Billy Joel and Fans, Drinking In The Nostalgia at Verizon Center

Billy Joel milked his hit-laden career -- musical and otherwise -- brilliantly before an appreciative audience Thursday. (By Joel Richardson -- The Washington Post)

Billy Joel has been more of a punch line than a pop star in recent years, getting his name in late-night monologues by driving a car into a wall in 2002 and a tree in 2003 and an old lady's house in 2004. Joel, 56, also occasionally checks himself into rehab, and his latest wife is a lot younger than many of the songs he performed at Verizon Center on Thursday.

But even as he's become a terror in the Hamptons, Joel remains a joy on the stage. He made light of his driving and drinking foibles often in the nearly 2 ½ -hour retrospective show. From behind his grand piano, he thanked the folks "up in the nosebleeds" for buying tickets. "I really do need the money," he said. "You wouldn't believe my car insurance."

And he transformed his romantic song "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" into a confession of temperance: "Bottle of red, bottle of white" he crooned, "I won't be having either one tonight."

The audience guzzled every nostalgic note Joel served. The show, with a set list heavy with his oldest singles and deep album cuts (including "New York State of Mind" and "Everybody Loves You Now"), was designed more for his hard-core fans than were previous tours. Nothing was more quaint than Joel's "Captain Jack," an anti-slacker tune from 1971 that finds him mocking casual drug use and generally railing against so much of what '60s rock stood for. "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me," from 1980, meanwhile, was Joel's plea for fans not to abandon him while he rode out the new wave era. The fervor with which crowds still respond to that song indicates that his request was granted.

On the whole, the guy who dubbed himself "Billy the Kid" at the start of his career in the early '70s was revealed as a bridge between two other Killer B's who debuted in the same decade -- Barry Manilow and Bruce Springsteen. For all the tuff-rocker poses Joel struck back in the day, it's obvious that he, like Manilow, always had a lot of show tune in him. "She's Always a Woman" and "My Life," which Joel performed with a smile, packed as much schmaltz as any Manilow jingle, while 1978's "Zanzibar," with its be-boppy bridge, echoed "Copacabana." Small wonder Joel's songbook has already been turned into a successful Broadway musical ("Movin' Out," choreographed by Twyla Tharp).

Springsteen, by writing tunes such as "Factory" and "Promised Land," already had the blue-collar rockers in the pocket of his denim jacket by the time Joel went for the same demographic by penning "Allentown." Yet, Joel's song about a laid-off plant worker has aged best, thanks to a hook that combines melody and depression with Brian Wilson-like brilliance: "I won't be getting up today-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay," Joel sang with a smile, as the crowd sang and smiled along.

Two years before Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." came out, Joel played on the nation's Vietnam War veteran sympathies with his fabulous "Goodnight Saigon." A group of U.S. military veterans, some with obvious wounds and far too young to have suffered them in Vietnam, stood arm in arm at the back of the stage and swayed while Joel reprised the war chronicle.