Billy Joel: The Legend of Billy the Kid
By Joshua Taylor
“I wanted to be a songwriter: I never imagined I would turn into a rock star.” - Billy Joel
Known by many as the “Piano Man,” Billy Joel is an American cultural icon. The Grammy-Award winning legend has released 13 studio albums, sold 160 million albums worldwide, and is the 3rd highest-selling solo artist of all time.
Billy Joel is still a polarizing figure in popular music: some consider him to be a poetic hero to the middle-class/working-class society of America, while others consider him to be a contemptive, uncool underdog begging for your attention. Others simply consider him to be the official King of Dad Rock. For music critics, Joel is their punching bag.
Yet, Joel is still performing today, at the age of seventy-four, and doesn’t care what his critics have to say about him. On February 1st, Joel released his first new single in seventeen years, “Turn the Lights Back On” and performed at the Grammys for the first time in over thirty years. Joel is also ending his record-breaking, one hundred and fifty-concert residency at Madison Square Garden in May, but is still touring and performing in places he’s never been before and has made it clear that he doesn’t have plans to retire any time soon.
He’s had an extraordinary career, going from a piano bar performer to a legendary songsmith.
But there was a time when it seemed unlikely that a kid from Long Island could have a lengthy, successful music career. In fact, Joel’s life was almost tragically shortened before his career could even begin.
Here is the “legend” of the Piano Man himself, Billy Joel.
Beginnings
Billy Joel was born on May 9th, 1949, to a Jewish-American family in the Bronx, NY. Joel grew up in the small village of Hicksville in the town of Oyster Bay on Long Island.
Joel began playing piano from the age of four, and was inspired by artists like the Beatles, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and Elvis Presley, as well as classical composers such as Beethoven, Debussy, and Chopin.
“The kind of music I program at home the most is classical music. My favorite composer of all time is Ludwig van Beethoven. I can’t get enough of him. This was a guy who inspired me as a writer, and still does,” said Joel at a Q and A session at Vassar College in 1997.
Joel first realized he wanted a career in music after watching the Beatles for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.
“That one performance changed my life…” said Joel in an CBS News interview in 2014. “Up to that moment I'd never considered playing rock as a career. And when I saw four guys who didn't look like they'd come out of the Hollywood star mill, who played their own songs and instruments, I said: 'I know these guys, I can relate to these guys, I am these guys. This is what I'm going to do—play in a rock band.’”
In his teenage years, Joel was a member of several local bands, including a British Invasion style band called the Hassles, and Attila, a heavy metal band.
Although Joel got experience from these bands, none of them were very successful, with Attila’s only album heavily panned upon release and now considered one of the worst albums of all time. This failure left him deeply discouraged. After a bout of terrible depression led to a failed suicide attempt in 1970, Joel spent several months in a mental institute to recover. After the fact, partnered with Artie Ripp, the owner of a little known record label called Family Productions, to produce his first album, Cold Spring Harbor.
Joel in 1971, during a photo shoot for Cold Spring Harbor.
“The advice I got from people in the music business was, ‘well, if you want people to hear your songs, make an album,’” said Joel in a 2011 interview. “‘And then you go out on the road and you do shows, and you promote your album.’ I thought, ‘this is a strange way to be a songwriter.’”
The album, consisting of 10 songs entirely penned by Joel, was recorded in the summer of 1971 and released that same November. However, it was a commercial flop and sold very poorly, partly because of a speed issue during the mastering process that left Joel’s voice sounding uncharacteristically high throughout the record, and as Joel put it, “I sounded like a chipmunk.”
Nevertheless, Joel didn’t really have anything else to work with, so he turned to touring throughout 1972, opening for acts such as the J. Geils Band, the Beach Boys, and Badfinger.
After being put on the radar following a well-received performance at a large music festival in Puerto Rico in April, Joel’s big break came after he recorded a song called “Captain Jack” at Sigma Studios in Philadelphia. “Captain Jack” was played by local radio station WMMR, and quickly became the most requested song in the station’s history.
Columbia Records executives heard the song, saw Joel’s talent, and signed him to a record contract in late 1972. As a result, Joel moved to Los Angeles, living there for around three years.
After the release of his 1973 album, Piano Man, and the success of the title song, Joel’s career rose, although he was still unknown in many parts of the country.
Career Stall
In the midst of newfound fame, Joel was overwhelmed with the weight of touring and his legal battle with Family Productions. Despite his contract with Columbia, Joel was legally binded to FP, requiring his first ten records to bear the Family Productions label and to be published under the label.
In 1974, Joel released his third studio album, Streetlife Serenade. “The Entertainer,” the only single from the album, hit #32 on the Hot 100. Otherwise, the album failed.
Streetlife Serenade brought forth Joel’s interpretation of life in Los Angeles. While his time in the city brought him semi-fame, LA was not his city.
After several years of nonstop touring and recording, Joel moved back to his native New York, just as the city was in the middle of a state of financial ruin, due to crime and an economic recession.
“If New York was going down, I was going down with it,” said Joel in an interview with SiriusXM.
The cover of the 1976 album, Turnstiles. Each figure on the cover represents a specific song on the album: the man and woman dancing are "I've Loved These Days,” the man in the leather jacket is "Say Goodbye to the Hollywood,” and the grandma with her granddaughter represents "Miami 2017.”
Joel’s exodus from California and his return to NY inspired his next album, Turnstiles. The album was a commercial flop, yet today is widely considered to be one of his finest works, spurring songs like “Summer, Highland Falls,” “New York State of Mind,” and “Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway).”
With the disappointment of the album, Joel’s record deal with Columbia was in jeopardy if his next album didn’t achieve better sales.
Billy Joel, Rock Star
Billy Joel in around 1979.
Fortunately for Joel, his next album, The Stranger, was a Grammy-award winning smash hit, breaking Columbia’s record sales record.
Produced by legendary producer Phil Ramone, The Stranger was a huge success, quickly becoming the highest-selling record Columbia had ever had. Three of the four singles reached the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, with “Just The Way You Are” bringing home both the Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 1979 Grammy Awards.
The Stranger’s success marked the beginning of a long line of successful efforts by Joel, with 52nd Street in 1978, Glass Houses in 1980, The Nylon Curtain in 1982, and An Innocent Man in 1983. Each of these albums have been certified platinum and were Top 10 Billboard chart toppers.
Glass Houses gave Joel his first #1, “It's Still Rock and Roll to Me”, and An Innocent Man, a tribute to his 50’s and 60’s music inspirations, launched the #1 hit song, “Tell Her About It.”
During this time, Joel suffered in his personal life. After a bitter divorce with his first wife and manager Elizabeth Weber in 1982, and an almost fatal motorcycle accident that same year, things rebounded for Joel with his marriage to supermodel Christie Brinkley in 1985 and the birth of his first daughter, Alexa.
“My daughter had been born at the end of 1985, and that completely changed my life,” said Joel in a 2006 interview. “It knocked me sideways, and it almost stopped me from wanting to be a road musician anymore, I didn’t want to leave my little girl.”
Thus, Joel’s next album, The Bridge, had the worst sales of a Joel album since Turnstiles, and, as music critic Stephen Erlewine of AllMusic put it, “The Bridge sounds dated and it’s his most uneven since Streetlife Serenade.”
Still, Joel did not let the critics bother him. He embarked on an extensive touring schedule over the next two years, performing over s hundred dates in 1987, including his “Bridge to Russia” tour, a landmark six-date visit to the Soviet Union. The tour, while very stressful for Joel and his band, was widely successful in spreading his music, and it marked one of the first times that a mainstream American artist had performed in the USSR. Joel’s visit to Russia was documented in the 1987 live album, Концерт (also known in English as Kontsert).
“The trip to Russia was probably the biggest highlight for me as a performer. I met these people and they weren’t the enemy. I also hoped that people in America could see what we did,” said Joel several years later.”
In 1989, Joel decided to shake things up with the release of his album, Storm Front. A stylistical one-eighty from the rest of his catalog, Joel brought in Foreigner frontman Mick Jones to produce the album, with the end product resulting in a cross between pop and arena rock. The album featured Joel’s last #1 song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
Then, in a huge shock to the music world and his fanbase, Joel announced the release of his final studio album, River of Dreams, in 1993. A commercial success but critical failure, Joel’s final album can be summed up by the lyrics of the last song on the album, ironically named “Famous Last Words”:
“These are the last words I have to say/that’s why it took so long to write/there will be other words some other day/but that’s the story of my life.”
After the River of Dreams tour concluded in 1995, Joel took a hiatus from music before embarking on a Greatest Hits tour in 1998, ending with a spectacular 4-hour concert on New Year’s Eve 1999, dubbed the “Millenium Concert”. At the time, Joel indicated that this concert would likely be his last, leaving many to think that he was completely done with music altogether, forever.
But alas, the Piano Man returned.
Joel returned to performing in 2006 with an extensive tour and a series of concerts at Madison Square Garden in NYC. After another hiatus from touring following this tour, Joel has been on the road since 2014, performing his Greatest Hits to fans all over the world.
What Makes Billy Joel Great?
In a world that is dominated by technology and trendy pop music, Billy Joel remains relevant. His hits like Uptown Girl and Piano Man are practically modern-day standards, while other songs like Vienna and Zanzibar have found newfound interest among younger listeners thanks to social media.
Still, Billy Joel has his haters.
Many of his hits have been called “schlocky,” “cheesy,” “self-loathing,” and “derivative” songs like “Just The Way You Are” and "Piano Man.” And while that can be considered true, Billy Joel’s music is so much more than that.
The key to understanding Billy Joel is listening to his back catalog. Sure, the hits are great: but most artists are oftentimes judged based on the musicality, lyrics, and catchiness of their hits. In the case of Joel, his hits are all excellent in each of those categories (maybe with the exception of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” but that discussion is for another day).
To truly understand an artist, you have to dive deep into their career, their life story, and the lyrics of their songs. Billy Joel writes songs that relate to his own life and the people that he meets, and that makes his music incredibly relatable. He is in many ways the ultimate singer-songwriter, especially when you look at his earlier songs.
An analysis of “Why Judy Why,” a virtually unknown album track from Joel’s first album, reveal a story of loneliness and frustration:
“Of all the people in the world that I know/you're the best place to go/when I cry, when I cry I never asked for much before, not before/Things are changed; I need more/Tell me why, Judy, why?”
Perhaps Joel’s vulnerability as a songwriter was at an all-time high when he wrote the songs for his album Turnstiles.
“Summer, Highland Falls”: “They say that these are not the best of times/but they’re the only times I’ve ever known/and I believe that there is a time for meditation/in cathedrals of our own.”
“New York State of Mind”: “Some folks like to get away/Take a holiday from the neighbourhood/Hop a flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood/But I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River Line/I'm in a New York state of mind.”
“James”: “James, we were always friends/From our childhood days/And we made our plans/And we had to go our separate ways/I went on the road/You pursued an education/James, do you like your life?”
Most of us can relate to a time where we felt lonely, or we were homesick, or we knew a friend who was unhappy with a life decision or career choice. We can relate to the themes of these songs, and that’s what makes Joel such a phenomenal songwriter. And the amazing thing is that these songs represent just a scratch of the surface of Billy Joel’s catalog.
Between Joel’s piano chops and his use of synthesizers, horns, and kitschy sound effects, Joel is also a creative musical genius. Inspired by artists like Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and even George Gershwin, Joel has the unique ability to take those inspirations and infuse them into his music.
Joel doesn’t even like the sound of his own voice, which possibly lends to his use of different voices in his music. Listening to a song like “Streetlife Serenader” versus “Vienna” will reveal two completely sounding vocals. Some people don’t even know that their favorite song is a Billy Joel song because it sounds so different. But this versatility really makes Joel a fiercely underrated vocalist. Even now that his voice has deepened from age, one could say his voice has aged “like fine wine” as it still has punch, power, and wonderful tone.
He has admitted that he’s purely an imitator, that he takes the successful styles of artists that he has appreciation for and turns them into his own songs. For example, songs like “You’re My Home” and “She’s Always a Woman” are imitations of Gordon Lightfoot, Laura and “A Room of Our Own” imitations of John Lennon, and “Uptown Girl” is an imitation of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
Joel also “borrowed” musical concepts from hit songs: “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” and it’s intro is a homage to Diana Ross and The Supremes, “Movin’ Out” is originally based off of Neil Sedaka’s hit song Laughter in the Rain, “Until the Night” pays tribute to the Righteous Brothers and Phil Spector’s revolutionary “Wall of Sound,” and “This Night” even uses Beethoven’s second movement of his famous Pathetique Sonata in it’s melody.
What makes Joel’s artistry original is that he is able to pay respect to the artists that inspired him by using their style in his own music, yet his songs are all his own. Not only does this contribute to Billy Joel’s continued relevance, but it helps keep the artists’ music that came before him alive.
Billy Joel is completely unique: he has a distinctive yet familiar sound, an incredible songwriting prowess, and a powerful energy only a Long Islander could have. Still, Joel doesn’t adhere to the common template for music artists: he’s not a Hollywood elitist, nor is he a self-serving snob. He’s still just as humble. If there’s anything about Billy Joel that’s been the same about Joel throughout his career, it’s his character.
Sing Us a Song Piano Man!
At the age of 74, even with the electric stage energy and high tenor voice gone from him, Billy Joel is still performing, singing the same songs he wrote over 30 years ago.
Joel often addresses his audiences by stating, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. I’ll give you the bad news first: we don’t have anything new to play. The good news is that you don’t have to sit through something you don’t know!”
But for Billy Joel fans, they don’t have to hear anything new: they just come to hear the Piano Man.
Billy Joel at his second home, Madison Square Garden. By the time he ends his ten year residency, Joel will have performed at MSG 150 times, making Joel's run at the arena one of the greatest arena runs of all time.
When Joel sings, not only do people listen, they sing along. A Billy Joel concert is arguably one of the most thrilling musical experiences, especially when he sings songs like “Allentown,” “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” or “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” or when the chorus of “Movin’ Out” reaches the heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-acks. It’s a community of people from all walks of life coming to hear the music that has affected each of them in their own way.
Fifty years after starting his career and the release of his signature song, “Piano Man,” millions of people around the world still love Billy Joel, despite all of his cheesiness and uncoolness, and no matter how many times they hear the song, they still find comfort in hearing that thundering chorus as Joel tickles the ivories and sings, “Sing us a song you’re the piano man, sing us a song tonight/well we’re all in the mood for a melody, and you’ve got us feeling alright.”
When you listen to the music of Billy Joel, you don’t just hear it: you live it, and that’s what makes him one of the greatest musical artists of all time.
