Episode 5: Billy Joel with Will Stegemann

great White Sharks. Tell me what you love, why you love it, how you got into it, and what makes it awesome. Every episode is presented in three chapters. Chapter one, my guest and I talk about what they're obsessed with. Chapter two is a game I call Tradja, where my guests and I turn each other onto one thing that we've discovered. And chapter three closes the show with me talking about music that I'm currently geeking out on and why I believe that curiosity is contagious and the life

is better with a soundtrack. So let's go Chapter one. Today's guest is Will Stegman. Will is a professional businessman with a normal person job who I met because he's good friends with my manager, Whitney. Will lives with his wife, Nina and their pitbull Olive in Los Angeles, California. Whitney and I met up with him on a rooftop in Westwood last fall. So you're going to hear the occasional traffic helicopter overhead as we talk. So introduce yourself, Hi,

and Will Stegman. We'll tell us what you do for a little I work for a very big corporation that you probably do business with in some way, shape or form. And um, what I officially do, they're probably does doesn't matter to anyone who's gonna do this right now. Not to be mysterious, no, but I work a regular office job. I do a regular nine to five. I work in customer experience. I guess is the the umbrella that it

fits under it? And um, I am, I should say, reluctantly geeked out and obsessed with a musician from my hometown. I grew up on Long Island. I grew up about twenty minutes from where Billy Joel grew up, and I, for a very long time wanted nothing to do with the guy like I grew up. It was so like he was our he was our Springsteen. He was our he was our local hero. In my memory, the local radio station would play Piano Man at nine o'clock every Saturday night, like it was just the thing that we did.

And everybody lumped him. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew him. Um, and he lived there. He lived there even you know, you know, he had a place in New York City, he had a place in Miami, and he still had a place on Long Island. You know, you could see him in restaurants all the time. Um. He was just part of the local fabric and I wanted zero to do with it now, So I grew

up there. I lived there for the first almost twenty five years of my life and just partly turned five, picked up my stuff, and I moved away to where we are now. Where are we now? We are now in Los Angeles. Specifically, we are on our roof right, yes, And I don't live on this roof, like your listeners should know, Like I'm not, I'm not homeless. Um, I

have a roof. But when I would tell people where I was from, everyone would always ask like, oh, you're from Long and likely Joel you must love him like, nope, in fact, I don't. And then I would tell people that every year I would make a New Year's resolution, and it was January one, We're gonna go through this

whole year without ever hearing a single village. Also, it's like I started this when I was still living on Long Island, which meant I failed every year, But from like nine six on, it's like, this year, no, Billy Joel, We're not gonna go places where we think we're gonna hear him um, which was nowhere, Like and maybe I go to a hospital, but there was a good chance, like if you're at a hospital, you're still gonna hear like uptown girls while you're you know right, it's it's inescapable.

So I would every year do it, and then like I would be on the fourth of January sitting in a diner and all of a sudden you hear you know, Downeaster Alexa playing over the over the diner jukebox at two o'clock in the morning, and you're like, what is going wrong with my life? That, like I can't avoid this, this this guy, I just it wasn't personal. I didn't know him. I just thought everything that he stood for and believed in and everyone who enjoyed him and his

work was done. That's a dumb straight down just didn't know, didn't know a thing. M hm. So I spend fifteen years vowing every year to not hear Billy Joel. I moved to Los Angeles, where I feel like, oh, probably gonna hear less of them. They're not the case. Every year he would pop up, usually within the first sixty days of the year. I would call and be put on hold, and there would be like a music version of you know, always a woman like bastard got me again?

Like every year that sneaky Long Island Bastard would would nail me. So two twelve rolls around two twelve. I am how old am I? Then? I am thirty seven, and I got a job, I'm married, I'm doing well. I'm a different person than the kid who used to sit being angry and diners and cursing Billy Joel on Long Island. But I still won't listen to the guy. So two twelve, it's the It's New Year's Day and my wife is watching TV and she says to me, Hey, there's this movie on and I think you want to

watch Um. The movie is called Last Play at Shay. Shea was Chase Stadium with the New York Mets play and the other thing that I'm obsessed with is the New York Mets. So my wife sees this and says, oh, Last Play at Shay, that's gotta be about the Mets. Let me get my husband in here, who loves the Mets and hates Billy Joel, in this room to watch this. So she flips the channel and I come walking in and I realized, oh, Last Play at Shay is not a movie about the Mets. Last Play at Cha is

a Billy Joeld concert film. So it's the first day of the year. I'm not even twelve hours into two and I'm blown it up. So I decide in that moment after I storm out, and I'm like, how could you do this to me? Because it was really like that Twilight Zone moment, like it's a cookbook, it's not a mess thing. It's a Billy Joel movie. No. So it's over and my wife is like, I'm so sorry that I ruined it for you, and I'm like, We're gonna regroup, you know, We're gonna do this year. We're

gonna flip this script. I've been putting this off for too long. I'm gonna listen to every goddamn song this guy ever wrote, recorded and released, and I'm gonna I'm going in. I'm going in deep. I'm gonna find out what is it that I don't like about this guy? Why does he set off all of these things in me?

And over the course of two thousand and twelve, I did this thing called a Year of Billy Joel, where I basically dedicated the whole year to just studying Billy Joel's music, and over the course of that year became just kind of obsessed with it. Um the music, his story, UM his upbringing, the source, his of his material, his

his writing process. I became so deep into it that now will be five years later, Um, there isn't a day that goes by that somebody doesn't send me a link to something Billy Joel related, or um, bring something to my attention, like, hey, do you know about this? You should write about this. It's this thing that like five years ago, just as a joke, I decided to

do this, and it's just it's take. It's the thing that people know me for now as the guy who hated Billy Joel and then decided to give him a try. And would you say that you love Billy Joel? Now, I love I really enjoy Billy Joel the person. But it's like I enjoy it when I hear it, but it's not the thing that I seek out, but it seeks me out. It's it's like your obsession, now, is it. Yeah, that's a way way to put it. I'm like in Billy Joel's gravitational orbit. And as much as I try to, like,

I can't get away from it. It's like every day somebody sends me something, Um, I hear something. You know, there's there, you know, reissues and stuff coming up. Or I get into a dispute about something, or someone else is arguing about Billy joelian on the Internet, and if I'm within five thousand miles of that argument, someone's like, oh, talk to Will, He'll settle this for us. So I'm I'm also now the Billy Joel argument settler. It's true. Yeah,

I will. I will tag Will on Facebook if anyone says anything bad about Billy Joel and I'm like, well, I that Will have something to say about this. Judge will right. So then the other thing is like learning like who all of the other secret Billy Joel fans are like people who who are like, oh yeah, it's sort of like my guilty pleasure. And it's like, I wouldn't even say that it's my guilty pleasure. It's just

the thing that I identify with. Like the thing that really got me obsessive about it was more his individuals story um as like just just kind of hard luck kid living in the middle of nowhere on Long Islands. Like, if you live on Long Island, you are acutely aware that the biggest city in the world is less than an hour to the east. You're a train ride or a car ride from New York City, and you know that that magnetism, that power that is in New York

is right there. Sometimes you can see it. And you also know that they don't want you. You also know that you are an outsider, and you'll always be an outsider. There'll always be somebody from Long Island. Um and sort of the chip on your shoulder that you carry if you grow up in the shadow of a place like New York City or Los Angeles, you feel like there's something there that you want to be a part of, and yet you don't feel welcome. And I felt that

way growing up. It wasn't until I started reading into views where he talked about his upbringing and that sense of disconnect from the place he wanted to be um and I really began to say, oh, Like it's cliche, but like, dude, I've been hating all these years, were not so different to you and I like I realized, Oh, Billy Joel and I are essentially the same person, but with a different skill set. He has a marketable skill set.

I have a skill set that brings me to rooftops in the middle of Los Angeles to talk about projects used to do. So It's amazing though, Like the more I read about him, the more I um. It was like watching a movie that you hadn't seen before, Like I had never really studied the movie of Billy Joel's career, but through learning about him, I began to root for him, like as if I ignored the fact that I knew

what the ending was or the ending up to that point. Obviously, he's still with us, he's still performing, so his story is still being told old, but the story of like him struggling, him getting ripped off by a record label, him getting a signing possibly one of the worst contracts in the history of music. UM, and having you know, having to basically have the mob get him out of that,

UM get him out of that deal. UM. You know, going through like having to really struggle just to sort of get to the starting points and then have some success, have a record of the year, make some money, then get completely ripped off to the point where, oh, he's broke again. He stopped recording new music in the early nineties, but continued to tour for a decade because he was broke,

because he had to because someone he trusted UM robbed him. UM. You know, I had the same thing happened to me, obviously for less money, but like people I trusted like took money from me. And it was like every time I would read something about him, I could find some parallel. And the thing that it did for me was it helped me to sort of understand maybe where I handled adversity the wrong way, maybe where I um turned my

back on people out of anger. As I was doing this and reading about Long Island and reading about Long Island's favorite son, I missed Long Island a great deal. I really missed it. I had been living here for about twelve years at that point, so I was suddenly homesick. In the twelve years that I had lived in l A M, I had grown up. I went from being a kid to an adult, you know, being married and you know, not living like in an apartment with four roommates. UM,

just living something with my wife and my dog. My dad had passed away, and between my dad's passing and just time, I felt disconnected from my own upbringing. So I the thing that I got out of this, in addition to becoming just really into the life of a musician, UM was one finally giving his music a chance. And like I said, it's good. It's way better than I give him credit. I gave him credit for it's way better than I ever understood. And I think he is

grossly underestimated as a musician. So that was a gift. That was something I didn't expect. But also it made me go back home and connect and talk to family members I hadn't spoken to, maybe go to my high school reunion. Really, you've never been, never been, never been. Just coincided with my twentieth high school reunion, and I went they did, Yes, they did, because it's of course. And then I went to the diner afterwards, the same diner that I was once asked to leave for yelling

at somebody from playing piano. Man. Um. I went back to that diner and I put on some Billy Joel songs on the jukebox, and I sat with my wife and we listened to Billy Joel on a Long Island jukebox, and I felt like, oh, I've made it all the way back home, like this is good. This is a really good thing, Um. And you know, now when I go home, I have a different relationship with my hometown. I feel a lot more warmth towards it. I can go home and not really be angry about things, leave

the past in the past, and move forward. And where did you start? Did you like started like, did you do it chronologically? Yes, as I started the writing portion of the project with his first record, this thing called Cold Spring Harbor, which of all of the Billy Joel records, it's it's I would say it's the worst of them, but it's not all. It's not entirely his fault. When the record was was UM recorded the producer who also

owned the label who signed him to this terrible contract. Basically, a twenty year old Billy Joel signed a contract saying that UM he owed this rinky dink Long Islands, UM UM outlet ten records, and UM the record company basically could control everything and got a big cut of everything. So Billy Joel basically signed his life away at twenty because nobody else was offering him anything. You know, Columbia wasn't showing up at his house, Electra wasn't looking for him.

This local guy wanted to help make records. All I gotta do is signed a ten record deal and give him a large percentage of my publishing. Great, where do I sign? So so he signed this horrible deal. Then so his producer guy, but I already ripped who owned the record label already? RiPP goes to after the record and he does it at the wrong speed. Now, I don't know if you've ever mastered a record, UM, but

you probably understand how it works. Yeah, so not funny if you are the guy who's put his life into this. So when I talk about, like Billy Joel at this point, does everything right, you know works hard? Signs the deal that was given to him, says, I'm gonna make the best of his rights, a good collection of songs for a year old. You know, it's not a great record,

but there's promise there. Um it comes out and because it's mastered at the wrong speed, his voice sounds really high and the piano sounds like basically, take take a piano, stick it in like an aluminum backyard shed, and then put a mic outside of that shed. That's what the record sounds like. So the label is this little rinky dink operation. It's like, well, I ain't gonna pay the remastered this. Nobody's ever heard of this guy just put

it out like this. Oh my gosh. So young Billy Joel gets the pressing of his first record and it sounds like garbage, like it's it is. They later re released it. They remastered and rereleased it about ten years later. So the version of it you would buy now is the better version where it sounds correct. But it's on YouTube. Go to YouTube, look up Cold Spring Harbor original mastering, and you don't recognize the voice. So Billy Joel here's this record and feels like, oh my life is my

career is over? So he just takes his band on the road and it's like, well, I gotta earn a living. I can earn a living playing live shows. He builds a good reputation as a solid live act um and he's still working on new material. Columbia UM, somebody from Columbia sees him and they approach him, and he's like, I would love to sound you guys, Dylan's on your label, Like, of course, this is where I want to be, but I'm under contract to these guys for the rest of

my life to the point where you know. Of course, the reaction of Columbia was bright, you have a ten year deal with who will take care of this? And allegedly Columbia sent some muscle over to Basically, they worked out a deal where UM Family Productions, which was the name of this guy's company, UM got some sort of buy out and they got a piece of each record and for the first ten records of Billy Joel's career there's a Columbia logo and a Family Productions logo on

it because that was the deal. So, if you're trying to get somebody into Billy Joel, even though you started at the top, where would you start them regardless of the album. I would start with deep cuts, start pick up Piano Man, which was his first hit, and end um, don't play piano Man. Okay, listen to everything else on

the Listen to everything but Piano Man. Listen to Um Traveling Prayer, which is this great bluegrass song like Dolly Parton recorded in one of Grammy four and if you listen to it like Dolly singing, you'd never know it wasn't her song. Um, Listen to Traveling Prayer. Listen to Stop in Nevada, which is about him and this woman that he's now going to get married to them, sort

of heading west. Um. And then if you do want to listen to Piano Man, the important thing to know about Piano Man is that everything he's telling you in the song Piano Man is based on true life events. And he swears, and I'm gonna reveal here he and I have spoken about this, both on the phone and face to face. He swears to me that someone actually ordered a Tonic and Gin and also made love to his Tonic and Gin. Want a real estate novelist. We've never got into that. Look, I didn't How much time

do you think I had let's back up for a second. Yes, the part where you just said you got on the phone with him. Yes, yes, So what happens is, I'm doing this Year of Billy Joel through two twelve. In September of two thousand twelve. It ends up like not on the Today's Show, but on the Today Show blog, which they promote on the show, because that the year you tracked it online. That's what you're saying, you did you like, right, every day I wrote, I wrote four

days a week, four or five days a week. So yeah, I should have talked about that. As it's in a second. As it's going, I'm listening to every song and I'm writing a little essay about every song. Some days it's four sentences, some days it's two thousand words whatever comes to mind from the song. And as I'm writing about

the songs, um, I'm also writing about myself. I'm talking about my family, and I'm talking about like being at my dad's house when I'm seven years old, and like he and my mom have just separated and it's really weird and it's uncomfortable, and my dad puts on like this this like sand Billy Joel Songs Mixtape that he made. So I'm sitting in this basement department with my dad, and my dad's listening to Captain Jack, which is the

saddest song imaginable. And as my dad's listening to Captain Jack, he's painting over the windows so that the sunlight can't get in. Oh my god, And like I realized, like I'm my parents had me really young. So when I'm seven, my dad is years old. So like my dad is about the same age Billy Joeld is at that point, and like my dad feels like his life is over.

So we're just sitting there listening to sad music while my dad is like blocking the life out of our of our home and like just putting us in darkness. And I hadn't thought about that since I was a child, Like I remember that that night so vividly because all I wanted to do was watch the Mets because the Mets were gonna be on. It's like, when can we

watch the game? It's like when when I'm done with this, Like as soon as I'm done shutting out everything good in our life, we can watch the Mets and maybe we'll get pizza too. So it ends up on the Today show thing. So it suddenly gets some like some other outlets pick it up. It was like a Huffington's Post thing. Um, so it got some press. So Billy has a publicist who gets clippings every day and this was when he got so it was billed as the headline,

which is summed me up very well. Billy and Jill Hayter changes his tune with year long dedication, so appropriate headline. Yeah, So the publicist contacted me. I was like, hey, I would love to talk to you about this, Like, oh yeah, no problem, Like give me a call. So I don't think anything of it. So a week later, I'm driving home from work and my phone rings unknown number, which I normally would just let it go to voicemail, but for some reason, I'm sitting in traffic. I got nowhere

else to be. I pick up the phone and voice that sounds weirdly familiar. It's like, hey, can I talk to Will? Like this is Will. He's like, hey, it's Billy Joel and I'm like, come on, I won't say what I said because we're on a family type podcast here, but I'm like, get out of here. This is not Billy Joel. This is a friend of my dad's. This is somebody putting me on. So he's like, no, I

talked to and he gave me the publicist name. He's like, I talked to so and so she told me that, like, um, you're doing something about me, and that we should go to lunch. Because throughout the course of the project, every time I finished an album, I would post an open letter inviting Billy Joel to lunch. I was like, hey, look, I'm making the effort here. I'm trying to trying to make things good between us. And he's like, so, what's

this thing? And I it was in the weird position where I needed to tell a famous musician that I do not like his work. So I was like, I was like, how much did your publicists tell you about what I'm doing. It's like said, you had some my website you were writing about me. I was like, but did she tell you like how it came about? And so I'm like, hang on one second. I'm like, Billy, I've got to pull over to tell you this. So I pulled my car over to the side of the

road and like, here's the thing. I am not a fan, never been a fan of your work. I'm like, and he's just sort of silent. He's like, hey, a lot of people, you know, after a moment of silence, a lot of people aren't fans of my work. It's like I can live with that. And I was like, but I'm giving it a try, and like he was happy. It was like, oh great. He was like, what are you up to? So I told him sort of where I was, and we started talking about the records, huh.

And we just talked and talked and like to the point where you're like, hey, Billy, Joel has been great, but like, hey, I'm sure you gotta go. And he's like, don't worry about it. Like he couldn't have been nicer, and like he seemed to be more into talking to me about what I was doing. And if we end up talking about like our families and I'm talking about my dad who had passed away, and it was like we had this great conversation. So finally I'm like, Billy,

thank you so much. This has been wonderful. I'm like, before we talk any further, you should read everything that I've written and then decide if you want to continue to talk to me. Because he was like, hey, we should talk again, Like, if you have questions, you can ask me. Like, I was so amazed at how receptive he was to me taking a critical analysis his work. After the project ended, he was like, Hey, we're gonna do that lunch. So he came to l A. He

was here for something. Um, he was gonna be out here. Was like, Hey, I'm gonna be on here if you want to meet up. We met up, We had lunch. Um had a great conversation about you know, not just his music but music in general. Um, and like his he talked to me about how he thought people perceived his music. But it was a really interesting conversation. That's because you're right in the middle of that, right, I

mean I would say it as an artist. I mean, and this is none of this is it really about me? But I do know that the one muscle that you have to use is to convince a stranger to like you. Yeah. Well, I think there were two things that like the fact that wait, how come this guy doesn't like me, He's got to win me over, Like he got a little obsessed with this random dude liking him. Um, And so the other thing was like I wasn't asking him for anything right, Like I didn't have a demo on him

to listen too. I wasn't in a band. I wasn't trying to get anything from him, and I think because of that, he was willing to go further then he maybe would have been with other people, because I was like, hey, if you want to read this, I'd love to have you read this. But like he read it all and they called me and he's like, hey, I just want to let you know I read everything, and he's like

it's great. He's like, I don't agree with everything you say, but I really like I appreciate the thought, like the work you put into it. And he's like, you also make a lot of great points about stuff that I don't think people understand, Like I had said something that resonated with him. Um. And we had lunch and then he invited my wife and I to go to Hollywood Bowl, where we got to Um, you know you've been to

the Hollywood Bowl. Hollywood Bowl is a beautiful place. It's a lot more beautiful when you're sitting right up front. I've been to the Hollywood Bowl a number of times, and usually when I'm paying for the tickets, I'm sitting practically up in the hills like I usually like I'm closer to a coyote than I am the stage. But I I we go to see the show, and I'm sitting right in that little sort of pit area with

the tables and the and the millionaires. So we're sitting basically in the one percent section, and it's nice, like we're one percent caused playing like Hey, we're gonna pretend we're fancy people for a day now. But no, but none of the fancy people around No, is that I took the bus to the show. I took the bus, and it's like I'm looking at this guy up on stage like he was a bus taker, Like you know,

there's no reason, like he got lucky. He hit the lottery, you know, and he didn't, he didn't get a gift, like he earned his seat, but like he got lucky, like things could have very easily gone the other way. I watched him, and I realized, like he could just as easily be sitting on the bus with me and we're here seeing somebody else. So it was very much

like again, it's it's an identity. So I got ended up wanting to listen to somebody's music to see what it was that sort of brought people into it, and I realized it's a combination of one. As I said, songs are better than I gave him credit for, especially the deep cuts. Deep cuts are way better than people understand. And the person and the fact that oh more than any other, more than almost any other sort of hugely popular musician, like he could really be any one of us.

Like the appeal of Springsteen, who I love, is that everybody feels like Springsteen is a guy you can go have a beer with. Billy Joel was also a guy you can go have a beer with. Just he'll tell you this, don't let him drive you home. That's awesome. Chapter two. In every episode of Geeking Out, I see if I can trade one thing I've discus with one thing that my guest has discovered, a friendly exchange. I

call it trade you. This segment, as I'm eating some banana chips here um is called trade you, okay, And the idea is much like you have, uh you know, told me what your passion is or your obsession is what you're geeking out on. This is just something very kind of within your week, within your month, um, something that you're into and one thing that I'm into, and I'll trade you one thing for another. So for me, um, I'll start. So you're gonna have a show to think about.

Give me a moment um during our conversation. I just heard you say that you have a podcast, Mets podcast called Flushing Transit Authority, UM, which I do with my friend j Bushman, and it's a ton of fun we like talking about Basically, he and I love talking about the Mets. Are like, Hey, we're gonna talk about the Mets. Let's record it and make other people listen to it.

So this is my first experience in podcasting, and I, uh, you know, own a recording studio and stuff, so I know all of the things I should be doing to make it awesome from an audio standpoint. But um, what I've discovered is one of the things that's actually sitting

in front of us as this microphone right here. It's an apog microphone, and it this is the same converter in the bottom of this tiny little microphone that I used to record albums that when awards and it's somehow instead of having it in a giant rack, they put it in this tiny little microphone. And it will plug into your phone or it'll plug into your computer anything.

And secondly to to up it, there is a kickstarter thing when these guys in Canada that is um they call it the eyeball, and it goes on top of this and suddenly you have an entire recording studio that really will squish down like a nerf ball into your bag. It's amazing. You know what I'm obsessed with lately? I love Nil Young. You're a big Neil Young. I love Nil Young. Um does that mean that you bought like

a poo player? I did not buy a poono player because I also realized that your average listener, which I am, can't tell the difference, got it, And unless you have, like I'm listening to dope, you can't tell the difference. I'm listening to music in my car, or I'm listening with earbuds on my my iPhone or my home. You know, record player with a USB speaker is gonna be fine. So the thing that I'm obsessed with right now, Neil

Young put on a record this week called Hitchhiker. Hitchhiker was recorded in nineteen seventy six, and I learned about Hitchhiker through my friend Daniel Ralston, who just published a great story in Vulture uh this week, just you know, pop culture side about the making of this record. So the record was Neil Young, his producer David Briggs, who produced all of his best stuff. UM, and Dean Stockwell. Remember Dean Stockwell? Do you Stockwell from Okay? Now? Dean

Stockwell was also a musician. Dean Stockwell was a renaissance man of the twentieth century. Um, Dean Stockwell does not play on the record, He's just there in the room.

And but the record is just Neil Young and an acoustic guitar doing the first version of Pocahontas, the first version of powder Finger, UM, and a bunch of like other stuff that Captain Kennedy, like a bunch of stuff that you've heard him do on other records or he pulls out live every now and then, But just to hear like powder Finger, just on an acoustic guitar, because like the beauty of I love powder Fingers, one of my five favorite songs ever recorded. And just that sort

of that harmonic guitar sound. Um, and that's sort of really just slow she riff that he does on the electric and to not hear that um, as my friend Daniel points out, like makes the narrator of the song feel even frailer and more afraid than he is in the electric version two years three years before it came out on on Rust Never Sleeps. Wow, Okay, I will

totally go listen to That's fantastic. I I put Neil Young's guitar playing as one of the things that really inspires me because it's it's more right hand than left hand. It's so sort of like it's just so primal. Yeah, I love it. That's awesome. Well, thanks for being here or thanks for joining us on the route always happen to be on a roof, Go to be had. Chapter three me geeking out on music piano man, I would

like to discuss piano playing front men and women. We're all used to seeing our singers stand and perform at a microphone and some mics with diamonds on them, some with scarves or tambourines hanging down, and some even toiling or swinging the stands around like their weapons. We also have stars that commonly wheeled guitars as they sing, whether they're rock and roll battle axes, or hipster ukuleles or wooden steel string country artists. We're all accustomed to our

rock stars performing certain duties a certain way. As a culture, we really don't stray too much from this model. Yes, there are a few that play violin and a rare saxophone here. They're even a drummer like Phil Collins or Sheila E or even Cowboy Mouth. But I've noticed something odd about our rock stars. There are very few that play piano. In nineteen nineteen, stein Way and Sons launched an ad campaign for their pianos and the tagline was

the instrument of the Immortals. So let's think about that. Let's see what's on the top of my mind. Uh, Fats Domino, Cherry Lee Lewis, Little Richard all built rock and roll on pianos. And then my mind I think of Elton John and Billy Joel and Jules Holland from The Squeeze. Then I think I skip ahead. Maybe in my mind have been Folds, and then Lady Gaga and Sarah Burrellus, And then it feels like they're more like that old TV show The Highlander, that there can be

only one piano. Rock Stars are things that we love, but it seems that we don't have a lot of room for them on our pop charts. Great for rhythm and blues, great for songwriter, but what about the piano makes it a hard sell for a rock and roll Why is this just harder to carry your piano to a campfire at a remote beach to serenade the girl that you like, Harder to carry up a flight of stairs for an open mic. It doesn't go well with tight pants. Maybe it's baked into our learning by default.

When we take a piano lesson, we learned chopsticks versus on, it gets harror, we learn deep purple smoke on the water. Maybe it's our history in the fifties and sixties, as teenagers became purchasers, Fats Domino was playing two Dy Fruity versus Chuck Berry playing Johnny be Good? Is that when we turned Maybe in our subconscious it's that we feel that a piano just can't get loud enough to drown out the cheers of an arena and may in the masses.

Whatever it is. As a guitar player, I'm always fascinated watching my brother playthings with keys on it. Fascinated hearing Elton John effortlessly's land a song on its feet every time it tumbles out of a speaker. Fascinated at how Billy Joel sounds like a drummer and a bass player and a guitar player all at the same time on

the same instrument. I hope someone new out there feels like taking us for a ride soon on their imagination using their piano, and I hope it feels like freedom and rock and power and awesome long live rock stars who play piano. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Geeking Out and we are already hard at work on the next one. Are you obsessed with something amazing? I want to tell us about it? Right to us at geeking Out with KB at gmail dot com and you

might be a guest on an upcoming episode. Come find out more about me and this podcast at Christian Bush dot com, Christian with a K people follow me at Christian Bush on Twitter, Christian Bush Instagram, Christian Bush on Facebook, and Christian M. Bush on Snapchat. Thanks to Bobby Bones for the opportunity to make this podcast, Brian and Bush for making the soundtrack and assembling the pieces, Tom Tapley for audio wizardry and Whitney Pastrick for being a great

producer and making this whole thing possible. This is Christian Bush geeking out. Thank you for listening.