Things Skin is Tracking

A CRAZY story involving Billy Joel, Christie Brinkley, and another very famous singer

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ben and Skin Show ninety seven point one. The Eagle
will be listening today for your chance to win a
four pack Ranger tickets to the August twenty seventh game. Also,
we have our very cool thing going on with Iheartradios
Thank It Teacher powered by donors Choose. You can go
to iHeartRadio dot com Forward slash Teachers and nominated teacher
who can win five thousand dollars to spruce up her classroom.

(00:21):
You know, budget cuts happen. School districts are struggling with
their financing, so that's you know, teachers, they get less
to work with. But hey, a special teacher wins this,
she's gonna have five thousand dollars just really spend on
the students. It's pretty awesome. Our teacher today is Jacqueline
Japez from Dickinson Elementary School in Grand Prairie. She is

(00:43):
a great teacher. People love her, she inspires and uplifts.
Go nominate the person that you think does that right
now at iHeartRadio dot com Forward slash Teachers and maybe
they will win that five thousand dollars. Denzel Washington weighs
in on the Cowboys, hearing about ten minutes or so.
But right now, time for this skinny track, another edition

(01:06):
of things it is tracking, all right. I brought this
up last week. I told you guys there's a two
part Billy Joel documentary on HBO. And I'm not some
big Billy Joel fan. Like, there's a few songs from
the seventies I really like when Ben and I were kids.
Busom Buddies was a popular sitcom with Tom Hanks. And
actually Tom Hanks is the executive producer of this, which

(01:28):
I thought was interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, and so,
and the other guy is I think his name is
Sean Hayes. Isn't that the guy from the podcast with
Bateman and Okay, I think his name is Sean Hayes.
He was on Will and Grace. I know the guy
you're talking about. Yeah, he's a big producer on it.
But anyways, Tom Hanks is real interested in how pop
culture impacts the world. Like he's produced all these documentary

(01:51):
series like TV of the seventies, TV of the Eighties,
TV of the nineties, movies, music, Like, he's real involved
in this stuff. And this one is, you know, similar
in that there was a time period where Billy Joel
from like nineteen seventy seven to about nineteen eighty two
was the biggest artist, certainly the biggest American artist, Like

(02:11):
he was shattering all these records. He did things know
what had done since the Beatles. We all know his songs, Like,
even if you're not a fan, you've heard them. Everyone's
heard Piano Man a million times. Yeah, I'd argue one
of the five best sing along songs of all time.
Put it on at a bar and watch everybody act
like it's sweet Caroline, but it's playing in my head

(02:33):
a songingos. But anyways, so when I was in junior high,
a big story was that Billy Joel, who basically looked
like a little troll from Long Island, married Christy Brinkley,
and at the time she was the biggest supermodel in
the world. Christy Brinkley had in the early eighties broken

(02:54):
a record for most magazine covers. She was the biggest
supermodel in the earth, really part of the eighties before
Cindy Crawford, Right, Cindy Crawford came after. She was probably
the first ever quote unquote supermodel, like where they started
using that term. So anyways, I didn't know the story
of how they got together. But it was a big

(03:14):
deal because Billy Joel had this song that was a
beating when I was a kid called Uptown Girl, where
it's like a doo wop song and he's singing to
Christie Brinkley and she's dressed like a model in the video,
and it was on MTV every frickin' hour. It was
on NonStop. Were they married, they had just gotten married.
And I don't know if you guys remember me telling
a story that Billy Joel's first wife he stole from

(03:35):
a friend. Yeah, that friend ended up directing all of
Billy Joel's videos. Oh nice, Yeah, okay, so I watched
some of this. Do you know how many wives he
had Billy Joel? Yes? Just too right? No? Oh okay,
I want to say he has an insane amount We
go ahead. Sorry, okay. So his first wife was his manager,
and then when she they got a divorce, her brother

(03:56):
started managing him, and her brother stole ninety million dollars
from Billy Joel. Oh yeah, who's brother like her first
wife's brother. His first wife brother that he stole from
his friend. Yeah, and ninety million she told she told
him do not use my brother as your manager. But
he didn't listen. Wow, yeah, that's show hee o tani.
It's crazy. But anyway, so he and he's with Christy Brinkley.

(04:18):
Now here's how he met her. He was having he
was a big time alcoholic, he had just gotten off tour.
He's going through a divorce, he was burnout. Paul Simon,
who was in the finals of our Left Handed Bracket yesterday, goes, hey, man,
you need to go to Saint Bart's. It's badass island.
You can hang out, no one will bother you. So
Billy Joel flies to Saint Bart's. He's in the hotel

(04:39):
lobby playing piano. There's a supermodel shoot on the island
and someone says, Billy Joel's in a piano bar playing piano,
and Christy briegles like, oh, we gotta go. So her
and you guys know who El McPherson is. Oh yeah,
so her and Elle McPherson go, and El McPherson is
into Billy Joel and basic like I'm here and he's

(05:03):
singing songs with Christy Brinkley and El McPherson had never
met him, okay, And so he's paying attention to them,
and then there's a younger girl, probably in her mid teens,
and she's like, I'm a singer. Do you mind if
I sing with you? And he's like, eh, you know, okay, fine, whatever.
I'm paying attention to Christy Brinkley and Elle McPherson. And
suddenly this girl starts singing and they're like, my god,

(05:25):
you've got an incredible voice. And it was Whitney Houston's
first ever. She was a model at the time. So
here's this scene in Saint Barts with Billy Joel playing
piano for Christy Brinkley and Elle McPherson, and teenage Whitney
Houston says, hey, sir, I can sing. What a crazy thing.
Damn it was involved in her career. Just no, just happened.

(05:49):
Just happened. Just happenstance. Do you think he regretted that, Like, dude,
I was the first one to discover I could have
like signed her and gun on my label and he might.
But she actually had a famous aunt who was a
big session singer, so she was gonna get there one
way or the other. But you know it's like I
was sitting there, you know, I stopped paying attention to

(06:10):
Billy Joel when I was in junior high, you know,
because I thought he sucked, and then every song they
played I knew, like even the stuff in the nineties.
I didn't realize he had records in the early nineties
that went to number one because I stopped paying attention.
But if you just live in the world, the number
one song in America is going to be playing somewhere.
So they're playing all these songs like, oh yeah, I
know that, Oh yeah, I know that, Oh yeah, I

(06:32):
mean I knew all of them. It's a really fascinating thing.
I Mean, most people don't want to dedicate six hours
to a Billy Joel documentary. It's a two parter, but man,
those stories are just amazing today, really interesting stuff. You
want to check it out HBO. It's called and so
it goes the Billy Joel Story, all right, fantastic stuff
by Jeff skin Wade. Coming up next, Denzel Washington takes

(06:56):
a shot at Jerry Jones. How random is this? We've
got the audio next