Billy Joel

The New Documentary Drives Me to Wax About My Long Love For His Music

As you can see, Billy Joel has looked over, and guarded, “Selfish Giant Studios,” for many years now. This record store cut-out made its debut in my various dorms at UT Austin in the 1980s. With a few gaps, it has been on the wall of every home I’ve had since. “An Innocent Man” wasn’t my favorite record. But it’s the piece I could find, at the time.

And, yes, Dallas friends, OF COURSE. I bought it at the original “Bill’s.”

I’m obviously thinking about Billy Joel because of the new, brilliant, two-part documentary, out now on HBO/Max.
I’ve waxed nostalgically about Billy and his music before.
And here I go, again.

Raising my hand as an unapologetic fan.

For much of his career —at least, what I will here call the first “Three Quarters” of it— admitting you were a Billy Joel fan was tantamount to admitting you were deeply uncool. Punk, grunge, heavy metal, prog rock fans, they all generally roll their eyes at Billy Joel, with the elite critics providing the ammunition.

But remember, dear cultural despisers, Billy is the one who signs off his live shows with:

“Don’t take any shit from anybody…”

That was always good advice for his life.
And it’s always been good advice for us diehard fans too.

You gotta see this documentary.
It’s pitch perfect.

At the start, let us remember how Billy Joel is the fourth best selling artist in US history, and one of the top selling artists, worldwide, for the past fifty years.

My hunch is that Billy lovers and haters will all find something to admire in this documentary. If not the music, then the stories of perseverance, and deeply personal stories of hardship, only now fully told.

Even those of us who already know a lot, going in, will come away with something new.

Billy is brutally honest about his life. And the producers somehow managed to get powerful interviews from all FOUR… yes four… of Billy’s wives.

Even Liberty DeVito, (God bless you, you tom-beating fool…) comes back to tell the stories only he knows.
And I’m here for all of it.

Just the right mix of fascinating details and tidbits, just the right running-time balance for every phase of this remarkable life and career.

First Quarter¹

Night One —that is, half the entire documentary— takes us through what I’d call the “First Quarter” of Billy’s career. But, to me, it’s the part I’ve always known best. We go up through “52nd Street.”

And while that could seem out of balance at first glance, it is exactly where I would have put the dividing line between the two nights of the film.

It allows for a slower pace during the early period. Then, a story arc that picks up speed (mirroring how Billy Joel picks up superstardom) as it goes into night two.

Night One goes into his origins with “The Hassels,” through “Piano Man,” then, the breakthrough, iconic, and seminal “The Stranger,” and finally the first-fruits of true stardom with “Glass Houses,” and “52nd Street.”

I suppose the other reason I love that much time for “Episode One,” or “The First Quarter,” is because this makes the narrative mirror my own transition from high school to college.

“The Stranger” was an iconic junior high album for me.
“52nd Street” ends my high school years.
And…so ends Episode One.

Perhaps this is why that directorial division is also what makes it feel perfect to me, given my own life history?

So glad they started with The Hassels. I pulled out my copy…. Yes, this is my Hassels record, and I have owned it now for decades. (And, yes, I probably got it at “Bill’s” too.)

(I told you I was a fan…)

What I did not know until this documentary was the story of how Billy stole the girlfriend of his bandmate, how that broke up that band, and how that relationship eventually morphed into his wife, muse, manager.

I mean, I knew she became all those things. That’s been well known to fans for a long time.

But, damn Billy, I didn’t know that origin story of the jilted bandmate…and they even got him to come back and tell his side of the story!
That’s a classic rock-n-roll move right there, Billy.

Second Quarter

Part Two (night two of the doc) spends significant time with what I’d call “The Second Quarter” of Billy’s career; perhaps known most colloquially as “the Christy Brinkley years.”

I’m sure some will hate me for calling it that. But it’s apt, I think. They were, truly, one of the most iconic “super couples” of the 1980s….as big and iconic as any power couple of any age. And music, modeling, superstardom, all sort of merged together with them.

That era, to me, is dominated by “The Nylon Curtain,” with it’s subtle digs at the Reagan era, and was a ubiquitous record of my college years.

“The Bridge” and “Storm Front” dominated the soundtrack of my seminary years.

During finals week, at UT Austin, in the midst of exam stress, a half dozen Moore-Hill dorm floor-mates would gather in my room, put one that song, turn it up to eleven, and scream out “PRESSURE!” at the top of our lungs.

Let me give a special shout out to a grossly overlooked song on “Nylon Curtain.” The semi-Christmas song, “She’s Right On Time.”

For me, if you asked me to give you two overlooked songs that most epitomize Billy’s rock edge, it would be:

“She’s Right On Time,” and “All For Leyna.”

Give em a listen, now. Note Liberty DeVito’s blistering drum fills on the final chorus of the former.

If I could make Billy-haters listen to only two songs that I bet they’ve never heard, it would be these. They still might hate him…but they will will have heard what I’d consider the most “Billy Joel” of all his rock songs.

BTW…Billy has publicly stated “She’s Right On Time” is his favorite “overlooked Billy Joel song!”
So, there…

Despite not selling as well, I also loved “The Bridge.” How can you not love that duet with Ray Charles?

As somebody who’d been with Billy since the beginning, I was so happy for his success during this era. And most of all, for landing the most iconic supermodel of the age, for being a cultural icon I could hold on to, in a music decade I increasingly found vacuous.²

It felt like cosmic karma for those edgier, earlier, songs….for all those tours. For enduring all the stupid reporters comparing him to Elton. For all us who grew up on “Captain Jack,” and “Sleeping with the Television On,” here was our goofy, wild-haired hero….ending up with the hottest girl in the room.

Maybe there is hope for us all, Billy.
Maybe there is hope for us all.

Man, Christy’s interview is powerful. What an early look at the perils of celebrity culture they gave us. She doesn’t hold back, and I’m glad she didn’t.

Third Quarter

Then, comes the dark part….what I’d call “The Third Quarter.”
He quits touring.
He quits writing.
All those accidents…all that bad press….a third “failed marriage.”

Some interview subject in the doc (I forget who, already) admits to having been seriously worried about Billy in this phase.

Hell, I was seriously worried about him, and I was just living vicariously through through the occasional Rolling Stone piece.

I mean, who just walks away from writing?
From touring?
From being “Billy Joel?”

There was a Rolling Stone piece during this time (I forget the year) when he’s in a particularly dark, and Billy-like “fuck the world” place.

I read it, and it just felt “dark.” And I remember thinking: “That guy just might be suicidal…”

I actually remember that thought. It was almost a relief to hear somebody close to him saying the same thing.

Vienna

Let me insert a section here on the song “Vienna,” and some storyline that takes place in “Part Two,” despite the fact that “Vienna” is a solid “Part One” song. This alluded to in the trailer above, as well. For me, it was the biggest, most shocking, “reveal” of the documentary.

Serious Billy fans have always heard him say the song was about going to look for his Father. But, that’s about all he’d ever really say about it. We were left to imagine what that story was…because Billy seemed to like to hold some of that mystery.

Well, turns out, it’s quite a story.

Billy does track down his Father in Vienna. His Father and Grandfather had moved here from Germany. As Jews, his Grandfather had been forced to sell his prosperous textile business to Nazis and antisemites. That factory would, chillingly, be retooled to produce uniforms for Nazi concentration camps prisoners.

Billy talks of finding his Father and….his half-brother, who is an orchestra conductor! (of course) He talks of seeing the graves of the holocaust and war-dead relatives.

He talks about his deep concern after Charlottesville, and how he chose to sew the yellow concentration camp start into his stage jacket in the aftermath of that event.

No sermonizing from the stage…just that subtle, umistakable, mesage.

These are stories he has never shared. Or if he had, I don’t ever recall hearing them. He often says he doesn’t go into depth on song creation, because he likes his music speak for itself.

But, man, knowing these storys…it sure helps explain “Angry Young Man,” “Closer to the Borderline” and “Pressure.” That anger that’s alway come through in his persona… thats from some pretty real demons in the emotional DNA of that family.
Yeah…it makes more sense now.

“Vienna” has always been a favorite song.
And it now, after seeing this, it has even deeper, and profound, resonance.

And then, then, as if out of nowhere…the Fourth Quarter.

And, suddenly, those jealous critics and fickle fans come roaring back. Suddenly he’s back to performing. And, suddenly, as the documentary well details…EVERYBODY LOVES Billy Joel.

The documentary doesn’t put a start date on this phase. It credibly insinuates the 150 sold out shows at Madison Square Garden…the TWO MILLION fans who came to see him there…as the ultimate proof of this last, remarkable, phase.

Suddenly Billy is New York.
Going to see Billy at MSG becomes a staple of a NYC visit…like going to see a Broadway play, or seeing Stephen Colbert.
(Ugh…I shouldn’t remind you…)

“New York State of Mind,” becomes the classic for our time. For better or worse, it’s as or more popular than “New York, New York.”

Billy wrote that song when he was twenty-six-year-old.
Think about that.

Honestly, it’s a song no young man has the right to sing. But he did. And he kept singing it. It was never a hit single for him. But without commerical success, it’s now far more than that. It’s a song for all time.

And that is what it means to be a genius songwriter…to pen a classic a twenty-six, that fifty years later you come to personally embody, along with your city.
You are the city now, and the city is you.

The poetry of the song itself has “come down to reality…”

And…it’s fine with me.

Does all this adulation for Billy now bother this long term fan?

Um…NO…

One of my realizations about getting older is that only the very luckiest humans get to be remembered by more than a handful of people, past their lifespan. And some of those are so remembered, for being scoundrels.

But here, now, are legions of new fans, screaming out these songs I’ve known for years. Some of them are so young, they weren’t even born for “Storm Front” or “The Bridge.” But they know every word of even older songs…

Do you know how incredibly rare that truly is?

And if you watch Billy’s live performances during this “Fourth Quarter,” as he pulls back from the mic, falls out, and allows the tens of thousands of fans to sing along, you can see: he knows how rare it is too.

If you’re watching closely, you can see his enjoyment of their enjoyment.
And what a gift that moment must be.

And, I’m so ridiculously happy that he’s been around to see it. To experience it.

I know Billy Joel has some physical problems, which may well force more permanent retirement. And I get that this may be why this documentary is happening now…and even why all these folks decided to be so brutally honest….now.

Whatever.
I’m just soooo glad they did.

So happy for you, Billy.
So happy for you.

Classical Music With Folk Lyrics

Stay with me for a bit more Billy Joel song talk… about the songs and the songwriting.

The documentary makes a point many of us have known since at least “An Innocent Man” …that Billy’s musical constructs borrow from classical music. He’s always been clear about this. But this may be news to some.

But if his musical phrasings borrow from the classics, I will repeat an assertion I made some years ago…that his lyric-writing is solidly out of the folk music tradition. Let me invite you to consider this too.

Yes, the instrument is a piano, not a guitar.

But, what is “Piano Man,” if not a folk song?

“The piano it sounds like a carnival,
And the microphone smells like a beer.”

We don’t just love this song because it’s singable, long after we’ve had one-too-many.
We love it because it’s gritty, real life, POETRY.

Same for “Goodnight Saigon.”
And “Allentown.”
And “Downeaster Alexa”
And…I could go on all night, if you let me…

These are story-songs…in the best of the folk…and later the “folk rock” traditions. Very few critics, if any, have ever made this point stick. But I invite you to it.

But the songs themselves have staying power, too. There are plenty of dated fifty-year-old “story songs,” that are no longer sung by huge crowds of adoring fans.

To this point, there’s brilliant little insight mades in the doc by one of the interviewees (Springsteen, maybe?).
That Billy’s songs are general enough that they feel fresh in every new age.

I think that’s prescient. They are general enough to feel timeless. They are somehow specific enough to paint pictures of times and places you can see in your own mind…or that remind you of your own times and places.

“Goodnight Saigon,” brought healing to a generation of Vietnam Vets, when first released. But, the same song comes back, twenty years later, after September 11th, and brings healing to those same soldier’s adult children/grandchildren; who rushed into the blazing inferno, on that horrible day.

THAT is what makes a great song.

“Summer Highland Falls,” is not a time I’ve ever live through.
But, of course, I have. It is either sadness or euphoria.

We college boys screamed “PRESSURE!” the top of our lungs, while the songs was at its zenith, at the top of the charts.
And on stressful days, I still crank it to eleven, and and scream it, today.

But back in those college days…we’d often follow “Pressure” with a blast from the past…

“Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.”

And now, we must wax nostalgically about one of the most nostaglic, iconic, songs of all time.

A brilliantly constructed three part song-novel, spanning past and present, and an imagined future; with characters, place, and setting, you can picture in your mind.

A 7:37 minute song that never had any business being released on any record.
What ridiculous pretense.

And yet, it’s a “desert island” song for me, and thousands of others, too.
One of my top ten, all-time songs…without a second of hesitation.
A masterpiece.

And if you fail to see that, I just might not be able to trust you.

But when we listened to it, back in that in college dorm room, it was already an old song…from the mid 1970s…a half a decade before us.

My point is: In every age since, people have pictured their own “Scenes” meeting, with their own true-life friends.

In that sense, it’s a twin sister of Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lange Syne,” with exactly the same kind of nostalgic tone and theme of holy remembrance.³

Yes, of course our band covered “Scenes” in our Billy Joel show.
And, yes, I definitely sang it.

Enjoy a clip, here.

I have a very specific memory of those times, listening to “Scenes” with those college friends. Even as a young man, I literally remember thinking, “One of these days…one of US will be ‘Eddie.’ And, one of these days…the rest of us will ‘remember those days’…”

And son of a bitch, about a year later, one of us did become “Eddie.”
And now, we hardly ever see him.
And, yes, I still have many of the rest of those old friends from that time, just as I imagined I might.
And, yes, we still meet up, to reminisce, about the old times.

Again, I couldn’t have known the specifics, back in the mid 1980s. But I knew that song was a “parable" of what it meant to have a past, and to integrate that past memory into your present day.

I knew, as a young man, I’d one day have own “Scenes,” scenes.

Because Billy is Billy, and Billy is New York, his setting was, of course, an “Italian Restaurant.” That image is iconic, and the lyrics draw the place for you.

But for we old Dallas farts, it’s usually a trip back to some place like Chuy’s. And I’d bet many of you have your own place too, with wine and conversation at a quiet table, near the street.

Because it’s such a beautifully human story.

And for me, Yes.
I’ll meet them any time they want.

I’ve now been listening to “Scenes” for almost fifty years, and have sung it for multiple crowds of hundreds. I’ve belted it out, alone on some open highway (as I did last Saturday Night after watching Part Two…) more times than I can count.

And yes, I sometimes cry at the depth of the memories, the history, the parable that now speaks to me a story of my own life, just as the young-me imagined it one day would.

And THAT, my friends…THAT is also what makes a masterpiece.

Names

Let me make another “folk music” observation about Billy’s songs.

Not always, but quite often, Billy names his characters.
Enough to make it interesting.

Anthony.
Sgt. O’Leary.
Mama Leoni.
Brenda, Eddie.
Don, Paul, and Davy.
Roberta.
James.
Rosalinda.
Leyna.
Diane.

Most all these, save Alexa, are no doubt “mostly” fictional.

But, like all good songs, they leave you wondering, “Who *was* Leyna, anyway?”
Even if there never was a real one, it’s fun to imagine.

And then, as a song burrows into you, over the years, you start to ask the more personal question: “Who was *MY* ‘Laura?’”

( Oh…I know. Trust me. I know.)

Again, this is part of what’s made Billy’s music so timeless. Just general enough to not be completely tied to place and time, but nostalgic enough to be invitation to every listener of every time. Personal touches, like named characters, that pull you in.

What Makes A Legend?

Finally, let me close with the observation I’ve made about several other artists of our era.

I will continue to maintain that there are performers who started, and/or peaked in the 1970s, whose songs have now become timeless beyond anything we have to compare it to. They are, now, multi-generationally, legendary.

Folks like McCartney. Springsteen. The Eagles. Paul Simon. Elton.
Many others, of course.

But also, of course, Billy.

I measure this by the fact that in today…here in the mid 2020s…Billy Joel could easily sell out a stadium show, almost anywhere. And a multigenerational crowd would, easily, be singing along on half a dozen, or more, songs. Hell, maybe close to all the songs.

I know, I know…Crowds sing along with every Olivia Rodrigo…or Taylor song. And yes, that is impressive too.
(Attention old farts: Pay attention to Rodrigo. She’s the real deal…)⁴

What I’m saying to you is that it’s unheard of for stadiums-full of MULTIGENERATIONAL fans to be belting out the words to these songs decades after they were written.

Take Piano Man.

It was released in 1973. That’s fifty-two years-ago.
The equivalent time-jump backward would be: 1921.

In 1973, I assure you this: There was not one song from 1921 still being sung to large crowds…multi-generational crowds…by the original artist.
Not one.

Perhaps the closest thing to it would be “Take Me Out To the Ball Game.”

But whoever sang that originally was not the one still singing it in 1972. And today, yes, that’s a culturally iconic song trascends time.
But, only the song.
Not the singer. The writer.

Speaking of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” I’ll end with pointing you to what I personally mark as the start of Billy Joel’s remarkable “Fourth Quarter.”

The 2008 concert, “Live From Shea Stadium.”

There are a half dozen concert videos, collections of live music, from Billy now.
”Songs In the Attic.”
”Kohliept.”

But that show is iconic for place, setting…and as a marker for the clear beginning of Billy’s status as “a legend.”

That show at Shea Stadium…the last concert there, ever…Billy leads the crowd like it’s fifty people in a neighborhood singalong piano bar.

But it’s 55,000 people, singing along.

There’s even one final “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

Because by then, Billy already fully understood the power of shared singing…
By then, Billy was well on his way to becoming King of all New York…not just Long Island… taking his rightful place alongside Springsteen’s realm, just across the river.

At the show, Billy offers “New York State of Mind” with the great Tony Bennett. There are guest appearances from half a dozen other legends.

Billy brings out Paul McCartney for some final songs. The Beatles opened up Shea to concerts, but this now New York legend would close it down.

They end with “Let It Be,” another in the pantheon of songs that has transcended space and time. Another one where everybody always sings along, on every word.

And when I hear this live version, I weep.
Every time.

Just before “Let It Be,” the penultimate song is “Piano Man.” And…as he has for years…Billy drops out during some of the verse, to let the audience sing.

Not just the chorus…he drops out and lets the crowd sing THE VERSES.
Again, it makes me weep.

I was in Deep Ellum on my nightly walk, not three weeks ago now, and the sound of “Piano Man” wafted out from “Louie, Louie’s”

For the uninitiated, that’s our local “dueling piano” bar…a living embodiment of the “Piano Man” mystique, where a modern-day Joel sits at the bar, while they put bread in the jar.

Fifty-plus years after he wrote the song…
Almost twenty years after that Shea concert…
Well after those 150 sold out MSG concerts…

On this recent night in Deep Ellum, some shiny new batch of Dallas twenty-somethings, beat back the drink called loneliness, with the power of a shared, communal song that has transcends age and time.

“Sing us a song…”
It wafted on the street. And I could not see a single face.
Only hear the power of a truly “legendary” song.

But, ya’ll, that is STILL not what gets me most about that Shea-Show.
As I’ve just demonstrated, everybody sings “Piano Man.” (How can you not?) It’s an old-school tavern song, for modern-day America.

What sticks with me about that Shea Show is…once again…”Scenes From An Italian Restaurant.”

Just watch this video…and see if you notice what gets me.

They’re singing along with it too…

Fifty-five thousand fans….THEY’RE SINGING ALONG with this song!!!
As, yes, they do in all his shows.

And THAT, my friends…THAT is how you know, without any shadow of question:
That Billy Joel is a legend.

On the video, Billy sings, “Do you remember those days, hanging out at the Village Green?”
The crowd erupts.

No, none of them actually “remember those days,” of course. Maybe the Village Green wasn’t even a real place…I have no idea…maybe it’s Greenwich Village. Maybe that’s what they think.

It doesn’t matter. That’s my point.
It’s a shared experience. They’ve all got a “Village Green,” somewhere.

They’ve all got a “Brenda and Eddie.”
We all do.

And so they belt out this obscure, non-hit 7: 37 minute song, like it’s the Hallelujah Chorus at the end of Easter Sunday church.

This, my friends, is the best part of our American cultural religion
It’s the kind of shared experience we need MORE of today.
God, do we need it today.

After Sir Paul joins Billy for “I Saw Her Standing There,” —an homage to the OG Shea concert decades before— Paul is exits the stage, and Billy gestures to him and says:

“The original! Thanks for letting us use the room!”

Oh Billy…

It’s YOUR town, now…it’s your room now.
Surely after all these years, you know that.

It’s YOUR room of your own.

1. The documentary doesn’t describe the different “quarters” that I do here….that’s my own, personal, way of understanding the carrer arc…

2. This is not the time/place for this discussion…but I find the 1980s to be the most depressing era for music, ever. Besides punk…a movement I somehow missed…the synthesizer driven tunes of the age…the need for a sax solo on every ballad…the repackaging of 1970s stars into big haird, overdressed, shells of their formers selves…it was depressing as hell to me.

As, as you will read later, I deeply amire singer-songwriters…they always get higher ranking for me than any artist just doing other people’s songs.
So, much of my loathing of this decade comes from the fact that “singer-songwriters” disappear…the Folk-Rock tradition…dies on the radio dial during the 1980s.
Again, so depressing.

Billy navigates this era by simultaneously contining to write/perform…beating those odds…and by, through their sheer star power together, forming this super couple.

As I say…some might fault him for this. I do not.

As I imagine him saying: he fucking survived…and thrived.
That’s not nothing.

3. That one is also a desert island song, of course…

4. Swifties, stand down. I’m assuming everyone already respect Taylor as the real deal.