‘If someone had told me twenty years ago I’d be spending this much time with cops, I would have punched him in the goddamn face,” says Billy Joel with a laugh.

Joel is referring to the four weeks he’s just spent rehearsing at the Suffolk County Police Academy, in West Hampton, Long Island. There, for most of November, he played the toughest series of gigs in his life – at least since the tour he did in the Seventies opening for Olivia Newton-John. Sure, he may have successfully invaded Russia with rock & roll, but for Joel, who proudly confesses to having “one big problem dealing with authority,” it takes nerve to spend a month warming up for a world tour by playing for a uniformed audience bearing firearms.

“My single biggest fear in life is being called down to the principal’s office,” says Joel. “It’s someone telling me, ‘Billy, you’re not following the rules.’ It’s being told what to do. By a manager. By a lawyer. By a critic. By a cop. By anybody. I’ve gotta work on it, I suppose.”

Of course, Joel’s reasons for hanging with the authorities were not simply therapeutic. He wanted to stay as close as possible to his wife, Christie Brinkley, and their three-year-old daughter, Alexa Ray, before heading out for a road trip that could last more than a year, and he also wanted to pump cash into the local economy.

On one of the final days of rehearsal, Joel practices his craft onstage in the academy hall, which resembles an airplane hangar – except for the fake pizza parlor and real-estate office where police trainees investigate mock crimes to perfect their own craft. As a half dozen policemen try to look busy, Joel’s new band (drummer Liberty DeVitto, guitarist David Brown and saxophonist Mark Rivera – all veterans – are joined by new members percussionist and backup singer Crystal Taliefero, multi-instrumentalist Mindy Jostyn, keyboardist Jeff Jacobs and bassist Schuyler Deale) works out a grittier, more soulful sound than that of the old group Joel disbanded before recording his latest album, Storm Front.