If you’ve been to enough of these, you know what to expect once the lights go on, once the last encore is done and the roadies take the stage to pack it up and tear it down: half the arena is already climbing up stairs, sprinting for exits (though they’ll deny it to their friends), hoping to win the dash to the parking lot.
Not this time. All around Nassau Coliseum Tuesday night, the foot traffic halted, five minutes after Billy Joel had played the final chord of “Only the Good Die Young.” Ten minutes. The show had lasted for 3 hours and 7 minutes and the folks craning their necks inside this doomed hockey rink gladly would have stayed for another 3:07.