Billy Joel

Beginning as a quintessential confessional singer/songwriter, Billy Joel has gone on to render consistently well-crafted pop. Classically trained, he combines rock attitude with musicianly professionalism. Whether taking the form of rock & roll, new wave, hard-edged dance fare, '60s nostalgia, or political statement, his songs are marked by a melodicism derived ultimately from Tin Pan Alley and Paul McCartney. His forte is the romantic ballad epitomized by his signature tune, “Just the Way You Are.” Unlike that of many of his pop-music contemporaries, Joel’s work has been perceived as progressing over the years, moving steadily from the purely personal, some would argue sophomoric, concerns of his earliest work to embrace a wider range of styles - particularly with his classical compositions - and subjects. As bard of everyday suburban dream and disappointment, he has achieved a singular voice and status.

When Joel was eight, his father, a German Jew, left the family to live in Vienna, Austria, and divorced Joel’s mother. She struggled to support her two children in suburban Hicksville, Long Island, where, as a teenager, Joel ran with a leather-jacketed street gang. He also boxed for three years, breaking his nose in the process.

In the late ’60s, after playing in a series of local cover bands, he joined the Long Island group the Hassles, who released two meager-selling records on the United Artists label. He then formed a hard-rock duo, Attila, with Hassles drummer Jonathan Small; Small’s wife, Elizabeth Weber, would later wed Joel. Attila’s only album also failed. Taking up commercial songwriting, Joel signed with Family Productions in 1971. His solo debut, Cold Spring Harbor, demonstrated both his fondness for Long Island and the somber side of his singing/songwriting approach, but because the tapes were inadvertently sped up slightly in production, Joel’s voice sounded nasal and unnatural.

Legal and managerial woes precluded an immediate followup, and for six months Joel performed in West Coast piano bars under the name “Bill Martin.” These experiences informed his breakthrough, Piano Man, yielding hits in the Top 30 title track, the Top 100 “Travelin’ Prayer,” and “Worse Comes to Worst.” His third solo album, another respectable seller, featured “The Entertainer” (#34, 1974). Turnstiles came next, and although “New York State of Mind” eventually became a standard, Joel’s career appeared to be in a holding pattern. Then came The Stranger and a string of hit singles: 1977’s “Just the Way You Are” (#3) and 1978’s “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” (#17), “She’s Always a Woman” (#17), and “Only the Good Die Young” (#24). “Just the Way You Are,” written for his first wife and then-manager Elizabeth (the couple divorced in 1982), won two Grammys in 1979 and became a popular tune for both weddings and cover versions - by some counts, there have been approximately 200 versions of the song recorded.

More hits followed - from 1978’s 52nd Street, “My Life” (#3, 1978), “Big Shot” (#14, 1979), and “Honesty” (#24, 1979); from 1980’s Glass Houses, “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” (#1, 1980) and “You May Be Right” (#7, 1980) - and in 1979 Joel appeared at the Havana Jam Concert in Cuba. In 1981 he released Songs in the Attic, a live collection of pre-Stranger material; also that year, “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” (later recorded by Ronnie Spector) became a hit. Despite the hits, Joel remained in his most vociferous critics’ eyes “a lightweight”; Joel responded publicly by tearing up critical reviews onstage during his concerts.

Critically and musically, the tide seemed to turn for Joel with the socially conscious The Nylon Curtain, which showcased his musical skill and pop traditionalist’s gift for song structure. That, along with his perseverance and industry, began winning critical converts (in 1992, Joel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, followed by induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999). Featuring “Pressure” (#20, 1982), “Allentown” (#17, 1982), a Reagan-era unemployment lament, and “Goodnight Saigon” (#56, 1983), about Vietnam vets, The Nylon Curtain went to #7. Several of Joel’s singles were showcased in innovative (“Pressure”) and dramatic (“Allentown”) music videos that were put into heavy rotation on the then-new MTV. The multiplatinum An Innocent Man, a stylistic homage to early ’60s AM-radio pop, offered “Tell Her About It” (#1, 1983), “An Innocent Man” (#10, 1983), “The Longest Time” (#14, 1984), “Keeping the Faith” (#18, 1985), and “Uptown Girl” (#3, 1983), a Four Seasons–esque valentine for Christie Brinkley, the model whom Joel would marry in 1985 (the couple divorced in 1994). After a seven-night run at Madison Square Garden in 1984, he released Greatest Hits: vol. I & vol. II, his seventh consecutive Top 10 album.

The Bridge (1986) found him duetting on “Baby Grand,” with Ray Charles, for whom Joel’s and Brinkley’s daughter, Alexa Ray, was named. The next year Joel toured the Soviet Union; the live Kohˆept documented the concerts. In 1989 Storm Frontand its first single, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” charted simultaneously at #1; its centerpiece ballad “Shameless” became a hit for Garth Brooks two years later, and its supporting tour saw Yankee Stadium hosting its first rock concert. By this time, Joel had reorganized his band, found new management, and, for longtime producer Phil Ramone, substituted Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones. With 1993’s River of Dreams, which also hit #1, Joel’s lyrical content, oftentimes topical and acerbic, revealed a more philosophical outlook. With a cover painting by Brinkley, and employing producer Danny Kortchmar (known for his work with James Taylor and Don Henley), River featured fellow Long Islander Leslie West (ex-Mountain) on guitar. The album’s title track reached #3, and “All About Soul,” with guest vocals by the group Color Me Badd, peaked at #29. A tour of the U.S. with fellow piano man Elton John followed in 1994. (The duo would tour internationally in 1998.)

The title of River of Dreams’ last track, “Famous Last Words,” would prove prophetic in terms of the direction Joel’s career would take next. In 1997, the year he released another volume of greatest hits (with three new recordings that were all cover songs, an oddity for the prolific songwriter), Joel announced that he was concentrating on composing classical music for the foreseeable future. Still, he didn’t disappear from the public eye; he continued to speak about songwriting to aspiring musicians at colleges and performed with his band on tour, culminating in a 1999 New Year’s Eve concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, which resulted in a live two-disc set.

Joel’s career has been marked by tumultuous business moves - his 1972 relinquishing of publishing rights to Family Productions, his legal battles with Elizabeth, and a $90-million lawsuit Joel filed against his ex-manager and former brother-in-law Frank Weber in 1989 alleging fraud and misappropriation of funds (in 1990 he was awarded $2 million and, in a twist, by 1994 Joel was paying Weber $550,000 and forgiving $600,000 still owed). In September 1992 Joel filed another $90 million lawsuit, this time against former lawyer Allen Grubman, charging fraud, malpractice, and breach of contract (in October 1993 Joel and Grubman announced that litigation had ceased; no news of a financial settlement followed). And, not stopping, Joel also filed sued against his onetime tour manager Rick London (Elizabeth’s brother-in-law); Joel then dropped the suit in early 1995. Deeply suspicious of the music business, Joel has fought for lower concert-ticket prices and attacked ticket scalping; he has contributed extensively to philanthropic causes, including many on Long Island.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)