Billy Joel receives Kennedy Centre Honours

THE PIANO MAN who became one of the world’s best-selling artists of all time with such hits as Just the Way You Are, Uptown Girl and Allentown was awarded the nation’s highest honour on Sunday for influencing American culture through the arts.

Billy Joel joined Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock, opera star Martina Arroyo and actress Shirley MacLaine in receiving the Kennedy Centre Honours. All have been playing music, dancing or singing since they were children — and never stopped.

Tony Bennett opened the tribute to Joel’s long career and his songs written so often about ordinary people. “Billy Joel is no less than the poet, performer, philosopher of today’s American songbook,” Bennett said.

Don Henley sang She’s Got a Way and Garth Brooks sang a medley of Only the Good Die Young, Allentown, and Goodnight Saigon, joined by a choir of Vietnam veterans. Joel has explained he wrote Saigon because he wanted to write a song about the soldiers’ experience.

Rufus Wainright sang New York State of Mind and led the audience in a finale of Joel’s original hit, Piano Man.
Joel said the honour stands apart from his six Grammys.

“This is different. It’s our nation’s capital,” he said. “This is coming more from my country than just people who come to see me. It’s a little overwhelming.”

After criticism in recent years that the Kennedy Center Honours had been excluding Latinos, the first song this year was in Spanish. Fher Olvera, the lead singer of the Mexican rock band Mana, led off with a medley of Santana tunes, Corazon Espinado, Black Magic Woman and Oye Como Va for a tribute to the 66-year-old Santana.

An immigrant from Mexico who began learning English from American television, Santana is one of only a few Latinos who have received the honor so far. He first picked up the guitar after hearing blues and rock ‘n’ roll on the radio, and he wanted to be like his mariachi musician father. His family moved to San Francisco. By the age of 22, he was playing at Woodstock.

In a tribute, musician Harry Belafonte joked that something should be done about Mexican immigration because he’d been overshadowed by Santana’s fusion of rock, blues, African and Latino sounds. Santana is perhaps best known for his album Supernatural that won nine Grammys.

“Now Carlos is a citizen of the world. He belongs to all of us,” Belafonte said. “Carlos, you haven’t transcended race and origin. Really, who of us has? You continue to be informed by the immigrant experience on the journey to the great American dream.”
Before the show, Santana said he’d never been to the Kennedy Center before but the award stands apart for him because it came during the Obama administration.

“It’s really supreme because the award is being given to me by a black man. If it wasn’t like that, I would say just send it to me,” Santana said. “But since it’s Mr. Barack Obama, I definitely had to make myself present and say from the center of my heart, ‘you are the embodiment of our dreams and aspirations.’”

Hancock, 73, got his start at the piano at age 7 while growing up in Chicago. Jazz greats Terence Blanchard, Wayne Shorter, Jack DeJohnette and others played a tribute for Hancock’s work. And Snoop Dogg took the stage and brought some rap into the mix to celebrate Hancock’s influence on the birth of hip-hop.

“Herbie we love you, baby,” he said. “Thank you for creating hip-hop.”

For MacLaine, her longtime friend Kathy Bates took the stage and praised her work on stage and screen. “Your humanity informs your work,” she told MacLaine who was seated in a box with the president. “We think you’re magnificent now and forever.”
MacLaine, 79, has been acting for six decades ever since she began ballet at age 3. She said the award is like a homecoming because she grew up in the Washington area.

“My life as a professional was etched here in the Washington School of Ballet,” she said. AP