From the Archives: Billy Joel

Recorded July 29th, 2012. 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. He admits that he doesn’t remember how to read sheet music anymore saying 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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. Billy Joel's fans have gotten to
know him quite well over the past four decades.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Don't go change it.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
To dry please me.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
You never let me down before.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
From the open hearted declarations of old fashioned love and
She's Got Away and just the way you are to
the hard rocking social commentaries we didn't start the fire
and Alentown we're living here sunny. If like me, you

(00:57):
grew up listening to Billy Joel's music, you can chart
phases of your life by each of his albums. Maybe
that's because Billy Joel's songs are so passionately connected to
who he was at the time he wrote them. No, No,
testing one two, testing one two three, And when you're
actually sitting in the same room as him with a

(01:18):
piano nearby, well you can't help yourself. I stilways. Remember
you said that to me years ago, how predictable it
was wherever you were that there was a piano. Bots like,
Billy could you eh, do you mind right? We just
a couple of songs, Yeah, that's your life.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
Yes, but you know it's fun. You can't have act alongs.
You're an act you can't act along, but you can
have sing alongs. I can always sit down at a party,
play the piano and everybody starts singing.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I go to a pub in England, Hey, come on,
vinegarys and having his owns go there. You go, yes,
uptown girl up and they all sin around and sing
and everybody has a bliss. It's fun. It creates a
community instantly. Billy Joel is the third best selling solo
artist of all time in the United States. He sold
more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna, but

(02:05):
he admits there's still room for improvement.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
I know what good piano playing is, and I'm not good.
My left hand is lame. I have a two finger
left hand piano player, as opposed to post to somebody
who knows what they're doing with their 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 for my left hand being
so GIMPI, so I overplay on my right hand. My

(02:31):
technique is horrible. I can't read music. I never really
don't read music. I used to, but I don't anymore.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
I forgot how So if I took a piece of
music that you didn't know, if I got a score,
I wouldn't. And I put in videos to play this,
I would not. It would be Chinese. It would be
Chinese too. Yeah, I don't know how did that happen.
It's like a language. If you stop speaking it often enough,
you can't forget. When did you stop?

Speaker 4 (02:53):
In one Dances with Wolves, she forgot how to speak English.
I started taking lessons when I was about four or five,
and I went up till I was about sixteen, so
it was almost twelve years.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Of classical piano lessons.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
I loved it, but I just when you become a teenager,
everything changes. I didn't want to read other people's dots anymore.
And I also realized early on, I'm not going to
be a concert pianist. I don't have the rockmanning Off hands,
the Horowitz hands. I had strong hands, but the short fingers.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
You were Johnny Frimley's hands. Who's Johnny Frimly from on
the waterfront?

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (03:28):
You were a union boss doing the shape up down
to the dock and hopboken. Yeah, yeah, you're not you're not.
It was my brother. You stoildn't taken better care of me, Charlie.

Speaker 5 (03:36):
He should have looked out for me, Charli, just a
little bit, a little bit. So what did I get it?

Speaker 1 (03:41):
One way?

Speaker 5 (03:41):
Thick of I'm a bum, Charlie. Let's face it, that's
what I am.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
That's what I am. So you're a kid and you
was there an intimation in your household? There was a
classical music, right, my faical music. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
He was a classically playing trained pianist. He grew up
in Nuremberg, Germany, and he also went to school in Switzerland.
His father was quite well off. They had a mail
order textile business, Joel Mocht fabric. So he had learned
to play the piano. It was a very musical family.
He could play chopin, he could play all the great stuff.
He should have become a musician. He became an engineer.

(04:16):
He worked for ge and then he was in promotion.
But he was never really happy because he didn't become
a musician. We had an old, upright piano in the house,
a leicster piano, real piece of junk, and I happened
to inherit that thing and ended up being a planter
in the garden.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
My mom used it to grow a honeysuckle. She sang.

Speaker 4 (04:34):
Her family were all singing Gilbert and Sullivan, English music
hall people. Her family was English, so I grew up
in a very musical home. I heard music all the time.
My father was playing, my mother would sing. Radio was
always on, listening.

Speaker 5 (04:46):
To Milton Cross on the Opera. On Sunday, Leonorda enters
wearing a white gum.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
So I used to bang on the piano.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
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.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
You and the lester, and your mother and your father.
Where is this the Bronx. This is in Hicksville. Everybody
was in Hicksville. We were in Hicksville when my family
moved with me out of the Bronx. When I was
a baby, I think maybe a year old. Basically grew
up on the island.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
I grew up on the island in the Levittown section
of Hicksville. We had a Levett house, you know, the
cape cod on the quarter acre. Everybody's house looked the same,
started out looking the same. Now it doesn't look anything
like Levittown, right like my town.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
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?

Speaker 4 (05:37):
I joined a band when I was fourteen. I was
asked to be in a band, the Echoes. This was
the Echoes garage band. All guitars because there really were
no keyboards that you could amplify. I played the piano.
I never played the organ. Finally figured out how to
amplify keyboards. I think the Dave Clark five was the

(05:57):
first band that had an organ. You could hear a
vox organ.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
It was cool, pieces, bits and pieces, and I'm feeling
it's the most unglad sounding song. He was constant you,
so you amplify the keyboard. We got an organ and
I and I was.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
They decided I had the best voice in the band,
which isn't really saying much because nobody could sing all
that well in the band. We couldn't even harmonize. We're
very bad singers. But they decided you would have got
the best voice. You'll sing the songs.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Okay, how did you feel about that.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
I felt a little funny about it because I'm not
a front man where you stay with Michael mc jagger.
I didn't have the mic jagger moves. I had a keyboard.
You kind of locked in. You can't move around. You
can't carry a keyboard around unless you were accordion player.
And that looks like Lawrence welk Avan. Then the two
so I stood at the piano or I sat at
the piano. But then I realized, you know, that girl

(06:51):
I always had a crush on, is actually looking at me.
She never looked at me twice all those years in school.
And we're playing at the Holy Family Church, the church dance.
I was about fifteen sixteen. Virginia is looking at me.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
You know, come out Virginia at that Virginia she's looking
I said, my my god, she's looking at me. And
the band sounded great. I love what I was doing.
The crowd went yay.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
When we finished every song, and at the end of
the night, the priest gave us each fifteen dollars, which
in nineteen sixty five was fifteen hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
That was it.

Speaker 4 (07:24):
The door locked behind me. This is what I'm going
to do. I don't want to go to Corneghill anyway,
And I ended up going to Corneghill anyway. What music
were you performing covers of other people? Jukebox bands were
playing early Beatles, Stones, Sam de Sham and.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
The Finger in that time when you're seeing Tommy James
and the Chandell's and all that music. Who were you
saying to yourself, if at all, were you saying, that's
why I want to be That's why I really admire
or look up to, or I think I want to
have his career.

Speaker 4 (07:51):
Well, I liked a lot of different kinds of music.
I already came out of a classical background, and I
really dug jazz when I was in my early teens.
Dave brew Beck, Scarpedison, Art Tatum, Jimmy Smith, Bill Evans.
I loved jazz. But I realized I ain't gonna be
one of those guys either. Why because I wasn't a
good enough pianist.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
I mean, these guys are as virtuostick, virtuistic what virtuostic virtuostick?
They're good good, They're just really good. I mean the
top of the line, guys at the top of the
line in classical and jazz. They could have gone either way.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
The top of line classical guys, how they decided to
be jazz guys could have been just as good as
the top jazz guys, and vice versa.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
I wasn't good enough. I was good enough to play
rock and roll and pop.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
But when I really fell in love with as a
teenager with girls and stuff was first.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
I like soul music.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
James Brown, Wilson, Pickett, Otis Redding, the Temptations, Marvin Gay,
Marvin Gay, Smokey Robinson, Gladys.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
I mean, I just loved Did you cover that music
as well? I try to?

Speaker 4 (08:55):
You know, well, it was all you know they were.
They were all white people, yeah, exactly. And there wasn't
Long Island. There wasn't anybody but white people in my school.
I think there were a couple of Jews, some Latinos.
That was sprinklings. But everybody's white. But everybody likes me
it twist and shout what everybody would do?

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Come on now, shout, come on? Yeah, and Louis Louis.
I think there was the Kingsman. What I say, Ray Charles,
So you the girl all dressed in green and you'd
make up really dirty words to that. We came up
with some really good stuff.

Speaker 4 (09:27):
So I love that stuff. And then the Beatles came
around and there was boom. Four working class guys from Liverpool,
which is as close to Levittown in England, I think,
and sounding anyway, then you can be okay if four
guys from Liverpool, yeah, Liverpool.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
And it's possible. It's possible. They don't look like.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
Frankie Avalon, they don't look like Bobby ry Dell. They
look like four working class guys from anywhere. They could
be from Ckxville, they could be from Livetown. So I said,
that's that's possible. That's what I want to do. I
want to write my own songs.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
I want to play in my own band, do our
own arrangements and make our own way.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
When did that start? This is before the Echoes, before
before I joined the band. The Beatles came out.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
You were a kid. I was a kid.

Speaker 4 (10:13):
I was thirteen and you started writing music. Yes, started
writing Arizot's Beatles songs.

Speaker 5 (10:19):
Well, I climbed the highest mountaine trying to sound Liverpolon
live Apudlian, Pudlian, Yeah, you know, she don't love me
like before my own song she Don't Love Me Anymore,
But I believed all the lad she told me.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Ah ah, you know that kind of thing, trying to
sound like the early Beatles. And it was fun.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
It was a lot of fun. But I was asked
to join a band after the Beatles came out. Now
you got to remember November of sixty three, John F.
Kennedy is assassinated. The country goes into the dumps. Even
though we didn't know that much about politics or government,
he was our guy. He would the young, vigorous progressive.
He represented youth and vigor and he was booming. He

(11:06):
was shot taken away, and everybody just turned off, like
a switch turned off. We became very cynical to press.
The whole nation had the blues. February of sixty four,
who comes out? The Beatles come to America. We took
them in. We just embraced oxygen that they walked into
that space, hopeful, funny, it was they were warm.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yes, everything everything that was taken away from us, great,
let's go have a party. Let's party. So you start
writing songs and you're saying, airsat's Beatles songs. What's the
first song you write that you can remember? Was called
My Journey's End. I could play it. I fil me too.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Let's it We'll climb the highest mountain, swim with Dick.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
If I knew you were there at my journeys and.

Speaker 6 (12:04):
Waiting for me, I can tell them the letters.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
That you you said, jes I go anywhere.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
If I know you were waiting at my journey, He's in.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
What's the first song you wrote that was on a
record that you sold? Can you remember?

Speaker 7 (12:30):
Well?

Speaker 4 (12:31):
It was probably in the Hassles. The Hassles sold records
a few on Long Island, probably maybe Jersey.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
At the Woodrow Wilson rest stop.

Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yes, I think it was the Coffee chot Full of
Nuts in Paramus, because we opened it. We Hassles played
at the opening the first time.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
I we sold anything.

Speaker 4 (12:52):
So I was signed originally with the Echoes to Mercury Records,
and we changed the name to The Lost Souls. Were
the Lost For a while, we made a couple of records.
Nothing ever happened. Uh what was the other one? Though
she don't.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Love me A lot of people she don't love me
any more.

Speaker 8 (13:11):
I believe all the last she told me.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Don't you know it's true that she stole me away from.

Speaker 5 (13:18):
My true love and Nama lul Love doesn't love me anymore.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Almost like mister Mike. That's like the Beatles.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
And then we became the Lost Souls, and it turns
out there was an English band called the Lost Soul,
so we had to change our name. So the president
of Mercury Records, brilliant guy at the time, So, okay,
we're gonna give you a new name, the Commandos Vietnamers.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Sure at the time, you're gonna be the Commandosh we
hate that name. Nobody likes or yeah, no, we likes
that stuff.

Speaker 4 (13:51):
I know you're gonna be the comand it's gonna be
great and we're gonna get your outfits. And so that
lasted about fifteen minutes and we got dumped off the label.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
So it's Echo Lost Souls, Lost Souls and then command
Mandos for a weekend. For a weekend. It opened up
one quick chuck full of nuts.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
And then I there was a band on Long Island
which was making a lot of local noise called the Hassles.
They asked me to join the guys in my band
and the Echoes, Lost Souls Commandos Room. They were all
going on to either the military or college. None of
them were really seriously going to be musicians except the
bass player. And I said, I'll join all right, I'll
join the Hassles. They wanted me to play organ I'll

(14:28):
join the if I can bring my bass player with
me because they didn't have a bass player. They said okay,
So that became the Hassles. And then there was another guy.
He got a lot of Mick Jagger moves, Little John.
His name was fun, great hair, good looking guy, couldn't
sing to save his.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Ass, didn't matter, you can wiggle it.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
He was gorgeous and women just went nuts and I'm
in the back door were death well, but they had eyes,
you know, they could they.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Could see the music video killed the radio absolutely glad.

Speaker 4 (14:59):
I came up in an air where it wasn't that
prep record. So then I was in the Hassles. Now,
the Hassles were a band, blue white soul band. There
were a bunch of them. The Vagrants was another one.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
They used to play at the Action House all the
time on Long Island. We made two albums with the
United Artists and they both bombed out. That that's the
first time we started selling anything. Every step I take.
Was the first song that I wrote that actually sold something.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Was the vamp Everything I Do I don't know. The
chorus went every step by say, every move I made.
You know, I'm trying to a knife with that, I
turned eye run, eye hid really no, deep inside, A

(15:53):
part of me has died. He said, like, I didn't
know you wrote that. That's great. That's how my father
used to tell it. Sounded like Pompey. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
So that was probably the first thing that solo was
on the first Hassle's album. I think we saw a
dozen copies and I actually heard it on the radio once.
But our big single was actually a cover of a
Sam and Dave record, You Got Me Humming.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
I don't know what you got but it's good too, man.
You got Me Humming, You got Me Huming. It's a
big song by Sam and Dave.

Speaker 4 (16:52):
Everybody was covering soul records and doing them psychedelic or
doing their own arrangements of them. That was the Hassles hit.
First time was horrible, This second hal was really horrible.
And then I, me and the drummers split off from
the Hassles to form a power duo like I.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Played Simon and Garfuncle. Yes, sure, we were.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
Going to destroy the world with amplification. This was like
the heavy metal thing we heard Zeppelin.

Speaker 9 (17:19):
It blew on mind Iron Butterfly, Gotta DaVita.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Don't you know that I love you? Ye went on
and on and on. We tried to are we listening
to that? Because that's what there was? A Garden of Eden?
Isn't that what someone said? There was?

Speaker 3 (17:44):
That was?

Speaker 1 (17:44):
That was like a nonsense lyric. A friend of mine
knows the guy that wrote that song. I think I
think he was trying to say, in the Garden of Eden,
you actually know the lyrics to it? Divita. Yeah, that's
all I know in a Gotta DaVita. I don't remember
the rest of it. I remember he explained that he
was at a party in La years ago that they
were really in the game. He made a gibberish version,

(18:06):
so their bail out lyrics. Okay. So when you get
to this point where you say, a couple albums the
hassles and then when is it you Well, it's what happened.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
The band's got small and smaller and smaller. The Attila
became a two man band.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
So when you and he went off, we went with
Attila was the two of you. Attila was just the
two of them. What did he play? He played drums, drums.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
I played Hammond organ wired directly through ham We're getting closer.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
To Lawrence Welk. Now the more we go, it's getting closer.
I almost got that, according but it was louder. It
was much louder.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
And we got signed to Epic, and we were on
Epic for one album and it was in colossal failure.
We played one gig I think it was on Ungano's
on the West Side in Manhattan, and people went fleeing
from the place. We were so loud you could see
blood coming out of his ears, which is horrible. Thank
god it didn't happen, because I would have screamed myself

(19:00):
out of the right, out of the business.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
So after you nearly kill a room full of people at.

Speaker 4 (19:03):
On Commomy and then what happens then that we broke
up and I decided I no longer want to be
a rock and roll star. I got that out of
my got that out of my system. I was about
nineteen or twenty. I want to write songs now. I'd
like to explore a little bit of folk new Where
did you start to write? I started to write the
songs that are run Now I'm called cold Spring Harbor.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
So give me, give me an except one of the
earliest ones you remember writing, baby, all the lights are
turned on you. Now you're in the center of the stage.
Everything revolves on what you do while you were in

(19:43):
your prime of comedy. Man, you can always have your
wears somehow, because everybody want you know, it was kind
of Dylanesque, you know. I wanted to I wanted to
go play in the village. Actually I didn't even want
to play anymore, just you, me with you and the piano.

Speaker 4 (20:01):
Well, I got a band to play this stuff with me,
but I'm picturing it on guitars general maybe on a
lands ten on you.

Speaker 5 (20:10):
You're in a center of the stage.

Speaker 6 (20:14):
Everything revelves on what you do.

Speaker 5 (20:16):
Hy you already primed coming.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Did you send him that song to record? I wanted
him to. But Bob writes his own stuff. He's not
gonna do covers. He doesn't buy songs from other people.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
No, he does not, and he does very well with
his own right, of course. But I no longer wanted
to be the guy on stage. I wanted to be
the guy behind the scenes. It's kind of a Jimmy
Webb kind of thing. This just happened to coincide with
the era of the singer songwriter Harry Chape and Jim Crochey,
James Taylor was huge at the time, Jackson Brown, Jackson Brown,

(20:51):
all these singer songwriters. Even Carol King, who was a
great songwriter, became a singer songwriter.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
So the advice I got was, well, you want people
of these songs, why don't you make your own album?

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
I got a record deal, and then I got traded
to a record company on the West Coast call Family.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Records, a guy named already Rip, perfect name. I was
like an Occhio. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
I fell in with the you know, Hydrid lead actor's
life for me, for those people. And I recorded an
album in La. I lived in La for a little while.
They said, Okay, you made the album. Now now you've
got an album, you need to promote it. You need
to go on the road and play and promote the album.
Is oh okay. It's kind of a strange way to
be a songwriter. But that's what other people were doing.

(21:36):
But you know, other people be interested in my material
if I promoted it, promote the album and we'll hear it. Well,
the album was mastered at the wrong speed.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
So a song like this.

Speaker 8 (21:51):
She's Got Away about her, I don't know what it is,
but I know that I can live without played like.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
This She's Got Away.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
I don't know what it is, but I know that
I can't live without it.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
So if you hear that recording, I sound like the Chipmunks,
well speed it up kind of. Yeah, it's terrible. The
album never went anywhere.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
Nothing happened, and I went on the road and I
promoted it and never saw it in the stores.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
But that was when I was me. That was just
Billy Joel. So you when people buy that album, the
album has been re released where it's not at that speed.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
It's been remastered, but it's still there's something wrong with it.
It just doesn't sound right. I would advise people don't
buy it. If you can steal it, steal it.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
We're taking a break, stay with us. So then, so
Cold Spring Harbor is the first album. It's you, how
Many Get You? And it's how many band members? Guitar, bass, drums,
and there was some violins.

Speaker 4 (22:53):
That were put in by Audie Rip you know he
was trying to be phil Spector. It got all glopped up.
It was supposed to be more of a folky. You
recorded that in La, recorded it in La. How long
were you in l A?

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Three years? What was that like for you? Weird?

Speaker 4 (23:07):
How I went there and I stayed on Santa Mia Boulevard.
It's just dun't be a little place called the Tropicana
Motel right there on Santa the Duke's where the Duke's car,
Duke's coffee shop, and they mean the huge sandwiches for
the poor.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Musicians have breakfast at Duke's. It was great.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Yeah, you know a buck, you're gonna eat like a can.
The place was a dump, but the postcards said the
Tropic Canna and it had like a palm tree on it.
So I sent postcards all my friends.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
I've made it. I'm in Hollywood, coming together a cat.
I'm having omelets on Santa Monica Boulevard for a dollar.
I mean to play it my song at a Chipmunk speed. Well,
it's all going great. Yeah, if you're from Long Island,
you get a postcard with a pomp. It says the
Tropic Canas. Oh my god, he's made it because you
and I from the same background. Yes, I mean I'm

(23:54):
from southsho Wanga and when I when people would do
and I can see you're probably your friends. You grew
up with a propleate like mine, with a provate at
that post because like Joey come here, I got a
postcod from Billy. He's at the Tropicana here. It's unfucking believable, right, Wow,
he's on the beach with girls like the beach boys.
He's driving cars. And I would make movies like my
friends to be like they say, let me ask you

(24:15):
a question. Will you do a love scene with a
broad movie? Like? Do you ever get excited like yourself?

Speaker 5 (24:19):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (24:20):
There's a weird you know, to make love to a
woman in front of all them people. Can you pick
who you make out with? Yeah? They're like, do you
enjoy that? It was a fun you mean he groupies
out there. I'm like, no, it's not fun because it's
one hundred and twenty five people staring at you like,
oh yeah, I forgot about that, Yeah, I forgot. We
got those questions. What's it like in the studio? I
mean like a lot of drugs and girls and stuff.

Speaker 4 (24:39):
No, you're actually in a factory and you're surrounded by equipment,
and you know, I don't.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Have like big fish tanks full of cocaine, like chicks
coming in with bikinis and stuff from the beach rubbing
your neck and shoulders while you're playing. Yeah, and that's
what it looks like in the movies. Yeah, did you
meet the movie stars some of a musician. I'm like,
you haven't done it with all the big stars, right,
and a fish tank full of blow when chicks and
bikinis rubbing the shoulders right, day and night. That's what
people think now when you did the you did Cold

(25:05):
Spring Harbor? There? I did? Did you do the next album?
Out there? I did two more albums out there? So
what'd you do out there? Actually?

Speaker 4 (25:13):
I got a job after I did the Cold Spring
Harbor album. I dropped that aside. I had to get
out of this horrible deal and I'd signed. I signed
away everything, copyrights, publishing, record royalties, everything, my first child
I gave away at all.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
And I said that I got to get out of
this deal, and.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
I hid in La and I worked in a piano
bar under the name Bill Mortin. This was down in
the Wilship District, and it was it's not a real
bar town LA. You know, Long Island is a pub
on every corner. It's a pub culture.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
So when people close their eyes and they think a
piano man, I think of a guy bending over, you know,
leaning over a piano, and I think of a guy
in a place on Long Island or in New York.
But you recorded that out of Los Angeles.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
I recorded in LA and that's where I worked. Some
people think I did it for years. I worked in
this piano bar for six months. I needed to make
some money. I made Union scale, I get tips. Mostly
played the you know, major seven chords.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Anything I don't, But how does piano man start? Right?

Speaker 4 (26:27):
That kind of thing? That guy in the hotel lot lobby.
They would request songs I didn't even know the song.
Can you play what's that? Hogey Carmichael's song?

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Startups? And I would go, sure, do you play mystery? Sure?
And everybody was drinking pretty heavy because in an l.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
A bar, these were all people who lost at the track, losers.
I just like drink like fish and I got free drinks.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Oh my god. So then you do piano man. That
was the next album after that, You do in La.
We did Piano Man in La, and there was an
album that wasn't a hit album. People perceived that to
be a hit.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
It was not a hit Piano Man. Piano Man was
not a hit record. It was with a turntable hit.
In other words, it didn't sell through. But this is
back in the early seventies. In those days they still
had FM, progressive radio. Disc jockeys could spend whatever they wanted.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
W L I R. Dennis McNamara, that's it under him.
I was a kid home. I was smoking, you know what,
leaning out the window, so my mom didn't know. And
on the video here w L I R. This is
Dennis smack namara Jackson Brown right. I listened to this guy.
He was my childhood Dennis mc We grew up with
these dis jockeys at night. Allison steel Alis, the night Bird,
Roscoe Zacherley, was Vin Skel Vince Skels, and my favorite

(27:50):
guy was Scott Me and he coming at Chess got
me with a little spooky tooth from England. Spooky too.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
This got me and you're coming at you right now
and it was great voices just coming out of the
air and they played whatever they wanted. They didn't have
program directors, they didn't have consultants, and people would call in.
If they got enough request they would play a track.
So Piano Man got requested all the time. It was
a five and a half minute record. I mean, he's
not an am hit an amount of time. It's too long,

(28:22):
and it was in three quarters time.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
It's a waltz popa.

Speaker 4 (28:31):
And it's and it's not really lyrics. Dilimeerates John at
the bar is a friend of mine. He gets my
drinks for free. He's quick with the joke and a
lot of you smoke with us. Somebody did he rather be?
It could be one of the girl from Nantucket. Yeah,
so it's the Limericks. And if anybody said this was
going to be a hit record, I tell him right
of their minds. But it became a trying table hit,
so people perceive it to be a sell through.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
It wasn't.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
The next album comes out Street Live Serenade, it's the
sophomore Jenks I did not have enough time to write
new material after the Piano Man.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Alm came out.

Speaker 4 (29:00):
Piano Man made a lot of noise, got a lot
of attention paid to it, record company wanted another follow
up right away. Okay, new album now, But I've been
on the road. I haven't had a chance to write.
I need it now. I didn't have any material and.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
You can hear it. So what do you do? What
do you do when you got nothing? What do you play?
I had nothing. I was empty. I was running on empty.
But there's not nothing on the album. Where'd that come from? Well?
I had one song that I thought, which was the Entertainer.
Which is that? Another folks on I am the Entertainer.

(29:35):
I know just where I was done. Another surtinator. I
had another long haired band today, I am the Champion.
I made one your hearts, but I know the game.
You're forgetting my name.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
I won't be here in another year if I don't
stay on the charm. I wrote it on the guitar, actually,
but that was it. That was probably the one song
that I had finished. And the boom in the studio
the clock is ticking. So there's two instrumentals on that album,
the root beer rag, which is just a piano rag
time thing, and this air zots Western movie theme called

(30:11):
the Mexican Connection. Because I was living in LA was
fascinated with westerns.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
That's it. There's a song actually on the piano.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
Man, I'm called the Ballot of Billy the Kids historically
completely inaccurate. I just used Western sounding things from a
town known as Wheeling, West Virginia.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
It wasn't from Willie, West Virginia. He was actually from Brooklyn.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
Boy with a six gun in his hand, and then
he robbed his way from Utah to Oklahoma.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
He never got out of New Mexico. You're ruining the
song for me now. I don't want to know how
Saua made East and West Pallida. Billy the Kid is
fine by me the way it is. Don't screw it
up for me. No, But I think it's funny.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
The fact it was just Western sounding things east and
west of the Rio Grant. Well, it can't be eastern west,
because the real Grand runs.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
East and west of the Rio Grand. God damn it.
I know which way the Rio Grand runs. And the
crab poured in to watch the hanging of Billy the Kid. Well,
Billy the Kid wasn't hung. He was shot, of course,
we don't know if he was. Okay, now now you win.
Now I hate the song. Okay, I hate it. It's
a fraud. What are the songs came off of Street
Life that were nothing, that were memorable? Nothing that We're
pretty is the only one.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (31:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
It's called Roberta. What else was on that album? Souvenirs?
A nice song, a picture postcard, a folded stub, a program.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
Of the play.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Fall Away, the photographs of yourlity and the old old Man.

Speaker 4 (32:07):
It doesn't only like another fifteen seconds of it. That
was a nice song, but it was like this short
and other than that is the Mexican connection ruper ragg.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
It was okay, and you finished street Life and you're
in LA and then what do you do?

Speaker 4 (32:18):
I finished Street Life and it comes out and it
goes yeah, bum dives right off the charts. The album
after that was Turnstiles. I moved back to New York.
I said, I'm going back to New York. This is
when this nineteen mid seventies, New York was in the dumps.
They were gonna default Ford to New York, drop dead,
Ford to New York dropped. I saw that headline, and
people in la were like, a screw new York. We

(32:40):
can't wait to New York goes down the dumps. And
I said, the hell with that. If New York's 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 twenty seventeen thinking about the
year twenty seventeen.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
I'm an old man.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
I'm telling my grandchildren I was there. I saw the
lights go out on Broadway. That's the it's a science
fiction song, see.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
In the lights going out on brow.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
I saw the empire state of La Loo, and life
went on beyond the palaces. We all bought cadillacs and
left there long ago. And I'm picturing I'm an old
man in the year twenty seventeen, and I'm living in Miami.

Speaker 4 (33:24):
Which I'm closing in there now you would need. I'm
kind of fulfilling my own prophecy here so and the
other song, which is.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from
the neighborhood, have a flight to Miami Beach on the
Hollywood Wood.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson river Line. I'm
in the New York state of mind. We could do
it like this. Some folks like to get away, Tony,
come on, Chicken, take a holiday from the neighborhood.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
Have a flight, tromple, fly to Miami Beach out of Hollywood.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Yeah, I'm taking it.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
That's right, hud Susan really yeah, yeah, New York.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
That's yeah, that's it.

Speaker 4 (34:34):
And he recorded it, and that was I was hoping
other people would do that song.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
But I was back in New York. I was homework
and glad you were. I was thrown so leaving La
it just was meant to be. I even wrote it
from home, say goodbye to Hollywood here right exactly, you know,
say goodbye to Hollywood. Thanks, it's been great, but goodbye.
After three years it went sour on me.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
And when I first moved out to the weather's great
and all the chicks and the palm trees.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
After three years, everybody's full of crown. Yeah, I'm a
producer of what you know. We all produced gas, we
produced something. But I found that for me, it was
healthier for me to be in an environment where show
business was one mountain peak in a range of mountains,
meaning when you're in New York and I'd be at
a party and some kind of real tweety looking Daniel

(35:22):
moynihan looking type of guy would be at a party
and say to me, and what do you do for
a living? Young man? They say to me years ago?
I go, well, I work in the movie business. How
have you made any films? I might have seen Olivia
and I don't go to the films very often, And
I thought, this is great. The guy who doesn't I
can talk to, who's not going to have his hand
down my pants or rub my neck to dance with

(35:44):
a hand in my pants from the entertainer. When you
go back to New York to where do you go
the city?

Speaker 4 (35:49):
I moved to Highland Falls, which is right up the Hudson.
Why because we we weren't ready to move lockstock and
barrel back into the city. I was married at the time.
My first X one, Sure where's she from?

Speaker 1 (36:02):
From? Sciacid?

Speaker 3 (36:03):
Right?

Speaker 4 (36:04):
And uh so she went out there with you and
came back. She went out there with me and came
back with me. And this was uh Turnstiles was recorded
in New York. I produced it myself, which you know
in hindsight was probably not a good idea, but I
didn't want people telling me what band to work with,
how to do the songs.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
I wanted to do it my way. Are you glad
you did?

Speaker 4 (36:24):
I'm I was glad I did at the time because
I needed to use my own musicians. I didn't want
to use session man. I didn't want to use studio players.
I wanted my road band. It was a long island band,
and we were doing great on the road. We weren't
selling any records, but the crowds were going crazy. We
were blowing headliners off the stage, the Doobie Brothers, everywhere
we played, the Beach Boys.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
We would get better plugged than when Turnstiles came out. Yes,
but Turnstiles sold records. Didn't No Trench Starles didn't sell anything.
You gotta be kidding me. No, No, no.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
Hits New York State of Mind is now perceived to
be a hit, but it wasn't a hit. It say
about how Hollywood wasn't a hit. None of the records.
I love all those songs, but you know that from
FM radio that was still playing those things on FM,
not until The Stranger, which was the next album in
seventy seven, and off that.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Comes how Many It's four which were just the way
you Are moving out only the good die young. And
She's Always a Woman, So She's always a woman, and
just the way you Are are love songs. Well, She's
Always a Woman is a love song. I'll perceived this well,
remember well, I was just saying, but they're very romantic songs.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
Yeah, well, I'd had romantic ballads before that. From the
Cold Spring Harbor, She's Got Away Piano man, if I
only had the words to tell you You're my home and
then Turnstiles Summer Highland Falls no atomatic depression, but about
a relationship. But I was writing ballads I've loved these
Days about a man and a woman, and then the

(37:45):
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'd
had ballads before them.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
But did you find that people sort of to buy
the ballads that they did? All of a sudden became
the most popular song you could often do. I had
no idea it was such a big record. Just the
Way you Were became this monster like the Beatles. Yeah, Stranger.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
After The Stranger that we started playing colosseums and arenas,
the big, big rooms, and I went right back on
the road again, and I started writing again, and.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Fifties started writing for bigger rooms. Yes you did. Yeah,
I had to be. I was aware.

Speaker 4 (38:23):
Now we're playing the big places, and we got to
write bigger songs. I gotta have bigger users energy, because
you can't play to a colosseum with a handful of ballots.
You got to knock them out. A big shot was
on an album sands a bar stiletto. It got bigger,
it got rounder, fatter, fuller, fuller, faster, you know, more

(38:47):
high energy stuff.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
And harder, faster, deeper, as they say in the adult
film Innistry.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
Yeah, that was it. Pretty much went into the triple X.
Do you started going triple X? Yeah, acoustically and that
that one album of the year they A Stranger actually
should have. But I was up against Saturday Night Fever,
which nobody was gonna touch on ten foot trll. Everybody
even said that the only reason you got fifty secretary
because we should have get a straight plasure.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
This was your color of money. Yes, exactly. This is
a poleman getting an Oscar, it's all political, it's fun.
Well you know how this works? Sure? What was after that,
Glass Houses was nineteen eighty and that was pure power pop.
Is there ever one you sit there and you really
have to strained? I mean you get it and you
like it and you love it and it does well.

(39:31):
Is there a song that didn't come easily to you
that you really had to work to crack it? So
to speak?

Speaker 4 (39:36):
The whole Nylon Curtain album, which was nineteen eighty two.
The album before it, which.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Was Glass Houses, was just pure fun playing with the band,
got a good guitar player.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
It just had a blast making the record. The next album,
I wanted to write my masterpiece, my Sergeant Pepper as
it were. Instead of writing from the inside out, like
having starting with the seed of a song, we started
with sand sounds and ideas and thoughts and studio techniques
and we went from the outside in. So it was

(40:08):
a whole different technique of creating recordings. And we didn't
really know what we had until almost the final mix.
What is this thing we're experimenting but stuff?

Speaker 1 (40:16):
And it was? It took a year? Were you still producing? No?

Speaker 3 (40:19):
No?

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Phil Ramone who started remote Stranger in nineteen seventy seven.
Now when you have someone like Ramone, because and again
I know nothing about your business except what I see
and observe, Like, what is someone like Ramone? What did
he do for you? How did he help you? Well?

Speaker 4 (40:32):
Phil Vermont has a background. When he was a kid,
he was a child prodigy on the violin. He was violinist.
He was from South Africa. Actually he knew music. And
now he had years and years in the trenches as
an engineer. He recorded a JFK speeches.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
I think when you see the Marilyn Monroe thing, a
Madison Square Gard Happy Birthday, mister President, that's Phil Ramone.

Speaker 4 (40:54):
Wow, he was the engineer on those things. I mean,
he's with some amazing recordings, but never got credited as
a producer.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
So I see, who's this guy?

Speaker 4 (41:01):
Philermon It keep seeing Philermont Filder more for remote Paul
Simon used him as an engineer, and I said, I
want to use I want to work with this guy
because he looks like he knows what he's doing. He
knows how to get good sound, he knows how to
deal with sonic things sonic and when he came in boom.
We knew we had a professional guy. I was like
working with another great musician. He knows how to play
the studio like we know how to play our instruments.

(41:22):
Everything changed. The band just roasted the occasion. We were
having a blast.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
So like a great producer. Very often in films, like
anywhere anything, any creative enterprise, I find the people that
are the most successful and talented producers are the ones who,
although they may not be able to do it themselves,
they know what you need to do, you know and
how to help you get to your highest level.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
They cut to what the synergy should be. They know
what the dynamics should be in the studio.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Does he come to you and go, don't do that
doesn't work and you listen to him.

Speaker 4 (41:49):
I would listen to him and we would try it
his way. We tried it his way, his mutual respect
when we did just the way you are. Originally the
drama was playing it like a chacho.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Don't go change one to chat John. We hated it.
Hated the things I hate this hated.

Speaker 4 (42:14):
Drummer couldn't figure out what to play. Phil actually told
play a backwards samba boom that boom bop boom chat
boom boom.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
And it worked.

Speaker 4 (42:28):
It was like a backwards so what are we doing?
We didn't know what we're doing, but Phil was right.
I came in with the idea of playing only the good.
Diana is a reggae Come out Virginia.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Let me wait. Can't let us star much doing.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Liberty throws his sticks at me, because why are you
doing Because the closest you've been to Jamaica is Queens.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
What are you doing is changing trains to go down
to Sea Fort, change at Jamaica, change at Jamaica.

Speaker 4 (42:55):
So the train to spik That's it. He said, I'm
not playing this. I'm not playing what to do? So
Phil came up with this shuffling against straight fours.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
And are going banana banana banana, and we were playing
and it worked. It was like two things jammed into
each other. Phil knows how to do that.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
And when we would get tired and we get discouraged,
it says, just stay, stay a little longer, try one more.
All right, take a break, Let's have some Chinese. Okay,
go back in the post. Chinese food takes were always good.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
I don't know why that was that, MSG man, it
gets it gets right into the fingertips. It worked, and
then you do Nylon Curtain. That's eighty two. Eighty two
was the Nylon and you said you wanted to be
your Sergeant Pepper and what was it? It was.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
It's my favorite album I'm Upfroid because I could hear
all the work that went into it, all the textures,
all the layers.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
It's a song that you're particularly fond of from that.

Speaker 4 (43:55):
Oh geez, every song on that album really surprises that.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
It's very obscure.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
Don't get excited, don't say nobody knowes.

Speaker 5 (44:12):
Nothing was her.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
It was committed discreetly, it was handled so neatly, and
it shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Surprise you at all.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
You know, break all the records, Berma cassettes. I'd be
lying and the fact told you that I had no regrets.
There were so many mistakes. But what a difference it makes,
and now it shouldn't.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Surprise you at all. No hits. Allentown was kind of
a hit off that I remember that. Yeah, didn't really
sell a lot of records. Pressure was the biggest. I
think the me as Tchaikowsky. What was that. It's the

(45:03):
one from Swan Lake. At least you up the greats
with those Russians, watch them for the Germans stuff. What
did you do after Nylon Curtain? After the Nylon Curtain?

(45:25):
Because it was such an intensive labor, the Nylon Curtain,
something very dense and very complex. I 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 hit. It was a joke. It was

(45:47):
an up chown girl.

Speaker 5 (45:49):
I'm trying to sing, she's been living in her uptown world.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
I bet she never had a backstreet gack and he
had this impossibly high bod told her why I'm gonna
track you? And I realized something that I remember the
song ragged all we read yeah, and then the verse

(46:19):
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 I was trying to
do Little Anthidine Imperials and didn't not say shoe up.
I wasn't ready for romance. Shoop shoe up.

Speaker 8 (46:38):
Didn't we promise we would only be friends all and
so we danced, though.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
It was only a slow dance.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
I started breaking my promises right there. And you'll recognize
the chorus because it goes like this this night, it's
min it's only you and is a long time away.

(47:15):
This night can last for it, which is the pathetic
by Beethoven, and I gave I gave credit on the
back of LV.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
Beethoven. So somebody's bill he's co writing with somebody LV
Beto Beethoven for coring outline. But that was a fun album.
I had met Christy. I had just gotten divorced from
X one and here I am meeting Whitney Houston when
she was a model Elle McPherson.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
I'm dating her.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
I'm dating Christy Brinkley. This is fantastic. I feel like
I'm sixteen years.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Old again now going on.

Speaker 4 (47:54):
It's going well, girls, It's all going great, and I'm
a rock star. I got a pair to the old
Sam Maritz on Central Park South, which is now that
I think the Rich Carlton, which is now the Ritz Carlton.
But the elevator would open and there was my apartment.
I was the only apartment on that floor. It was
very impressive. So this music was me being a teenager
all over again, falling in love, having romance and all
that great stuff.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
We're taking a break, stay with us. So why did
you get married? I don't know. Yeah, love, you're asking
me exactly. But I was gonna say, well, that's funny
because you think to yourself, why get married? It was
all going so good, but not getting married means bad.
But it was saying, but is that a part of

(48:36):
your makeup, which is married? Family? Was marriage the right
thing to do? I was merely in love and love.
You marry him? That's it. That's how I feel.

Speaker 4 (48:45):
But I still feel like I can be merely in
love and not be married. Yes, I was married three times.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
When did you go to Russia? Eighty seven?

Speaker 3 (48:54):
Right?

Speaker 1 (48:54):
And how did that happen?

Speaker 4 (48:55):
Well, we went to We played in Cuba in nineteen
seventy nine. They did this thing called the Havannah Jam.
Cubans came up here and we went to Havana. We
played at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana. It looks
like Bloomingdale's. It's crypt the Karl Marx Theater. It looks
like a department store and everybody gets up on stage,
these other American artists, Steven Still's Viva Revolution, Viva Fidel,

(49:18):
Chris Christopherson Viva Evolution, Riva fitting on.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
He's talking in Spanish. I get up on stage. I'm
in the last act. Don't take any shit from it.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
I say, you'll know Ablo Espanol. And I went to
Big Shot and the kids were storm the state. They
don't want to hit Viva. We hit his crap all
the time. We want to hit Big Shot. I said,
we got something going here. We're being subversive with rock
and roll.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
This is what I loved you there, I love How
did that feel to you? What was the first place
you played a big concert at when you were a star.
You're a big music star, you one of the biggest
music stars ever, and you go to a foreign country
and you realize music just transcends all of it.

Speaker 4 (49:57):
Germany, I think it was in Frankfurt. What year, seventy seven,
seventy eight. We'd had a hit with a stranger and
I played in England. In the English they're kind of fickle.
They like you for about a month and then you're
yesterday's papers.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Oh we like that. Billy Joe l Billy Joel and
they Actually.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
I wasn't big there until Uptown Girl. But Germany we
had a couple of its and the Germans went Bersark Lot.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
They don't have seats.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
You're getting a standing ovation when you walk on the
stage because they can't sit down. This is great and
it actually changes the energy and they're all.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Standing yeah, Billy, Belly. I'm thinking, Oh, I guess they
don't know what they did to my family. Yay Billy.
But I'm thinking, so this is how Adolph must have felt. Yeah,
you know, they love you. They let you know her.

Speaker 4 (50:42):
You're like, okay, let's go in vade poland co on,
let's go. But there was a great, great audience.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
You know, they're tearing at your hand like a Detroit
heavy metal crowd, ripping at my hands and tearing my clothes.
This is great. That was the first time in a
foreign country where I knew something. How they the trip
to Russia in eighty seven, was that your first time there?

Speaker 4 (50:59):
It was the first time they'd ever had a major
act from the West America. People had gone there before,
but played with small PA systems and little private rooms.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
We played at the Lenin.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Stadium, the Olympic Stadium, and We brought a Western PA system,
the same pit with paces and we'd use at Madison
Square Garden. They'd never heard a PA system like that.
They were scared shitless. You know, the helicopters come in
at the beginning of Good Nights Ago and they're looking
around for the helicopters, and then the hard rock is
hitting and the drums.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
They started going berserk. There were security guards going around
giving people sedatives because they thought they were having fits.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
The Cold War ended for me, right then. This is
still when it was. Reagan was calling it the evil Empire,
and we're not gonna have a war.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
With these people. They can't even get toilet paper, right, you.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
Know, we're not gonna have a We're not gonna fight
with them. I don't want to fight them.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
They don't. They love us everywhere I went, Viva America,
Long Live America. This is great. Cold War ended. I
was thrilled that went the way it did. Let me
ask you a question. You're funny. You could have done
that with your eyes. Every thing it takes to be
an actor, who could have done you? Never wanted to
do that. Never. I never was comfortable in front of
a camera. Really. Yeah, as a matter of fact, even

(52:07):
though I had to perform in front of a camera
for the last thirty years. Basically, yes, uh make videos
which I was told you were comfortable in front of
but you were. But I guess to a degree, you
were comfortable in front of a camera as long as
you were playing, not even.

Speaker 4 (52:18):
Stand there, not even I was aware of the camera.
It was like it was an invader, was invasive to me.
I became a musician because I never felt I was photogenic.
I was never happy with how I looked. It's about
a microphone, not about a camera. I was very comfortable
in a studio. I'm very comfortable far away on a stage.
Or an album cover. You could make it look and

(52:39):
however you want, and people would say, oh, you're shorter
than I thought. I said, well, the album cover is
only this big.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
How do you know. Whenever there was a camera, it
kind of destroyed what I was trying to create.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
It took away the imagination. You could I could look
however I want. I could look like Carry Grant. But
I saw it reduced to an image. I went, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not who I am. Don't look at that guy.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
I realized I could have done that, but I love
music so much. That's the way I went. Some people
can do both. Most don't. Well, Bowie didn't do it,
really really he tried. Sting didn't do it. No, Jagger
didn't do it. Beatles never did it, except as they
played the Beatles.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
But then there's some actors who were originally musicians and
they they now just basically acted.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
But I always say that, I said, this acting is
what you do when you have no musical ability. If
I could do what you do, I would never do
what That's what actors say. I would never, ever, ever,
ever waste five minutes of doing what I do. If
I could do with you. That's a lot of actors. Yeah,
you're so good at what you do. No, if I
could do what you do. Music is Music is saying
if I could play, if I could write a film

(53:44):
or a television program, you have to make an appointment
with that and watch that. When you 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 want to in church, anywhere. Music is everywhere,
Music is everything, and acting is, like I said, what
you do when you have no musical talents. So you

(54:05):
got divorced the second time, Yes, and got remarried and
divorced the third time. Right, And when you have these
things happen Because I know that these situations in my
life have a big effect of life. Does it affect
Do you write songs about that? No?

Speaker 4 (54:19):
I stopped writing songs about it when I got divorced
the second time. That was in ninety three, actually ninety four.
The divorce happened, the album River Dreams came out, and
I realized, you know what, I'm spinning out the story
of my life to all these strangers. I'm kind of
sick and tired everybody knowing my personal life and how
I feel about you. Just one on that one? Did
you resent that? I didn't resent it. I just decided

(54:41):
to clam up. I feel like I've given away pieces
of myself, maybe something I should have given to the relationship.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
I gave to the work.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
And the work was so important and it's all consuming.
If you're going to do it right, you have to
jump in with both feet and do it one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Music will do. That was a very harsh mistress music,
you have to do it all.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
Maybe I didn't do things I should have done, or
maybe I didn't take care of business the way I
should have take here because the music and so I
stopped writing songs about my personal relationships, but I kept
writing music. And after the third marriage didn't work, I
tried marriage. It's you know, three times.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
I tried three to much. I never gave up on it.
I just realized that this just doesn't I don't know,
it doesn't work right. People don't appreciate how it's like
to have a relationship in this business that works. You
got to be really lucky, man, It's got to be.
It's so much luck, you know, because, like you said,
the career is the mistress and you're out there working

(55:37):
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.

Speaker 4 (55:45):
Yeah, But on the other hand, how much of you
are they getting? If you're in a part, you take
on the role. It doesn't come off at five o'clock
in the afternoon when work. Most people leave their jobs.
You have to be that character through the whole project. Now,
when I'm writing, I mean, I've got to stay in harness.
I've got to be that songwriter guy I'm preoccupied. Maybe
I should change that to a B flat, you know

(56:07):
that quarterback. I'm obsessed with it. I wonder how much
of me they're not getting because of that. I don't
know if you were like that when you're doing a part.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
I find that in film it's different because you don't
really have a chance unless you work with a tremendously
intense group of people. I've never gotten close to that
in film. Film is always in pieces. You know, you know,
you're in your room. It's not linear. It's not like
a play. When I've done that, when I've done play,
is it's different When you do it well, you can

(56:38):
sit back and you light up a cigarette and you're like, well, well,
well well and we nail that way. I just just
write it down in the books. There it is, We've
done it again. You really feel some satisfaction. Yeah, you
feel that way when you perform. When we perform, we
got we do a show. We do a show. Do
you come off stage after our show and you sit
there and go, well, there it is. But that was
a good ladies and gentlemen, Billy Joe. That is all.

(57:01):
They'll be talking about this for a while, for a
few days to the animal. But we also know when
we stuck. We come over and that's yeah, oh we
were terrible. Please don't remember that one right right? Why
did they applaud you know, last play at Shay Yeah,
do you think you did well? Yeah? That was good.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
They were both good shows that the double last double
play at say we didn't do nights? Yeah, yes, that
was exhilarating. It was a hometown crowd, and it's just
it was exhilarating. We were on stage for three and
a half hours and I didn't realize how hot it was.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
It was sweating. I'm watching the movie of me. Somebody
give that guy a towel. Yeah, he's like soaky, he's so.

Speaker 4 (57:42):
Wet and slimy. Wipe him off and but we're having
such a good time. We walked off, and for weeks
after they were kind of amping from it.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
New York loves you. I know, I know, and I
love New York. That's why I live here. I love you.

Speaker 4 (57:57):
But I put away the recording part of my career
and I put away for the time being performing.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
What's that music? That's my telephone? The theme from the
god that's interesting, that's perfect. The theme from The Godfather?
Is your ring tone on your phone? Yes, that's amazing. Well,
like I got to think about what my ringtone should be.
That's the guys on the road call me you got Godfather?

Speaker 5 (58:20):
Why do you company?

Speaker 10 (58:22):
Bona Sarah Bona, Sarah onever. I haven't done. You'll never
invite me the house for a cup of coffee.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Do you appreciate who you are? People who love you,
They adore you, and they love your talent. You are
so talented, you are so like it makes me want
to choke up. How talented you are? Do you know
who you are?

Speaker 4 (58:50):
I know I have a talent for music. I don't
think I'm all that good. I think I have a
good perspective on it. I can separate the the star
stuff from the musician stuff. The music is really import.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
They have to stay separate, don't they. Well, one is
a job and one is a life.

Speaker 4 (59:09):
The job thing I can take off at five o'clock
and the afternner and the rock star thing I go,
I go shopping, I cook my own food, I wash
the dishes, I take out the garbage. I know who
that guy is and that that's and the music is
has nothing to do with money or career or it's
just it's just part of me. It's like love, music, love, food, friendship,

(59:32):
my daughter. You know, all these great things.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
How's your daughter doing? She's great. But I you know,
I know how to take the job hat off and
h and just kind of be normal. I've learned how
to do it.

Speaker 4 (59:45):
Took a long time to separate them out. Okay, I
can be a musician and not be a rock star.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
You know. I'm still trying to convince people, well, I'm
not a rock star. No, yes, you are. You are
a rock star US star.

Speaker 4 (59:57):
So okay, fine, But a lot of that is has
a job aspect to it. I work very hard at
what in writing, because that's my deepest love. I think
that's really where I belong. The rockstar thing I've never
really been comfortable with because I don't think I looked
like a rock star. I didn't really set out to
be a rock star. I became a rock star serendipitously.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
You became a rock star in spite of yourself.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
In spite of myself, which is hysterical as hard, as
much as you tried to kill it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Yeah, I mean, I don't put that camera too close
to me, exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
I don't want to make a good video. Let me
make a bad video because I just want to get
out of here. I don't want to be in a
photo session. I hate taking pictures. I don't want to
go to this opening. I don't want to go to
that schmooze fest. I just didn't do any of that stuff.
But I'm comfortable with it now.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Billy Joel says he doesn't look back on his life
that much. Last year, he decided not to publish his
long awaited memoir, entitled The Book of Joel. He said, instead, quote,
the best expression of my life and its ups and
downs has been and remains my music, unquote. What's a
song that you think yourself? You know, I really still
enjoy hearing that song? Does it have to be a hit.

(01:01:04):
What's one you dislike that you haven't played? Do you
really really like it?

Speaker 11 (01:01:07):
The ones?

Speaker 4 (01:01:07):
I've been doing master classes at colleges, and I get
to play all these obscure songs that I never played
over the thirty forty years I've been playing played one
the other night, and I said, well, that's a really
good song. There's no rhyme, not until the very end
is when rhyme can, but the lyrics work. It's from
the Nylon Curtain, and it's called Where's the Orchestra?

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Where the orchestra?

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
Wasn't this supposed to be a musical? There I am
in the balcony. How the hell could I have missed
the overture?

Speaker 9 (01:02:02):
I loved.

Speaker 6 (01:02:05):
The scenery, even though I.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Have so ludly.

Speaker 8 (01:02:15):
No, I dear all.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
What has been said, despite the dialogue.

Speaker 9 (01:02:26):
There.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
The leading man, movie star who never faced an audience.
Where's the orchestra? After all, this is my night on

(01:02:50):
the town, my.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Introduction to the theater Crown. I assume that a show
I would have a song. So I was wrong. At
least I understand.

Speaker 6 (01:03:10):
All the innuendo and the irony, and I appreciate the
roles the actors played, the point the author made head
of after the closing lines of after.

Speaker 11 (01:03:35):
The curtain calls, the curtain falls on empty chairs with.

Speaker 7 (01:03:50):
The orchestra, You're the king, thank you, No really, you're

(01:04:23):
the king man, thank you?

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Thank you for coming. Thanks, I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
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