From the Archives: Billy Joel

This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. Billy Joel's fans have gotten to know him quite well over the past four decades.

Don't go change it.

To dry please me.

You never let me down before.

From the open hearted declarations of old fashioned love and She's Got Away and just the way you are to the hard rocking social commentaries we didn't start the fire and Alentown we're living here sunny. If like me, you grew up listening to Billy Joel's music, you can chart phases of your life by each of his albums. Maybe that's because Billy Joel's songs are so passionately connected to

Yes, but you know it's fun. You can't have act alongs. You're an act you can't act along, but you can have sing alongs. I can always sit down at a party, play the piano and everybody starts singing.

I go to a pub in England, Hey, come on, vinegarys and having his owns go there. You go, yes, uptown girl up and they all sin around and sing and everybody has a bliss. It's fun. It creates a community instantly. Billy Joel is the third best selling solo artist of all time in the United States. He sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna, but

I know what good piano playing is, and I'm not good. My left hand is lame. I have a two finger

I forgot how So if I took a piece of music that you didn't know, if I got a score, I wouldn't. And I put in videos to play this, I would not. It would be Chinese. It would be Chinese too. Yeah, I don't know how did that happen. It's like a language. If you stop speaking it often enough, you can't forget. When did you stop?

In one Dances with Wolves, she forgot how to speak English. I started taking lessons when I was about four or five, and I went up till I was about sixteen, so it was almost twelve years.

Of classical piano lessons.

I loved it, but I just when you become a teenager, everything changes. I didn't want to read other people's dots anymore. And I also realized early on, I'm not going to be a concert pianist. I don't have the rockmanning Off hands,

You were Johnny Frimley's hands. Who's Johnny Frimly from on the waterfront?

Oh?

You were a union boss doing the shape up down to the dock and hopboken. Yeah, yeah, you're not you're not. It was my brother. You stoildn't taken better care of me, Charlie.

He should have looked out for me, Charli, just a little bit, a little bit. So what did I get it?

One way?

Thick of I'm a bum, Charlie. Let's face it, that's what I am.

That's what I am. So you're a kid and you was there an intimation in your household? There was a classical music, right, my faical music. Yeah.

He was a classically playing trained pianist. He grew up in Nuremberg, Germany, and he also went to school in Switzerland. His father was quite well off. They had a mail order textile business, Joel Mocht fabric. So he had learned to play the piano. It was a very musical family.

My mom used it to grow a honeysuckle. She sang.

Her family were all singing Gilbert and Sullivan, English music hall people. Her family was English, so I grew up in a very musical home. I heard music all the time. My father was playing, my mother would sing. Radio was always on, listening.

To Milton Cross on the Opera. On Sunday, Leonorda enters wearing a white gum.

So I used to bang on the piano.

My mom got sick of hearing me bang, and she dragged me down the street and I started taking lessons, and I took to it.

You and the lester, and your mother and your father.

I grew up on the island in the Levittown section of Hicksville. We had a Levett house, you know, the cape cod on the quarter acre. Everybody's house looked the same, started out looking the same. Now it doesn't look anything like Levittown, right like my town.

Yeah, sixteen years old, Hicksville, Long Island, Vietnam War going on, Yes, very very tumultuous times, and all of a sudden, what do you decide you want to do well?

I joined a band when I was fourteen. I was asked to be in a band, the Echoes. This was the Echoes garage band. All guitars because there really were no keyboards that you could amplify. I played the piano.

It was cool, pieces, bits and pieces, and I'm feeling it's the most unglad sounding song. He was constant you, so you amplify the keyboard. We got an organ and I and I was.

They decided I had the best voice in the band, which isn't really saying much because nobody could sing all that well in the band. We couldn't even harmonize. We're very bad singers. But they decided you would have got the best voice. You'll sing the songs.

Okay, how did you feel about that.

I felt a little funny about it because I'm not a front man where you stay with Michael mc jagger. I didn't have the mic jagger moves. I had a keyboard. You kind of locked in. You can't move around. You can't carry a keyboard around unless you were accordion player. And that looks like Lawrence welk Avan. Then the two so I stood at the piano or I sat at the piano. But then I realized, you know, that girl I always had a crush on, is actually looking at me.

You know, come out Virginia at that Virginia she's looking I said, my my god, she's looking at me. And the band sounded great. I love what I was doing. The crowd went yay.

When we finished every song, and at the end of the night, the priest gave us each fifteen dollars, which in nineteen sixty five was fifteen hundred dollars.

That was it.

The door locked behind me. This is what I'm going to do. I don't want to go to Corneghill anyway, And I ended up going to Corneghill anyway. What music were you performing covers of other people? Jukebox bands were playing early Beatles, Stones, Sam de Sham and.

The Finger in that time when you're seeing Tommy James

Well, I liked a lot of different kinds of music. I already came out of a classical background, and I really dug jazz when I was in my early teens. Dave brew Beck, Scarpedison, Art Tatum, Jimmy Smith, Bill Evans. I loved jazz. But I realized I ain't gonna be one of those guys either. Why because I wasn't a good enough pianist.

I mean, these guys are as virtuostick, virtuistic what virtuostic virtuostick? They're good good, They're just really good. I mean the top of the line, guys at the top of the line in classical and jazz. They could have gone either way.

The top of line classical guys, how they decided to be jazz guys could have been just as good as the top jazz guys, and vice versa.

I wasn't good enough. I was good enough to play rock and roll and pop.

But when I really fell in love with as a teenager with girls and stuff was first.

I like soul music.

James Brown, Wilson, Pickett, Otis Redding, the Temptations, Marvin Gay, Marvin Gay, Smokey Robinson, Gladys.

I mean, I just loved Did you cover that music as well? I try to?

You know, well, it was all you know they were. They were all white people, yeah, exactly. And there wasn't Long Island. There wasn't anybody but white people in my school. I think there were a couple of Jews, some Latinos. That was sprinklings. But everybody's white. But everybody likes me it twist and shout what everybody would do?

Come on now, shout, come on? Yeah, and Louis Louis. I think there was the Kingsman. What I say, Ray Charles, So you the girl all dressed in green and you'd make up really dirty words to that. We came up with some really good stuff.

So I love that stuff. And then the Beatles came around and there was boom. Four working class guys from Liverpool, which is as close to Levittown in England, I think, and sounding anyway, then you can be okay if four guys from Liverpool, yeah, Liverpool.

And it's possible. It's possible. They don't look like.

Frankie Avalon, they don't look like Bobby ry Dell. They look like four working class guys from anywhere. They could be from Ckxville, they could be from Livetown. So I said, that's that's possible. That's what I want to do. I want to write my own songs.

I want to play in my own band, do our own arrangements and make our own way.

When did that start? This is before the Echoes, before before I joined the band. The Beatles came out.

You were a kid. I was a kid.

I was thirteen and you started writing music. Yes, started writing Arizot's Beatles songs.

Well, I climbed the highest mountaine trying to sound Liverpolon live Apudlian, Pudlian, Yeah, you know, she don't love me like before my own song she Don't Love Me Anymore, But I believed all the lad she told me.

Ah ah, you know that kind of thing, trying to sound like the early Beatles. And it was fun.

It was a lot of fun. But I was asked to join a band after the Beatles came out. Now you got to remember November of sixty three, John F. Kennedy is assassinated. The country goes into the dumps. Even though we didn't know that much about politics or government, he was our guy. He would the young, vigorous progressive. He represented youth and vigor and he was booming. He was shot taken away, and everybody just turned off, like a switch turned off. We became very cynical to press.

Yes, everything everything that was taken away from us, great, let's go have a party. Let's party. So you start writing songs and you're saying, airsat's Beatles songs. What's the first song you write that you can remember? Was called My Journey's End. I could play it. I fil me too.

Let's it We'll climb the highest mountain, swim with Dick.

If I knew you were there at my journeys and.

Waiting for me, I can tell them the letters.

That you you said, jes I go anywhere.

If I know you were waiting at my journey, He's in.

What's the first song you wrote that was on a record that you sold? Can you remember?

Well?

It was probably in the Hassles. The Hassles sold records a few on Long Island, probably maybe Jersey.

At the Woodrow Wilson rest stop.

Yes, I think it was the Coffee chot Full of Nuts in Paramus, because we opened it. We Hassles played at the opening the first time.

I we sold anything.

So I was signed originally with the Echoes to Mercury Records, and we changed the name to The Lost Souls. Were the Lost For a while, we made a couple of records. Nothing ever happened. Uh what was the other one? Though she don't.

Love me A lot of people she don't love me any more.

I believe all the last she told me.

Don't you know it's true that she stole me away from.

My true love and Nama lul Love doesn't love me anymore.

Almost like mister Mike. That's like the Beatles.

And then we became the Lost Souls, and it turns out there was an English band called the Lost Soul, so we had to change our name. So the president of Mercury Records, brilliant guy at the time, So, okay, we're gonna give you a new name, the Commandos Vietnamers.

Sure at the time, you're gonna be the Commandosh we hate that name. Nobody likes or yeah, no, we likes that stuff.

I know you're gonna be the comand it's gonna be great and we're gonna get your outfits. And so that lasted about fifteen minutes and we got dumped off the label.

So it's Echo Lost Souls, Lost Souls and then command Mandos for a weekend. For a weekend. It opened up one quick chuck full of nuts.

And then I there was a band on Long Island which was making a lot of local noise called the Hassles. They asked me to join the guys in my band and the Echoes, Lost Souls Commandos Room. They were all going on to either the military or college. None of them were really seriously going to be musicians except the bass player. And I said, I'll join all right, I'll join the Hassles. They wanted me to play organ I'll join the if I can bring my bass player with

Ass, didn't matter, you can wiggle it.

He was gorgeous and women just went nuts and I'm in the back door were death well, but they had eyes, you know, they could they.

Could see the music video killed the radio absolutely glad.

I came up in an air where it wasn't that prep record. So then I was in the Hassles. Now, the Hassles were a band, blue white soul band. There were a bunch of them. The Vagrants was another one.

Uh.

They used to play at the Action House all the time on Long Island. We made two albums with the United Artists and they both bombed out. That that's the first time we started selling anything. Every step I take. Was the first song that I wrote that actually sold something.

Was the vamp Everything I Do I don't know. The chorus went every step by say, every move I made. You know, I'm trying to a knife with that, I turned eye run, eye hid really no, deep inside, A part of me has died. He said, like, I didn't know you wrote that. That's great. That's how my father used to tell it. Sounded like Pompey. Yeah.

So that was probably the first thing that solo was on the first Hassle's album. I think we saw a dozen copies and I actually heard it on the radio once. But our big single was actually a cover of a Sam and Dave record, You Got Me Humming.

I don't know what you got but it's good too, man. You got Me Humming, You got Me Huming. It's a big song by Sam and Dave.

Everybody was covering soul records and doing them psychedelic or doing their own arrangements of them. That was the Hassles hit. First time was horrible, This second hal was really horrible. And then I, me and the drummers split off from the Hassles to form a power duo like I.

Played Simon and Garfuncle. Yes, sure, we were.

Going to destroy the world with amplification. This was like the heavy metal thing we heard Zeppelin.

It blew on mind Iron Butterfly, Gotta DaVita.

Don't you know that I love you? Ye went on and on and on. We tried to are we listening to that? Because that's what there was? A Garden of Eden? Isn't that what someone said? There was?

That was?

That was like a nonsense lyric. A friend of mine knows the guy that wrote that song. I think I think he was trying to say, in the Garden of Eden, you actually know the lyrics to it? Divita. Yeah, that's all I know in a Gotta DaVita. I don't remember the rest of it. I remember he explained that he was at a party in La years ago that they were really in the game. He made a gibberish version,

The band's got small and smaller and smaller. The Attila became a two man band.

So when you and he went off, we went with Attila was the two of you. Attila was just the two of them. What did he play? He played drums, drums.

I played Hammond organ wired directly through ham We're getting closer.

To Lawrence Welk. Now the more we go, it's getting closer. I almost got that, according but it was louder. It was much louder.

And we got signed to Epic, and we were on Epic for one album and it was in colossal failure. We played one gig I think it was on Ungano's on the West Side in Manhattan, and people went fleeing from the place. We were so loud you could see blood coming out of his ears, which is horrible. Thank god it didn't happen, because I would have screamed myself out of the right, out of the business.

So after you nearly kill a room full of people at.

On Commomy and then what happens then that we broke up and I decided I no longer want to be a rock and roll star. I got that out of

So give me, give me an except one of the earliest ones you remember writing, baby, all the lights are turned on you. Now you're in the center of the stage. Everything revolves on what you do while you were in your prime of comedy. Man, you can always have your wears somehow, because everybody want you know, it was kind of Dylanesque, you know. I wanted to I wanted to go play in the village. Actually I didn't even want to play anymore, just you, me with you and the piano.

Well, I got a band to play this stuff with me, but I'm picturing it on guitars general maybe on a lands ten on you.

You're in a center of the stage.

Everything revelves on what you do.

Hy you already primed coming.

Did you send him that song to record? I wanted him to. But Bob writes his own stuff. He's not gonna do covers. He doesn't buy songs from other people.

No, he does not, and he does very well with his own right, of course. But I no longer wanted to be the guy on stage. I wanted to be the guy behind the scenes. It's kind of a Jimmy Webb kind of thing. This just happened to coincide with the era of the singer songwriter Harry Chape and Jim Crochey, James Taylor was huge at the time, Jackson Brown, Jackson Brown, all these singer songwriters. Even Carol King, who was a great songwriter, became a singer songwriter.

Sure.

So the advice I got was, well, you want people of these songs, why don't you make your own album?

Okay.

I got a record deal, and then I got traded to a record company on the West Coast call Family.

Records, a guy named already Rip, perfect name. I was

I fell in with the you know, Hydrid lead actor's life for me, for those people. And I recorded an album in La. I lived in La for a little while. They said, Okay, you made the album. Now now you've got an album, you need to promote it. You need to go on the road and play and promote the album. Is oh okay. It's kind of a strange way to be a songwriter. But that's what other people were doing. But you know, other people be interested in my material

So a song like this.

She's Got Away about her, I don't know what it is, but I know that I can live without played like.

This She's Got Away.

I don't know what it is, but I know that I can't live without it.

So if you hear that recording, I sound like the Chipmunks, well speed it up kind of. Yeah, it's terrible. The album never went anywhere.

Nothing happened, and I went on the road and I promoted it and never saw it in the stores.

But that was when I was me. That was just Billy Joel. So you when people buy that album, the album has been re released where it's not at that speed.

It's been remastered, but it's still there's something wrong with it. It just doesn't sound right. I would advise people don't buy it. If you can steal it, steal it.

We're taking a break, stay with us. So then, so Cold Spring Harbor is the first album. It's you, how Many Get You? And it's how many band members? Guitar, bass, drums, and there was some violins.

That were put in by Audie Rip you know he was trying to be phil Spector. It got all glopped up. It was supposed to be more of a folky. You recorded that in La, recorded it in La. How long

Three years? What was that like for you? Weird?

How I went there and I stayed on Santa Mia Boulevard. It's just dun't be a little place called the Tropicana Motel right there on Santa the Duke's where the Duke's car, Duke's coffee shop, and they mean the huge sandwiches for the poor.

Musicians have breakfast at Duke's. It was great.

Yeah, you know a buck, you're gonna eat like a can. The place was a dump, but the postcards said the Tropic Canna and it had like a palm tree on it. So I sent postcards all my friends.

I've made it. I'm in Hollywood, coming together a cat. I'm having omelets on Santa Monica Boulevard for a dollar. I mean to play it my song at a Chipmunk speed. Well, it's all going great. Yeah, if you're from Long Island, you get a postcard with a pomp. It says the Tropic Canas. Oh my god, he's made it because you and I from the same background. Yes, I mean I'm from southsho Wanga and when I when people would do

You know what I mean?

There's a weird you know, to make love to a woman in front of all them people. Can you pick who you make out with? Yeah? They're like, do you enjoy that? It was a fun you mean he groupies out there. I'm like, no, it's not fun because it's one hundred and twenty five people staring at you like, oh yeah, I forgot about that, Yeah, I forgot. We got those questions. What's it like in the studio? I mean like a lot of drugs and girls and stuff.

No, you're actually in a factory and you're surrounded by equipment, and you know, I don't.

Have like big fish tanks full of cocaine, like chicks coming in with bikinis and stuff from the beach rubbing your neck and shoulders while you're playing. Yeah, and that's what it looks like in the movies. Yeah, did you meet the movie stars some of a musician. I'm like, you haven't done it with all the big stars, right, and a fish tank full of blow when chicks and bikinis rubbing the shoulders right, day and night. That's what people think now when you did the you did Cold

I got a job after I did the Cold Spring Harbor album. I dropped that aside. I had to get out of this horrible deal and I'd signed. I signed away everything, copyrights, publishing, record royalties, everything, my first child I gave away at all.

And I said that I got to get out of this deal, and.

I hid in La and I worked in a piano bar under the name Bill Mortin. This was down in the Wilship District, and it was it's not a real bar town LA. You know, Long Island is a pub on every corner. It's a pub culture.

So when people close their eyes and they think a piano man, I think of a guy bending over, you know, leaning over a piano, and I think of a guy in a place on Long Island or in New York. But you recorded that out of Los Angeles.

I recorded in LA and that's where I worked. Some people think I did it for years. I worked in this piano bar for six months. I needed to make some money. I made Union scale, I get tips. Mostly played the you know, major seven chords.

Anything I don't, But how does piano man start? Right?

That kind of thing? That guy in the hotel lot lobby. They would request songs I didn't even know the song. Can you play what's that? Hogey Carmichael's song?

Startups? And I would go, sure, do you play mystery? Sure? And everybody was drinking pretty heavy because in an l.

A bar, these were all people who lost at the track, losers. I just like drink like fish and I got free drinks.

Oh my god. So then you do piano man. That was the next album after that, You do in La. We did Piano Man in La, and there was an album that wasn't a hit album. People perceived that to be a hit.

It was not a hit Piano Man. Piano Man was not a hit record. It was with a turntable hit. In other words, it didn't sell through. But this is back in the early seventies. In those days they still had FM, progressive radio. Disc jockeys could spend whatever they wanted.

W L I R. Dennis McNamara, that's it under him. I was a kid home. I was smoking, you know what, leaning out the window, so my mom didn't know. And on the video here w L I R. This is Dennis smack namara Jackson Brown right. I listened to this guy. He was my childhood Dennis mc We grew up with these dis jockeys at night. Allison steel Alis, the night Bird, Roscoe Zacherley, was Vin Skel Vince Skels, and my favorite guy was Scott Me and he coming at Chess got

This got me and you're coming at you right now and it was great voices just coming out of the air and they played whatever they wanted. They didn't have program directors, they didn't have consultants, and people would call in. If they got enough request they would play a track. So Piano Man got requested all the time. It was a five and a half minute record. I mean, he's not an am hit an amount of time. It's too long, and it was in three quarters time.

It's a waltz popa.

And it's and it's not really lyrics. Dilimeerates John at the bar is a friend of mine. He gets my drinks for free. He's quick with the joke and a lot of you smoke with us. Somebody did he rather be? It could be one of the girl from Nantucket. Yeah, so it's the Limericks. And if anybody said this was going to be a hit record, I tell him right

It wasn't.

The next album comes out Street Live Serenade, it's the sophomore Jenks I did not have enough time to write new material after the Piano Man.

Alm came out.

Piano Man made a lot of noise, got a lot of attention paid to it, record company wanted another follow up right away. Okay, new album now, But I've been on the road. I haven't had a chance to write. I need it now. I didn't have any material and.

You can hear it. So what do you do? What do you do when you got nothing? What do you play? I had nothing. I was empty. I was running on empty. But there's not nothing on the album. Where'd that come from? Well? I had one song that I thought, which was the Entertainer. Which is that? Another folks on I am the Entertainer. I know just where I was done. Another surtinator. I had another long haired band today, I am the Champion. I made one your hearts, but I know the game.

I won't be here in another year if I don't stay on the charm. I wrote it on the guitar, actually, but that was it. That was probably the one song that I had finished. And the boom in the studio the clock is ticking. So there's two instrumentals on that album, the root beer rag, which is just a piano rag time thing, and this air zots Western movie theme called the Mexican Connection. Because I was living in LA was fascinated with westerns.

That's it. There's a song actually on the piano.

Man, I'm called the Ballot of Billy the Kids historically completely inaccurate. I just used Western sounding things from a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia.

It wasn't from Willie, West Virginia. He was actually from Brooklyn.

Boy with a six gun in his hand, and then he robbed his way from Utah to Oklahoma.

He never got out of New Mexico. You're ruining the song for me now. I don't want to know how Saua made East and West Pallida. Billy the Kid is fine by me the way it is. Don't screw it up for me. No, But I think it's funny.

The fact it was just Western sounding things east and west of the Rio Grant. Well, it can't be eastern west, because the real Grand runs.

East and west of the Rio Grand. God damn it. I know which way the Rio Grand runs. And the crab poured in to watch the hanging of Billy the Kid. Well, Billy the Kid wasn't hung. He was shot, of course, we don't know if he was. Okay, now now you win. Now I hate the song. Okay, I hate it. It's a fraud. What are the songs came off of Street Life that were nothing, that were memorable? Nothing that We're pretty is the only one.

Uh.

There was a song about a hooker I was in love with. I wanted her to leave her profession and be with me, but she made too much money and I couldn't afford her.

It's called Roberta. What else was on that album? Souvenirs? A nice song, a picture postcard, a folded stub, a program.

Of the play.

Fall Away, the photographs of yourlity and the old old Man.

It doesn't only like another fifteen seconds of it. That was a nice song, but it was like this short and other than that is the Mexican connection ruper ragg.

It was okay, and you finished street Life and you're in LA and then what do you do?

I finished Street Life and it comes out and it goes yeah, bum dives right off the charts. The album after that was Turnstiles. I moved back to New York. I said, I'm going back to New York. This is when this nineteen mid seventies, New York was in the dumps. They were gonna default Ford to New York, drop dead, Ford to New York dropped. I saw that headline, and people in la were like, a screw new York. We can't wait to New York goes down the dumps. And

I'm an old man.

I'm telling my grandchildren I was there. I saw the lights go out on Broadway. That's the it's a science fiction song, see.

In the lights going out on brow.

I saw the empire state of La Loo, and life went on beyond the palaces. We all bought cadillacs and left there long ago. And I'm picturing I'm an old man in the year twenty seventeen, and I'm living in Miami.

Which I'm closing in there now you would need. I'm kind of fulfilling my own prophecy here so and the other song, which is.

Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood, have a flight to Miami Beach on the Hollywood Wood.

I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson river Line. I'm in the New York state of mind. We could do it like this. Some folks like to get away, Tony, come on, Chicken, take a holiday from the neighborhood.

Have a flight, tromple, fly to Miami Beach out of Hollywood.

Yeah, I'm taking it.

That's right, hud Susan really yeah, yeah, New York.

That's yeah, that's it.

And he recorded it, and that was I was hoping

But I was back in New York. I was homework and glad you were. I was thrown so leaving La it just was meant to be. I even wrote it from home, say goodbye to Hollywood here right exactly, you know, say goodbye to Hollywood. Thanks, it's been great, but goodbye. After three years it went sour on me.

And when I first moved out to the weather's great and all the chicks and the palm trees.

After three years, everybody's full of crown. Yeah, I'm a producer of what you know. We all produced gas, we produced something. But I found that for me, it was healthier for me to be in an environment where show business was one mountain peak in a range of mountains, meaning when you're in New York and I'd be at a party and some kind of real tweety looking Daniel moynihan looking type of guy would be at a party and say to me, and what do you do for a living? Young man? They say to me years ago?

I moved to Highland Falls, which is right up the Hudson. Why because we we weren't ready to move lockstock and barrel back into the city. I was married at the time. My first X one, Sure where's she from?

From? Sciacid?

Right?

And uh so she went out there with you and came back. She went out there with me and came back with me. And this was uh Turnstiles was recorded in New York. I produced it myself, which you know in hindsight was probably not a good idea, but I didn't want people telling me what band to work with, how to do the songs.

I wanted to do it my way. Are you glad you did?

I'm I was glad I did at the time because I needed to use my own musicians. I didn't want to use session man. I didn't want to use studio players. I wanted my road band. It was a long island band, and we were doing great on the road. We weren't selling any records, but the crowds were going crazy. We were blowing headliners off the stage, the Doobie Brothers, everywhere we played, the Beach Boys.

We would get better plugged than when Turnstiles came out. Yes, but Turnstiles sold records. Didn't No Trench Starles didn't sell anything. You gotta be kidding me. No, No, no.

Hits New York State of Mind is now perceived to be a hit, but it wasn't a hit. It say about how Hollywood wasn't a hit. None of the records. I love all those songs, but you know that from FM radio that was still playing those things on FM, not until The Stranger, which was the next album in seventy seven, and off that.

Comes how Many It's four which were just the way you Are moving out only the good die young. And She's Always a Woman, So She's always a woman, and just the way you Are are love songs. Well, She's Always a Woman is a love song. I'll perceived this well, remember well, I was just saying, but they're very romantic songs.

Yeah, well, I'd had romantic ballads before that. From the Cold Spring Harbor, She's Got Away Piano man, if I only had the words to tell you You're my home and then Turnstiles Summer Highland Falls no atomatic depression, but about a relationship. But I was writing ballads I've loved these Days about a man and a woman, and then the stranger just the Way you Are, which is just a pure out and out love song. She's Always a Woman,

But did you find that people sort of to buy the ballads that they did? All of a sudden became the most popular song you could often do. I had no idea it was such a big record. Just the Way you Were became this monster like the Beatles. Yeah, Stranger.

After The Stranger that we started playing colosseums and arenas, the big, big rooms, and I went right back on the road again, and I started writing again, and.

Fifties started writing for bigger rooms. Yes you did. Yeah, I had to be. I was aware.

Now we're playing the big places, and we got to write bigger songs. I gotta have bigger users energy, because you can't play to a colosseum with a handful of ballots. You got to knock them out. A big shot was on an album sands a bar stiletto. It got bigger, it got rounder, fatter, fuller, fuller, faster, you know, more high energy stuff.

And harder, faster, deeper, as they say in the adult film Innistry.

Yeah, that was it. Pretty much went into the triple X. Do you started going triple X? Yeah, acoustically and that that one album of the year they A Stranger actually should have. But I was up against Saturday Night Fever, which nobody was gonna touch on ten foot trll. Everybody even said that the only reason you got fifty secretary because we should have get a straight plasure.

This was your color of money. Yes, exactly. This is a poleman getting an Oscar, it's all political, it's fun. Well you know how this works? Sure? What was after that, Glass Houses was nineteen eighty and that was pure power pop. Is there ever one you sit there and you really have to strained? I mean you get it and you like it and you love it and it does well. Is there a song that didn't come easily to you that you really had to work to crack it? So to speak?

The whole Nylon Curtain album, which was nineteen eighty two. The album before it, which.

Was Glass Houses, was just pure fun playing with the band, got a good guitar player.

It just had a blast making the record. The next album, I wanted to write my masterpiece, my Sergeant Pepper as it were. Instead of writing from the inside out, like having starting with the seed of a song, we started with sand sounds and ideas and thoughts and studio techniques and we went from the outside in. So it was a whole different technique of creating recordings. And we didn't really know what we had until almost the final mix. What is this thing we're experimenting but stuff?

And it was? It took a year? Were you still producing? No?

No?

Phil Ramone who started remote Stranger in nineteen seventy seven. Now when you have someone like Ramone, because and again I know nothing about your business except what I see and observe, Like, what is someone like Ramone? What did he do for you? How did he help you? Well?

Phil Vermont has a background. When he was a kid, he was a child prodigy on the violin. He was violinist. He was from South Africa. Actually he knew music. And now he had years and years in the trenches as an engineer. He recorded a JFK speeches.

I think when you see the Marilyn Monroe thing, a Madison Square Gard Happy Birthday, mister President, that's Phil Ramone.

Wow, he was the engineer on those things. I mean, he's with some amazing recordings, but never got credited as a producer.

So I see, who's this guy?

Philermon It keep seeing Philermont Filder more for remote Paul Simon used him as an engineer, and I said, I want to use I want to work with this guy because he looks like he knows what he's doing. He knows how to get good sound, he knows how to deal with sonic things sonic and when he came in boom. We knew we had a professional guy. I was like working with another great musician. He knows how to play the studio like we know how to play our instruments.

So like a great producer. Very often in films, like anywhere anything, any creative enterprise, I find the people that are the most successful and talented producers are the ones who, although they may not be able to do it themselves, they know what you need to do, you know and how to help you get to your highest level.

They cut to what the synergy should be. They know what the dynamics should be in the studio.

Does he come to you and go, don't do that doesn't work and you listen to him.

I would listen to him and we would try it his way. We tried it his way, his mutual respect when we did just the way you are. Originally the

Don't go change one to chat John. We hated it. Hated the things I hate this hated.

Drummer couldn't figure out what to play. Phil actually told play a backwards samba boom that boom bop boom chat boom boom.

And it worked.

It was like a backwards so what are we doing? We didn't know what we're doing, but Phil was right. I came in with the idea of playing only the good. Diana is a reggae Come out Virginia.

Let me wait. Can't let us star much doing.

Liberty throws his sticks at me, because why are you doing Because the closest you've been to Jamaica is Queens.

What are you doing is changing trains to go down to Sea Fort, change at Jamaica, change at Jamaica.

So the train to spik That's it. He said, I'm not playing this. I'm not playing what to do? So Phil came up with this shuffling against straight fours.

And are going banana banana banana, and we were playing and it worked. It was like two things jammed into each other. Phil knows how to do that.

And when we would get tired and we get discouraged, it says, just stay, stay a little longer, try one more. All right, take a break, Let's have some Chinese. Okay, go back in the post. Chinese food takes were always good.

I don't know why that was that, MSG man, it gets it gets right into the fingertips. It worked, and then you do Nylon Curtain. That's eighty two. Eighty two was the Nylon and you said you wanted to be your Sergeant Pepper and what was it? It was.

It's my favorite album I'm Upfroid because I could hear all the work that went into it, all the textures, all the layers.

It's a song that you're particularly fond of from that.

Oh geez, every song on that album really surprises that.

It's very obscure.

Don't get excited, don't say nobody knowes.

Nothing was her.

It was committed discreetly, it was handled so neatly, and it shouldn't.

Surprise you at all.

You know, break all the records, Berma cassettes. I'd be lying and the fact told you that I had no regrets. There were so many mistakes. But what a difference it makes, and now it shouldn't.

Surprise you at all. No hits. Allentown was kind of a hit off that I remember that. Yeah, didn't really sell a lot of records. Pressure was the biggest. I think the me as Tchaikowsky. What was that. It's the one from Swan Lake. At least you up the greats with those Russians, watch them for the Germans stuff. What

I'm trying to sing, she's been living in her uptown world.

I bet she never had a backstreet gack and he had this impossibly high bod told her why I'm gonna track you? And I realized something that I remember the

Didn't we promise we would only be friends all and so we danced, though.

It was only a slow dance.

I started breaking my promises right there. And you'll recognize the chorus because it goes like this this night, it's min it's only you and is a long time away. This night can last for it, which is the pathetic by Beethoven, and I gave I gave credit on the back of LV.

Beethoven. So somebody's bill he's co writing with somebody LV Beto Beethoven for coring outline. But that was a fun album. I had met Christy. I had just gotten divorced from X one and here I am meeting Whitney Houston when she was a model Elle McPherson.

I'm dating her.

I'm dating Christy Brinkley. This is fantastic. I feel like I'm sixteen years.

Old again now going on.

It's going well, girls, It's all going great, and I'm a rock star. I got a pair to the old Sam Maritz on Central Park South, which is now that I think the Rich Carlton, which is now the Ritz Carlton. But the elevator would open and there was my apartment. I was the only apartment on that floor. It was very impressive. So this music was me being a teenager all over again, falling in love, having romance and all that great stuff.

We're taking a break, stay with us. So why did you get married? I don't know. Yeah, love, you're asking me exactly. But I was gonna say, well, that's funny because you think to yourself, why get married? It was all going so good, but not getting married means bad. But it was saying, but is that a part of your makeup, which is married? Family? Was marriage the right thing to do? I was merely in love and love. You marry him? That's it. That's how I feel.

But I still feel like I can be merely in love and not be married. Yes, I was married three times.

When did you go to Russia? Eighty seven?

Right?

And how did that happen?

Well, we went to We played in Cuba in nineteen seventy nine. They did this thing called the Havannah Jam. Cubans came up here and we went to Havana. We played at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana. It looks like Bloomingdale's. It's crypt the Karl Marx Theater. It looks like a department store and everybody gets up on stage, these other American artists, Steven Still's Viva Revolution, Viva Fidel, Chris Christopherson Viva Evolution, Riva fitting on.

He's talking in Spanish. I get up on stage. I'm in the last act. Don't take any shit from it.

I say, you'll know Ablo Espanol. And I went to Big Shot and the kids were storm the state. They don't want to hit Viva. We hit his crap all the time. We want to hit Big Shot. I said, we got something going here. We're being subversive with rock and roll.

This is what I loved you there, I love How did that feel to you? What was the first place you played a big concert at when you were a star. You're a big music star, you one of the biggest music stars ever, and you go to a foreign country and you realize music just transcends all of it.

Germany, I think it was in Frankfurt. What year, seventy seven, seventy eight. We'd had a hit with a stranger and I played in England. In the English they're kind of fickle. They like you for about a month and then you're yesterday's papers.

Oh we like that. Billy Joe l Billy Joel and they Actually.

I wasn't big there until Uptown Girl. But Germany we had a couple of its and the Germans went Bersark Lot.

They don't have seats.

You're getting a standing ovation when you walk on the stage because they can't sit down. This is great and it actually changes the energy and they're all.

Standing yeah, Billy, Belly. I'm thinking, Oh, I guess they don't know what they did to my family. Yay Billy. But I'm thinking, so this is how Adolph must have felt. Yeah, you know, they love you. They let you know her.

You're like, okay, let's go in vade poland co on, let's go. But there was a great, great audience.

You know, they're tearing at your hand like a Detroit heavy metal crowd, ripping at my hands and tearing my clothes. This is great. That was the first time in a foreign country where I knew something. How they the trip to Russia in eighty seven, was that your first time there?

It was the first time they'd ever had a major act from the West America. People had gone there before, but played with small PA systems and little private rooms.

We played at the Lenin.

Stadium, the Olympic Stadium, and We brought a Western PA system,

They started going berserk. There were security guards going around giving people sedatives because they thought they were having fits.

The Cold War ended for me, right then. This is still when it was. Reagan was calling it the evil Empire, and we're not gonna have a war.

With these people. They can't even get toilet paper, right, you.

Know, we're not gonna have a We're not gonna fight with them. I don't want to fight them.

They don't. They love us everywhere I went, Viva America, Long Live America. This is great. Cold War ended. I was thrilled that went the way it did. Let me ask you a question. You're funny. You could have done that with your eyes. Every thing it takes to be an actor, who could have done you? Never wanted to do that. Never. I never was comfortable in front of a camera. Really. Yeah, as a matter of fact, even though I had to perform in front of a camera

Stand there, not even I was aware of the camera. It was like it was an invader, was invasive to me. I became a musician because I never felt I was photogenic. I was never happy with how I looked. It's about a microphone, not about a camera. I was very comfortable in a studio. I'm very comfortable far away on a stage. Or an album cover. You could make it look and however you want, and people would say, oh, you're shorter than I thought. I said, well, the album cover is only this big.

How do you know. Whenever there was a camera, it kind of destroyed what I was trying to create.

It took away the imagination. You could I could look however I want. I could look like Carry Grant. But I saw it reduced to an image. I went, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not who I am. Don't look at that guy.

I realized I could have done that, but I love music so much. That's the way I went. Some people can do both. Most don't. Well, Bowie didn't do it, really really he tried. Sting didn't do it. No, Jagger didn't do it. Beatles never did it, except as they played the Beatles.

But then there's some actors who were originally musicians and they they now just basically acted.

But I always say that, I said, this acting is what you do when you have no musical ability. If I could do what you do, I would never do what That's what actors say. I would never, ever, ever, ever waste five minutes of doing what I do. If I could do with you. That's a lot of actors. Yeah, you're so good at what you do. No, if I could do what you do. Music is Music is saying if I could play, if I could write a film or a television program, you have to make an appointment

I stopped writing songs about it when I got divorced the second time. That was in ninety three, actually ninety four. The divorce happened, the album River Dreams came out, and I realized, you know what, I'm spinning out the story of my life to all these strangers. I'm kind of sick and tired everybody knowing my personal life and how I feel about you. Just one on that one? Did you resent that? I didn't resent it. I just decided

I gave to the work.

And the work was so important and it's all consuming. If you're going to do it right, you have to jump in with both feet and do it one hundred percent.

Music will do. That was a very harsh mistress music, you have to do it all.

Maybe I didn't do things I should have done, or maybe I didn't take care of business the way I should have take here because the music and so I stopped writing songs about my personal relationships, but I kept writing music. And after the third marriage didn't work, I tried marriage. It's you know, three times.

I tried three to much. I never gave up on it. I just realized that this just doesn't I don't know, it doesn't work right. People don't appreciate how it's like to have a relationship in this business that works. You got to be really lucky, man, It's got to be. It's so much luck, you know, because, like you said, the career is the mistress and you're out there working Like like I would look at my ex wife or ex girlfriends and I think, what would the alternative be?

Yeah, But on the other hand, how much of you are they getting? If you're in a part, you take on the role. It doesn't come off at five o'clock in the afternoon when work. Most people leave their jobs. You have to be that character through the whole project. Now, when I'm writing, I mean, I've got to stay in harness. I've got to be that songwriter guy I'm preoccupied. Maybe I should change that to a B flat, you know that quarterback. I'm obsessed with it. I wonder how much

I find that in film it's different because you don't really have a chance unless you work with a tremendously intense group of people. I've never gotten close to that in film. Film is always in pieces. You know, you know, you're in your room. It's not linear. It's not like a play. When I've done that, when I've done play, is it's different When you do it well, you can sit back and you light up a cigarette and you're like, well, well, well well and we nail that way. I just just

They were both good shows that the double last double play at say we didn't do nights? Yeah, yes, that was exhilarating. It was a hometown crowd, and it's just it was exhilarating. We were on stage for three and a half hours and I didn't realize how hot it was.

It was sweating. I'm watching the movie of me. Somebody give that guy a towel. Yeah, he's like soaky, he's so.

Wet and slimy. Wipe him off and but we're having such a good time. We walked off, and for weeks after they were kind of amping from it.

New York loves you. I know, I know, and I love New York. That's why I live here. I love you.

But I put away the recording part of my career and I put away for the time being performing.

What's that music? That's my telephone? The theme from the god that's interesting, that's perfect. The theme from The Godfather? Is your ring tone on your phone? Yes, that's amazing. Well, like I got to think about what my ringtone should be. That's the guys on the road call me you got Godfather?

Why do you company?

Bona Sarah Bona, Sarah onever. I haven't done. You'll never

Do you appreciate who you are? People who love you, They adore you, and they love your talent. You are so talented, you are so like it makes me want to choke up. How talented you are? Do you know who you are?

I know I have a talent for music. I don't think I'm all that good. I think I have a good perspective on it. I can separate the the star stuff from the musician stuff. The music is really import.

They have to stay separate, don't they. Well, one is a job and one is a life.

The job thing I can take off at five o'clock and the afternner and the rock star thing I go, I go shopping, I cook my own food, I wash the dishes, I take out the garbage. I know who that guy is and that that's and the music is has nothing to do with money or career or it's just it's just part of me. It's like love, music, love, food, friendship, my daughter. You know, all these great things.

How's your daughter doing? She's great. But I you know, I know how to take the job hat off and h and just kind of be normal. I've learned how to do it.

Took a long time to separate them out. Okay, I can be a musician and not be a rock star.

You know. I'm still trying to convince people, well, I'm not a rock star. No, yes, you are. You are a rock star US star.

So okay, fine, But a lot of that is has a job aspect to it. I work very hard at what in writing, because that's my deepest love. I think that's really where I belong. The rockstar thing I've never really been comfortable with because I don't think I looked like a rock star. I didn't really set out to be a rock star. I became a rock star serendipitously.

You became a rock star in spite of yourself.

In spite of myself, which is hysterical as hard, as much as you tried to kill it.

Yeah, I mean, I don't put that camera too close to me, exactly.

I don't want to make a good video. Let me make a bad video because I just want to get out of here. I don't want to be in a photo session. I hate taking pictures. I don't want to go to this opening. I don't want to go to that schmooze fest. I just didn't do any of that stuff. But I'm comfortable with it now.

Billy Joel says he doesn't look back on his life that much. Last year, he decided not to publish his long awaited memoir, entitled The Book of Joel. He said, instead, quote, the best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music, unquote. What's a song that you think yourself? You know, I really still enjoy hearing that song? Does it have to be a hit. What's one you dislike that you haven't played? Do you really really like it?

The ones?

I've been doing master classes at colleges, and I get to play all these obscure songs that I never played over the thirty forty years I've been playing played one the other night, and I said, well, that's a really good song. There's no rhyme, not until the very end is when rhyme can, but the lyrics work. It's from

Where the orchestra?

Wasn't this supposed to be a musical? There I am in the balcony. How the hell could I have missed the overture?

I loved.

The scenery, even though I.

Have so ludly.

No, I dear all.

What has been said, despite the dialogue.

There.

The leading man, movie star who never faced an audience. Where's the orchestra? After all, this is my night on the town, my.

Introduction to the theater Crown. I assume that a show I would have a song. So I was wrong. At least I understand.

All the innuendo and the irony, and I appreciate the roles the actors played, the point the author made head of after the closing lines of after.

The curtain calls, the curtain falls on empty chairs with.

The orchestra, You're the king, thank you, No really, you're the king man, thank you?

Thank you for coming. Thanks, I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio