Why did Billy Joel and Elton John stop touring together?
In 1994, Elton John and Billy Joel faced an unusual juncture in their careers. Despite being household names, they had transitioned from being the fresh faces in the industry to becoming its elder statesmen.
As two giants of music, they decided to bring their powers together for the Face to Face tour, which proved to be a masterstroke. The initial run of co-headline dates saw the pair sell out stadiums across North America, including five shows at the Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, and due to demand, the tour was revived the following year.
While Joel and John didn’t hit the road together every single year, the Face to Face tour remained a fixture until 2010. During the shows, they would begin by duetting on a selection of songs before alternating set times and sending the crowd jubilantly home.
Rather than diplomatically ending their collaborative partnership, unfortunately, it played out in public, with both men claiming different reasons for their journey ending. The situation wasn’t helped by John criticising Joel for not releasing new music and also claiming the singer’s troubles with alcoholism led to the cancellation of shows.
Joel, who eventually got sober in 2021, didn’t take kindly to John airing his grievances in public but maintains this wasn’t why they stopped touring. Instead, he claims to have never signed on to any more dates because of his health, despite it being alleged that he pulled out of a series of dates plotted for the summer of 2010.
During an interview with the Daily Mail in 2016, Joel maintained: “That’s NOT the reason we’re not touring any more. I got tired of doing the same show over and over again and I think his agent told him we were going to do more dates that I never agreed to. I kept seeing in the press, ‘Billy cancelled the tour’. I didn’t cancel it; it was never booked. I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you call me? Don’t talk to my agent, talk to me.'”
Elaborating on his health issues, Joel said: “I had to have my hips replaced, and that was the reason I was out of commission. The last few gigs I did with Elton I could barely walk. I had canes – canes on stage is not good. I have had drinking issues in the past. So did he. I think at heart he meant well.'”
Although Joel believed John’s heart was in the right place, and he didn’t mean to cause any harm, the ‘Piano Man’ singer retaliated with a vicious barb of his own. He continued: “At one point, he said I went to a rehab that allowed me to have a dog. I thought, ‘You weren’t in rehab with me, you don’t know what happened.’ Once you go 30 days without a drink, you go, OK, I get it. They dry you out. So I told him, instead of speaking these words, why don’t you write a few – because he doesn’t write lyrics.”
The heated remarks exchanged between the pair weren’t the initial reason they stopped touring, but it put the final nail in the coffin. Furthermore, Joel later complained that he found it too restrictive because he wasn’t playing solely to his audience, which took away the opportunity to perform deep cuts. Most importantly, after over 15 years, the time had finally come to return to going it alone.
