Former CBS News 8 anchor Barbara-Lee Edwards wasn’t expecting to see Billy Joel perform in downtown San Diego Monday night.
“Nobody was,” she says.
She and her husband were downtown that evening and noticed that an event was about to take place at the Rady Shell in Jacobs Park behind the San Diego Convention Center.
“We looked around for a while and started to walk away,” she says. “Then I heard Billy Joel singing. My husband said, ‘I think it’s live.’ I said, ‘No way.’ Then I heard him speaking, and we just ran back there.”
They found a gap in the shrubs that afforded a great view of the stage and spent nearly two hours listening to the Grammy-winning icon and his band play several of his greatest hits.
The surprise performance had been shrouded in secrecy. Another onlooker, a lifelong Billy Joel fan, had walked by the Rady Shell earlier in the day and asked the crew setting up who was going to perform.
They said they weren’t allowed to tell him but teased, “You’ll know who it is.”
Turns out, the concert was a private corporate gig hosted by Daimler Truck North America (DTNA). It was the trucking giant’s invitation-only 2022 Customer Appreciation Event, attended by about 1,200 people (and several more lucky ersby who, like Edwards, peeked from the perimeter of the outdoor venue).
“There was a lot of energy. People were having a good time,” says Seth Clevenger, an attendee and features managing editor for the industry publication “Transport Topics.” Many mouthed the lyrics and danced between tables.
He was there covering the American Trucking Association’s annual Management Conference and Exhibition, which started Saturday at the convention center. Daimler, which manufactures Freightline and Western Star trucks, was one of the corporate attendees.
For years, Daimler has sponsored a separate surprise concert during the ATA convention as a thank-you to its top customers.
Last year, the mystery performer was Bon Jovi in Nashville. Three years ago, it was Luke Bryan and Maddie & Tae in Petco Park. The event also took place in San Diego in 2014. That year the Eagles gave a surprise performance on the USS Midway flight deck, says DTNA spokesman Fred Ligouri.
Ligouri was mum on the corporate cost of bringing in a big-name entertainer such as Billy Joel.
The intimate audience of about 1,200 was a change of pace for the mega-musician who drew more than 40,000 fans to his sold-out pre-pandemic Petco Park concert. His monthly N.Y. Madison Square Garden concerts, where he reportedly earns at least $2 million a show, packs in 20,000. He rarely gives other concerts each year, except for a few stadium dates.
Clevenger, who has covered the trucking association for the past six years, posted an article on Billy Joel’s appearance. He noted that Carrie Underwood and the Florida Georgia Line performed in 2018, Jason Aldean in 2017, the Rolling Stones in 2016 and Paul McCartney in 2014.
It is enough to make you want to go out and buy a freight truck from Daimler just to get on the customer invitation list.
After people streamed into the venue, which was set up with dinner tables, lounge seating and Adirondack chairs, Daimler CEO John O’Leary and Senior VP of Sales and Marketing David Carson took the stage and dribbled out clues to the guest performer’s identity.
He had sold 150 million records. He had won six Grammys. He was from Long Island, N.Y. The mystery and guesses stirred the crowd into a frenzy. When Billy Joel’s name was announced, he launched into a song at the piano.
“Can you imagine being on vacation and walking by the (Fifth Avenue Landing) marina, then hearing Billy Joel play,” says Ligouri of the bystanders.
“Where we were, there were maybe 40 and 50 people,” says Edwards of the outsiders, “and a lot of people were singing every word to every song.”
She says Billy Joel included some local references, substituting “San Diego” in place of another city in some song lyrics.
Clevenger re him changing the lyrics in “Piano Man” from “Saturday” to “Monday” in one spot — “It’s a pretty good crowd for a Monday … And the manager gives me a smile.” The ad-lib elicited some chuckles from the Monday night crowd.
He sang through a set list of 18 hits, including “My Life,” “Don’t Ask Me Why,” “Just the Way You Are,” “Movin’ Out,” “She’s Always a Woman to Me,” “Only the Good Die Young,” “The River of Dreams,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” “Uptown Girl,” “Zanzibar.”
When attendees thought the show was over, he returned to sing two encores: “Tush” and “A Hard Day’s Night.”
The performance was similar, Edwards says, to his Madison Square Garden concert she saw four years ago with her daughter. While watching, she ed her daughter on Facetime and held up the phone, giving her a snippet of Monday’s live show.
“It would be very easy for an entertainer to cut it short on a Monday night, but Billy Joel played for the better part of two hours,” Clevenger says. “That’s all everyone was talking about the next day.”
It was back to business, though, on Tuesday because U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg spoke to the roughly 2,900 American Trucking Association attendees about President Biden’s infrastructure law, freight transportation issues, work force retention and development.
Country singer Walker Hayes, of Applebee’s “Get All Fancy Like” viral song fame, performed at Tuesday’s convention center banquet — which was not catered by Applebee’s.
