Music

Billy Joel is not rock star material. Not now.

Yes, the Bronx native was a dashing, pouty-lipped figure when he rose to prominence in the mid-1970s. Even into the late '80s, his hawkish charm lent him an air of retro-cool suavity as MTV took over pop music. And OK, even at a portly, dinner-jacket-donned age 58, the musician can command a mightily lighted stage by force of presence, chord and voice alone, as he did in front of a near-sellout crowd at American Airlines Center on Tuesday.

But the man shouldn't wear a baseball cap backward while singing "Big Shot." Nor should he twirl a mike stand like David Coverdale as he rambles through a hardened-up version of "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me." Nor should he strum an electric guitar with the bicep-balling terseness of Bruce Springsteen during "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Eric Kayne / DMN

Billy Joel performed Tuesday night at American Airlines Center.

Wait a second. Why not? Mr. Joel has toured the world solo for the past 23 months playing his innumerable hits and has made a Fort Knox-ian mint doing it despite his tongue-in-cheek claim that he "needs the money for car insurance." Past auto and motorcycle mishaps aside, Billy Joel is as stealthy a stitch in today's pop-cultural fabric as any, and he knows it.

And he delivered on his reputation on Tuesday. Despite a few niggling sound issues (the eardrum-scarring clanging-steel sound bite during "Allentown," for instance), a horrendously bizarre midset performance of Mr. Joel's Iraq-inspired ode, "Christmas in Fallujah," and that campy rocker hamming, he recaptured hopeful fans with crystalline piano playing and supple, leather-bound vocal work that's lost almost no force or quality.

He joked about being Billy throughout his 23-song, two-hour set, sprinkled bits of holiday songs as interludes between his undeniably classic pop-piano numbers, and even gave the audience a choice between three semi-obscure compositions early in the evening. Most everything was offered up with proper levels of faithfulness, especially keyboard-paced selections such as "The Entertainer," "New York State of Mind," "Movin' Out" and "She's Always a Woman."

Surprises: "Vienna," the dischordant near-free jazz exercise "Zanzibar" (with fantastic trumpet stabs by Carl Fischer) and "Everybody Loves You Now" from Mr. Joel's dubious 1971 debut, Cold Spring Harbor. Notable omissions: "Tell Her About It," "Pressure," "Uptown Girl" (we can understand that one, since it was allegedly written about ex Christie Brinkley), "Only the Good Die Young," "She's Got a Way" and his most recent pop recording, the year-old "All My Life." (We missed the final two songs of the encore, but surely he had to have ended it with "Piano Man" and one of the hits above.)

Mr. Joel would have had to have played another two hours to get those and the rest of his commonly known songs in. As the concert was, he balanced the old with the new, the iconic with the obscure and the faithful with the playful as well as could be expected.

And though he's not nearly as monolithic a force when wielding a mike stand or a guitar as he is with a grand piano, he proved that he can pass glibly as Billy, a Rock Star. As long, that is, as those excursions are bookended with his succulent and timeless piano pop.