The five-song encore opened with a trio of upbeat rock tunes, including the No. (“I didn’t know I was gonna end up here when I was playing that little dump on Wilshire,” Joel said early in show.) The main set wrapped up “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” a mini-suite of songs set in, well, you know, a restaurant, and his signature tune “Piano Man,” a ballad based on his time as a lounge singer in a Los Angeles piano bar early in his career.

His longtime backing vocalist, percussionist and sax player Crystal Taliefero fared much better – they’ve got the benefit of playing together since 1989 – when she sang the Ike & Tina Turner hit “River Deep, Mountain High” as an interlude in the middle of “River of Dreams” a few songs later. Nicks joined Joel for the ballad “And So It Goes,” on which her voice never quite seemed to mesh with his as they sang to each other across the top of his grand piano. The ballad “Just the Way You Are” wasn’t originally going to make his 1977 breakout album “The Stranger,” but then singer Linda Ronstadt urged him to reconsider, Joel said before playing the sax-infused ballad that went on to win the Grammys for record and song of the year. “An Innocent Man” was introduced with a warning that he might regret the highest notes he’d written into it when he was 40 years young, which set up for cheers when he scaled those heights on the choruses of the finger-snapping tune inspired by the street-corner doo-wop of his youth. The album tracks and fan favorites “Vienna” and “Zanzibar” followed, and from there the show unfolded with the familiarity of a good friend you haven’t seen in years – Joel hadn’t played Southern California since a Dodger Stadium show in 2017 – who dropped by to pick up right where you’d last left off. 1 hit “Tell Her About It,” out of his show, while giving his guitar player, Mike DelGuidice, the spotlight to sing the Puccini aria “Nessun dorma” with Joel as his accompanist. That speaks to the confidence of an entertainer who hasn’t released an album of new material since 1993, but still feels fine to leave the No. Lee Rocker is bringing stories, holiday songs and more to The Coach House

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