Morgan Auditorium, Foster Auditorium

January 15, 1974, and March 10, 1977

Billy Joel’s concert in 1977 was a high water mark for the UPC and among the more anticipated campus events that year. The show was staged in Foster Auditorium, the Crimson Tide basketball teams’ former arena before the 1968 opening of Memorial Coliseum. While Foster was still used as a gym for various intramural sports, it held another critical distinction as the place where Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace defiantly stood in the “schoolhouse door” protesting the Kennedy Administration’s federal order to desegregate the University of Alabama. Joel had played on campus a few years before in 1974, at the Morgan Hall Auditorium, home to the English Department. Audiences recalled it was so quiet at times you could hear a pin drop. When Joel and his band finished the show and the audience demanded more, he sheepishly told the crowd they’d played every song they had. A voice from the audience was said to have shouted, “Play ‘em again.” The move from smaller stages like Morgan Hall to a larger venue like Foster portended bigger things for the New York pop rocker. He had had his share of successful releases from earlier albums like “Piano Man,” “Streetlight  Serenade” and “Turnstiles,” but this release “The Stranger” set an entirely new table for the burgeoning rock star. Nearly every song on “The Stranger,” which included “She’s Always a Woman,” “Movin’ Out,” and “Just the Way You Are,” became a hit for Joel. His behavior onstage that evening was manic, running around the arena, hobnobbing with fans, and liberally copping lines from a rising comedian named Steve Martin (“I get paid for doin’ this!”), who most people in the audience weren’t familiar with yet.