The shows were filmed for future DVD release but in the meantime...we have the best quality clips I could find on Youtube - some are really good, some notsomuch...

From the NY Times - Clips in story; more at bottom of page:

It takes a lot to upstage Billy Joel at Shea Stadium.

But late on Friday night [July 18], nearly three hours into a career-spanning performance advertised as the last concert at Shea before it was to be demolished, Mr. Joel seemed happy to turn over the spotlight to Paul McCartney, who, he said, had just flown in from London.

The sold-out crowd of 55,000 people let out an ear-splitting roar as Mr. McCartney sang the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There," with Mr. Joel singing backup and, fitting his reputation as a self-deprecating rock star, looking on from his piano as if he were just another fan himself.

Before beginning "Let It Be," Mr. McCartney alluded to the Beatles' first concert at Shea in 1965, the year after the stadium opened.



"It's so cool to be back here on the last night," he said. "Been here a long time ago -- we had a blast that night, and we're having another one tonight."

The concert was the second of two farewell shows by Mr. Joel, who told the crowd earlier in the night: "They're tearing this house down. I want to thank you for letting me do the job and keep doing it -- the best job in the world."

Mr. McCartney wasn't the only big guest. The country star Garth Brooks, dressed in a Mets T-shirt, sang Mr. Joel's "Shameless," which was a big hit for Mr. Brooks; Steven Tyler of Aerosmith performed "Walk This Way;"



and Roger Daltrey of the Who -- which played at Shea in 1982 -- sang "My Generation" as Mr. Joel smashed a guitar on the center-field stage.



Before the show, fans praised Mr. Joel, Long Island's favorite son, as an approachable superstar whose songs chronicle everyday New York lives and struggles. "Only New Yorkers have a true sense of what he talks about," said Lauren Marchiano, 26. As an avowed follower of both Mr. Joel and the Mets, she said, the night was doubly poignant for her.

But the most popular topic of conversation seemed to be how much everyone had paid to get in. Ronnie Glowacki, an administrative assistant from Brooklyn, had been frozen out when tickets went on sale in February; she would say only that she paid "somewhere between zero and $500" to get in on Friday. A Yankees fan, she was there to catch what could be a last glimpse -- not of Shea Stadium, but of Mr. Joel.

"I don't know how much longer he's going to be doing concerts, so I want to get every one I can get in," she said. "For me it's all Billy."

Joel has made recent statements that he is ready to stop creating rock songs. He's been dabbling in classical music of late and has alluded to the fact that his future might lie there.

Excerpts from NYTimes Review of First "Last Play at Shea" Wednesday, July 15

Mr. Joel played to two kinds of local pride. "This is where New York meets Long Island," he said with a smile. "Queens -- politically, that's New York City. But geographically, we are on Long Island." In a three-hour concert dotted with guest stars, Mr. Joel hinted that a long pop career -- like his -- can parallel the life of a city, full of pleasures and disappointments, triumphs and mistakes, changes and tenacity.

Mr. Joel hasn't released an album of new pop songs since 1993, but he charged into his catalog like a trouper, with two-fisted piano playing and a voice that turned the grain of an older singer into stadium-sized vehemence -- usually a decent tradeoff.

Mr. Joel, 59, doesn't pretend to be anything but grown up. Fans in distant stadium seats got the first video close-up of his grizzled face and balding head as he sang "Angry Young Man," the skeptical song about youthful self-righteousness that he wrote back in the 1970s. Late in the show, he played rock star for a little while, knocking around a microphone stand in "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me," and putting some Jerry Lee Lewis growls and whoops into "You May Be Right."

Mr. Joel's music spans the styles of New York City before hip-hop, from classical Tin Pan Alley to doo-wop to Irish-American waltzes to big-band jazz to soul to rock. At Shea, his band was expanded with strings and horns. Amid the hefty chords, classical arpeggios and splashes of honky-tonk, his hits send melodies climbing toward well-turned choruses that, countless radio plays later, just sound inevitable. The tunes work so neatly as pop that they can make Mr. Joel's songs seem less hard-nosed than they often are.

Mr. Joel sang cynically about a musician's life in songs like "The Entertainer" and "Zanzibar," and he sang about crushed hopes in songs like "Allentown," "The Downeaster 'Alexa,' " "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" and "Goodnight, Saigon," a power ballad about Vietnam for which he was joined by a chorus of soldiers in uniform.
,br> But New York itself was often the concert's muse. Mr. Joel brought Tony Bennett out to join him in "New York State of Mind," and they pushed each other toward flamboyantly jazzy vocal turns. Other songs were filled with New York City memories and locales. There were baseball references, too; he added a line about the Mets and Shea to the borough-hopping song "Miami 2017."
,br> Mr. Joel's concert presented his New York City as a place full of romantic possibilities that, like ballparks, won't last forever. He recalled that Shea was built while he was a teenager. "Now they're going to tear it down," he mused, "and I'm still playing."

Shea Stadium is no CBGB. Its musical cachet has nothing to do with atmosphere, aesthetics or acoustics (although Mr. Joel's sound system was first-rate; the concert was being filmed for a documentary). Shea gained its musical reputation directly from the Beatles, whose concert there in August 1965 showed the world that rock's audience had grown by an order of magnitude. No wonder Mr. Joel sang "A Hard Day's Night" with John Lennon inflections in his voice -- though he inserted it between verses of his own "River of Dreams." He returned to the Beatles to finish his two-and-a-half hour main set with "Please Please Me."

Shea never became part of a regular stadium rock circuit, partly because its summer season is filled with baseball games. (Giants Stadium holds most of the stadium shows in the New York City area.) So the relatively few concerts at the stadium still bask in a Beatles afterglow. When the Police played their farewell concert at Shea Stadium in 1983, they thanked the Beatles. On Wednesday night, Mr. Joel became the only musician ever to headline all three area stadiums: Yankee, Giants and Shea.

Mr. Joel apologized to audience members who had bought tickets for Wednesday's show expecting it to be Shea's very last; after some boos he said the second show, on Friday, was added after the first sold out, and was the date offered by the Mets organization.

Guest stars seized their last chance to perform at Shea. John Mayer squeezed off bluesy guitar solos for "This Is the Time." Don Henley picked up the night's baseball theme with his own "Boys of Summer." John Mellencamp added some lines about the current price of gasoline to his song "Pink Houses." But it was a night for New York, a place where a pop hook can outlast a stadium of concrete and steel.

"I want to thank the Beatles for letting us use their room. Best band that ever was, best band that ever will be!" Mr. Joel shouted near the end, before belting one more Beatles song: "She Loves You." But Mr. Joel seized his own last word: "Piano Man," with a new introduction: "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." The stadium crowd sang along on both. But his finale was quiet: "Every year's a souvenir," he sang, "that slowly fades away."

Setlist/More Clips:

-ORCHESTRA OPENING
-National Anthem (Star Spangled Banner)
-Miami 2017
-Prelude/Angry Young Man
-My Life
-The Entertainer
-Summer, Highland Falls
-Zanzibar
-Allentown
-Ballad of Billy the Kid
-New York State of Mind (w/Tony Bennett)
-Root Beer Rag
-Goodnight Saigon
-Don't Ask Me Why
-Keeping The Faith
-The Downeaster "Alexa"
-This Night
-Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)
-Under The Boardwalk/An Innocent Man
-Shameless (with Garth Brooks)
-She's Always A Woman
-Captain Jack
-Lullabye
-River of Dreams/A Hard Days Night
-Walk This Way (w/Steven Tyler)
-We Didn't Start The Fire
-It's Still Rock 'n Roll To Me
-My Generation (w/Roger Daltrey)
-You May Be Right

Encore:

-Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
-Only The Good Die Young

Second Encore:

-I Saw Her Standing There (with Sir Paul McCartney)
-Piano Man, Let It Be (with Sir Paul McCartney)

More Rock News