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People in the News

Joel to speak at graduation

HICKSVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Fifty years after he finished short by one English class credit from graduating high school, Billy Joel is returning to his Long Island hometown to speak at this weekend’s commencement ceremony.

Newsday reports the 68-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer will be among the speakers at Saturday morning’s graduation for Hicksville High School’s Class of 2017.

The six-time Grammy Award winner didn’t graduate with the class of 1967 because he had fallen shy by one English credit. But he returned for the 1992 graduation ceremony and received his diploma, telling the audience, “I can finally pull myself out of this dead-end job I have and start working on a career with a real future.”

Joel is in the midst of a tour.

Richie: Tour will be ‘camp city’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lionel Richie is welcoming full diva behavior from Mariah Carey when she joins his “All the Hits “ tour next month.

Richie jokes that he expects Carey to bring along a massive entourage and might need a “dressing room larger than the arena,” but that’s no problem.

“I wanted her to feel in her element,” Richie says. “And a diva has to do what a diva has to do.”

The Grammy- and Oscar-winning singer-songwriter says he invited Carey on tour because of her discography of hits and campy vibe.

“It’s going to be camp city,” Richie says. “And I told her, ‘Bring all the camp with you.'”

Richie and Carey’s 22-show tour launches July 21 in Oakland. Richie postponed the tour’s start in February so he could fully recover from a knee procedure and says he now feels great.

The 68-year-old father of three — who says he’s writing a book called ‘How to Survive Your Children’ — is accustomed to dramatics. He says his daughter Nicole started her acting career as a teenager at home anytime she denied wrongdoing. Now she’s earning praise for her comedic turn in the NBC sitcom “Great News.”

“She has the command of what she wants to portray,” Richie says of his eldest child. “If it’s dramatic, boy can she be dramatic. And just funny. That’s a natural.”

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