March 20, 2018 • 40 mins
Long Island native Will Stegemann used to hate Billy Joel, but now considers himself "reluctantly obsessed." Kristian sits down with him to talk about what changed, and how music can bring us back home. Also: Trade Ya, and a tribute to the power of piano men and women in rock n' roll.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, this is Christian Bush and welcome to episode five
of Geeking Out, my new podcast. Every episode is a
new person talking about what they're obsessed with that has
nothing to do with their job. The only requirement is
that they're totally geeking out on it and they want
(00:21):
to talk about it. From homemade bamboo furniture to secret
paminaciese recipes from Disney Prince's Collections to Doctor Who, lego
sets from your favorite Netflix Ben snacked the Internet tracking
great White Sharks. Tell me what you love, why you
love it, how you got into it, and what makes
it awesome. Every episode is presented in three chapters. Chapter one,
(00:44):
my guest and I talk about what they're obsessed with.
Chapter two is a game I call Tradja, where my
guests and I turn each other onto one thing that
we've discovered. And chapter three closes the show with me
talking about music that I'm currently geeking out on and
why I believe that curiosity is contagious and the life
(01:04):
is better with a soundtrack. So let's go Chapter one.
Today's guest is Will Stegman. Will is a professional businessman
with a normal person job who I met because he's
(01:25):
good friends with my manager, Whitney. Will lives with his wife,
Nina and their pitbull Olive in Los Angeles, California. Whitney
and I met up with him on a rooftop in
Westwood last fall. So you're going to hear the occasional
traffic helicopter overhead as we talk. So introduce yourself, Hi,
and Will Stegman. We'll tell us what you do for
(01:46):
a little I work for a very big corporation that
you probably do business with in some way, shape or form.
And um, what I officially do, they're probably does doesn't
matter to anyone who's gonna do this right now. Not
to be mysterious, no, but I work a regular office job.
I do a regular nine to five. I work in
(02:09):
customer experience. I guess is the the umbrella that it
fits under it? And um, I am, I should say,
reluctantly geeked out and obsessed with a musician from my hometown.
I grew up on Long Island. I grew up about
twenty minutes from where Billy Joel grew up, and I,
for a very long time wanted nothing to do with
(02:32):
the guy like I grew up. It was so like
he was our he was our Springsteen. He was our
he was our local hero. In my memory, the local
radio station would play Piano Man at nine o'clock every
Saturday night, like it was just the thing that we did.
And everybody lumped him. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody
who knew him. Um, and he lived there. He lived
(02:54):
there even you know, you know, he had a place
in New York City, he had a place in Miami,
and he still had a place on Long Island. You know,
you could see him in restaurants all the time. Um.
He was just part of the local fabric and I
wanted zero to do with it now, So I grew
up there. I lived there for the first almost twenty
(03:15):
five years of my life and just partly turned five,
picked up my stuff, and I moved away to where
we are now. Where are we now? We are now
in Los Angeles. Specifically, we are on our roof right, yes,
And I don't live on this roof, like your listeners
should know, Like I'm not, I'm not homeless. Um, I
(03:38):
have a roof. But when I would tell people where
I was from, everyone would always ask like, oh, you're
from Long and likely Joel you must love him like, nope,
in fact, I don't. And then I would tell people
that every year I would make a New Year's resolution,
and it was January one, We're gonna go through this
whole year without ever hearing a single village. Also, it's
(04:00):
like I started this when I was still living on
Long Island, which meant I failed every year, But from
like nine six on, it's like, this year, no, Billy Joel,
We're not gonna go places where we think we're gonna
hear him um, which was nowhere, Like and maybe I
go to a hospital, but there was a good chance,
like if you're at a hospital, you're still gonna hear
(04:20):
like uptown girls while you're you know right, it's it's inescapable.
So I would every year do it, and then like
I would be on the fourth of January sitting in
a diner and all of a sudden you hear you know,
Downeaster Alexa playing over the over the diner jukebox at
two o'clock in the morning, and you're like, what is
(04:40):
going wrong with my life? That, like I can't avoid this,
this this guy, I just it wasn't personal. I didn't
know him. I just thought everything that he stood for
and believed in and everyone who enjoyed him and his
work was done. That's a dumb straight down just didn't know,
didn't know a thing. M hm. So I spend fifteen
(05:05):
years vowing every year to not hear Billy Joel. I
moved to Los Angeles, where I feel like, oh, probably
gonna hear less of them. They're not the case. Every
year he would pop up, usually within the first sixty
days of the year. I would call and be put
on hold, and there would be like a music version
of you know, always a woman like bastard got me again?
(05:28):
Like every year that sneaky Long Island Bastard would would
nail me. So two twelve rolls around two twelve. I
am how old am I? Then? I am thirty seven,
and I got a job, I'm married, I'm doing well.
I'm a different person than the kid who used to
(05:49):
sit being angry and diners and cursing Billy Joel on
Long Island. But I still won't listen to the guy.
So two twelve, it's the It's New Year's Day and
my wife is watching TV and she says to me, Hey,
there's this movie on and I think you want to
watch Um. The movie is called Last Play at Shay.
(06:13):
Shea was Chase Stadium with the New York Mets play
and the other thing that I'm obsessed with is the
New York Mets. So my wife sees this and says, oh,
Last Play at Shay, that's gotta be about the Mets.
Let me get my husband in here, who loves the
Mets and hates Billy Joel, in this room to watch this.
So she flips the channel and I come walking in
(06:34):
and I realized, oh, Last Play at Shay is not
a movie about the Mets. Last Play at Cha is
a Billy Joeld concert film. So it's the first day
of the year. I'm not even twelve hours into two
and I'm blown it up. So I decide in that
moment after I storm out, and I'm like, how could
(06:56):
you do this to me? Because it was really like
that Twilight Zone moment, like it's a cookbook, it's not
a mess thing. It's a Billy Joel movie. No. So
it's over and my wife is like, I'm so sorry
that I ruined it for you, and I'm like, We're
gonna regroup, you know, We're gonna do this year. We're
gonna flip this script. I've been putting this off for
(07:18):
too long. I'm gonna listen to every goddamn song this
guy ever wrote, recorded and released, and I'm gonna I'm
going in. I'm going in deep. I'm gonna find out
what is it that I don't like about this guy?
Why does he set off all of these things in me?
And over the course of two thousand and twelve, I
(07:39):
did this thing called a Year of Billy Joel, where
I basically dedicated the whole year to just studying Billy
Joel's music, and over the course of that year became
just kind of obsessed with it. Um the music, his story,
UM his upbringing, the source, his of his material, his
(08:01):
his writing process. I became so deep into it that
now will be five years later, Um, there isn't a
day that goes by that somebody doesn't send me a
link to something Billy Joel related, or um, bring something
to my attention, like, hey, do you know about this?
You should write about this. It's this thing that like
(08:23):
five years ago, just as a joke, I decided to
do this, and it's just it's take. It's the thing
that people know me for now as the guy who
hated Billy Joel and then decided to give him a try.
And would you say that you love Billy Joel? Now,
I love I really enjoy Billy Joel the person. But
(08:46):
it's like I enjoy it when I hear it, but
it's not the thing that I seek out, but it
seeks me out. It's it's like your obsession, now, is it. Yeah,
that's a way way to put it. I'm like in
Billy Joel's gravitational orbit. And as much as I try to, like,
I can't get away from it. It's like every day
somebody sends me something, Um, I hear something. You know,
(09:09):
there's there, you know, reissues and stuff coming up. Or
I get into a dispute about something, or someone else
is arguing about Billy joelian on the Internet, and if
I'm within five thousand miles of that argument, someone's like, oh,
talk to Will, He'll settle this for us. So I'm
I'm also now the Billy Joel argument settler. It's true. Yeah,
(09:30):
I will. I will tag Will on Facebook if anyone
says anything bad about Billy Joel and I'm like, well,
I that Will have something to say about this. Judge
will right. So then the other thing is like learning
like who all of the other secret Billy Joel fans
are like people who who are like, oh yeah, it's
sort of like my guilty pleasure. And it's like, I
wouldn't even say that it's my guilty pleasure. It's just
(09:52):
the thing that I identify with. Like the thing that
really got me obsessive about it was more his individuals
story um as like just just kind of hard luck
kid living in the middle of nowhere on Long Islands. Like,
if you live on Long Island, you are acutely aware
(10:13):
that the biggest city in the world is less than
an hour to the east. You're a train ride or
a car ride from New York City, and you know
that that magnetism, that power that is in New York
is right there. Sometimes you can see it. And you
also know that they don't want you. You also know
that you are an outsider, and you'll always be an outsider.
(10:36):
There'll always be somebody from Long Island. Um and sort
of the chip on your shoulder that you carry if
you grow up in the shadow of a place like
New York City or Los Angeles, you feel like there's
something there that you want to be a part of,
and yet you don't feel welcome. And I felt that
(10:57):
way growing up. It wasn't until I started reading into
views where he talked about his upbringing and that sense
of disconnect from the place he wanted to be um
and I really began to say, oh, Like it's cliche,
but like, dude, I've been hating all these years, were
not so different to you and I like I realized, Oh,
(11:19):
Billy Joel and I are essentially the same person, but
with a different skill set. He has a marketable skill set.
I have a skill set that brings me to rooftops
in the middle of Los Angeles to talk about projects
used to do. So It's amazing though, Like the more
I read about him, the more I um. It was
(11:40):
like watching a movie that you hadn't seen before, Like
I had never really studied the movie of Billy Joel's career,
but through learning about him, I began to root for him,
like as if I ignored the fact that I knew
what the ending was or the ending up to that point. Obviously,
he's still with us, he's still performing, so his story
is still being told old, but the story of like
(12:02):
him struggling, him getting ripped off by a record label,
him getting a signing possibly one of the worst contracts
in the history of music. UM, and having you know,
having to basically have the mob get him out of that,
UM get him out of that deal. UM. You know,
(12:24):
going through like having to really struggle just to sort
of get to the starting points and then have some success,
have a record of the year, make some money, then
get completely ripped off to the point where, oh, he's
broke again. He stopped recording new music in the early nineties,
(12:45):
but continued to tour for a decade because he was broke,
because he had to because someone he trusted UM robbed him. UM.
You know, I had the same thing happened to me,
obviously for less money, but like people I trusted like
took money from me. And it was like every time
I would read something about him, I could find some parallel.
(13:07):
And the thing that it did for me was it
helped me to sort of understand maybe where I handled
adversity the wrong way, maybe where I um turned my
back on people out of anger. As I was doing
this and reading about Long Island and reading about Long
(13:29):
Island's favorite son, I missed Long Island a great deal.
I really missed it. I had been living here for
about twelve years at that point, so I was suddenly homesick.
In the twelve years that I had lived in l
A M, I had grown up. I went from being
a kid to an adult, you know, being married and
(13:51):
you know, not living like in an apartment with four roommates. UM,
just living something with my wife and my dog. My
dad had passed away, and between my dad's passing and
just time, I felt disconnected from my own upbringing. So
I the thing that I got out of this, in
addition to becoming just really into the life of a musician,
(14:15):
UM was one finally giving his music a chance. And
like I said, it's good. It's way better than I
give him credit. I gave him credit for it's way
better than I ever understood. And I think he is
grossly underestimated as a musician. So that was a gift.
That was something I didn't expect. But also it made
(14:37):
me go back home and connect and talk to family
members I hadn't spoken to, maybe go to my high
school reunion. Really, you've never been, never been, never been.
Just coincided with my twentieth high school reunion, and I
went they did, Yes, they did, because it's of course.
(15:01):
And then I went to the diner afterwards, the same
diner that I was once asked to leave for yelling
at somebody from playing piano. Man. Um. I went back
to that diner and I put on some Billy Joel
songs on the jukebox, and I sat with my wife
and we listened to Billy Joel on a Long Island jukebox,
and I felt like, oh, I've made it all the
way back home, like this is good. This is a
(15:22):
really good thing, Um. And you know, now when I
go home, I have a different relationship with my hometown.
I feel a lot more warmth towards it. I can
go home and not really be angry about things, leave
the past in the past, and move forward. And where
did you start? Did you like started like, did you
do it chronologically? Yes, as I started the writing portion
(15:44):
of the project with his first record, this thing called
Cold Spring Harbor, which of all of the Billy Joel records,
it's it's I would say it's the worst of them,
but it's not all. It's not entirely his fault. When
the record was was UM recorded the producer who also
(16:05):
owned the label who signed him to this terrible contract. Basically,
a twenty year old Billy Joel signed a contract saying
that UM he owed this rinky dink Long Islands, UM
UM outlet ten records, and UM the record company basically
(16:26):
could control everything and got a big cut of everything.
So Billy Joel basically signed his life away at twenty
because nobody else was offering him anything. You know, Columbia
wasn't showing up at his house, Electra wasn't looking for him.
This local guy wanted to help make records. All I
gotta do is signed a ten record deal and give
him a large percentage of my publishing. Great, where do
(16:49):
I sign? So so he signed this horrible deal. Then
so his producer guy, but I already ripped who owned
the record label already? RiPP goes to after the record
and he does it at the wrong speed. Now, I
don't know if you've ever mastered a record, UM, but
you probably understand how it works. Yeah, so not funny
(17:14):
if you are the guy who's put his life into this.
So when I talk about, like Billy Joel at this point,
does everything right, you know works hard? Signs the deal
that was given to him, says, I'm gonna make the
best of his rights, a good collection of songs for
a year old. You know, it's not a great record,
(17:34):
but there's promise there. Um it comes out and because
it's mastered at the wrong speed, his voice sounds really
high and the piano sounds like basically, take take a piano,
stick it in like an aluminum backyard shed, and then
put a mic outside of that shed. That's what the
record sounds like. So the label is this little rinky
(17:57):
dink operation. It's like, well, I ain't gonna pay the
remastered this. Nobody's ever heard of this guy just put
it out like this. Oh my gosh. So young Billy
Joel gets the pressing of his first record and it
sounds like garbage, like it's it is. They later re
released it. They remastered and rereleased it about ten years later.
(18:18):
So the version of it you would buy now is
the better version where it sounds correct. But it's on YouTube.
Go to YouTube, look up Cold Spring Harbor original mastering,
and you don't recognize the voice. So Billy Joel here's
this record and feels like, oh my life is my
career is over? So he just takes his band on
(18:40):
the road and it's like, well, I gotta earn a living.
I can earn a living playing live shows. He builds
a good reputation as a solid live act um and
he's still working on new material. Columbia UM, somebody from
Columbia sees him and they approach him, and he's like,
I would love to sound you guys, Dylan's on your label, Like,
(19:01):
of course, this is where I want to be, but
I'm under contract to these guys for the rest of
my life to the point where you know. Of course,
the reaction of Columbia was bright, you have a ten
year deal with who will take care of this? And
allegedly Columbia sent some muscle over to Basically, they worked
out a deal where UM Family Productions, which was the
(19:25):
name of this guy's company, UM got some sort of
buy out and they got a piece of each record
and for the first ten records of Billy Joel's career
there's a Columbia logo and a Family Productions logo on
it because that was the deal. So, if you're trying
to get somebody into Billy Joel, even though you started
(19:47):
at the top, where would you start them regardless of
the album. I would start with deep cuts, start pick
up Piano Man, which was his first hit, and end um,
don't play piano Man. Okay, listen to everything else on
the Listen to everything but Piano Man. Listen to Um
(20:08):
Traveling Prayer, which is this great bluegrass song like Dolly
Parton recorded in one of Grammy four and if you
listen to it like Dolly singing, you'd never know it
wasn't her song. Um, Listen to Traveling Prayer. Listen to
Stop in Nevada, which is about him and this woman
that he's now going to get married to them, sort
(20:29):
of heading west. Um. And then if you do want
to listen to Piano Man, the important thing to know
about Piano Man is that everything he's telling you in
the song Piano Man is based on true life events.
And he swears, and I'm gonna reveal here he and
I have spoken about this, both on the phone and
(20:49):
face to face. He swears to me that someone actually
ordered a Tonic and Gin and also made love to
his Tonic and Gin. Want a real estate novelist. We've
never got into that. Look, I didn't How much time
do you think I had let's back up for a second. Yes,
the part where you just said you got on the
(21:10):
phone with him. Yes, yes, So what happens is, I'm
doing this Year of Billy Joel through two twelve. In
September of two thousand twelve. It ends up like not
on the Today's Show, but on the Today Show blog,
which they promote on the show, because that the year
you tracked it online. That's what you're saying, you did
(21:32):
you like, right, every day I wrote, I wrote four
days a week, four or five days a week. So yeah,
I should have talked about that. As it's in a second.
As it's going, I'm listening to every song and I'm
writing a little essay about every song. Some days it's
four sentences, some days it's two thousand words whatever comes
to mind from the song. And as I'm writing about
(21:54):
the songs, um, I'm also writing about myself. I'm talking
about my family, and I'm talking about like being at
my dad's house when I'm seven years old, and like
he and my mom have just separated and it's really
weird and it's uncomfortable, and my dad puts on like
this this like sand Billy Joel Songs Mixtape that he made.
(22:17):
So I'm sitting in this basement department with my dad,
and my dad's listening to Captain Jack, which is the
saddest song imaginable. And as my dad's listening to Captain Jack,
he's painting over the windows so that the sunlight can't
get in. Oh my god, And like I realized, like
I'm my parents had me really young. So when I'm seven,
(22:37):
my dad is years old. So like my dad is
about the same age Billy Joeld is at that point,
and like my dad feels like his life is over.
So we're just sitting there listening to sad music while
my dad is like blocking the life out of our
of our home and like just putting us in darkness.
(22:58):
And I hadn't thought about that since I was a child,
Like I remember that that night so vividly because all
I wanted to do was watch the Mets because the
Mets were gonna be on. It's like, when can we
watch the game? It's like when when I'm done with this,
Like as soon as I'm done shutting out everything good
in our life, we can watch the Mets and maybe
we'll get pizza too. So it ends up on the
(23:20):
Today show thing. So it suddenly gets some like some
other outlets pick it up. It was like a Huffington's
Post thing. Um, so it got some press. So Billy
has a publicist who gets clippings every day and this
was when he got so it was billed as the headline,
which is summed me up very well. Billy and Jill
(23:43):
Hayter changes his tune with year long dedication, so appropriate headline. Yeah,
So the publicist contacted me. I was like, hey, I
would love to talk to you about this, Like, oh yeah,
no problem, Like give me a call. So I don't
think anything of it. So a week later, I'm driving
home from work and my phone rings unknown number, which
(24:05):
I normally would just let it go to voicemail, but
for some reason, I'm sitting in traffic. I got nowhere
else to be. I pick up the phone and voice
that sounds weirdly familiar. It's like, hey, can I talk
to Will? Like this is Will. He's like, hey, it's
Billy Joel and I'm like, come on, I won't say
what I said because we're on a family type podcast here,
(24:26):
but I'm like, get out of here. This is not
Billy Joel. This is a friend of my dad's. This
is somebody putting me on. So he's like, no, I
talked to and he gave me the publicist name. He's like,
I talked to so and so she told me that, like, um,
you're doing something about me, and that we should go
to lunch. Because throughout the course of the project, every
(24:47):
time I finished an album, I would post an open
letter inviting Billy Joel to lunch. I was like, hey, look,
I'm making the effort here. I'm trying to trying to
make things good between us. And he's like, so, what's
this thing? And I it was in the weird position
where I needed to tell a famous musician that I
(25:08):
do not like his work. So I was like, I
was like, how much did your publicists tell you about
what I'm doing. It's like said, you had some my
website you were writing about me. I was like, but
did she tell you like how it came about? And
so I'm like, hang on one second. I'm like, Billy,
I've got to pull over to tell you this. So
(25:29):
I pulled my car over to the side of the
road and like, here's the thing. I am not a fan,
never been a fan of your work. I'm like, and
he's just sort of silent. He's like, hey, a lot
of people, you know, after a moment of silence, a
lot of people aren't fans of my work. It's like
I can live with that. And I was like, but
I'm giving it a try, and like he was happy.
(25:52):
It was like, oh great. He was like, what are
you up to? So I told him sort of where
I was, and we started talking about the records, huh.
And we just talked and talked and like to the
point where you're like, hey, Billy, Joel has been great,
but like, hey, I'm sure you gotta go. And he's like,
don't worry about it. Like he couldn't have been nicer,
(26:13):
and like he seemed to be more into talking to
me about what I was doing. And if we end
up talking about like our families and I'm talking about
my dad who had passed away, and it was like
we had this great conversation. So finally I'm like, Billy,
thank you so much. This has been wonderful. I'm like,
(26:34):
before we talk any further, you should read everything that
I've written and then decide if you want to continue
to talk to me. Because he was like, hey, we
should talk again, Like, if you have questions, you can
ask me. Like, I was so amazed at how receptive
he was to me taking a critical analysis his work.
(26:55):
After the project ended, he was like, Hey, we're gonna
do that lunch. So he came to l A. He
was here for something. Um, he was gonna be out here.
Was like, Hey, I'm gonna be on here if you
want to meet up. We met up, We had lunch.
Um had a great conversation about you know, not just
his music but music in general. Um, and like his
(27:19):
he talked to me about how he thought people perceived
his music. But it was a really interesting conversation. That's
because you're right in the middle of that, right, I
mean I would say it as an artist. I mean,
and this is none of this is it really about me?
But I do know that the one muscle that you
have to use is to convince a stranger to like you. Yeah. Well,
(27:39):
I think there were two things that like the fact
that wait, how come this guy doesn't like me, He's
got to win me over, Like he got a little
obsessed with this random dude liking him. Um, And so
the other thing was like I wasn't asking him for
anything right, Like I didn't have a demo on him
(27:59):
to listen too. I wasn't in a band. I wasn't
trying to get anything from him, and I think because
of that, he was willing to go further then he
maybe would have been with other people, because I was like, hey,
if you want to read this, I'd love to have
you read this. But like he read it all and
they called me and he's like, hey, I just want
to let you know I read everything, and he's like
it's great. He's like, I don't agree with everything you say,
(28:20):
but I really like I appreciate the thought, like the
work you put into it. And he's like, you also
make a lot of great points about stuff that I
don't think people understand, Like I had said something that
resonated with him. Um. And we had lunch and then
he invited my wife and I to go to Hollywood Bowl,
where we got to Um, you know you've been to
(28:42):
the Hollywood Bowl. Hollywood Bowl is a beautiful place. It's
a lot more beautiful when you're sitting right up front.
I've been to the Hollywood Bowl a number of times,
and usually when I'm paying for the tickets, I'm sitting
practically up in the hills like I usually like I'm
closer to a coyote than I am the stage. But
I I we go to see the show, and I'm
(29:04):
sitting right in that little sort of pit area with
the tables and the and the millionaires. So we're sitting
basically in the one percent section, and it's nice, like
we're one percent caused playing like Hey, we're gonna pretend
we're fancy people for a day now. But no, but
none of the fancy people around No, is that I
(29:25):
took the bus to the show. I took the bus,
and it's like I'm looking at this guy up on
stage like he was a bus taker, Like you know,
there's no reason, like he got lucky. He hit the lottery,
you know, and he didn't, he didn't get a gift,
like he earned his seat, but like he got lucky,
(29:45):
like things could have very easily gone the other way.
I watched him, and I realized, like he could just
as easily be sitting on the bus with me and
we're here seeing somebody else. So it was very much
like again, it's it's an identity. So I got ended
up wanting to listen to somebody's music to see what
it was that sort of brought people into it, and
(30:08):
I realized it's a combination of one. As I said,
songs are better than I gave him credit for, especially
the deep cuts. Deep cuts are way better than people understand.
And the person and the fact that oh more than
any other, more than almost any other sort of hugely
popular musician, like he could really be any one of us.
(30:29):
Like the appeal of Springsteen, who I love, is that
everybody feels like Springsteen is a guy you can go
have a beer with. Billy Joel was also a guy
you can go have a beer with. Just he'll tell
you this, don't let him drive you home. That's awesome.
(30:54):
Chapter two. In every episode of Geeking Out, I see
if I can trade one thing I've discus with one
thing that my guest has discovered, a friendly exchange. I
call it trade you. This segment, as I'm eating some
banana chips here um is called trade you, okay, And
the idea is much like you have, uh you know,
(31:16):
told me what your passion is or your obsession is
what you're geeking out on. This is just something very
kind of within your week, within your month, um, something
that you're into and one thing that I'm into, and
I'll trade you one thing for another. So for me, um,
I'll start. So you're gonna have a show to think about.
Give me a moment um during our conversation. I just
(31:38):
heard you say that you have a podcast, Mets podcast
called Flushing Transit Authority, UM, which I do with my
friend j Bushman, and it's a ton of fun we
like talking about Basically, he and I love talking about
the Mets. Are like, Hey, we're gonna talk about the Mets.
Let's record it and make other people listen to it.
So this is my first experience in podcasting, and I, uh,
(32:00):
you know, own a recording studio and stuff, so I
know all of the things I should be doing to
make it awesome from an audio standpoint. But um, what
I've discovered is one of the things that's actually sitting
in front of us as this microphone right here. It's
an apog microphone, and it this is the same converter
in the bottom of this tiny little microphone that I
used to record albums that when awards and it's somehow
(32:25):
instead of having it in a giant rack, they put
it in this tiny little microphone. And it will plug
into your phone or it'll plug into your computer anything.
And secondly to to up it, there is a kickstarter
thing when these guys in Canada that is um they
call it the eyeball, and it goes on top of
this and suddenly you have an entire recording studio that
(32:48):
really will squish down like a nerf ball into your bag.
It's amazing. You know what I'm obsessed with lately? I
love Nil Young. You're a big Neil Young. I love
Nil Young. Um does that mean that you bought like
a poo player? I did not buy a poono player
because I also realized that your average listener, which I am,
(33:09):
can't tell the difference, got it, And unless you have,
like I'm listening to dope, you can't tell the difference.
I'm listening to music in my car, or I'm listening
with earbuds on my my iPhone or my home. You know,
record player with a USB speaker is gonna be fine.
So the thing that I'm obsessed with right now, Neil
(33:31):
Young put on a record this week called Hitchhiker. Hitchhiker
was recorded in nineteen seventy six, and I learned about
Hitchhiker through my friend Daniel Ralston, who just published a
great story in Vulture uh this week, just you know,
pop culture side about the making of this record. So
the record was Neil Young, his producer David Briggs, who
(33:55):
produced all of his best stuff. UM, and Dean Stockwell.
Remember Dean Stockwell? Do you Stockwell from Okay? Now? Dean
Stockwell was also a musician. Dean Stockwell was a renaissance
man of the twentieth century. Um, Dean Stockwell does not
play on the record, He's just there in the room.
(34:18):
And but the record is just Neil Young and an
acoustic guitar doing the first version of Pocahontas, the first
version of powder Finger, UM, and a bunch of like
other stuff that Captain Kennedy, like a bunch of stuff
that you've heard him do on other records or he
pulls out live every now and then, But just to
(34:41):
hear like powder Finger, just on an acoustic guitar, because
like the beauty of I love powder Fingers, one of
my five favorite songs ever recorded. And just that sort
of that harmonic guitar sound. Um, and that's sort of
really just slow she riff that he does on the
(35:01):
electric and to not hear that um, as my friend
Daniel points out, like makes the narrator of the song
feel even frailer and more afraid than he is in
the electric version two years three years before it came
out on on Rust Never Sleeps. Wow, Okay, I will
(35:24):
totally go listen to That's fantastic. I I put Neil
Young's guitar playing as one of the things that really
inspires me because it's it's more right hand than left hand.
It's so sort of like it's just so primal. Yeah,
I love it. That's awesome. Well, thanks for being here
or thanks for joining us on the route always happen
to be on a roof, Go to be had. Chapter
(35:50):
three me geeking out on music piano man, I would
like to discuss piano playing front men and women. We're
all used to seeing our singers stand and perform at
a microphone and some mics with diamonds on them, some
(36:12):
with scarves or tambourines hanging down, and some even toiling
or swinging the stands around like their weapons. We also
have stars that commonly wheeled guitars as they sing, whether
they're rock and roll battle axes, or hipster ukuleles or
wooden steel string country artists. We're all accustomed to our
rock stars performing certain duties a certain way. As a culture,
(36:36):
we really don't stray too much from this model. Yes,
there are a few that play violin and a rare
saxophone here. They're even a drummer like Phil Collins or
Sheila E or even Cowboy Mouth. But I've noticed something
odd about our rock stars. There are very few that
play piano. In nineteen nineteen, stein Way and Sons launched
(37:01):
an ad campaign for their pianos and the tagline was
the instrument of the Immortals. So let's think about that.
Let's see what's on the top of my mind. Uh,
Fats Domino, Cherry Lee Lewis, Little Richard all built rock
and roll on pianos. And then my mind I think
(37:22):
of Elton John and Billy Joel and Jules Holland from
The Squeeze. Then I think I skip ahead. Maybe in
my mind have been Folds, and then Lady Gaga and
Sarah Burrellus, And then it feels like they're more like
that old TV show The Highlander, that there can be
only one piano. Rock Stars are things that we love,
(37:44):
but it seems that we don't have a lot of
room for them on our pop charts. Great for rhythm
and blues, great for songwriter, but what about the piano
makes it a hard sell for a rock and roll
Why is this just harder to carry your piano to
(38:05):
a campfire at a remote beach to serenade the girl
that you like, Harder to carry up a flight of
stairs for an open mic. It doesn't go well with
tight pants. Maybe it's baked into our learning by default.
When we take a piano lesson, we learned chopsticks versus on,
it gets harror, we learn deep purple smoke on the water.
(38:29):
Maybe it's our history in the fifties and sixties, as
teenagers became purchasers, Fats Domino was playing two Dy Fruity
versus Chuck Berry playing Johnny be Good? Is that when
we turned Maybe in our subconscious it's that we feel
that a piano just can't get loud enough to drown
out the cheers of an arena and may in the masses.
(38:52):
Whatever it is. As a guitar player, I'm always fascinated
watching my brother playthings with keys on it. Fascinated hearing
Elton John effortlessly's land a song on its feet every
time it tumbles out of a speaker. Fascinated at how
Billy Joel sounds like a drummer and a bass player
and a guitar player all at the same time on
the same instrument. I hope someone new out there feels
(39:15):
like taking us for a ride soon on their imagination
using their piano, and I hope it feels like freedom
and rock and power and awesome long live rock stars
who play piano. I hope you enjoyed this episode of
(39:36):
Geeking Out and we are already hard at work on
the next one. Are you obsessed with something amazing? I
want to tell us about it? Right to us at
geeking Out with KB at gmail dot com and you
might be a guest on an upcoming episode. Come find
out more about me and this podcast at Christian Bush
dot com, Christian with a K people follow me at
(39:57):
Christian Bush on Twitter, Christian Bush Instagram, Christian Bush on Facebook,
and Christian M. Bush on Snapchat. Thanks to Bobby Bones
for the opportunity to make this podcast, Brian and Bush
for making the soundtrack and assembling the pieces, Tom Tapley
for audio wizardry and Whitney Pastrick for being a great
producer and making this whole thing possible. This is Christian
Bush geeking out. Thank you for listening.
Hello, this is Christian Bush and welcome to episode five
of Geeking Out, my new podcast. Every episode is a
new person talking about what they're obsessed with that has
nothing to do with their job. The only requirement is
that they're totally geeking out on it and they want
(00:21):
to talk about it. From homemade bamboo furniture to secret
paminaciese recipes from Disney Prince's Collections to Doctor Who, lego
sets from your favorite Netflix Ben snacked the Internet tracking
great White Sharks. Tell me what you love, why you
love it, how you got into it, and what makes
it awesome. Every episode is presented in three chapters. Chapter one,
(00:44):
my guest and I talk about what they're obsessed with.
Chapter two is a game I call Tradja, where my
guests and I turn each other onto one thing that
we've discovered. And chapter three closes the show with me
talking about music that I'm currently geeking out on and
why I believe that curiosity is contagious and the life
(01:04):
is better with a soundtrack. So let's go Chapter one.
Today's guest is Will Stegman. Will is a professional businessman
with a normal person job who I met because he's
(01:25):
good friends with my manager, Whitney. Will lives with his wife,
Nina and their pitbull Olive in Los Angeles, California. Whitney
and I met up with him on a rooftop in
Westwood last fall. So you're going to hear the occasional
traffic helicopter overhead as we talk. So introduce yourself, Hi,
and Will Stegman. We'll tell us what you do for
(01:46):
a little I work for a very big corporation that
you probably do business with in some way, shape or form.
And um, what I officially do, they're probably does doesn't
matter to anyone who's gonna do this right now. Not
to be mysterious, no, but I work a regular office job.
I do a regular nine to five. I work in
(02:09):
customer experience. I guess is the the umbrella that it
fits under it? And um, I am, I should say,
reluctantly geeked out and obsessed with a musician from my hometown.
I grew up on Long Island. I grew up about
twenty minutes from where Billy Joel grew up, and I,
for a very long time wanted nothing to do with
(02:32):
the guy like I grew up. It was so like
he was our he was our Springsteen. He was our
he was our local hero. In my memory, the local
radio station would play Piano Man at nine o'clock every
Saturday night, like it was just the thing that we did.
And everybody lumped him. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody
who knew him. Um, and he lived there. He lived
(02:54):
there even you know, you know, he had a place
in New York City, he had a place in Miami,
and he still had a place on Long Island. You know,
you could see him in restaurants all the time. Um.
He was just part of the local fabric and I
wanted zero to do with it now, So I grew
up there. I lived there for the first almost twenty
(03:15):
five years of my life and just partly turned five,
picked up my stuff, and I moved away to where
we are now. Where are we now? We are now
in Los Angeles. Specifically, we are on our roof right, yes,
And I don't live on this roof, like your listeners
should know, Like I'm not, I'm not homeless. Um, I
(03:38):
have a roof. But when I would tell people where
I was from, everyone would always ask like, oh, you're
from Long and likely Joel you must love him like, nope,
in fact, I don't. And then I would tell people
that every year I would make a New Year's resolution,
and it was January one, We're gonna go through this
whole year without ever hearing a single village. Also, it's
(04:00):
like I started this when I was still living on
Long Island, which meant I failed every year, But from
like nine six on, it's like, this year, no, Billy Joel,
We're not gonna go places where we think we're gonna
hear him um, which was nowhere, Like and maybe I
go to a hospital, but there was a good chance,
like if you're at a hospital, you're still gonna hear
(04:20):
like uptown girls while you're you know right, it's it's inescapable.
So I would every year do it, and then like
I would be on the fourth of January sitting in
a diner and all of a sudden you hear you know,
Downeaster Alexa playing over the over the diner jukebox at
two o'clock in the morning, and you're like, what is
(04:40):
going wrong with my life? That, like I can't avoid this,
this this guy, I just it wasn't personal. I didn't
know him. I just thought everything that he stood for
and believed in and everyone who enjoyed him and his
work was done. That's a dumb straight down just didn't know,
didn't know a thing. M hm. So I spend fifteen
(05:05):
years vowing every year to not hear Billy Joel. I
moved to Los Angeles, where I feel like, oh, probably
gonna hear less of them. They're not the case. Every
year he would pop up, usually within the first sixty
days of the year. I would call and be put
on hold, and there would be like a music version
of you know, always a woman like bastard got me again?
(05:28):
Like every year that sneaky Long Island Bastard would would
nail me. So two twelve rolls around two twelve. I
am how old am I? Then? I am thirty seven,
and I got a job, I'm married, I'm doing well.
I'm a different person than the kid who used to
(05:49):
sit being angry and diners and cursing Billy Joel on
Long Island. But I still won't listen to the guy.
So two twelve, it's the It's New Year's Day and
my wife is watching TV and she says to me, Hey,
there's this movie on and I think you want to
watch Um. The movie is called Last Play at Shay.
(06:13):
Shea was Chase Stadium with the New York Mets play
and the other thing that I'm obsessed with is the
New York Mets. So my wife sees this and says, oh,
Last Play at Shay, that's gotta be about the Mets.
Let me get my husband in here, who loves the
Mets and hates Billy Joel, in this room to watch this.
So she flips the channel and I come walking in
(06:34):
and I realized, oh, Last Play at Shay is not
a movie about the Mets. Last Play at Cha is
a Billy Joeld concert film. So it's the first day
of the year. I'm not even twelve hours into two
and I'm blown it up. So I decide in that
moment after I storm out, and I'm like, how could
(06:56):
you do this to me? Because it was really like
that Twilight Zone moment, like it's a cookbook, it's not
a mess thing. It's a Billy Joel movie. No. So
it's over and my wife is like, I'm so sorry
that I ruined it for you, and I'm like, We're
gonna regroup, you know, We're gonna do this year. We're
gonna flip this script. I've been putting this off for
(07:18):
too long. I'm gonna listen to every goddamn song this
guy ever wrote, recorded and released, and I'm gonna I'm
going in. I'm going in deep. I'm gonna find out
what is it that I don't like about this guy?
Why does he set off all of these things in me?
And over the course of two thousand and twelve, I
(07:39):
did this thing called a Year of Billy Joel, where
I basically dedicated the whole year to just studying Billy
Joel's music, and over the course of that year became
just kind of obsessed with it. Um the music, his story,
UM his upbringing, the source, his of his material, his
(08:01):
his writing process. I became so deep into it that
now will be five years later, Um, there isn't a
day that goes by that somebody doesn't send me a
link to something Billy Joel related, or um, bring something
to my attention, like, hey, do you know about this?
You should write about this. It's this thing that like
(08:23):
five years ago, just as a joke, I decided to
do this, and it's just it's take. It's the thing
that people know me for now as the guy who
hated Billy Joel and then decided to give him a try.
And would you say that you love Billy Joel? Now,
I love I really enjoy Billy Joel the person. But
(08:46):
it's like I enjoy it when I hear it, but
it's not the thing that I seek out, but it
seeks me out. It's it's like your obsession, now, is it. Yeah,
that's a way way to put it. I'm like in
Billy Joel's gravitational orbit. And as much as I try to, like,
I can't get away from it. It's like every day
somebody sends me something, Um, I hear something. You know,
(09:09):
there's there, you know, reissues and stuff coming up. Or
I get into a dispute about something, or someone else
is arguing about Billy joelian on the Internet, and if
I'm within five thousand miles of that argument, someone's like, oh,
talk to Will, He'll settle this for us. So I'm
I'm also now the Billy Joel argument settler. It's true. Yeah,
(09:30):
I will. I will tag Will on Facebook if anyone
says anything bad about Billy Joel and I'm like, well,
I that Will have something to say about this. Judge
will right. So then the other thing is like learning
like who all of the other secret Billy Joel fans
are like people who who are like, oh yeah, it's
sort of like my guilty pleasure. And it's like, I
wouldn't even say that it's my guilty pleasure. It's just
(09:52):
the thing that I identify with. Like the thing that
really got me obsessive about it was more his individuals
story um as like just just kind of hard luck
kid living in the middle of nowhere on Long Islands. Like,
if you live on Long Island, you are acutely aware
(10:13):
that the biggest city in the world is less than
an hour to the east. You're a train ride or
a car ride from New York City, and you know
that that magnetism, that power that is in New York
is right there. Sometimes you can see it. And you
also know that they don't want you. You also know
that you are an outsider, and you'll always be an outsider.
(10:36):
There'll always be somebody from Long Island. Um and sort
of the chip on your shoulder that you carry if
you grow up in the shadow of a place like
New York City or Los Angeles, you feel like there's
something there that you want to be a part of,
and yet you don't feel welcome. And I felt that
(10:57):
way growing up. It wasn't until I started reading into
views where he talked about his upbringing and that sense
of disconnect from the place he wanted to be um
and I really began to say, oh, Like it's cliche,
but like, dude, I've been hating all these years, were
not so different to you and I like I realized, Oh,
(11:19):
Billy Joel and I are essentially the same person, but
with a different skill set. He has a marketable skill set.
I have a skill set that brings me to rooftops
in the middle of Los Angeles to talk about projects
used to do. So It's amazing though, Like the more
I read about him, the more I um. It was
(11:40):
like watching a movie that you hadn't seen before, Like
I had never really studied the movie of Billy Joel's career,
but through learning about him, I began to root for him,
like as if I ignored the fact that I knew
what the ending was or the ending up to that point. Obviously,
he's still with us, he's still performing, so his story
is still being told old, but the story of like
(12:02):
him struggling, him getting ripped off by a record label,
him getting a signing possibly one of the worst contracts
in the history of music. UM, and having you know,
having to basically have the mob get him out of that,
UM get him out of that deal. UM. You know,
(12:24):
going through like having to really struggle just to sort
of get to the starting points and then have some success,
have a record of the year, make some money, then
get completely ripped off to the point where, oh, he's
broke again. He stopped recording new music in the early nineties,
(12:45):
but continued to tour for a decade because he was broke,
because he had to because someone he trusted UM robbed him. UM.
You know, I had the same thing happened to me,
obviously for less money, but like people I trusted like
took money from me. And it was like every time
I would read something about him, I could find some parallel.
(13:07):
And the thing that it did for me was it
helped me to sort of understand maybe where I handled
adversity the wrong way, maybe where I um turned my
back on people out of anger. As I was doing
this and reading about Long Island and reading about Long
(13:29):
Island's favorite son, I missed Long Island a great deal.
I really missed it. I had been living here for
about twelve years at that point, so I was suddenly homesick.
In the twelve years that I had lived in l
A M, I had grown up. I went from being
a kid to an adult, you know, being married and
(13:51):
you know, not living like in an apartment with four roommates. UM,
just living something with my wife and my dog. My
dad had passed away, and between my dad's passing and
just time, I felt disconnected from my own upbringing. So
I the thing that I got out of this, in
addition to becoming just really into the life of a musician,
(14:15):
UM was one finally giving his music a chance. And
like I said, it's good. It's way better than I
give him credit. I gave him credit for it's way
better than I ever understood. And I think he is
grossly underestimated as a musician. So that was a gift.
That was something I didn't expect. But also it made
(14:37):
me go back home and connect and talk to family
members I hadn't spoken to, maybe go to my high
school reunion. Really, you've never been, never been, never been.
Just coincided with my twentieth high school reunion, and I
went they did, Yes, they did, because it's of course.
(15:01):
And then I went to the diner afterwards, the same
diner that I was once asked to leave for yelling
at somebody from playing piano. Man. Um. I went back
to that diner and I put on some Billy Joel
songs on the jukebox, and I sat with my wife
and we listened to Billy Joel on a Long Island jukebox,
and I felt like, oh, I've made it all the
way back home, like this is good. This is a
(15:22):
really good thing, Um. And you know, now when I
go home, I have a different relationship with my hometown.
I feel a lot more warmth towards it. I can
go home and not really be angry about things, leave
the past in the past, and move forward. And where
did you start? Did you like started like, did you
do it chronologically? Yes, as I started the writing portion
(15:44):
of the project with his first record, this thing called
Cold Spring Harbor, which of all of the Billy Joel records,
it's it's I would say it's the worst of them,
but it's not all. It's not entirely his fault. When
the record was was UM recorded the producer who also
(16:05):
owned the label who signed him to this terrible contract. Basically,
a twenty year old Billy Joel signed a contract saying
that UM he owed this rinky dink Long Islands, UM
UM outlet ten records, and UM the record company basically
(16:26):
could control everything and got a big cut of everything.
So Billy Joel basically signed his life away at twenty
because nobody else was offering him anything. You know, Columbia
wasn't showing up at his house, Electra wasn't looking for him.
This local guy wanted to help make records. All I
gotta do is signed a ten record deal and give
him a large percentage of my publishing. Great, where do
(16:49):
I sign? So so he signed this horrible deal. Then
so his producer guy, but I already ripped who owned
the record label already? RiPP goes to after the record
and he does it at the wrong speed. Now, I
don't know if you've ever mastered a record, UM, but
you probably understand how it works. Yeah, so not funny
(17:14):
if you are the guy who's put his life into this.
So when I talk about, like Billy Joel at this point,
does everything right, you know works hard? Signs the deal
that was given to him, says, I'm gonna make the
best of his rights, a good collection of songs for
a year old. You know, it's not a great record,
(17:34):
but there's promise there. Um it comes out and because
it's mastered at the wrong speed, his voice sounds really
high and the piano sounds like basically, take take a piano,
stick it in like an aluminum backyard shed, and then
put a mic outside of that shed. That's what the
record sounds like. So the label is this little rinky
(17:57):
dink operation. It's like, well, I ain't gonna pay the
remastered this. Nobody's ever heard of this guy just put
it out like this. Oh my gosh. So young Billy
Joel gets the pressing of his first record and it
sounds like garbage, like it's it is. They later re
released it. They remastered and rereleased it about ten years later.
(18:18):
So the version of it you would buy now is
the better version where it sounds correct. But it's on YouTube.
Go to YouTube, look up Cold Spring Harbor original mastering,
and you don't recognize the voice. So Billy Joel here's
this record and feels like, oh my life is my
career is over? So he just takes his band on
(18:40):
the road and it's like, well, I gotta earn a living.
I can earn a living playing live shows. He builds
a good reputation as a solid live act um and
he's still working on new material. Columbia UM, somebody from
Columbia sees him and they approach him, and he's like,
I would love to sound you guys, Dylan's on your label, Like,
(19:01):
of course, this is where I want to be, but
I'm under contract to these guys for the rest of
my life to the point where you know. Of course,
the reaction of Columbia was bright, you have a ten
year deal with who will take care of this? And
allegedly Columbia sent some muscle over to Basically, they worked
out a deal where UM Family Productions, which was the
(19:25):
name of this guy's company, UM got some sort of
buy out and they got a piece of each record
and for the first ten records of Billy Joel's career
there's a Columbia logo and a Family Productions logo on
it because that was the deal. So, if you're trying
to get somebody into Billy Joel, even though you started
(19:47):
at the top, where would you start them regardless of
the album. I would start with deep cuts, start pick
up Piano Man, which was his first hit, and end um,
don't play piano Man. Okay, listen to everything else on
the Listen to everything but Piano Man. Listen to Um
(20:08):
Traveling Prayer, which is this great bluegrass song like Dolly
Parton recorded in one of Grammy four and if you
listen to it like Dolly singing, you'd never know it
wasn't her song. Um, Listen to Traveling Prayer. Listen to
Stop in Nevada, which is about him and this woman
that he's now going to get married to them, sort
(20:29):
of heading west. Um. And then if you do want
to listen to Piano Man, the important thing to know
about Piano Man is that everything he's telling you in
the song Piano Man is based on true life events.
And he swears, and I'm gonna reveal here he and
I have spoken about this, both on the phone and
(20:49):
face to face. He swears to me that someone actually
ordered a Tonic and Gin and also made love to
his Tonic and Gin. Want a real estate novelist. We've
never got into that. Look, I didn't How much time
do you think I had let's back up for a second. Yes,
the part where you just said you got on the
(21:10):
phone with him. Yes, yes, So what happens is, I'm
doing this Year of Billy Joel through two twelve. In
September of two thousand twelve. It ends up like not
on the Today's Show, but on the Today Show blog,
which they promote on the show, because that the year
you tracked it online. That's what you're saying, you did
(21:32):
you like, right, every day I wrote, I wrote four
days a week, four or five days a week. So yeah,
I should have talked about that. As it's in a second.
As it's going, I'm listening to every song and I'm
writing a little essay about every song. Some days it's
four sentences, some days it's two thousand words whatever comes
to mind from the song. And as I'm writing about
(21:54):
the songs, um, I'm also writing about myself. I'm talking
about my family, and I'm talking about like being at
my dad's house when I'm seven years old, and like
he and my mom have just separated and it's really
weird and it's uncomfortable, and my dad puts on like
this this like sand Billy Joel Songs Mixtape that he made.
(22:17):
So I'm sitting in this basement department with my dad,
and my dad's listening to Captain Jack, which is the
saddest song imaginable. And as my dad's listening to Captain Jack,
he's painting over the windows so that the sunlight can't
get in. Oh my god, And like I realized, like
I'm my parents had me really young. So when I'm seven,
(22:37):
my dad is years old. So like my dad is
about the same age Billy Joeld is at that point,
and like my dad feels like his life is over.
So we're just sitting there listening to sad music while
my dad is like blocking the life out of our
of our home and like just putting us in darkness.
(22:58):
And I hadn't thought about that since I was a child,
Like I remember that that night so vividly because all
I wanted to do was watch the Mets because the
Mets were gonna be on. It's like, when can we
watch the game? It's like when when I'm done with this,
Like as soon as I'm done shutting out everything good
in our life, we can watch the Mets and maybe
we'll get pizza too. So it ends up on the
(23:20):
Today show thing. So it suddenly gets some like some
other outlets pick it up. It was like a Huffington's
Post thing. Um, so it got some press. So Billy
has a publicist who gets clippings every day and this
was when he got so it was billed as the headline,
which is summed me up very well. Billy and Jill
(23:43):
Hayter changes his tune with year long dedication, so appropriate headline. Yeah,
So the publicist contacted me. I was like, hey, I
would love to talk to you about this, Like, oh yeah,
no problem, Like give me a call. So I don't
think anything of it. So a week later, I'm driving
home from work and my phone rings unknown number, which
(24:05):
I normally would just let it go to voicemail, but
for some reason, I'm sitting in traffic. I got nowhere
else to be. I pick up the phone and voice
that sounds weirdly familiar. It's like, hey, can I talk
to Will? Like this is Will. He's like, hey, it's
Billy Joel and I'm like, come on, I won't say
what I said because we're on a family type podcast here,
(24:26):
but I'm like, get out of here. This is not
Billy Joel. This is a friend of my dad's. This
is somebody putting me on. So he's like, no, I
talked to and he gave me the publicist name. He's like,
I talked to so and so she told me that, like, um,
you're doing something about me, and that we should go
to lunch. Because throughout the course of the project, every
(24:47):
time I finished an album, I would post an open
letter inviting Billy Joel to lunch. I was like, hey, look,
I'm making the effort here. I'm trying to trying to
make things good between us. And he's like, so, what's
this thing? And I it was in the weird position
where I needed to tell a famous musician that I
(25:08):
do not like his work. So I was like, I
was like, how much did your publicists tell you about
what I'm doing. It's like said, you had some my
website you were writing about me. I was like, but
did she tell you like how it came about? And
so I'm like, hang on one second. I'm like, Billy,
I've got to pull over to tell you this. So
(25:29):
I pulled my car over to the side of the
road and like, here's the thing. I am not a fan,
never been a fan of your work. I'm like, and
he's just sort of silent. He's like, hey, a lot
of people, you know, after a moment of silence, a
lot of people aren't fans of my work. It's like
I can live with that. And I was like, but
I'm giving it a try, and like he was happy.
(25:52):
It was like, oh great. He was like, what are
you up to? So I told him sort of where
I was, and we started talking about the records, huh.
And we just talked and talked and like to the
point where you're like, hey, Billy, Joel has been great,
but like, hey, I'm sure you gotta go. And he's like,
don't worry about it. Like he couldn't have been nicer,
(26:13):
and like he seemed to be more into talking to
me about what I was doing. And if we end
up talking about like our families and I'm talking about
my dad who had passed away, and it was like
we had this great conversation. So finally I'm like, Billy,
thank you so much. This has been wonderful. I'm like,
(26:34):
before we talk any further, you should read everything that
I've written and then decide if you want to continue
to talk to me. Because he was like, hey, we
should talk again, Like, if you have questions, you can
ask me. Like, I was so amazed at how receptive
he was to me taking a critical analysis his work.
(26:55):
After the project ended, he was like, Hey, we're gonna
do that lunch. So he came to l A. He
was here for something. Um, he was gonna be out here.
Was like, Hey, I'm gonna be on here if you
want to meet up. We met up, We had lunch.
Um had a great conversation about you know, not just
his music but music in general. Um, and like his
(27:19):
he talked to me about how he thought people perceived
his music. But it was a really interesting conversation. That's
because you're right in the middle of that, right, I
mean I would say it as an artist. I mean,
and this is none of this is it really about me?
But I do know that the one muscle that you
have to use is to convince a stranger to like you. Yeah. Well,
(27:39):
I think there were two things that like the fact
that wait, how come this guy doesn't like me, He's
got to win me over, Like he got a little
obsessed with this random dude liking him. Um, And so
the other thing was like I wasn't asking him for
anything right, Like I didn't have a demo on him
(27:59):
to listen too. I wasn't in a band. I wasn't
trying to get anything from him, and I think because
of that, he was willing to go further then he
maybe would have been with other people, because I was like, hey,
if you want to read this, I'd love to have
you read this. But like he read it all and
they called me and he's like, hey, I just want
to let you know I read everything, and he's like
it's great. He's like, I don't agree with everything you say,
(28:20):
but I really like I appreciate the thought, like the
work you put into it. And he's like, you also
make a lot of great points about stuff that I
don't think people understand, Like I had said something that
resonated with him. Um. And we had lunch and then
he invited my wife and I to go to Hollywood Bowl,
where we got to Um, you know you've been to
(28:42):
the Hollywood Bowl. Hollywood Bowl is a beautiful place. It's
a lot more beautiful when you're sitting right up front.
I've been to the Hollywood Bowl a number of times,
and usually when I'm paying for the tickets, I'm sitting
practically up in the hills like I usually like I'm
closer to a coyote than I am the stage. But
I I we go to see the show, and I'm
(29:04):
sitting right in that little sort of pit area with
the tables and the and the millionaires. So we're sitting
basically in the one percent section, and it's nice, like
we're one percent caused playing like Hey, we're gonna pretend
we're fancy people for a day now. But no, but
none of the fancy people around No, is that I
(29:25):
took the bus to the show. I took the bus,
and it's like I'm looking at this guy up on
stage like he was a bus taker, Like you know,
there's no reason, like he got lucky. He hit the lottery,
you know, and he didn't, he didn't get a gift,
like he earned his seat, but like he got lucky,
(29:45):
like things could have very easily gone the other way.
I watched him, and I realized, like he could just
as easily be sitting on the bus with me and
we're here seeing somebody else. So it was very much
like again, it's it's an identity. So I got ended
up wanting to listen to somebody's music to see what
it was that sort of brought people into it, and
(30:08):
I realized it's a combination of one. As I said,
songs are better than I gave him credit for, especially
the deep cuts. Deep cuts are way better than people understand.
And the person and the fact that oh more than
any other, more than almost any other sort of hugely
popular musician, like he could really be any one of us.
(30:29):
Like the appeal of Springsteen, who I love, is that
everybody feels like Springsteen is a guy you can go
have a beer with. Billy Joel was also a guy
you can go have a beer with. Just he'll tell
you this, don't let him drive you home. That's awesome.
(30:54):
Chapter two. In every episode of Geeking Out, I see
if I can trade one thing I've discus with one
thing that my guest has discovered, a friendly exchange. I
call it trade you. This segment, as I'm eating some
banana chips here um is called trade you, okay, And
the idea is much like you have, uh you know,
(31:16):
told me what your passion is or your obsession is
what you're geeking out on. This is just something very
kind of within your week, within your month, um, something
that you're into and one thing that I'm into, and
I'll trade you one thing for another. So for me, um,
I'll start. So you're gonna have a show to think about.
Give me a moment um during our conversation. I just
(31:38):
heard you say that you have a podcast, Mets podcast
called Flushing Transit Authority, UM, which I do with my
friend j Bushman, and it's a ton of fun we
like talking about Basically, he and I love talking about
the Mets. Are like, Hey, we're gonna talk about the Mets.
Let's record it and make other people listen to it.
So this is my first experience in podcasting, and I, uh,
(32:00):
you know, own a recording studio and stuff, so I
know all of the things I should be doing to
make it awesome from an audio standpoint. But um, what
I've discovered is one of the things that's actually sitting
in front of us as this microphone right here. It's
an apog microphone, and it this is the same converter
in the bottom of this tiny little microphone that I
used to record albums that when awards and it's somehow
(32:25):
instead of having it in a giant rack, they put
it in this tiny little microphone. And it will plug
into your phone or it'll plug into your computer anything.
And secondly to to up it, there is a kickstarter
thing when these guys in Canada that is um they
call it the eyeball, and it goes on top of
this and suddenly you have an entire recording studio that
(32:48):
really will squish down like a nerf ball into your bag.
It's amazing. You know what I'm obsessed with lately? I
love Nil Young. You're a big Neil Young. I love
Nil Young. Um does that mean that you bought like
a poo player? I did not buy a poono player
because I also realized that your average listener, which I am,
(33:09):
can't tell the difference, got it, And unless you have,
like I'm listening to dope, you can't tell the difference.
I'm listening to music in my car, or I'm listening
with earbuds on my my iPhone or my home. You know,
record player with a USB speaker is gonna be fine.
So the thing that I'm obsessed with right now, Neil
(33:31):
Young put on a record this week called Hitchhiker. Hitchhiker
was recorded in nineteen seventy six, and I learned about
Hitchhiker through my friend Daniel Ralston, who just published a
great story in Vulture uh this week, just you know,
pop culture side about the making of this record. So
the record was Neil Young, his producer David Briggs, who
(33:55):
produced all of his best stuff. UM, and Dean Stockwell.
Remember Dean Stockwell? Do you Stockwell from Okay? Now? Dean
Stockwell was also a musician. Dean Stockwell was a renaissance
man of the twentieth century. Um, Dean Stockwell does not
play on the record, He's just there in the room.
(34:18):
And but the record is just Neil Young and an
acoustic guitar doing the first version of Pocahontas, the first
version of powder Finger, UM, and a bunch of like
other stuff that Captain Kennedy, like a bunch of stuff
that you've heard him do on other records or he
pulls out live every now and then, But just to
(34:41):
hear like powder Finger, just on an acoustic guitar, because
like the beauty of I love powder Fingers, one of
my five favorite songs ever recorded. And just that sort
of that harmonic guitar sound. Um, and that's sort of
really just slow she riff that he does on the
(35:01):
electric and to not hear that um, as my friend
Daniel points out, like makes the narrator of the song
feel even frailer and more afraid than he is in
the electric version two years three years before it came
out on on Rust Never Sleeps. Wow, Okay, I will
(35:24):
totally go listen to That's fantastic. I I put Neil
Young's guitar playing as one of the things that really
inspires me because it's it's more right hand than left hand.
It's so sort of like it's just so primal. Yeah,
I love it. That's awesome. Well, thanks for being here
or thanks for joining us on the route always happen
to be on a roof, Go to be had. Chapter
(35:50):
three me geeking out on music piano man, I would
like to discuss piano playing front men and women. We're
all used to seeing our singers stand and perform at
a microphone and some mics with diamonds on them, some
(36:12):
with scarves or tambourines hanging down, and some even toiling
or swinging the stands around like their weapons. We also
have stars that commonly wheeled guitars as they sing, whether
they're rock and roll battle axes, or hipster ukuleles or
wooden steel string country artists. We're all accustomed to our
rock stars performing certain duties a certain way. As a culture,
(36:36):
we really don't stray too much from this model. Yes,
there are a few that play violin and a rare
saxophone here. They're even a drummer like Phil Collins or
Sheila E or even Cowboy Mouth. But I've noticed something
odd about our rock stars. There are very few that
play piano. In nineteen nineteen, stein Way and Sons launched
(37:01):
an ad campaign for their pianos and the tagline was
the instrument of the Immortals. So let's think about that.
Let's see what's on the top of my mind. Uh,
Fats Domino, Cherry Lee Lewis, Little Richard all built rock
and roll on pianos. And then my mind I think
(37:22):
of Elton John and Billy Joel and Jules Holland from
The Squeeze. Then I think I skip ahead. Maybe in
my mind have been Folds, and then Lady Gaga and
Sarah Burrellus, And then it feels like they're more like
that old TV show The Highlander, that there can be
only one piano. Rock Stars are things that we love,
(37:44):
but it seems that we don't have a lot of
room for them on our pop charts. Great for rhythm
and blues, great for songwriter, but what about the piano
makes it a hard sell for a rock and roll
Why is this just harder to carry your piano to
(38:05):
a campfire at a remote beach to serenade the girl
that you like, Harder to carry up a flight of
stairs for an open mic. It doesn't go well with
tight pants. Maybe it's baked into our learning by default.
When we take a piano lesson, we learned chopsticks versus on,
it gets harror, we learn deep purple smoke on the water.
(38:29):
Maybe it's our history in the fifties and sixties, as
teenagers became purchasers, Fats Domino was playing two Dy Fruity
versus Chuck Berry playing Johnny be Good? Is that when
we turned Maybe in our subconscious it's that we feel
that a piano just can't get loud enough to drown
out the cheers of an arena and may in the masses.
(38:52):
Whatever it is. As a guitar player, I'm always fascinated
watching my brother playthings with keys on it. Fascinated hearing
Elton John effortlessly's land a song on its feet every
time it tumbles out of a speaker. Fascinated at how
Billy Joel sounds like a drummer and a bass player
and a guitar player all at the same time on
the same instrument. I hope someone new out there feels
(39:15):
like taking us for a ride soon on their imagination
using their piano, and I hope it feels like freedom
and rock and power and awesome long live rock stars
who play piano. I hope you enjoyed this episode of
(39:36):
Geeking Out and we are already hard at work on
the next one. Are you obsessed with something amazing? I
want to tell us about it? Right to us at
geeking Out with KB at gmail dot com and you
might be a guest on an upcoming episode. Come find
out more about me and this podcast at Christian Bush
dot com, Christian with a K people follow me at
(39:57):
Christian Bush on Twitter, Christian Bush Instagram, Christian Bush on Facebook,
and Christian M. Bush on Snapchat. Thanks to Bobby Bones
for the opportunity to make this podcast, Brian and Bush
for making the soundtrack and assembling the pieces, Tom Tapley
for audio wizardry and Whitney Pastrick for being a great
producer and making this whole thing possible. This is Christian
Bush geeking out. Thank you for listening.
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