In September, Billy Joel sat down with a notebook in his Long Island house and did something he’d done only twice in the past fourteen years: He wrote a pop song. Inspired by letters he received from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, Joel quickly penned “Christmas in Fallujah” — a lonely soldier’s account of life in a war zone. “I knew I wasn’t the right person to sing it,” Joel tells Rolling Stone. “I thought it should be somebody around the age of the people serving over there.” He ended up giving the track to newcomer Cass Dillon, a twenty-one-year-old Long Island singer-songwriter who has worked with Joel’s guitarist Tommy Byrnes for the past few years. On December 1st Dillon joined Joel onstage in Chicago to debut the track; three days later it debuted on iTunes. Click here to read a Q&A with Joel where he discusses what drove him back to songwriting, why he stopped in the first place and his thoughts on retirement.
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- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC.
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