Madison Square Garden: the arena where Billy Joel played 150 times

Madison Square Garden is a sports arena first: home of the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers. But for more than half a century it has also been one of the most important rooms in music, the place where New York acts play their homecoming shows and where artists from everywhere else go to prove they've made it. As of 2016 it was the second-busiest music arena in the world by ticket sales. Some acts played it once. Some never left.

Four Gardens

The name is older than the building. There have been four Madison Square Gardens. The first two stood beside Madison Square itself, on East 26th Street: one from 1879, leased to P. T. Barnum and knocked down in 1890, and a grand second Garden designed by Stanford White, whose main hall was the largest in the world, with permanent seats for 8,000 people. The third, opened in 1925, moved uptown to Eighth Avenue and 50th Street.

The first was pulled down because of a leaky roof and dangerous balconies. The second was a showpiece, paid for by a syndicate that included J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and Barnum himself. Alongside the main hall it had a 1,200-seat theatre, a 1,500-seat concert hall, the largest restaurant in the city and a cabaret on the roof, all for $3 million. Like the first, it didn't make money, and the name moved on again.

The Garden we know opened on 11 February 1968 on a remarkable site: on top of Pennsylvania Station, one of the first buildings of its kind built over the platforms of a working railway station. To make room for it, the above-ground part of the old Penn Station, a celebrated Beaux-Arts building, was torn down. The outcry led to the creation of New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The nights everyone remembers

Some of the most famous concerts in history happened here. George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh was held at the Garden. Elvis Presley played four sold-out shows in 1972, his first and last concerts in New York City. Led Zeppelin's three nights in July 1973 were filmed and recorded and became The Song Remains the Same. On Thanksgiving night 1974, John Lennon joined Elton John on stage there, his last appearance at a concert before his murder in 1980.

It's also where New York rallies. After the September 11 attacks, the Garden hosted the Concert for New York City. And it marked the pandemic at both ends: the Allman Brothers Band's 50th-anniversary show on 10 March 2020 was the last concert before the arena closed, and Foo Fighters reopened it on 20 June 2021 with the first full-capacity show in a New York arena since the pandemic began, for a vaccinated audience only.

The list of big Garden nights goes on. Michael Jackson brought his Bad World Tour there in 1988. Parliament-Funkadelic headlined a string of sold-out shows in 1977 and 1978. The Police played the final show of their reunion tour at the Garden in 2008. Even the regulars had their moments: the Dave Matthews Band were joined by a surprise guest, James Brown, in 2002, and came back in 2018 after eight years away.

Billy Joel's 150

No one has played the Garden more than Billy Joel. A New Yorker by birth, he played his first show there on 14 December 1978, followed by three more that month. In 2006 he set a record with 12 consecutive concerts at the arena between January and April. In December 2013 the Garden named him its first-ever music "franchise", putting him alongside the Knicks, the Rangers and the WNBA's New York Liberty. The next year he started a residency of monthly concerts, and kept it going nearly continuously for a decade. By July 2024 he had played the Garden 150 times.

The regulars

Before Joel, the record belonged to Elton John, with 64 shows. He chose the Garden for his 60th birthday concert, released on DVD as Elton 60: Live at Madison Square Garden. In 1977 he became the first person from outside sport inducted into the Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame, for drawing 140,000 people that June, and in 1992 he was the first entertainer on the arena's Walk of Fame.

Then there's Phish. Their first Garden show was on 30 December 1994, and they've played multi-night runs there most years since, usually around New Year's Eve. In the summer of 2017 they played 13 nights in a row, a run they called "The Bakers' Dozen", and played 237 different songs without repeating a single one. The Garden hung a Phish banner in the rafters to mark it, and by July 2026 they had played there 96 times.

The Grateful Dead played 53 times between 7 January 1979 and 19 October 1994. The Who have headlined 32 times, including a six-night stand in 1996. Eric Clapton has played 45 concerts there since 1968, and the Dave Matthews Band has a standing reservation for two nights every November, 29 shows in all. Kiss, formed in New York City, played four sold-out shows in 1977 and two more in 1979, and came back for their final two Garden shows on 1 and 2 December 2023, the year of their 50th anniversary.

Gold and Platinum tickets

The Garden keeps its own score. In 1977 it introduced the Gold Ticket Award for performers who had sold more than 100,000 tickets at the arena. With about 20,000 seats, that meant at least five sold-out shows. The first eligible acts included the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Chicago, John Denver, Peter Frampton and Yes. A Platinum Ticket followed for 250,000 tickets. In 1984 the Rolling Stones went into the Garden's Hall of Fame for 13 sell-out concerts.

The smaller room downstairs

Not every Garden show is in the arena. The building also holds The Theater at Madison Square Garden, which seats between 2,000 and 5,600 people for concerts. It's built to feel close: almost all the seats are on a single level that slopes back from the stage, and no seat is more than 177 feet from it. Over the years it has also hosted the NFL draft, the NBA draft, boxing and TV quiz-show tapings, but for a gig-goer it's the Garden's in-between size, bigger than a club and much smaller than the arena upstairs.

The Garden at a glance

1. 1879
   The first Madison Square Garden opens, beside Madison Square.
2. 11 Feb 1968
   The current Garden opens, on top of Penn Station.
3. 1972
   Elvis Presley plays four sold-out shows, his only New York concerts.
4. July 1973
   Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains the Same.
5. 1974
   John Lennon joins Elton John on Thanksgiving night.
6. 14 Dec 1978
   Billy Joel's first Garden show.
7. 2017
   Phish: 13 nights, 237 songs, no repeats.
8. 10 Mar 2020
   The last show before the pandemic closure.
9. July 2024
   Billy Joel reaches 150 Garden shows.

Going to a gig at the Garden

The arena sits in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets, so the easiest way in is the one under your feet: Penn Station is directly below. Inside, the arena seats about 20,000 people, which is why it took at least five sold-out nights to earn one of the Garden's Gold Tickets. It's a short walk from the Empire State Building and Macy's on Herald Square. The streets immediately around it are named Joe Louis Plaza, after the boxer who defended his title eight times at the old Garden.

For other rooms with a long history, read about Wembley Stadium, where Coldplay hold the record with 22 shows, the Hyde Park concerts that began with a free afternoon in 1968, and Red Rocks, the venue built by nature. And for Led Zeppelin's live years, see the story of “Stairway to Heaven”.