Arrow season 6: Thanksgiving episode to feature … Billy Joel?
To be a little more specific, one of the biggest surprises is a sort-of-appearance from none other than Piano Man Billy Joel (or as Dwight Schrute used to call him on “The Office” – William Joel). He’s not actually appearing in the flesh — instead, Joel will be featured in some concert footage during the episode. Apparently, a concert is going to be the setting of a major plot point in the episode and based on what executive producer Marc Guggenheim told Entertainment Weekly, there is a very specific reason why a concert is being targeted:
“For the Thanksgiving episode of Arrow, we wanted Cayden James to threaten a major event at Star City … A variety of ideas were discussed, but when we settled on a rock concert, I knew it had to be Billy Joel.”
In what shouldn’t surprise anyone, Guggenheim is a longtime fan of the “New York State of Mind” singer (who doesn’t love Billy Joel!), and specifically reached out to him in order to use footage during the episode:
“Having grown up on Long Island — where, as it happens, this episode’s concert footage was taken from — I’ve been a fan of Billy and his music since I was 7 years old,” Guggenheim says. “He’s always been an inspiration to me, personally and artistically. I told him as much when I wrote to him to ask for his permission to use his concert footage in our episode and when he agreed, it was one of the happiest days of my career. I chose ‘No Man’s Land’ for the episode because I wanted to use an album track and I’ve always liked how that particular song sounds live.”
The album track part of this is arguably the most interesting, largely because of the fact that we could’ve seen Guggenheim go with almost any other song he’d wanted to from the singer. Why not go with one that’s a little more well-known? It feels mostly like he’s trying to tip his hat to longtime Joel fans like himself.
What do you think that the Arrow Thanksgiving episode sounds fun, or is it almost too jarring to be getting Billy Joel in the midst of all the celebration? Share below!
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