Billy Joel Is Angry

Onstage, during a three-encore performance at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena in late July. Joel was raucous and riveting as he raced from keyboard to keyboard on his multiramped set, pressing his fine band (Russell Javors, rhythm guitar; David Brown, lead guitar; Doug Stegmeyer, bass; Richie Cannata, horns and organ; and drummer Liberty DeVitto, a veteran of Mitch Ryder’s early groups) to its limits. Billy seemed as pugnacious as his face-off stance suggested when he spit out “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” openly taunting the critics who dismiss him as a mere pop phenomenon. But it’s important to look past the pose, to read between his lyric lines and recognize his urgency — and boyish fear of rejection.

“All the digs he gets in the press really hurt him,” says producer Phil Ramone, who Joel willingly admits turned his career around with his studio expertise on The Stranger, 52nd Street and Glass Houses, the last three of his seven albums.

“He’s very disciplined,” says Ramone. “We — he, the band and I — generally get a song done in just two or three takes. And it’s all part of his tough, seasoned exterior, born out of years of double-crosses. But behind his hard facade is a great, great tenderness. I think, for example, that I took some of the rigid perfectionism out of his classical training and made ‘Just the Way You Are’ less like a stiff nightclub ballad and more like a powerful, deliberate love statement.”

This interview with Billy Joel took place in his room at the Hotel Pontchartrain following his Detroit performance. Dressed in a droopy red T-shirt, sneakers and jeans, he lounged on a couch and cajoled me into helping him empty two bottles of Dewar’s Scotch; we talked nonstop from one a.m. until dawn. At first, he came off randy and offhanded. But as he grew more tranquil, I thought back on a story he’d told me three years earlier about his maternal grandfather, who became his surrogate father after Billy’s dad left the family.

“He was an English gentleman,” Joel had said, “a brilliant man who inspired me to read, and he was a music lover. We would go to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see these great classical performances. And because he knew the guy at the door, he’d slip him a pack of Camels to get us good seats.

“He was,” Joel assured me then, his voice cracking, “a real gentleman.”

I reminded Joel of that recollection and asked him how he saw his current sta ge of personal development. “Part of me is an adult,” he said quietly, rubbing his crooked nose, “… and part of me is a kid. I want to hold on to both. Very much.”

You once told me that the image on the cover of The Stranger — you sitting on a bed in a suit and tie, staring at a mask, boxing gloves hanging nearby — came to you in a dream. There’s something surreal about the cover of Glass Houses, too. What’s the story behind it?
The mask actually had nothing to do with the song “The Stranger,” where I talk about faces, the sides of ourselves that we hide from one another. The Glass Houses jacket was the same kind of thing. I kept thinking [exasperated], “Well, I suppose people think of me as a pop star,” and right up to this second, I remain uncomfortable with that tag. That rock-star thing, that was not the purpose of making this latest record. I’m going to do whatever I feel like doing, and whatever I do, I know I’m going to get rocks thrown at me, so I figured, what the hell. I’m just gonna throw a rock through my window, at myself — meaning the whole narrow image people have of me!
[Smiling] And that is my house, by the way. People think I’ve got this multimillion-dollar mansion. I paid $300,000 for it, and that wasn’t even money up front; I’ve got a mortgage. I’m not a multimillionaire. Frankly, I’m not really sure what I’m worth. It’s safe to say I’m a millionaire — that’s a possibility. I honestly don’t know and don’t ask.

Does having a mortgage mean you couldn’t buy the home outright?
Yes, I couldn’t do that.

Even though you’re one of the largest sellers of records in recent years? It sounds as if you should renegotiate your contract with Columbia Records.
Well, I can’t turn around now and renegotiate something I’ve already agreed to. That’s my concept of good business, and I admit I did sign a lot of lousy papers over the years.

Are you content, overall, with this situation?
It was more fun when there were a lot less dollars involved and a lot less greed. And there was a lot less pressure to make megabucks. And I had fewer responsibilities to people. I tend to get pissed off about money, and that’s why I have lawyers and managers to keep it fairly distant from me. It used to be fun to just go out and play rock & roll.

What was the first record that really turned your head around, influenced you?
“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” by the Righteous Brothers. And almost every record the Ronettes did — their sound was bigger than the radio. To me, Phil Spector was like composer Richard Wagner. Any song by Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett — early Motown.

See, when I was twelve or thirteen, I didn’t have any money. My sister had a little record case for 45s that said I LOVE YOU, ELVIS on the side, and I’d sneak into it and borrow what she had. The singles had no photos on them, so you didn’t know whether the groups were white or black.

You speak of your reverence for black R&B, but I think it’s fair to say that your sound is a lot closer to white pop.
That’s probably because I’m white [laughing]. The closest I can get to sounding black might be something near Stevie Winwood. You know, I really wanted Ray Charles to record “New York State of Mind,” and I approached Al Green with some stuff.

I loved Streisand doing “New York State of Mind,” and Sinatra just did “Just the Way You Are,” but the biggest kick was when Ronnie Spector cut “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” ’cause I heard Ronnie in my head as I wrote the lyrics! It was wild! And then to have Miami Steve Van Zandt and the E Street Band back her up was the best. God, that made me truly happy. That’s jukebox music, man, good car-radio music! And I helped make it happen!

In my teens, I was in bands with names like the Emerald Lords and the Lost Souls. We wore matching jackets with velvet collars. I didn’t know from extended guitar solos, or that you were supposed to drop this drug while listening to that record and then read the album cover upside down as the record played. I tried being a hippie for a year — it was a total loss, I was a lousy hippie. I became the keyboard player for this band called the Hassles. We put out two albums, The Hassles and The Hour of the Wolf. It was real psych-e-whatever.

This was about the time Hendrix was out. His music really got to me, and the Hassles drummer and I decided we were gonna do a power duo. It was the loudest thing you ever heard. We made one album for Epic, called Attila. It had this weird cover. The art director had us in a meat locker, with carcasses hanging around us, and we were dressed up as Huns. I got talked into it.