis. Good music is good music whether it's coming out now or came out 30 years ago. I'll be a Billy Joel fanatic for the rest of my life. I once waited out all night in the snow to hear him play in Cleveland. We played football and danced around to keep warm. I don't have to do that anymore.