Previewing Billy Joel: A Matter of Trust – The Bridge to Russia

By the time I bought Billy Joel’s Kohuept, his live album that he recorded in Russia, the cold war was all but over. I really never put any thought in to what Joel’s presence in the communist country meant while listening to it, I just enjoyed the music. I was a kid when the concerts happened which was at the end of the cold war, long after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the other events the escalated the feuding countries over the end. As an adult, I can put the almost century old conflict in perspective as we currently wage a war on terrorism that looks to never die down.

Last year marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of those Russian concerts and tomorrow Showtime is airing Billy Joel: A Matter of Trust – The Bridge to Russia a documentary and retrospective on the first rock act to perform in Mother Russia. Touching down in former Russian state Georgia (not far from the site of this year’s Winter Olympics), where Joel would visit Gregorian chanters who he would then introduce doo-wop to. Joel would bring his three and a half hour show to the capital Moscow and Leningrad (a place we would write about on his next album Storm Front).

But it was a rocky start as he got booed in New Jersey when announcing the trip. Just image what the 24-hour networks would say if they were around like they are today. Might look like how they covered Dennis Rodman going to North Korea, but with less nipple rings. Then there were not enough seating in the venues he played and show promontories had to bring in chairs from local churches and union halls. And in true American rock and roll tradition, some of the concerts featured unplanned stage crashers and smashed instruments.

The documentary also features modern day interviews from Joel himself, ex-wife Christie Brinkley who accompanied him on the trip with their young daughter (who apparently was too young to remember anything because she is absent from the film), band members, Joel’s personal translator on the trip, Wayne Isham who was documenting the trip at the time, and even underground Soviet rock artists from the era. The documentary is a facilitating look at another small ray of sunshine that helped melt the cold war. But still a little depressing to think that anyone born the last time Billy Joel last released an album of new material is now old enough to drink.

Billy Joel: A Matter of Trust – The Bridge to Russia premieres Friday at 9:00 on Showtime.