Authorities in New York City say that they briefly questioned award-winning musical superstar William Martin Joel about his potential involvement in a Wednesday morning blaze of the Christmas tree in front of Fox NewsCorp's headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
Police say they questioned the 72 year old Joel--a five time Grammy winning singer-songwriter known for his iconic stadium shows--for approximately four minutes and forty-nine seconds on Wednesday afternoon before ultimately clearing him of involvement.
They remained tight-lipped about the exact contents of what Joel told police, only describing it as a "rather bizarre, rambling screed in which he named dropped a long laundry list of dozens of various newsworthy events and figures of the second half of the 20th Century."
"It was all quite strange," one detective said. "At one point, he's talking about serious items like the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, the JFK assassination and protests in Tiananmen Square, and the next moment, he shifts to far more light hearted topics like California baseball and the Coke and Pepsi 'cola wars.'"
Despite police finding Joel's statement completely baffling at times, they nonetheless described it as "extremely catchy," and noted that upon its conclusion, several detectives in the interview room stood up and cheered and requested an encore.
Ultimately, Joel was cleared of culpability when it was determined that at the time of the fire, Joel was uptown visiting a female companion and therefore couldn't have committed the arson. The exact name of the woman was not released, but it was said she was someone who was "living in her white bread world" and that she was seeking out a "downtown man."
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