December 25, 2018 • 57 mins
Billy Joel has sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna—though the “rock star thing” is something he can “take off.” Joel started playing piano when he was about four or five years old, but he admits that he doesn't remember how to read sheet music anymore. He says it’d be like reading Chinese. That doesn't stop the third best-selling solo artist of all time in the U.S. from plunking out a few tunes with Alec.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
My chance to talk with artists and writers, policymakers and performers,
to hear their stories, what inspired their creations, what decisions
changed their careers, and what relationships influenced their work. Billy
Joel's fans have gotten to know him quite well over
(00:23):
the past four decades. Don't go change to try and
please me. You never led meet 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 Allentown
(00:56):
how sad it's 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
(01:16):
songs are so passionately connected to who he was at
the time he wrote them. Jack want you to get
more level, Hello, Hello, Hello, And when you're actually sitting
in the same room as him with a piano nearby, well,
you can't help yourself. I want you to play me
something if you don't mind, because your fans would demand that.
(01:37):
I still remember you said that to me years ago,
how predictable it was wherever you were that there was
a piano. But it was like, Billy, could you do
you mind? Right? We just a couple of songs. It's
it's just birthday, it's Christmas, and we were wondering if
you could play there. It is it's and it's just
(01:58):
had it. We just just it's such fans. Yeah, you
know mine, right, that's your life, yes, but it's it's
you know, it's fun. You can't have act alongs. You're
an act you can't act along, but you're gonna have
sing alongs. I can always sit down at the party
play and everybody starts singing. I go to a pub
in England, I'm out, Benny Giby's having his zones there.
You go there, it's uptown girl up and they all
(02:19):
sit around he sing and everybody has a plass. It's fun.
It creates a community instantly. Billy Joel is the third
best selling solo artist of all time in the United States,
where he sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen,
and Madonna, but he admits there's still room for improvement.
I know what good piano playing is and I'm not good.
(02:40):
My left hand is lame. I'm a two finger left
hand piano player, as opposed to post somebody who knows
what they're doing with the left hand. I never practiced
enough to use all my fingers on my left hand,
so I just play octaves, bass notes. My right hand
tries to compensate from my left hand being so gimpy,
so I overplay my right hand. My technique is horrible.
(03:01):
I can't read music. I never really don't read music.
I used to, but I don't anymore. I forgot how
so 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. You would not it would
be Chinese. It would be Chinese. Yet I don't know
how did that happen. I started taking lessons when I
was about four or five, and I went up till
(03:22):
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 rocketmaning off hands, the harrowits hands.
(03:42):
I had strong hands, but the short fingers you were
Johnny Friendly's hands. Who's Johnny Friendly from on the waterfront
reunion boss doing the shape up down to the dock
and and hopeboken. Yeah, yeah, you're not, You're not, you said,
taking better accad of me, Charlie. He should have looked
down for me just a little bit, a little bit.
So what did I get one way to get? I'm
(04:06):
a bum jolly, Let's face it, that's what I am.
That's when I am. So you're a kid? Was there
an intimation in your household? There was a pissical music right?
My father was music. Yeah, he was a classically trained pianist.
He grew up in Nuremberg, Germany. He also went to
school in Switzerland. His father was quite well off. They
had a mailo out, a textile business. Joel mocked fabric.
(04:27):
So he had learned to play the piano. It was
a very musical family. He could play Chopini, could play
all the great stuff. He should have become a musician.
He became an engineer, worked for Chee and then he
was in promotion he was never really happy because he
didn't become a musician. We had an old, upright piano
in the house, a Leicester piano, real piece of junk,
and ended up being a planter in the garden. My
(04:47):
mom used it to grow a honeysuckle. She sang. Her
family were all singing Gilbert and Sullivan, English music hall people.
So I grew up in a very musical home. I
heard musical all the time. My father was playing my
that would saying radio is always on, listening to Milton
Cross and the opera. On Sunday, Leonora enters learning a light.
(05:10):
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. Now, where was the family when your
father was there? And the piano? Where were you? Were
you and the lester and your mother and your father?
Where is this brother in Hicksville? My family moved with
me out of the Bronx when I was a baby
and maybe a year old. Basically grew up on the
on the Island. I grew up on the island and
(05:32):
the Levittown section of Hicksville, We had a levitt house,
the cape cod on the quarter raker. Everybody's house looked
the same. Started out looking the same. Now it doesn't
look anything like Levittown, 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
(05:55):
was fourteen. I was asked to be in a band,
the Echos. This is the Echoes band. Well, guitars, because
there really weren't no keyboards that you could amplify. I
played the piano. I never played the organ. Finally figured
out how to amplify keyboards. I think that Dave Clark
five was the first band that had a an organ.
(06:16):
You could hear vox organ. It was pieces, bits and
pieces and I'm feeling good. It's the most unglad sounding song. Yeah,
so you amplify the keyboard. We 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
(06:37):
because nobody could sing all that well in the band.
We couldn't even harmonize. We're very bad singers, but they
decided you really 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 stand with Mick Jagger, I didn't have to Mick
jaggon moves. I had a keyboard. You kind of locked in.
You can't move around. You can't carry a keyboard around
(06:58):
unless you were acordion player. And that looks like Lawrence
Welcome Havan. Then the two. So I stood at the
piano or I sat at the piano. And but then
I realized, you know, that girl I always had a
crush on, is actually looking at me. She never looked
at me twice all those years in school. And uh,
we're playing at the Holy Family Church, the church dance
that was about fifteen. Virginia is looking at me, you know,
(07:21):
come out Virginia at that Virginia and the band sounded great.
I love what I was doing. The crowd went yea
when we finished every song, and at the end of
the night, the priest gave us each fifteen dollars, which
in nineteen was that was it? The door locked behind me.
This is what I'm gonna do. I don't want to
go to Carner all anymore. I ended up on corn anyway.
(07:43):
And what music were you performing covers of other people?
Tuke Bux bands were playing early Beatles, Stones, Sam, the
Sham and the Finger. At that time, when you're seeing
Tommy James and the shan Del's and all that music,
who were you saying to yourself, I want to have
his career? Well, I like the had a different kind
of music. I already came out of a classical background,
and I really dug jazz when I was in my
(08:05):
early teens. They brew back, Oscar Peterson, ar Taanum, Jimmy Smith,
Bill Evans. I loved jazz, but I realized I ain't
gonna be one of those guys either, because I wasn't
a good enough pianist. I mean, these guys are as virtuostic,
virtualistic whatever, juostic, virtuostic, as the classical as a religion.
(08:28):
Yeah is it? Yeah? That's a really darm kidding. They're 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
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 was good enough to play rock
and roll and pop. But when I really fell in
(08:50):
love with as a teenager with girls and stuff was
first out like soul music, James Brown, Wilson, Pickett, Otis Redding,
the Temptations, Marvin Marvin Gay, Smokey Robinson, Gladys No. I
mean I just loved well, I tried to, you know, well,
(09:10):
it was you know, they were they were all white people,
and there weren'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 the music a twist and shout or
everybody would do come on now, shout, come on and
Louis Louis, I think that was the kingsman. What I say,
(09:32):
Ray Charles, So you're a 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, Okay,
if what guys from Liverpool, Yeah, Liverpool, it's possible. It's possible.
(09:58):
They don't look like Frankie am Along, they don't look
like Bobby Rydell. They look like four working class guys
from anywhere. They could be from Micksville, from love It Town.
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,
(10:22):
the Beatles came out. You were a kid. I was
a kid. I was thirteen. You started writing music. Yes,
I started writing air Zots Beatles songs. But I climbed
the highest mountain. Ye hold your perse like that. I
want to hold your purse. Trying to sound live Napoleon Puglian. Puglian, Yeah,
(10:44):
you know, she don't love me like before my own
song she don't love me any more. I believed all
the l she told me. Uh uh, you know that
kind of thing. Trying to sound like the early Beatles.
It was fun. It was a lot of fun. I
was asked to join the band after the Beatles came out.
And now you gotta remember. November of sixty three, John F.
(11:07):
Kennedy is assassinated. The country goes into the dumps. Even
though we didn't know that much about politics government. He
was our guy. He was the young, vigorous progressive and
he was bump. He was shot taken away. Everybody just
turned off, like a switch turned off. We became very cynical,
the whole nation and the blues. February of sixty four,
(11:29):
who comes out? The Beatles come to America. We took
them in. We just embraced that. They walked into that
spaceful funny, it was. They were warm everything, everything that's
taken away from us. Great, let's go have a party.
Let's party. So you start writing songs and you're saying
air sets Beatles songs. What's the first song you write
(11:52):
that you can remember? Was called My Journey's End. I
could play it in film me too. Let's hear it
whill I climb the highest mountain and I swim the
deep scene. If I knew you were there at my
(12:15):
journeys and waiting for me. Let me tell now much
that you love me, sign the letters that you say
Jesus anywhere, And you were waiting there at my journeys.
(12:36):
And so what's the first song you wrote? So what's
the first song? Which was one that you wrote? Well,
it was probably in the Hassles, the Hassle sould records
a few on Long Island problems, maybe Jersey exactly on
the turn policies at the Woodrow Wilson rest stop. Yes,
(12:57):
I think it was the coffee chock full nuts in
Paramus because we opened it. We kind of has played
at the opening. Um the first thing 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 Souls for a while, we made a couple
(13:18):
of records, nothing ever happened. H was the other one,
she don't love me before, she don't love me anymore.
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 now my Lula doesn't love me any
(13:39):
email most like Mr Um And then we became the
Lost Souls, and it turns out there was an English
band called the Lost Souls, so we had to change
our name. So the president of Mercury Records, brilliant guy
at the time, said Okay, we're gonna give you a
new name, the Commandos Vietnams. At the put time, you're
(14:00):
gonna be the Commandos. We hate that name, nobody likes
or yeah, we likes that stuff. You know, you're gonna
be the Commander'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 Echoes, Echoes,
Lost Souls, Souls and then Commandos for a weekend. For
(14:21):
a weekend, opened up one quick choc 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. 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 I said I'll join all right, I'll join
(14:42):
the Hassles. They wanted me to play organ. I'll join
if I can bring my bass player with me, because
they didn't have a bass player, and they said okay.
So that became the Hassles. And then there was another guy.
He got with a lot of Mick Jagger moves, Little John.
His name was great Hair, good looking guy, couldn't sing
to save it didn't matter. He was gorgeous and women
(15:04):
just went nuts and I'm I'm in the back doing death. Well,
but they had eyes, you know, they could see, they
could see the music video killed the radio absolutely glad
I came up in an air where it wasn't that prep.
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
(15:26):
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, but
the first song that I wrote that actually sold something.
(15:50):
Everything I do, I don't know. The course went every step,
every move I make. You know I'm trying to do
enough without you. I turned eye run eye hide really bitlers,
but I know deep inside a part of me has died. Yeah,
(16:16):
like Popeye, He's gonna I didn't know you wrote that.
That's great. That's how my father used to start. It
sounded like Popeye. Yeah. So that was probably the first
thing that saw I was in the first Hassle's album.
I think we saw a dozen copies. But our big
single was actually a cover of a Salmon Dave record,
(16:40):
You got Me humming, Uh, I don't know what you got,
but it's dead man, you got me and you got
(17:02):
Me on and 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 Hassle's hit.
First album was horrible, the second hal was really horrible.
And then I, me and the drummers split off from
the Hassles to form a power duo. We were gonna
(17:24):
destroy the world with amplification. It's just like the heavy
metal thing we heard Zeppelin. It blew our minds, Iron Butterfly,
I gotta divid, don't you know that? I Love you?
(17:47):
Went on and on and on. So when you get
to this point where you say, a couple of albums,
the hassles, and then when is it you? Well, like
the band's got someone was smaller and smaller until I
became a two man. And so when you and he
went off, until it was the two of you, until
it was just the two What did he play? He
played drums? I played Hammond Oregan wired directly through hand.
(18:10):
So we're getting closer to Lawrence welk. Now the more
we go, it's getting closer. You almost got the according
but it was louder. It was much louder. And we
got signed to Epic, and we were on Epic from
one album and it was a colossal failure. We played
one gig I think it was an Unas on the
West Side in Manhattan, and people went fleeing from the place.
We were so loud he could see blood coming out
(18:32):
of ears. 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 onn what happened then that we broke
up and I decided I don't longer want to be
a rock and roll star. I got that out of
got that out of my system. I was about nineteen
or twenty. I want to write songs now coming up.
(18:57):
How this kid from Long Island adjusted to life in
Los Angeles, chicks coming and stuff from the beach, rubbing
your neck and shoulders while you're playing. Yeah, that's what
it looks like in the movies. And why even so
he was able to say goodbye to Hollywood. This is
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. This
(19:23):
is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Billy Joel never set out to be a rock star.
He just wanted to write songs like this one. Baby,
all the lights are turned on you. Now you're in
the center of the stage. And sometimes he heard his
songs in a voice other than his own. Baby on
(19:43):
a lance attend on you. You're in the center of
the stage. Everything revolves on what you do. You're in
your prim coming. Did you send him that song to record?
I wanted him too, But Bob writes his own stuff.
He's not gonn do covers. He doesn't buy songs from
the people. No, he does not. But I no longer
(20:04):
wanted to be the guy on stage. I wanted to
be the guy behind the scenes. This just happened to
coincide with the era of the singers songwriter Harry Chape
and Jim Croce. James Taylor was huge at the time.
So the advice I got was, what do you want
people to hear these songs? Why don't you make your
own album? Okay, I got a record deal, Family Records,
(20:26):
This guy named already RiPP, perfect name, like I was
like Pinocchio. Yeah. I fell in with the you know,
Hydride Lidy an actor's life for me, for those people.
And I recorded an album in l A. I lived
in l A for a little while. They said, okay,
then you made the album. Now now you got an album,
you need to promote it. You need to go on
the road and play and promote the albums. Oh okay.
(20:48):
It's a kind of a strange way to be a songwriter.
But that's what other people were doing. You know, other
people be interested in my material. If I promoted it,
promote the album, you'll hear it. Well, the album was
mastered at the wrong speed. So a song like this,
She's got away about her, I don't know what it is,
(21:15):
but I know that I can't 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. It's terrible. The album never
went anywhere. Nothing happened, and I went on the road.
(21:38):
I promoted it and never saw it in the stores.
But that was when I was me. That was just
Billy Joel. So when you when people buy that album,
there's album has been rereleased 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. I would advise people don't buy it.
If you can steal it, steal it. So Cold Spring
(21:58):
Harper is the first album. It's you how many band
members guitar, bassed, drums, and there was some violins that
were put in by Auady ripping. You know, he was
trying to be Phil Specter. It got all glopped up.
It was supposed to be more of a folky recorded
that in l A, recorded it in l A. How
long were you in l A? Three years? What was
that like for you? Weird? Yeah? How I went there
(22:20):
and I stayed on Santa Marca Boulevard. It's just dumpy.
A little place called the Tropicana Motel right there on
Santi the Duke's with the Duke's Duke's coffee shop. Maybe
the huge sandwiches for the poor. You have breakfast the Duke's.
It was great. You know a buck you could eat
like a king. The place was a dump, but the
postcards said the Tropic Canna and it had like a
(22:42):
palm tree on it. So I said postcards, all my friends,
I've made it here. I'm in Hollywood, coming together. Cat.
I'm having on what's on Santa Monica Boulevard for a dollar,
I mean to play in my song with a Chipmunk speed. Well,
if it's all going great, Yeah, if you're from Long Island,
you get a postcard pumped you the Tropic can It's
oh my god, he's made it because you and I
(23:04):
are from the same background. Yes, I mean from SAA.
Your friends you grew up with a propate like mine
where they probably get that post like like Joey, come here.
I got a postcard from Billy. He's the Tropicana here. Wow,
he's on the beach with girls like the beach boys.
He's driving cars. But I would make movies that coul
my friends be like, they say, let me ask you
a question. You do a love scene with it brought
the movie, Like do you ever get excited like yourself?
(23:26):
You know what I mean? There's always a weird you know,
to make love to a woman in front of olden people?
Can you pick who you make out with? Yeah? Like
do you enjoy that? It was it fun? You mean
he groupies out there and I'm like, you know, it's
not funn because it's a hundred and people staring at
you while you're doing it, Like, oh yeah, I forgot
about that. I forgot. We got those questions. What's it
like in a student? I mean like a lot of
drugs and girls and stuff. No, you're actually in a factory.
(23:48):
He's surrounded by equipment, and you know you don't have
like big fish thanks full of cocaine and everything, like
chicks coming and stuff from the beach rubbing your neck
and shoulders while you're playing. Yeah, that's what it looks
like in the movies. Did you movie stars some of
a musician? I'm every night you haven't been with who?
All the big stars? Right? And a fish tankful of
blow when chicks and bikinis rubbing the shoulders right, And
(24:08):
that's what people think now when you did you did
Cold Spring Harbor? There, did you do the next album
out there? Actually 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 signed.
I signed away everything, copyrights, publishing, record royalties, everything, my
first child. I gave away at all. And I said
that I gotta get out of this deal. And I
(24:30):
hid in l A and I worked in a piano
bar under the name Bill Morton. It's just down in
the Wilshire district. And it was no, it's not a
real bar town l A. Uh. You know, Long Island
is a pub on every corner. It's a pub culture.
So when people close their eyes and they think of piano, man,
I think of a guy bending over a piano, and
I think of a guy in a in a place
(24:51):
on Long Island or in New York. But you recorded
that out of Los Angeles. I recorded in l A.
And that's where I worked. Some people think I did
it for years. I worked in this piano for six months.
I needed to make some money. I made Union scale,
I get tips. Mostly played, you know, Major seventh Chords
(25:15):
anything but but but how does piano man start that
kind of thing? And that guy in the hotel a
lot love. They would request songs I didn't even know
the song. Can you play what's that? Jogi carn Michael's
(25:37):
song startus? And I would go, sure you play mr.
And everybody was drinking pretty heavy because in an l
(25:57):
A bar, these were all people who lost it the
track losers. I just like drinking like fish and I
got free drinks. Oh my god. But so then you
do piano man, what's the next album after that? You do?
In l A? Uh? We did Piano Man in l A.
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. But this is back in the
(26:18):
early seventies. In those days they still had FM, progressive radio.
Dis jockeys could spend whatever they want. W L A R.
Dennis McNamara him, I was a kid home. I was smoking,
you know what, leaning out the windows. So my mom
didn't know. And on the video we'd hear w L
I R this Dennis McNamara, Jackson Brown right, I listened
to this guy. He was my childhood Dennis McNamara. We
(26:39):
grew up with these disc jockeys at night Allison Steven
Allison the night Bird and Roscoe Zaccharly was Vin Skels,
and my favorite guy was Scott Muni coming at you,
Scott Muny, a little spooky tooth from from England. Spooky
tooth Scot Munick and at you right now. They played
(27:01):
whatever they wanted. They didn't have program directors, they didn't
have consultants, and people would call in. If they got
enough requests, they would play a track. So piano Man
got requested all the time. It was a five 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 quarter time pop pop and it's
(27:26):
and it's not really lyrics. Dellimerates. John at the Bar
is a friend of mine. He gets my drinks for free.
He's quick with the joke of a lot. Have you
smoke with it? Some said he rather big, could be
one of the girl from Nantucket the Puppa. So it's
still limericks. And if anybody said this is gonna be
a hit record. I tell him, right of their mind.
The next album comes out, Street Life Serenade. It's the
sophomore jinks. I did not have enough time to write
(27:49):
new material after the Piano Man album came out. Piano
Man got 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 on the road.
I haven't a chance to write now, needing 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 did that come from? Well?
(28:11):
I had one song that I thought, which was the Entertainer.
Which is that? Uh? Another folks song? I am the
entertain them, I know, just swear eyes done, not surenator.
I don't know a long haired band today. I am
(28:33):
your champion. I may won your hearts, but I know
in the game you're forgetting my name. I won't be
here and another year if I don't stay on the chart.
I wrote it on a 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,
(28:56):
which is just the piano ragtime thing, and this uh
Air's's Western movie theme called the Mexican Connection. Because I
was living in l A. Was fascinated with westerns, bum
bum bums. What are the songs came off a street
Life that were nothing that We're memorable? Nothing, The egg
(29:16):
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 was called Roberta. What else was on that album? Souvenirs?
Next song a picture postcon a folded stub, a program,
(29:51):
the play full away the photograph ups of your and
your moment? Doesn't it only like another fifteen seconds of it?
(30:12):
That was a nice song, but it was like this
short and other than that is the Mexican Connection, rut
beer Rag. It was okay, and you finished street life
and you're in l A. And then what do you do?
I finished street Life and it comes out and it goes,
you know, Pump 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. Mid seventies,
New York was in the dumps. They were gonna default
(30:34):
forward to New York dropped dead for to New York dropped.
I saw that headline and people in l A Were like,
ha ha, screw New York. We can't wait to New
York goes down to dumps. And I said, that was
down with that. If you're act going down the tubes,
I'm going back. I want to be there for this,
and I'm picturing this apocalypse. I actually wrote a song
called Miami seventeen, think about the year twenty seventeen. I'm
an old man. I'm telling my grandchildren I was there.
(30:55):
I saw the lights go out on Broadway. Seeing the
lights go out on Broadway, I saw the Empire state
later life went on beyond the Palaceades. We all bought
cadillacs and left there long ago. And I'm picturing I'm
(31:20):
I'm an old man in the year seventeen. I'm living
in Miami, which I'm closing in 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 Hollywooo.
(31:46):
I'm taking a gray Hound on the Hudson River line.
I'm in the New York state of mind. We could
do it like this, some oaks like get away, Tony,
come on, Chicken, a holiday from the neighborhood, a flight
(32:08):
to flight to Miami Beach, all the Hollywood. Yeah, I'm
taking the ghown huts and yeah, I'm in New York. Yeah.
(32:33):
And he'd recorded it, and that was I was hoping
other people would do that song. But I was back
in New York. I was home. Are you glad you were?
I was thrown so leaving l A, which just was
meant to be home. Say goodbye to Hollywood, 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 is
(32:53):
great and all the chicks and the palm trees. After
three years, everybody's full crap. Here, I'm a producer Prince
loved what you know. We all produced gas. We produced something.
When when you go back to New York, the where
do you go the city? I moved to Highland Falls,
which is right up to Hudson. Why we weren't ready
to move Lockstock and Barrow was waiting the city. I
(33:15):
was married at the time. My first X one where
is she from? From sayaset? So she went out there
with you and came back. She went out there with
me and came back with me. And this was Turnstiles
was recorded in New York. I produced it myself. 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
(33:35):
to use studio players. I want on 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 and Dooby Brothers everywhere we played the Beach Boys.
We would get better plus than the This is when
Turnstiles came out. Yes, but turns out no, Trench Styles
didn't sell anything. You gotta be kidding, No, no, no,
(33:56):
hits New York. State of Mind is now perceived to
be a hit, But wasn't it say about Hollywood wasn't
a hit? None of the Ruggets. But I love all
those songs, not until the Stranger, which was the next album,
and seventies and Off that Comes, how many HiT's four
which were just the Way you Are moving out only
the good Day Young and She's Always a Woman, so
she's always a woman, and just the way you Are
(34:19):
our love songs. Well, She's always a woman is a
love so not perceived. Remember I'm just saying, but they're
very romantic songs. 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 turnstyles Summer Highland Falls, no thematic depression,
(34:39):
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, which is kind of a double edged sword there.
I had no idea it was such a big record
just the way you are became this mon stir like
(35:00):
the Beatles. Yeah, once after the Stranger. After the Stranger,
we started playing colosseums and arena's, the big, big rooms,
and I went right back on the road again and
I started writing again. Um, you start writing for bigger rooms. Yes, yeah,
I had to be. I was aware. Now we're playing
the big places and we got to write bigger songs.
(35:21):
I gotta have bigger numbers energy. You can't play to
a colosseum with a handful of ballots. You gotta knock
them out. It got bigger, It got rounder, fatter, fuller, fuller, faster,
you know, more high energy stuff, harder, faster, deeper, as
they say in the adult film in His Dream. Yeah,
that was it. Pretty much went into the triple X.
(35:42):
You started going triple x. More Billy Joe raw, but uncensored.
After the break, you're listening to Here's the Thing, and
you can hear more conversations, sing a song with me,
Chris and Okay, more singing with other artists, policymakers and performers.
(36:04):
I bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, fun take a
listen to earlier episodes at Here's the thing dot Org. Okay,
that's enough. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
the Thing Billy. Joel recorded five albums with a band
(36:25):
that consisted of the same four guys, Liberty de Vito, Russell, Javor's,
Doug steg Meyer and Richie Kannada. Kannada left the band
in eight one. At that point, Joel was also ready
to try something new. I wanted to write my masterpiece,
my Sergeant Pepper as it were. Instead of writing from
the from the inside out, like having starting with the
(36:47):
seed of a song, we started with sound ideas and
thoughts and studio techniques and we didn't really know what
we had until almost the final mix. What is this thing?
We're experimenting with stuff? And it was? It took a year.
Were you still producing? No? No, he was producing sil
Vermon who started a stranger NW. When when you have
(37:07):
someone like Ramon, what did he do for you? How
did he help you? Well? Phil Ramon he was a
child prodigy on the violin. He was from South Africa.
Actually he knew music and now he had years and
years in the trenches as an engineer. He he recorded
JFK speeches when you see the Marilyn Monroe thing, A
mount of the Square God, Happy birthday, Mr. President. That's
(37:28):
Phil Ramon. He was the engineer on those things. I
mean he's when when with some amazing recordings, but never
got credited as a producer. So I who's this guy?
Phil Remona keep Simon Ramone. 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 do. He knows how to get
good sound, he knows how to deal with sonic things sonic.
(37:48):
And when he came in Boom, we knew we had
a professional. Guy. Was like working with another great musician.
He knows how to play the studio like we know
how to play our instruments. Everything changed, The band just
rose to the occasion. Uh. We were having a blast.
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,
(38:11):
although they may not be able to do it themselves,
they know what you need to do. They cut to
what the synergy should be. They know what the dynamics
should be in the studio because 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 tried
his wife, We tried his way, his mutual respect. When
we did just the way you are. Originally, the drumma
was playing it like a cha cha don't go change
(38:42):
when too. We hated it, hated drummer, couldn't figure out
what to play. Phil actually told play it back with
samba boom boom bop, boom boom, and it worked. It
was like a backwards sign up. What are we doing?
(39:02):
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 do, let me wait,
let us stop. Much Liberty throws his sticks at me,
because why are you doing Because closest you've been to
Jamaica as queens, what are you doing is changing trains
(39:24):
to go down to see for change that Jamaica, Change
that Jamaica, the train to spe On. That's it. He said,
I'm not playing this, I'm not playing what are we
gonna do it? So Phil came up with this shuffle
against straight forwards and the gas are going banana banana,
bob banana, and we're playing and it worked. It was
(39:50):
like j two things jammed into each other and Phil
knows how to do that. And when we would get
tired and we get discouraged, he says, just stay, stay
a little long, 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 right into the fingertips.
It worked, but he could wear Mozart would have been
(40:12):
if they had MSG back then. Oh wow, he did
pretty good. He did. He went as far as you
could go without MSG. I yes, And then you do
Nylon Curtain. That's eight two eight 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
because I could hear all the work that went into it,
all the textures, all the layers. It's a song that
(40:34):
you're particularly fond of. From that, it's very obscure. Don't
get excited, don't say well, nobody noticed, nothing was. It
was committed discreetly it was handled so needly, and it
(40:57):
shouldn't surprise you out Oh, you know, break all the records,
but the cassettes. I'd be lying in the fact on
you that I had no regrets. There was so many mistakes,
but what a difference it makes, and now it shouldn't
(41:21):
surprise you at all. No hits. Allentown was kind of
a hit off. That album didn't really sell a lot
of records. What did you do after Nylon Curtain? Um?
After the Nylon Curtain? Because it was such an intensive labor,
the Nylon Curtain something very dense and very complex. I
(41:41):
wanted to do something simple and dumb and happy, and
I did an Innocent Man, which is really an homage
to all the music of my teenage years. Frankie Valley
in the Four Seasons was Uptown Girl, and that was
a hit that was a big hig It was a joke.
It was gen girl trying to second. She been living
in her up town world app but she never had
(42:04):
a backstreet guy and he had this impossibly highway Ever
told her why I'm gonna track you? And I realized
something like remember the song rag Doll Ye, And then
(42:28):
the first was I love you just the way you
are is that where I heard that before, just the
way you were? And then there was a song. Um,
I was trying to do little Antonine Imperials. Didn't not
say shoot up? I wasn't ready for romance, shoop shoot up?
Didn't we promise we would only be friends? And so
(42:54):
we danced, though it was only a slow dance. I
start a breaking. My promise is right there, and you'll
recognize the chorus because it goes like this, This night
is my It's only you, and night to my road
(43:21):
is a long time away. This night can last for it,
which is the pathetique by Beethoven. And I gave I
gave credit and back at l V Beethoven. So so
(43:42):
Bill he's co writing with somebody LV Beto Beethoven for
Coming Out. But that was a fun album. I just
I had met Christie. I had just gotten divorced from
X one, and here I am meeting Whitney Houston when
she was a model. El mcpheerson, I'm dating her. I'm
dating Christie Brinkley. This is fantastic. I feel like I'm
sixteen years old again, going we girls. It's all going great,
(44:06):
and I'm a rock star. I got a pad the
old sand Maritz on Central Park Sunday, which is now
that I think the rich Carlton. So this music was
me being a teenager, roll over again, falling in love,
having romance and all that great stuff. So why did
you get married? I don't know you're asking me exactly?
Is that a part of your makeup? Which is married? Family?
(44:26):
Was marriage the right thing to do? I was madly
in love and when William loves you, marry him. That's it.
That's how I feel. But I still feel like I
can be madly in love and not be married. Yes,
but I was married three times. When did you go
to Russia? And how did that happen? Well, we played
in Cuba in nineteen seventy nine, played the Karl Marx
(44:48):
Theater in Havana, and everybody gets up on stage, the
other American artists Steven Still's Viva Evolution, Viva Fidel, Chris
Kristofferson Viva Revolution, Riva. The only's talking in Spanish. I
get up on stage him in the last act. You know,
it's a big shot and they don't want to hit
(45:10):
even 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 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're
one of the biggest music stars ever, and you go
to a foreign country and you realize music just transcends
(45:34):
all of it. To Germany, I think it was in
Frankfurt here seventy seven. I played in England and 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 Ll, Billy joe Ll. But Germany we had
a couple of and the Germans went berserk lot. They
don't have seats. You're getting a standing ovation when you
(45:56):
walk on the stage. Billy, Billy, I'm thinking, they don't
know what they did to my family. Yeah, Billy, but
I'm thinking, so this is how Adolf felt, ripping at
my hands and tearing my clothes. This is great. The
trip to Russia in eighties seven? Was that your first
time there? First time? Everyone? How was that? How do
they take to it? Was the first time they had
(46:17):
ever had a major act from the West America. People
have gone there before, but played with small p A
systems in little private rooms. We played at the Lenin Stadium,
the Olympic Stadium, and we brought a Western p A system,
same with past and we'd use at Madison Square Garden.
You know, the helicopters come in at the beginning of
good Nights and they're looking around for the helicopters, and
then the hard rock is hitting and the drums and
(46:39):
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. The Reagan was calling with 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 afore, We're not gonna fight with them.
I don't want to fight them. They dont They love
(47:00):
us everywhere I went Viva America, Live America. This is
great co war randed. I was thrilled that went the
way it did. Let me ask you a question. You're funny.
Everything it takes to be an actor. You could have done.
You never wanted to do that. Never. I never was
comfortable in front of a camera. Really, I became a
musician because I never felt I was photogenic. I was
(47:20):
never happy with how I looked. I was very comfortable
in the studio. I'm very comfortable far away on a stage.
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 Carrie Grint. But I saw it reduced to
an image. I went, no, no, no, no, no no,
(47:41):
that's not a way to look at that guy. Well,
I always say acting is what you do when you
have no musical ability. If I could do what you do,
I would never do what I That's what actors said
that 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 which is so good at
what you do. If I could do what you do. Music, music,
(48:02):
it is saying if I could play, if I could
write a film or a television program, you have to
make an appointment with that and watch that. May me
listen to music while you're jogging, while you're at the gym,
while you're making love, while you're having dinner, while you're
in the car. It can be the soundtrack to your
life all day long, if you wanted in church anywhere.
Music is everywhere, Music is everything, and acting is, like
(48:23):
I said, what you do when you have no musical talents.
So you got divorced the second time? Yes, and got
remarried and divorced a third time. And when you have
these things happened, do you write songs about that? No?
I stopped writing songs about it when I got divorced
the second time. That was ye, actually ninety four. The
divorce happened, the album River Dreams came out, and I realized,
(48:47):
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 one and that one. Did you resent that? I
didn't resent it. I just decided to clam up. I
feel like I have given away pieces of myself, maybe
something I should have given to the relationship. I gave
to the work. It's all consuming. If you're gonna do
(49:07):
it right, you have to jump in with both of you.
Do it a hundred percent music will do. That was
a very harsh mistress music, you have to do it
all the way. And maybe I didn't do things I
should have done, or maybe I didn't take care of
business the way I should have. Think here because the
music and so I stopped writing songs about my personal relationships,
but I kept writing music. And after the third marriage
(49:28):
didn't work, I tried marriage. It's you know, three times.
I tried three times. I never gave up on it.
I just realized that this just doesn't I don't know,
it doesn't work. People don't appreciate how it's like to
have a relationship in this business that works. You gotta
be really lucky, man, It's got to be. It's so
much luck, you know, because, like you said, the career
(49:49):
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? You want
me to have no options and no work and I'm
staying home all the time. 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. And work. Most
people leave their jobs. You have to be that character
(50:11):
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, don't. I'm
obsessed with it. I wonder how much of me they're
not getting because of that. I don't know if you
if you were like that when you're doing a part.
(50:31):
I find that in film it's different because film you
don't really have a chance unless you work with a
tremendously intense group of people. Now, when I've done play
is it's different. When you do it. Well, you can
sit back and you light up a cigarette. You're like, well, well, well,
well we nail that way. I just just write it
down in the books. You really feel some satisfaction. Yeah,
(50:52):
you feel that way when you perform. When we perform,
we got to do a show. Do a show. Do
you come off stage after a show and you sit
there and go, well, there it is. But that was
a good and gentlemen, Billy Joe. They'll be talking about
this for a while for a few days. But we
also know when We Stuck, We Come Over were terrible.
Don't remember that one right? Right? Why did they applaud
(51:15):
you know? Last play at Shay Yeah? Do you think
he did well? Yeah? That was good. They were both
good shows. That the double last Double Player show we
did the two nights. Yes, that was exhilarating the hometown crowd,
and it's just it was exhilarating. And we were on
stage with three and a half hours and I didn't
realize how hot it was, and it was sweating. I'm
(51:36):
watching the movie of me. Somebody give that guy a towel.
I was. He's like soaking luck, he's so wet and slimy.
Wipe him off. 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.
But I put away the recording part of my career,
(51:56):
and I put away for the time being. Performed what's
that music? That's my telephone? Yeah? Yeah, 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 ring toe to get the guys on the road
called me godfather. Why do you come to me, Sarah
(52:19):
Bonna Sara? When have I haven't done respect? You'll never
invite me the house for a couple off. Do you
appreciate who you are? People who love you, they adore you.
You are so talented, you are so like it makes
(52:39):
me want to choke up. How talented you are? Do
you know who you are? I know I have a
talent from music. I don't think I'm all that good.
I think I have a good perspective on it. I
can separate the star stuff from the musician stuff. The
music is really impy. Have to stay separate there. Well,
one is a job and one is a life. The
(53:02):
job thing I can take off at five o'clock and
after another rock star thing, I go, I go shopping.
I cook my own food, I washed the dishes, I
take out the garbage. I know who that guy is.
And the music is has nothing to do with money
or career or it's just part of me. It's like love, music,
love food, friendship, my daughter and all these great things.
(53:24):
How's your daughter? She's great? Um? You know. I know
how to take the job hat off and just kind
of be a normal 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 I'm not a rock star, and then though,
yes you are, you are a rock star. You okay, fine,
(53:46):
But a lot of that is it has a job
aspect to it. I worked very hard at what and
writing because that's my deepest love. I think that's really
where I belong. The rock star thing I've never really
been comfortable with because I don't think I look 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
(54:07):
of myself. As as much as you try 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 make
a bad video. 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. Do me a favor.
(54:29):
What's a song that you think yourself? You know, I
really still enjoy hearing that song. It doesn't have to
be a hit. What's one you just like that you haven't,
But do you really really like this? Really? I've been
doing masterclasses at colleges and I get to play all
these obscure songs. Played one the other night, and I said,
that's a really good song. It is no rhyme, not
till the very end is when rhyme comes, but the
(54:50):
lyrics work. It's from the Nylon curtain, and it's called
Where's the Orchestra? Where the orchestra? Wasn't this supposed to
(55:13):
be a musical? Here I am in the balcony. How
the hell could I have missed the overture? I love
the scenery, even though I have so loudly know I
(55:43):
did all 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 of quote, the best expression of my
life and it's up and downs, has been and remains
my music unquote. Lines for an extended version of my
(56:08):
interview with Billy Joel, listen to our podcast and Here's
the Thing dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin. Here's the
Thing is produced by Emily Botin and Kathy Russo, with
support from Jim Briggs, Brian Cosgrove, ed Herbstman, Melanie Hoops
and Monica Hopkins. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening
(56:32):
to Here's the Thing. You're the King. Thank you, No really,
(56:57):
you're the King man. Thank you, Thank you for coming.
Thanks
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
My chance to talk with artists and writers, policymakers and performers,
to hear their stories, what inspired their creations, what decisions
changed their careers, and what relationships influenced their work. Billy
Joel's fans have gotten to know him quite well over
(00:23):
the past four decades. Don't go change to try and
please me. You never led meet 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 Allentown
(00:56):
how sad it's 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
(01:16):
songs are so passionately connected to who he was at
the time he wrote them. Jack want you to get
more level, Hello, Hello, Hello, And when you're actually sitting
in the same room as him with a piano nearby, well,
you can't help yourself. I want you to play me
something if you don't mind, because your fans would demand that.
(01:37):
I still remember you said that to me years ago,
how predictable it was wherever you were that there was
a piano. But it was like, Billy, could you do
you mind? Right? We just a couple of songs. It's
it's just birthday, it's Christmas, and we were wondering if
you could play there. It is it's and it's just
(01:58):
had it. We just just it's such fans. Yeah, you
know mine, right, that's your life, yes, but it's it's
you know, it's fun. You can't have act alongs. You're
an act you can't act along, but you're gonna have
sing alongs. I can always sit down at the party
play and everybody starts singing. I go to a pub
in England, I'm out, Benny Giby's having his zones there.
You go there, it's uptown girl up and they all
(02:19):
sit around he sing and everybody has a plass. It's fun.
It creates a community instantly. Billy Joel is the third
best selling solo artist of all time in the United States,
where he sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen,
and Madonna, but he admits there's still room for improvement.
I know what good piano playing is and I'm not good.
(02:40):
My left hand is lame. I'm a two finger left
hand piano player, as opposed to post somebody who knows
what they're doing with the left hand. I never practiced
enough to use all my fingers on my left hand,
so I just play octaves, bass notes. My right hand
tries to compensate from my left hand being so gimpy,
so I overplay my right hand. My technique is horrible.
(03:01):
I can't read music. I never really don't read music.
I used to, but I don't anymore. I forgot how
so 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. You would not it would
be Chinese. It would be Chinese. Yet I don't know
how did that happen. I started taking lessons when I
was about four or five, and I went up till
(03:22):
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 rocketmaning off hands, the harrowits hands.
(03:42):
I had strong hands, but the short fingers you were
Johnny Friendly's hands. Who's Johnny Friendly from on the waterfront
reunion boss doing the shape up down to the dock
and and hopeboken. Yeah, yeah, you're not, You're not, you said,
taking better accad of me, Charlie. He should have looked
down for me just a little bit, a little bit.
So what did I get one way to get? I'm
(04:06):
a bum jolly, Let's face it, that's what I am.
That's when I am. So you're a kid? Was there
an intimation in your household? There was a pissical music right?
My father was music. Yeah, he was a classically trained pianist.
He grew up in Nuremberg, Germany. He also went to
school in Switzerland. His father was quite well off. They
had a mailo out, a textile business. Joel mocked fabric.
(04:27):
So he had learned to play the piano. It was
a very musical family. He could play Chopini, could play
all the great stuff. He should have become a musician.
He became an engineer, worked for Chee and then he
was in promotion he was never really happy because he
didn't become a musician. We had an old, upright piano
in the house, a Leicester piano, real piece of junk,
and ended up being a planter in the garden. My
(04:47):
mom used it to grow a honeysuckle. She sang. Her
family were all singing Gilbert and Sullivan, English music hall people.
So I grew up in a very musical home. I
heard musical all the time. My father was playing my
that would saying radio is always on, listening to Milton
Cross and the opera. On Sunday, Leonora enters learning a light.
(05:10):
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. Now, where was the family when your
father was there? And the piano? Where were you? Were
you and the lester and your mother and your father?
Where is this brother in Hicksville? My family moved with
me out of the Bronx when I was a baby
and maybe a year old. Basically grew up on the
on the Island. I grew up on the island and
(05:32):
the Levittown section of Hicksville, We had a levitt house,
the cape cod on the quarter raker. Everybody's house looked
the same. Started out looking the same. Now it doesn't
look anything like Levittown, 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
(05:55):
was fourteen. I was asked to be in a band,
the Echos. This is the Echoes band. Well, guitars, because
there really weren't no keyboards that you could amplify. I
played the piano. I never played the organ. Finally figured
out how to amplify keyboards. I think that Dave Clark
five was the first band that had a an organ.
(06:16):
You could hear vox organ. It was pieces, bits and
pieces and I'm feeling good. It's the most unglad sounding song. Yeah,
so you amplify the keyboard. We 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
(06:37):
because nobody could sing all that well in the band.
We couldn't even harmonize. We're very bad singers, but they
decided you really 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 stand with Mick Jagger, I didn't have to Mick
jaggon moves. I had a keyboard. You kind of locked in.
You can't move around. You can't carry a keyboard around
(06:58):
unless you were acordion player. And that looks like Lawrence
Welcome Havan. Then the two. So I stood at the
piano or I sat at the piano. And but then
I realized, you know, that girl I always had a
crush on, is actually looking at me. She never looked
at me twice all those years in school. And uh,
we're playing at the Holy Family Church, the church dance
that was about fifteen. Virginia is looking at me, you know,
(07:21):
come out Virginia at that Virginia and the band sounded great.
I love what I was doing. The crowd went yea
when we finished every song, and at the end of
the night, the priest gave us each fifteen dollars, which
in nineteen was that was it? The door locked behind me.
This is what I'm gonna do. I don't want to
go to Carner all anymore. I ended up on corn anyway.
(07:43):
And what music were you performing covers of other people?
Tuke Bux bands were playing early Beatles, Stones, Sam, the
Sham and the Finger. At that time, when you're seeing
Tommy James and the shan Del's and all that music,
who were you saying to yourself, I want to have
his career? Well, I like the had a different kind
of music. I already came out of a classical background,
and I really dug jazz when I was in my
(08:05):
early teens. They brew back, Oscar Peterson, ar Taanum, Jimmy Smith,
Bill Evans. I loved jazz, but I realized I ain't
gonna be one of those guys either, because I wasn't
a good enough pianist. I mean, these guys are as virtuostic,
virtualistic whatever, juostic, virtuostic, as the classical as a religion.
(08:28):
Yeah is it? Yeah? That's a really darm kidding. They're 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
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 was good enough to play rock
and roll and pop. But when I really fell in
(08:50):
love with as a teenager with girls and stuff was
first out like soul music, James Brown, Wilson, Pickett, Otis Redding,
the Temptations, Marvin Marvin Gay, Smokey Robinson, Gladys No. I
mean I just loved well, I tried to, you know, well,
(09:10):
it was you know, they were they were all white people,
and there weren'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 the music a twist and shout or
everybody would do come on now, shout, come on and
Louis Louis, I think that was the kingsman. What I say,
(09:32):
Ray Charles, So you're a 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, Okay,
if what guys from Liverpool, Yeah, Liverpool, it's possible. It's possible.
(09:58):
They don't look like Frankie am Along, they don't look
like Bobby Rydell. They look like four working class guys
from anywhere. They could be from Micksville, from love It Town.
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,
(10:22):
the Beatles came out. You were a kid. I was
a kid. I was thirteen. You started writing music. Yes,
I started writing air Zots Beatles songs. But I climbed
the highest mountain. Ye hold your perse like that. I
want to hold your purse. Trying to sound live Napoleon Puglian. Puglian, Yeah,
(10:44):
you know, she don't love me like before my own
song she don't love me any more. I believed all
the l she told me. Uh uh, you know that
kind of thing. Trying to sound like the early Beatles.
It was fun. It was a lot of fun. I
was asked to join the band after the Beatles came out.
And now you gotta remember. November of sixty three, John F.
(11:07):
Kennedy is assassinated. The country goes into the dumps. Even
though we didn't know that much about politics government. He
was our guy. He was the young, vigorous progressive and
he was bump. He was shot taken away. Everybody just
turned off, like a switch turned off. We became very cynical,
the whole nation and the blues. February of sixty four,
(11:29):
who comes out? The Beatles come to America. We took
them in. We just embraced that. They walked into that
spaceful funny, it was. They were warm everything, everything that's
taken away from us. Great, let's go have a party.
Let's party. So you start writing songs and you're saying
air sets Beatles songs. What's the first song you write
(11:52):
that you can remember? Was called My Journey's End. I
could play it in film me too. Let's hear it
whill I climb the highest mountain and I swim the
deep scene. If I knew you were there at my
(12:15):
journeys and waiting for me. Let me tell now much
that you love me, sign the letters that you say
Jesus anywhere, And you were waiting there at my journeys.
(12:36):
And so what's the first song you wrote? So what's
the first song? Which was one that you wrote? Well,
it was probably in the Hassles, the Hassle sould records
a few on Long Island problems, maybe Jersey exactly on
the turn policies at the Woodrow Wilson rest stop. Yes,
(12:57):
I think it was the coffee chock full nuts in
Paramus because we opened it. We kind of has played
at the opening. Um the first thing 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 Souls for a while, we made a couple
(13:18):
of records, nothing ever happened. H was the other one,
she don't love me before, she don't love me anymore.
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 now my Lula doesn't love me any
(13:39):
email most like Mr Um And then we became the
Lost Souls, and it turns out there was an English
band called the Lost Souls, so we had to change
our name. So the president of Mercury Records, brilliant guy
at the time, said Okay, we're gonna give you a
new name, the Commandos Vietnams. At the put time, you're
(14:00):
gonna be the Commandos. We hate that name, nobody likes
or yeah, we likes that stuff. You know, you're gonna
be the Commander'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 Echoes, Echoes,
Lost Souls, Souls and then Commandos for a weekend. For
(14:21):
a weekend, opened up one quick choc 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. 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 I said I'll join all right, I'll join
(14:42):
the Hassles. They wanted me to play organ. I'll join
if I can bring my bass player with me, because
they didn't have a bass player, and they said okay.
So that became the Hassles. And then there was another guy.
He got with a lot of Mick Jagger moves, Little John.
His name was great Hair, good looking guy, couldn't sing
to save it didn't matter. He was gorgeous and women
(15:04):
just went nuts and I'm I'm in the back doing death. Well,
but they had eyes, you know, they could see, they
could see the music video killed the radio absolutely glad
I came up in an air where it wasn't that prep.
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
(15:26):
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, but
the first song that I wrote that actually sold something.
(15:50):
Everything I do, I don't know. The course went every step,
every move I make. You know I'm trying to do
enough without you. I turned eye run eye hide really bitlers,
but I know deep inside a part of me has died. Yeah,
(16:16):
like Popeye, He's gonna I didn't know you wrote that.
That's great. That's how my father used to start. It
sounded like Popeye. Yeah. So that was probably the first
thing that saw I was in the first Hassle's album.
I think we saw a dozen copies. But our big
single was actually a cover of a Salmon Dave record,
(16:40):
You got Me humming, Uh, I don't know what you got,
but it's dead man, you got me and you got
(17:02):
Me on and 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 Hassle's hit.
First album was horrible, the second hal was really horrible.
And then I, me and the drummers split off from
the Hassles to form a power duo. We were gonna
(17:24):
destroy the world with amplification. It's just like the heavy
metal thing we heard Zeppelin. It blew our minds, Iron Butterfly,
I gotta divid, don't you know that? I Love you?
(17:47):
Went on and on and on. So when you get
to this point where you say, a couple of albums,
the hassles, and then when is it you? Well, like
the band's got someone was smaller and smaller until I
became a two man. And so when you and he
went off, until it was the two of you, until
it was just the two What did he play? He
played drums? I played Hammond Oregan wired directly through hand.
(18:10):
So we're getting closer to Lawrence welk. Now the more
we go, it's getting closer. You almost got the according
but it was louder. It was much louder. And we
got signed to Epic, and we were on Epic from
one album and it was a colossal failure. We played
one gig I think it was an Unas on the
West Side in Manhattan, and people went fleeing from the place.
We were so loud he could see blood coming out
(18:32):
of ears. 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 onn what happened then that we broke
up and I decided I don't longer want to be
a rock and roll star. I got that out of
got that out of my system. I was about nineteen
or twenty. I want to write songs now coming up.
(18:57):
How this kid from Long Island adjusted to life in
Los Angeles, chicks coming and stuff from the beach, rubbing
your neck and shoulders while you're playing. Yeah, that's what
it looks like in the movies. And why even so
he was able to say goodbye to Hollywood. This is
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. This
(19:23):
is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Billy Joel never set out to be a rock star.
He just wanted to write songs like this one. Baby,
all the lights are turned on you. Now you're in
the center of the stage. And sometimes he heard his
songs in a voice other than his own. Baby on
(19:43):
a lance attend on you. You're in the center of
the stage. Everything revolves on what you do. You're in
your prim coming. Did you send him that song to record?
I wanted him too, But Bob writes his own stuff.
He's not gonn do covers. He doesn't buy songs from
the people. No, he does not. But I no longer
(20:04):
wanted to be the guy on stage. I wanted to
be the guy behind the scenes. This just happened to
coincide with the era of the singers songwriter Harry Chape
and Jim Croce. James Taylor was huge at the time.
So the advice I got was, what do you want
people to hear these songs? Why don't you make your
own album? Okay, I got a record deal, Family Records,
(20:26):
This guy named already RiPP, perfect name, like I was
like Pinocchio. Yeah. I fell in with the you know,
Hydride Lidy an actor's life for me, for those people.
And I recorded an album in l A. I lived
in l A for a little while. They said, okay,
then you made the album. Now now you got an album,
you need to promote it. You need to go on
the road and play and promote the albums. Oh okay.
(20:48):
It's a kind of a strange way to be a songwriter.
But that's what other people were doing. You know, other
people be interested in my material. If I promoted it,
promote the album, you'll hear it. Well, the album was
mastered at the wrong speed. So a song like this,
She's got away about her, I don't know what it is,
(21:15):
but I know that I can't 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. It's terrible. The album never
went anywhere. Nothing happened, and I went on the road.
(21:38):
I promoted it and never saw it in the stores.
But that was when I was me. That was just
Billy Joel. So when you when people buy that album,
there's album has been rereleased 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. I would advise people don't buy it.
If you can steal it, steal it. So Cold Spring
(21:58):
Harper is the first album. It's you how many band
members guitar, bassed, drums, and there was some violins that
were put in by Auady ripping. You know, he was
trying to be Phil Specter. It got all glopped up.
It was supposed to be more of a folky recorded
that in l A, recorded it in l A. How
long were you in l A? Three years? What was
that like for you? Weird? Yeah? How I went there
(22:20):
and I stayed on Santa Marca Boulevard. It's just dumpy.
A little place called the Tropicana Motel right there on
Santi the Duke's with the Duke's Duke's coffee shop. Maybe
the huge sandwiches for the poor. You have breakfast the Duke's.
It was great. You know a buck you could eat
like a king. The place was a dump, but the
postcards said the Tropic Canna and it had like a
(22:42):
palm tree on it. So I said postcards, all my friends,
I've made it here. I'm in Hollywood, coming together. Cat.
I'm having on what's on Santa Monica Boulevard for a dollar,
I mean to play in my song with a Chipmunk speed. Well,
if it's all going great, Yeah, if you're from Long Island,
you get a postcard pumped you the Tropic can It's
oh my god, he's made it because you and I
(23:04):
are from the same background. Yes, I mean from SAA.
Your friends you grew up with a propate like mine
where they probably get that post like like Joey, come here.
I got a postcard from Billy. He's the Tropicana here. Wow,
he's on the beach with girls like the beach boys.
He's driving cars. But I would make movies that coul
my friends be like, they say, let me ask you
a question. You do a love scene with it brought
the movie, Like do you ever get excited like yourself?
(23:26):
You know what I mean? There's always a weird you know,
to make love to a woman in front of olden people?
Can you pick who you make out with? Yeah? Like
do you enjoy that? It was it fun? You mean
he groupies out there and I'm like, you know, it's
not funn because it's a hundred and people staring at
you while you're doing it, Like, oh yeah, I forgot
about that. I forgot. We got those questions. What's it
like in a student? I mean like a lot of
drugs and girls and stuff. No, you're actually in a factory.
(23:48):
He's surrounded by equipment, and you know you don't have
like big fish thanks full of cocaine and everything, like
chicks coming and stuff from the beach rubbing your neck
and shoulders while you're playing. Yeah, that's what it looks
like in the movies. Did you movie stars some of
a musician? I'm every night you haven't been with who?
All the big stars? Right? And a fish tankful of
blow when chicks and bikinis rubbing the shoulders right, And
(24:08):
that's what people think now when you did you did
Cold Spring Harbor? There, did you do the next album
out there? Actually 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 signed.
I signed away everything, copyrights, publishing, record royalties, everything, my
first child. I gave away at all. And I said
that I gotta get out of this deal. And I
(24:30):
hid in l A and I worked in a piano
bar under the name Bill Morton. It's just down in
the Wilshire district. And it was no, it's not a
real bar town l A. Uh. You know, Long Island
is a pub on every corner. It's a pub culture.
So when people close their eyes and they think of piano, man,
I think of a guy bending over a piano, and
I think of a guy in a in a place
(24:51):
on Long Island or in New York. But you recorded
that out of Los Angeles. I recorded in l A.
And that's where I worked. Some people think I did
it for years. I worked in this piano for six months.
I needed to make some money. I made Union scale,
I get tips. Mostly played, you know, Major seventh Chords
(25:15):
anything but but but how does piano man start that
kind of thing? And that guy in the hotel a
lot love. They would request songs I didn't even know
the song. Can you play what's that? Jogi carn Michael's
(25:37):
song startus? And I would go, sure you play mr.
And everybody was drinking pretty heavy because in an l
(25:57):
A bar, these were all people who lost it the
track losers. I just like drinking like fish and I
got free drinks. Oh my god. But so then you
do piano man, what's the next album after that? You do?
In l A? Uh? We did Piano Man in l A.
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. But this is back in the
(26:18):
early seventies. In those days they still had FM, progressive radio.
Dis jockeys could spend whatever they want. W L A R.
Dennis McNamara him, I was a kid home. I was smoking,
you know what, leaning out the windows. So my mom
didn't know. And on the video we'd hear w L
I R this Dennis McNamara, Jackson Brown right, I listened
to this guy. He was my childhood Dennis McNamara. We
(26:39):
grew up with these disc jockeys at night Allison Steven
Allison the night Bird and Roscoe Zaccharly was Vin Skels,
and my favorite guy was Scott Muni coming at you,
Scott Muny, a little spooky tooth from from England. Spooky
tooth Scot Munick and at you right now. They played
(27:01):
whatever they wanted. They didn't have program directors, they didn't
have consultants, and people would call in. If they got
enough requests, they would play a track. So piano Man
got requested all the time. It was a five 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 quarter time pop pop and it's
(27:26):
and it's not really lyrics. Dellimerates. John at the Bar
is a friend of mine. He gets my drinks for free.
He's quick with the joke of a lot. Have you
smoke with it? Some said he rather big, could be
one of the girl from Nantucket the Puppa. So it's
still limericks. And if anybody said this is gonna be
a hit record. I tell him, right of their mind.
The next album comes out, Street Life Serenade. It's the
sophomore jinks. I did not have enough time to write
(27:49):
new material after the Piano Man album came out. Piano
Man got 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 on the road.
I haven't a chance to write now, needing 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 did that come from? Well?
(28:11):
I had one song that I thought, which was the Entertainer.
Which is that? Uh? Another folks song? I am the
entertain them, I know, just swear eyes done, not surenator.
I don't know a long haired band today. I am
(28:33):
your champion. I may won your hearts, but I know
in the game you're forgetting my name. I won't be
here and another year if I don't stay on the chart.
I wrote it on a 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,
(28:56):
which is just the piano ragtime thing, and this uh
Air's's Western movie theme called the Mexican Connection. Because I
was living in l A. Was fascinated with westerns, bum
bum bums. What are the songs came off a street
Life that were nothing that We're memorable? Nothing, The egg
(29:16):
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 was called Roberta. What else was on that album? Souvenirs?
Next song a picture postcon a folded stub, a program,
(29:51):
the play full away the photograph ups of your and
your moment? Doesn't it only like another fifteen seconds of it?
(30:12):
That was a nice song, but it was like this
short and other than that is the Mexican Connection, rut
beer Rag. It was okay, and you finished street life
and you're in l A. And then what do you do?
I finished street Life and it comes out and it goes,
you know, Pump 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. Mid seventies,
New York was in the dumps. They were gonna default
(30:34):
forward to New York dropped dead for to New York dropped.
I saw that headline and people in l A Were like,
ha ha, screw New York. We can't wait to New
York goes down to dumps. And I said, that was
down with that. If you're act going down the tubes,
I'm going back. I want to be there for this,
and I'm picturing this apocalypse. I actually wrote a song
called Miami seventeen, think about the year twenty seventeen. I'm
an old man. I'm telling my grandchildren I was there.
(30:55):
I saw the lights go out on Broadway. Seeing the
lights go out on Broadway, I saw the Empire state
later life went on beyond the Palaceades. We all bought
cadillacs and left there long ago. And I'm picturing I'm
(31:20):
I'm an old man in the year seventeen. I'm living
in Miami, which I'm closing in 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 Hollywooo.
(31:46):
I'm taking a gray Hound on the Hudson River line.
I'm in the New York state of mind. We could
do it like this, some oaks like get away, Tony,
come on, Chicken, a holiday from the neighborhood, a flight
(32:08):
to flight to Miami Beach, all the Hollywood. Yeah, I'm
taking the ghown huts and yeah, I'm in New York. Yeah.
(32:33):
And he'd recorded it, and that was I was hoping
other people would do that song. But I was back
in New York. I was home. Are you glad you were?
I was thrown so leaving l A, which just was
meant to be home. Say goodbye to Hollywood, 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 is
(32:53):
great and all the chicks and the palm trees. After
three years, everybody's full crap. Here, I'm a producer Prince
loved what you know. We all produced gas. We produced something.
When when you go back to New York, the where
do you go the city? I moved to Highland Falls,
which is right up to Hudson. Why we weren't ready
to move Lockstock and Barrow was waiting the city. I
(33:15):
was married at the time. My first X one where
is she from? From sayaset? So she went out there
with you and came back. She went out there with
me and came back with me. And this was Turnstiles
was recorded in New York. I produced it myself. 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
(33:35):
to use studio players. I want on 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 and Dooby Brothers everywhere we played the Beach Boys.
We would get better plus than the This is when
Turnstiles came out. Yes, but turns out no, Trench Styles
didn't sell anything. You gotta be kidding, No, no, no,
(33:56):
hits New York. State of Mind is now perceived to
be a hit, But wasn't it say about Hollywood wasn't
a hit? None of the Ruggets. But I love all
those songs, not until the Stranger, which was the next album,
and seventies and Off that Comes, how many HiT's four
which were just the Way you Are moving out only
the good Day Young and She's Always a Woman, so
she's always a woman, and just the way you Are
(34:19):
our love songs. Well, She's always a woman is a
love so not perceived. Remember I'm just saying, but they're
very romantic songs. 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 turnstyles Summer Highland Falls, no thematic depression,
(34:39):
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, which is kind of a double edged sword there.
I had no idea it was such a big record
just the way you are became this mon stir like
(35:00):
the Beatles. Yeah, once after the Stranger. After the Stranger,
we started playing colosseums and arena's, the big, big rooms,
and I went right back on the road again and
I started writing again. Um, you start writing for bigger rooms. Yes, yeah,
I had to be. I was aware. Now we're playing
the big places and we got to write bigger songs.
(35:21):
I gotta have bigger numbers energy. You can't play to
a colosseum with a handful of ballots. You gotta knock
them out. It got bigger, It got rounder, fatter, fuller, fuller, faster,
you know, more high energy stuff, harder, faster, deeper, as
they say in the adult film in His Dream. Yeah,
that was it. Pretty much went into the triple X.
(35:42):
You started going triple x. More Billy Joe raw, but uncensored.
After the break, you're listening to Here's the Thing, and
you can hear more conversations, sing a song with me,
Chris and Okay, more singing with other artists, policymakers and performers.
(36:04):
I bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, fun take a
listen to earlier episodes at Here's the thing dot Org. Okay,
that's enough. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
the Thing Billy. Joel recorded five albums with a band
(36:25):
that consisted of the same four guys, Liberty de Vito, Russell, Javor's,
Doug steg Meyer and Richie Kannada. Kannada left the band
in eight one. At that point, Joel was also ready
to try something new. I wanted to write my masterpiece,
my Sergeant Pepper as it were. Instead of writing from
the from the inside out, like having starting with the
(36:47):
seed of a song, we started with sound ideas and
thoughts and studio techniques and we didn't really know what
we had until almost the final mix. What is this thing?
We're experimenting with stuff? And it was? It took a year.
Were you still producing? No? No, he was producing sil
Vermon who started a stranger NW. When when you have
(37:07):
someone like Ramon, what did he do for you? How
did he help you? Well? Phil Ramon he was a
child prodigy on the violin. He was from South Africa.
Actually he knew music and now he had years and
years in the trenches as an engineer. He he recorded
JFK speeches when you see the Marilyn Monroe thing, A
mount of the Square God, Happy birthday, Mr. President. That's
(37:28):
Phil Ramon. He was the engineer on those things. I
mean he's when when with some amazing recordings, but never
got credited as a producer. So I who's this guy?
Phil Remona keep Simon Ramone. 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 do. He knows how to get
good sound, he knows how to deal with sonic things sonic.
(37:48):
And when he came in Boom, we knew we had
a professional. Guy. Was like working with another great musician.
He knows how to play the studio like we know
how to play our instruments. Everything changed, The band just
rose to the occasion. Uh. We were having a blast.
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,
(38:11):
although they may not be able to do it themselves,
they know what you need to do. They cut to
what the synergy should be. They know what the dynamics
should be in the studio because 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 tried
his wife, We tried his way, his mutual respect. When
we did just the way you are. Originally, the drumma
was playing it like a cha cha don't go change
(38:42):
when too. We hated it, hated drummer, couldn't figure out
what to play. Phil actually told play it back with
samba boom boom bop, boom boom, and it worked. It
was like a backwards sign up. What are we doing?
(39:02):
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 do, let me wait,
let us stop. Much Liberty throws his sticks at me,
because why are you doing Because closest you've been to
Jamaica as queens, what are you doing is changing trains
(39:24):
to go down to see for change that Jamaica, Change
that Jamaica, the train to spe On. That's it. He said,
I'm not playing this, I'm not playing what are we
gonna do it? So Phil came up with this shuffle
against straight forwards and the gas are going banana banana,
bob banana, and we're playing and it worked. It was
(39:50):
like j two things jammed into each other and Phil
knows how to do that. And when we would get
tired and we get discouraged, he says, just stay, stay
a little long, 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 right into the fingertips.
It worked, but he could wear Mozart would have been
(40:12):
if they had MSG back then. Oh wow, he did
pretty good. He did. He went as far as you
could go without MSG. I yes, And then you do
Nylon Curtain. That's eight two eight 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
because I could hear all the work that went into it,
all the textures, all the layers. It's a song that
(40:34):
you're particularly fond of. From that, it's very obscure. Don't
get excited, don't say well, nobody noticed, nothing was. It
was committed discreetly it was handled so needly, and it
(40:57):
shouldn't surprise you out Oh, you know, break all the records,
but the cassettes. I'd be lying in the fact on
you that I had no regrets. There was so many mistakes,
but what a difference it makes, and now it shouldn't
(41:21):
surprise you at all. No hits. Allentown was kind of
a hit off. That album didn't really sell a lot
of records. What did you do after Nylon Curtain? Um?
After the Nylon Curtain? Because it was such an intensive labor,
the Nylon Curtain something very dense and very complex. I
(41:41):
wanted to do something simple and dumb and happy, and
I did an Innocent Man, which is really an homage
to all the music of my teenage years. Frankie Valley
in the Four Seasons was Uptown Girl, and that was
a hit that was a big hig It was a joke.
It was gen girl trying to second. She been living
in her up town world app but she never had
(42:04):
a backstreet guy and he had this impossibly highway Ever
told her why I'm gonna track you? And I realized
something like remember the song rag Doll Ye, And then
(42:28):
the first was I love you just the way you
are is that where I heard that before, just the
way you were? And then there was a song. Um,
I was trying to do little Antonine Imperials. Didn't not
say shoot up? I wasn't ready for romance, shoop shoot up?
Didn't we promise we would only be friends? And so
(42:54):
we danced, though it was only a slow dance. I
start a breaking. My promise is right there, and you'll
recognize the chorus because it goes like this, This night
is my It's only you, and night to my road
(43:21):
is a long time away. This night can last for it,
which is the pathetique by Beethoven. And I gave I
gave credit and back at l V Beethoven. So so
(43:42):
Bill he's co writing with somebody LV Beto Beethoven for
Coming Out. But that was a fun album. I just
I had met Christie. I had just gotten divorced from
X one, and here I am meeting Whitney Houston when
she was a model. El mcpheerson, I'm dating her. I'm
dating Christie Brinkley. This is fantastic. I feel like I'm
sixteen years old again, going we girls. It's all going great,
(44:06):
and I'm a rock star. I got a pad the
old sand Maritz on Central Park Sunday, which is now
that I think the rich Carlton. So this music was
me being a teenager, roll over again, falling in love,
having romance and all that great stuff. So why did
you get married? I don't know you're asking me exactly?
Is that a part of your makeup? Which is married? Family?
(44:26):
Was marriage the right thing to do? I was madly
in love and when William loves you, marry him. That's it.
That's how I feel. But I still feel like I
can be madly in love and not be married. Yes,
but I was married three times. When did you go
to Russia? And how did that happen? Well, we played
in Cuba in nineteen seventy nine, played the Karl Marx
(44:48):
Theater in Havana, and everybody gets up on stage, the
other American artists Steven Still's Viva Evolution, Viva Fidel, Chris
Kristofferson Viva Revolution, Riva. The only's talking in Spanish. I
get up on stage him in the last act. You know,
it's a big shot and they don't want to hit
(45:10):
even 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 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're
one of the biggest music stars ever, and you go
to a foreign country and you realize music just transcends
(45:34):
all of it. To Germany, I think it was in
Frankfurt here seventy seven. I played in England and 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 Ll, Billy joe Ll. But Germany we had
a couple of and the Germans went berserk lot. They
don't have seats. You're getting a standing ovation when you
(45:56):
walk on the stage. Billy, Billy, I'm thinking, they don't
know what they did to my family. Yeah, Billy, but
I'm thinking, so this is how Adolf felt, ripping at
my hands and tearing my clothes. This is great. The
trip to Russia in eighties seven? Was that your first
time there? First time? Everyone? How was that? How do
they take to it? Was the first time they had
(46:17):
ever had a major act from the West America. People
have gone there before, but played with small p A
systems in little private rooms. We played at the Lenin Stadium,
the Olympic Stadium, and we brought a Western p A system,
same with past and we'd use at Madison Square Garden.
You know, the helicopters come in at the beginning of
good Nights and they're looking around for the helicopters, and
then the hard rock is hitting and the drums and
(46:39):
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. The Reagan was calling with 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 afore, We're not gonna fight with them.
I don't want to fight them. They dont They love
(47:00):
us everywhere I went Viva America, Live America. This is
great co war randed. I was thrilled that went the
way it did. Let me ask you a question. You're funny.
Everything it takes to be an actor. You could have done.
You never wanted to do that. Never. I never was
comfortable in front of a camera. Really, I became a
musician because I never felt I was photogenic. I was
(47:20):
never happy with how I looked. I was very comfortable
in the studio. I'm very comfortable far away on a stage.
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 Carrie Grint. But I saw it reduced to
an image. I went, no, no, no, no, no no,
(47:41):
that's not a way to look at that guy. Well,
I always say acting is what you do when you
have no musical ability. If I could do what you do,
I would never do what I That's what actors said
that 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 which is so good at
what you do. If I could do what you do. Music, music,
(48:02):
it is saying if I could play, if I could
write a film or a television program, you have to
make an appointment with that and watch that. May me
listen to music while you're jogging, while you're at the gym,
while you're making love, while you're having dinner, while you're
in the car. It can be the soundtrack to your
life all day long, if you wanted in church anywhere.
Music is everywhere, Music is everything, and acting is, like
(48:23):
I said, what you do when you have no musical talents.
So you got divorced the second time? Yes, and got
remarried and divorced a third time. And when you have
these things happened, do you write songs about that? No?
I stopped writing songs about it when I got divorced
the second time. That was ye, actually ninety four. The
divorce happened, the album River Dreams came out, and I realized,
(48:47):
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 one and that one. Did you resent that? I
didn't resent it. I just decided to clam up. I
feel like I have given away pieces of myself, maybe
something I should have given to the relationship. I gave
to the work. It's all consuming. If you're gonna do
(49:07):
it right, you have to jump in with both of you.
Do it a hundred percent music will do. That was
a very harsh mistress music, you have to do it
all the way. And maybe I didn't do things I
should have done, or maybe I didn't take care of
business the way I should have. Think here because the
music and so I stopped writing songs about my personal relationships,
but I kept writing music. And after the third marriage
(49:28):
didn't work, I tried marriage. It's you know, three times.
I tried three times. I never gave up on it.
I just realized that this just doesn't I don't know,
it doesn't work. People don't appreciate how it's like to
have a relationship in this business that works. You gotta
be really lucky, man, It's got to be. It's so
much luck, you know, because, like you said, the career
(49:49):
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? You want
me to have no options and no work and I'm
staying home all the time. 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. And work. Most
people leave their jobs. You have to be that character
(50:11):
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, don't. I'm
obsessed with it. I wonder how much of me they're
not getting because of that. I don't know if you
if you were like that when you're doing a part.
(50:31):
I find that in film it's different because film you
don't really have a chance unless you work with a
tremendously intense group of people. Now, when I've done play
is it's different. When you do it. Well, you can
sit back and you light up a cigarette. You're like, well, well, well,
well we nail that way. I just just write it
down in the books. You really feel some satisfaction. Yeah,
(50:52):
you feel that way when you perform. When we perform,
we got to do a show. Do a show. Do
you come off stage after a show and you sit
there and go, well, there it is. But that was
a good and gentlemen, Billy Joe. They'll be talking about
this for a while for a few days. But we
also know when We Stuck, We Come Over were terrible.
Don't remember that one right? Right? Why did they applaud
(51:15):
you know? Last play at Shay Yeah? Do you think
he did well? Yeah? That was good. They were both
good shows. That the double last Double Player show we
did the two nights. Yes, that was exhilarating the hometown crowd,
and it's just it was exhilarating. And we were on
stage with three and a half hours and I didn't
realize how hot it was, and it was sweating. I'm
(51:36):
watching the movie of me. Somebody give that guy a towel.
I was. He's like soaking luck, he's so wet and slimy.
Wipe him off. 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.
But I put away the recording part of my career,
(51:56):
and I put away for the time being. Performed what's
that music? That's my telephone? Yeah? Yeah, 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 ring toe to get the guys on the road
called me godfather. Why do you come to me, Sarah
(52:19):
Bonna Sara? When have I haven't done respect? You'll never
invite me the house for a couple off. Do you
appreciate who you are? People who love you, they adore you.
You are so talented, you are so like it makes
(52:39):
me want to choke up. How talented you are? Do
you know who you are? I know I have a
talent from music. I don't think I'm all that good.
I think I have a good perspective on it. I
can separate the star stuff from the musician stuff. The
music is really impy. Have to stay separate there. Well,
one is a job and one is a life. The
(53:02):
job thing I can take off at five o'clock and
after another rock star thing, I go, I go shopping.
I cook my own food, I washed the dishes, I
take out the garbage. I know who that guy is.
And the music is has nothing to do with money
or career or it's just part of me. It's like love, music,
love food, friendship, my daughter and all these great things.
(53:24):
How's your daughter? She's great? Um? You know. I know
how to take the job hat off and just kind
of be a normal 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 I'm not a rock star, and then though,
yes you are, you are a rock star. You okay, fine,
(53:46):
But a lot of that is it has a job
aspect to it. I worked very hard at what and
writing because that's my deepest love. I think that's really
where I belong. The rock star thing I've never really
been comfortable with because I don't think I look 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
(54:07):
of myself. As as much as you try 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 make
a bad video. 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. Do me a favor.
(54:29):
What's a song that you think yourself? You know, I
really still enjoy hearing that song. It doesn't have to
be a hit. What's one you just like that you haven't,
But do you really really like this? Really? I've been
doing masterclasses at colleges and I get to play all
these obscure songs. Played one the other night, and I said,
that's a really good song. It is no rhyme, not
till the very end is when rhyme comes, but the
(54:50):
lyrics work. It's from the Nylon curtain, and it's called
Where's the Orchestra? Where the orchestra? Wasn't this supposed to
(55:13):
be a musical? Here I am in the balcony. How
the hell could I have missed the overture? I love
the scenery, even though I have so loudly know I
(55:43):
did all 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 of quote, the best expression of my
life and it's up and downs, has been and remains
my music unquote. Lines for an extended version of my
(56:08):
interview with Billy Joel, listen to our podcast and Here's
the Thing dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin. Here's the
Thing is produced by Emily Botin and Kathy Russo, with
support from Jim Briggs, Brian Cosgrove, ed Herbstman, Melanie Hoops
and Monica Hopkins. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening
(56:32):
to Here's the Thing. You're the King. Thank you, No really,
(56:57):
you're the King man. Thank you, Thank you for coming.
Thanks
Host
Alec Baldwin
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.