POP/ROCK - Aug. 4, 1987

Billy Joel had kinder words Monday for the Soviet audiences in Leningrad than for the glummer Muscovites. Cheering Leningraders jumped up and down on their seats, breaking about 200 chairs, then lifted him over their heads in celebration after his performance Sunday night. “The audience was a lot looser than the one in Moscow. I guess the farther away you get from the seat of power, the less paranoia there is,” Joel said, adding that the Sunday show was his best yet in a three-week tour of the Soviet Union. Joel’s tour producer, Rick London, said the rocker would either pay for the broken chairs or leave behind 500 folding chairs he brought with him to help accommodate overflow audiences.