Billy Joel's Alamodome concert a grand slam with San Antonio fans...

Call it the Piano Man effect.

When Billy Joel sits down at his spotlighted piano and starts to sing and play, everything else recedes — the band behind him and the stadium full of fans in front of him.

Billy Joel introduced most of his songs from the piano, including a cover of ZZ Top's "Tush." "I didn't write this one," he said.

It’s not exactly that Joel turned the Alamodome into a smoky lounge on Friday night. For one thing, there was no TV playing game one of the World Series, which Joel definitely would have been watching. The New Yorker received updates throughout the night on the Yankees-Dodgers game.

Maybe Madison Square Garden, where Joel recently brought a legendary residency to a close, is closer to the mark. Joel and his eight-person band have played these songs hundreds of times, and it’s fair to say they’ve got them down.

From the staccato “Cadillac-ack-ack-ack” in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” to the romantic croon of ‘Just the Way You Are,’ Joel’s singing is strong and clear and sounds pretty much the way you remember it — even as he warns fans he might not nail the high notes on ‘An Innocent Man.’

His multitalented band members matched him step for step, from the cinematic sweep of “New York State of Mind,” with Mark Rivera front and center on saxophone, to the vocal interplay on “The Longest Time.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone left the two-hour-plus concert without hearing their favorite Billy Joel song. Five big hits were packed into the encore alone — “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” “Uptown Girl,” “It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me,” “Big Shot” and “You May Be Right.”

That fast-paced encore contrasted with the concert as a whole. Joel took his time on songs such as “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” “River of Dreams” and “The Ballad of Billy the Kid.” That song even came with footnotes. Joel made it clear that he now knows West Virginia isn’t the West, and the Rio Grande doesn’t run from north to south. He was young when he wrote the song, and from Long Island.

There were more jokes, too — Joel is a New York showman, after all. He talked about how a Texas oil well he invested in looked like a fire hydrant to him, and how his first wife divorced him after he wrote “Just the Way You Are” about her. “So what do I know?” he asked.

There also was some musical schtick. Joel trotted out a Mick Jagger impersonation on a short version of the Rolling Stones' “Start Me Up.” And guitarist Mike Delguidice took the lead vocal on a romp through ZZ Top’s “Tush” — because Texas, one supposes.

If anyone was disappointed Friday night, it was Joel, who learned late in the evening that the Dodgers had taken a one-game lead in the World Series on a grand slam in the bottom of the 10th inning. He was still processing the news when he began his next song — it may have been the first time ever that “Piano Man” kicked off with an expletive.

Sting played an hourlong set heavy on hits by the Police.

Sting opened the concert with an hourlong set heavy on Police hits such as “Roxanne,” “Every Breath You Take” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” which featured an appearance by Joel. Sting, dressed in a white T and black jeans, later returned the favor, donning a black suit to join Joel for “Big Man on Mulberry Street.”

If Joel gave the people what they wanted, Sting and his new Sting 3.0 band — guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas — seemed to be searching for something new in the old tracks. They stretched songs like “Walking on the Moon” almost to the breaking point then let them snap back into place in versions with more forward momentum and noise than the originals.

A scan of the almost-sold-out Alamodome crowd suggested that the concert was a very popular date night option for empty-nesters. It was more than that for a younger couple, who got engaged on the floor of the dome before the concert as Triumph’s “Fight the Good Fight” played on the sound system.

San Antonio-specific concert shirts, with a piano set up in front of the Alamo, went fast at the merch tables. They are still available through midnight Sunday at Joel’s online store.

(c) San Antonio Express-News by Jim Keist