Billy Joel’s manic Moscow outburst: The Cold War’s curious culmination
The year was 1987; shoulder pads were all the rage, Aretha Franklin became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Billy Joel finally flipped his lid. It wasn’t for the reasons outlined, although God knows ’80s fashion could send anyone into a tailspin, but for the mounting pressure of one seismic, if slightly perplexing, set of gigs.
Of course, the concept of touring Russia is, by today’s standards, a bit of a no-go area. Yet as the ‘80s surely reached their conclusion, the tides of Eastern European relations were quite different, and the peace and love train was very much in town. After years of fighting, the Cold War was finally on its way to thawing at the hands of Mikhail Gorbachev, who envisioned a world where the US and Russia could not only be civil to one another but also prosper in a steadfast geopolitical partnership. It seems almost utopian. But as always, what was the key to getting this started? Music.
This is where Joel comes into the picture, not because he is some form of unlikely UN peacekeeper, but because part of Gorbachev’s vision was to kickstart healthier relations through a series of rock concerts across the then-USSR with artists brought over from the States. In principle, the idea was all well and good, and a number of artists dutifully signed up to play some smaller gigs dotted around the conglomerate of countries. However, Joel was landed with a much tougher task—to amplify the quiet sounds of American music into full-blown stadium rock.
It was a lot of pressure, to say the least, and pair that with a not-so-welcoming atmosphere, and it’s clear that Joel’s string of Moscow concerts he was assigned were a mammoth undertaking. There were six shows to play in total, and when the voice in your head is telling you that each gig needs to be bigger than the last, in order to truly fly the flag of the star-spangled banner, the pressure became an almost unbearable weight on his shoulders.
The first show may have been a little stiff, but it largely went off without a hitch. It took a while for the crowd to warm up, but once the ‘Piano Man’ got them going, he truly had them eating out the palm of his hand as he invigorated them with a slew of all his greatest hits. Easy work, and all he had to do was repeat that five more times and become a hero, right? If only it were that simple.
The second night was set to build on said momentum, with the crowd, by now, really learning the meaning of rock and roll and what it meant to cut loose. It was all going so well until the lighting crew decided to do one over them. Shining spotlights across the scores of revellers may have seemed like a great idea, not to mention an even better visual aesthetic for the documentary film crew trying to capture the shots, but for a population so used to strict rule and still becoming accustomed to the showmanship of live music, it caused them to freeze.
The after-effects of the Cold War then plunged to even more hypothermic levels, as the crowd were terrified and Joel increasingly frustrated by their unfounded fear, as he repeatedly tried to encourage them to keep dancing. But eventually, between the pressure of the gigs themselves and the task of attempting to coax a crowd back onside, Joel snapped—quite literally.
Somehow flipping his piano in the air and then getting into a wrestling match with a microphone stand, the crowd were left bemused as to whether they were watching a rock star or the world’s strongest man, or possibly both. After his outburst, Joel left the stage, managed to pull himself together, and returned to finish the set. But, of course, as is the way of the world, the damage was long since done.
Sending the press into a frenzy, it’s fair to say that for better or worse, the US stint in Russia achieved what it set out to do in terms of publicity. For Joel’s part, he did actually continue to oblige the remainder of his six-gig engagement, and the rest were a roaring success, perhaps because word had got around that a free WWE showcase might be chucked in on the side.
As such, when the USSR collapsed a few short years later and the memories of the Cold War melted into distant view, who knew that all the political fighting and tensions of days gone by could largely be solved by a man flipping a piano on stage. It seems like a pretty simple solution, really. Maybe it’s a strategy they should employ nowadays, so whenever Vladimir Putin and Volodomyr Zelensky ever do come face to face, just get Billy Joel on the phone to sort them out.
