Names and faces

Billy Joel began his Madison Square Garden residency Monday night with an energetic show that covered a wide swath of music from his five-decade career. Shortly before 9 p.m., the piano man and his band came out to thunderous applause and launched into “Miami 2017,” a song Joel, 64, wrote in the early 1970s about post-apocalyptic New York City. His performance put him in the record books as the fourth franchise of the famed venue,along with the Knicks, Rangers and Liberty. Throughout the evening, Joel seemed to touch on at least one song from most of his studio albums. The only notable omission was 1989’s Storm Front. While he didn’t hold back on the classics like “New York State of Mind” and “Allentown,” Joel also performed the lesser played tracks “The Entertainer” and “Zanzibar” that included a sultry trumpet solo by Carl Fischer. Joel performed the a capella “The Longest Time,” and after he finished said: “It sounds better in a men’s room.” And when he introduced “Everybody Loves You Now,” as a song from his first album, Cold Spring Harbor, he told the audience: “I doubt you have it. I don’t have it.”

There’s an easy way to give pop music’s most performance-hardened stars a case of the butterflies: ask them to perform in front of The Beatles. Many of today’s top artists gathered Monday night to honor The Beatles’ legacy, with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in attendance and late members John Lennon and George Harrison always in mind, at The Recording Academy’s Los Angeles taping of “The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles.” John Legend and Alicia Keys sang “Let It Be.” Katy Perry performed “Yesterday” while her boyfriend, John Mayer, teamed with Keith Urban on “Don’t Let Me Down.” And Brad Paisley and Pharrell Williams took on the challenge of “Here Comes the Sun.” Later, McCartney and Starr took the stage, turning what had been a fairly sedate affair into an arm-in-arm sing-a-long of hits “Hey, Jude,” “Sgt. Pepper” and “Yellow Submarine” that prompted movie stars and Grammy Award-winning musicians alike to sing along like giddy kids. The telecast will air Feb. 9, 50 years after The Fab Four made their first appearance in front of an American television audience on The Ed Sullivan Show.