Ah, key change.
It's like a flat.
One half step down.
Mmm, yeah
Alright
Yeah!
I don't need you to worry for me
'Cause I'm alright
I don't want you to tell me it's time
To come home
I don't care what you say anymore
This is my life
Go ahead with your own life
Leave me alone
Keep it to yourself
It's my life...
I don't like being told what to do.
I never did.
They will tell you you can't sleep alone
In a strange place...
When I was growing up,
it was, "You're going
to graduate high school,
"you're going to college,
you're going to get a good job,
that's it."
And there was really nothing beyond that.
Ah, but sooner or later you sleep
In your own space...
And I thought, wait a minute,
that doesn't really suit
what I want my life to be.
I want to be something different.
That's kind of my life's philosophy.
If I want to do it, I'll do it.
I don't need your authority
to get me there.
Keep it to yourself
It's my life
The pop music artist of the '70s
known as "The Piano Man" is alive
and doing rather well in the '80s.
Proof of that could be found
in Cincinnati tonight.
Dan Royal was there.
At age 33, Billy Joel has been
some say, with the song "Piano Man."
National attention followed
by a string of hits.
But just about a year ago,
another milestone:
the motorcycle accident.
The wrist got broken.
Wrist is, you know, it's...
I don't have full range of motion in it.
I should be able to get
my hand down further,
but I can't.
And the thumb got crushed.
So there's a piece of bone
missing in the thumb.
It hurts.
But, I mean, this is rock and roll.
I'm not Vladimir Horowitz here.
In the past year,
Joel has split with his wife.
You'd think that and the accident
would tone this guy down a little.
I accept it with quiet dignity and grace.
I do not want to live!
And the dogs go mad
in packs on the west side
Have you been taking
very good care of Billy?
I hear that you've had
a few personal problems,
but you've got a new manager now and...
No, they beat me up every night.
Yeah.
You know that motorcycle accident?
I was driving the car.
While the millionaires hide
in Beekman Place
The bag ladies throw
their bones in my face
I don't wanna hear it
but he won't turn it down
For those who had
any doubt, Billy is back.
And the strange thing about it,
the crowds never seem to have left.
The album "Glass Houses"
was great to play live.
It had stronger dynamics to get across
in a big venue.
It was closer to the rock and roll music
that used to excite me when I was younger.
And after that album was done,
I wanted to completely change direction.
I was going through a divorce.
I was reevaluating everything in my life.
I wanted to do something more serious.
I went into the studio last year
to do this album,
but I got hung up finishing it
because I'd had a motorcycle accident,
and that kind of threw
the whole scheduling off
and everything.
It took a long time to make,
but I'm glad I stuck with it.
Billy doesn't have that much patience
in the studio making a record.
I would say "The Nylon Curtain"
was the exception.
I wanted to make
a real sonic masterpiece.
Normally, you would use the studio
to capture something
that you were creating.
In this case, there was a lot
of work in the studio
using the technology to finish the song.
I was experimenting
playing the studio
as an instrument.
He was creating moods and soundscapes,
like in "Scandinavian Skies."
I could play the blues all night
Ah
It was an incredibly fertile time
musically and creatively for Billy.
They started changing what I was hearing
in my headphones.
The vocal sounded different.
The echo sounded different.
I said, oh, wow, I can write to that.
Pressure! Pressure!
It's so f*cking weird and avant garde.
I wanted to create something
where the sound was
as important as the notes themselves.
For "Pressure," I'm hearing
this Tchaikovsky like...
And I want to hear mandolins
and balalaikas.
Phil Ramone found these
Russian balalaika players,
brought them all into the studio.
Which is kind of weird,
walking in the studio,
seeing all these old guys
with these old instruments.
But it was very cool.
And it sounded great.
Six balalaika players, for what?
In a semicircle.
You're kidding me.
No, that's what we want to do.
Pressure!
One, two, three, four...
Pressure!
I'm probably
the most proud of that album
as a work of sonic art.
And it was a transition in how I wrote.
Because the music kind of directed me
towards writing a different kind of lyric.
It can't just be about love
and girlfriends.
It has to be serious.
Because the music was more serious.
I had grown up.
I wasn't in my 20s anymore.
It wasn't just about rock and roll.
It was about the world.
It was the era of Reagan
which was supposed to be
the shining city on the hill,
but there was a lot
of underbelly stuff going on.
The promise of America
wasn't there anymore.
Things were really changing.
Well, we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing
all the factories down...
The steel industry
was dying in Pennsylvania.
People were out of work.
This was in the headlines every day.
...here in Allentown
But they've taken all
the coal from the ground
At a certain point, he sort of turned
his attention to songs like "Allentown."
The camera pulls back, and you see us all
in a particular place in time.
Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far
as their old man got
I think he really got a lot
of what he was trying to go for.
It was very much a Billy Joel song
and very much a song about
something larger than him.
...place
Whoa
And it's getting very hard to stay
And we're living here in Allentown
The egalitarian nature of that song,
a connection to working people,
that's really important in his music.
His songs relate to people.
He knows what will reach someone,
because he's felt it himself.
So he's got the passion,
and I think it starts
in the purity of the music.
He cares about the human experience.
There's no bullshit.
He wrote songs that matter.
We met as soulmates
On Parris Island
There's a song on "The Nylon Curtain"
that I wrote for my friends
who were veterans of Vietnam.
They told me they wanted me
to write a song for them,
and I said, well, I didn't go to Vietnam.
I don't think I have
credibility to write a song.
And they said, "We'll tell
you what we went through."
...sharp as sharp as knives
And we were so gung h*
to lay down our lives
There was never a song really written
from the soldier's point of view,
who was the guy over there
getting his a*s shot off.
Not whether it was wrong,
whether it was right.
It was just: How did you feel
when you were over there?
And we held onto each other
Like brother to brother
All art has political implications.
But Billy's thing was less political
than just pure attitude.
Billy's angry young man thing
was literally just that,
you know, it wasn't
an angry activist young man.
One of the things I like
about Billy's writing
is that he never directly goes there.
It's also a part of why
the material hasn't dated.
...all go down together
Yes, we will all go down together
When I listen to "Goodnight Saigon,"
I'm not thinking about
the socio-political ramifications
of the Vietnam w*r.
I'm thinking about the guys in that song.
I think Billy Joel at his best
writes about people,
not causes or concepts.
Thank you.
You've been incredible.
I've never liked
getting political onstage.
People want to get away
from a lot of that stuff,
I realize that.
But sometimes,
there are things that happen,
and you can't just look away.
When I wore the yellow Star of David
about a week after Charlottesville,
The Unite the Right rally...
Jews will not replace us!
...I had to do something.
I was angry. Here they are
marching through an American city
saying, "Jews will not replace us."
We fought a w*r to,
you know, defeat these people.
And then when Trump
comes out and says,
"There were very fine people
on both sides."
You had people that were...
very fine people on both sides.
You know, he should have come out and said
those are bad people.
There is no qualifying it.
The Nazis are not good people. Period.
And I was angry.
I was very angry,
and I had to do something.
But I didn't want to get up
on a soapbox onstage
and say this is wrong.
So I wore the star,
basically to say...
no matter what,
I will always be a Jew.
I am a Jew.
My father grew up in Germany
in a well-to-do family.
I only met my father's
parents a few times.
They were very proud to be German.
They weren't practicing Jews.
My father got bar mitzvahed,
and that was it.
They really didn't go to synagogue.
But in Germany,
if your family was Jewish, you were a Jew.
My paternal grandfather, Karl Joel,
had a business called Joel Macht Fabrik
in Nuremberg,
and they had a factory
where they made textiles
and clothing.
His business was doing very, very well
until the Nazis came to power.
They were wealthy people.
They lived in a nice house next to a park.
The park was where they had
the n*zi Nuremberg rallies.
Heil!
Heil! Heil!
Heil! Heil!
My dad would look over the fence
while they were doing all
these anti-Semitic speeches
and see this going on.
I can't imagine the trauma
to watch the SS parade
espousing these principles.
He was born in 1923, so he was 10
when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.
Things got nasty.
The German government
revoked the citizenship
of anyone who was Jewish.
You couldn't sit in the park.
You couldn't walk on the street.
You had no rights at all.
The Jewish kids in the school had
to sit on the other side of the class.
Eventually, he couldn't even go to school.
There was a newspaper editor,
Julius Streicher,
who had a couple
of anti-Semitic newspapers
that they published.
"Der Stürmer" was the big one.
They would target my grandfather.
"The Jew Joel," he was referred to.
Eventually,
these ordinances and laws,
anti-Semitic newspapers
took a toll on the business.
They had to stamp everything
that they mailed out
with a "J" for "Jew."
I don't know why he thought
he could survive this,
because it was becoming apparent
that no Jewish business was
going to be able to survive.
He must have been an optimist
or just didn't want to see it,
didn't want to know it.
They were forced to sell
the business for nothing.
You know, like pennies on the dollar,
to a guy named Neckermann.
But Neckermann never paid.
My grandfather was asking what
he should do to get the money
and he got a message,
"We'll settle the account."
He was warned at the last minute,
you know, watch out.
They're going to k*ll you.
My grandfather realized this is it.
I better leave while I can.
And he was lucky.
They got to go across the Swiss border
which was difficult for a lot of people.
If my grandparents
had been found on the train
with the documents that said "Jew,"
they would have been sent immediately
to a concentration camp.
They got out. A miracle.
The ironic thing is,
when Neckermann took over the business,
they actually started to manufacture
the striped pajamas
that the prisoners
in the concentration camps
had to wear.
That was made by Joel Macht Fabrik.
I didn't know any of that
until I was in my mid-20s.
There's still a lot I don't know.
I'm still trying
to put the pieces together.
I didn't know my father at all
from the time I was about eight years old
until I was in my mid-20s.
Tried to...
figure out where he was,
how I could contact him,
but nobody knew.
Well, so here I am
At the end of the road
Where do I go from here?
When I was 21, 22, I went to Europe.
I played in clubs,
and I played in these little bars
and showcase places.
And I figured maybe I could track down
my father somewhere
because I never heard from him.
I never got a card,
not a phone call, nothing.
And I was wondering, is he dead or alive?
I didn't know.
And it's hard
The day I was leaving
to go back to the States,
I get a telegram,
and it says, "We found your father."
And, oh, my God, they found my father.
Where? How do I do that?
And then I found out
my father lived in Vienna.
I went to visit my father's apartment,
and there was a little blonde boy.
I found out I had a half-brother.
I met Bill when I was five.
I remember that moment.
It was my first day in school.
And I just got out of school.
He read me a goodnight story.
I saw pictures of my father
playing in the snow and skiing.
And I said, you never did that with me.
How come... What did I do?
How come I never heard nothing?
I had conflicting feelings about it,
but he had a very strange life.
He fought in the US Army
under General Patton.
They liberated Dachau.
I tried to get him to talk about it,
but he didn't really want
to talk about his past.
And I heard most of it from my brother.
In the first week, he was there
after it was liberated
and saw the terrible things.
It was something that
deeply traumatized him.
And then I found out
about my father's family.
They were hunted.
Many from my family were in Auschwitz.
Our whole family,
most of them were k*lled.
I visited the graveyard
where the Joel family's buried,
and I didn't even know
I had that many relatives.
There's an underlying rage
that comes out sometimes.
And it's, "What are you
getting all mad about?
Nobody did anything to you."
But they wiped out my family.
I would have liked to have
known some of these people.
And so, my father, he was very internal.
Very dark man.
And he told me once
when I was a little kid,
"Life is a cesspool."
Wow. That's not a great outlook on life.
After he moved to the States,
he didn't really take to America.
He thought it was too commercial.
Lacking in culture.
And the anti-Semitism he ran into
embittered him a good deal.
And then when my grandparents decided
they were going to move back to Germany,
my father and mother divorced
around that time,
and he moved back to Europe.
I was there when Billy met with his dad.
His father walks in,
and nobody's saying anything,
but you could see the angst.
It was awkward.
How do you reconnect with your father?
How does he reconnect with his son?
I guess we were too shy
to talk to each other.
We just kind of spent time
being near each other
and trying to warm it up
and figure out how to communicate.
Neither of us knew how to do it.
Those thoughts marinated.
And one day, I just sat down
and started writing this song.
This is for my father. Okay. Here we go.
Slow down you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart
Tell me why are you still so afraid?
Hmm
Where's the fire? What's the hurry about?
You better cool it off
before you burn it out
You got so much to do and only so many...
I've had the privilege of getting
to know Billy personally.
And Billy had a lot of trauma
in his young life.
When you look at some of Billy's songs,
you see a glimpse of this.
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you?
"Vienna waits for you."
I suppose it's what I was searching for.
You know, my father was there.
I know I was searching for him.
But beyond my father,
it's the music city of the world.
So it has a lot of meaning.
There's a lot of different layers to it.
Too bad, but it's the life you lead
You're so ahead of yourself
That you forgot what you need...
I think Billy's story
is way deeper psychologically
than Billy wants to know.
You're right
There are certain traumas
that one never gets over,
and there are certain motivators in life
that sometimes we're not even aware of.
But I think his drive comes
from wanting to know
his father through music.
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you?
Alright. Thank you.
Now, I want to try playing
the piano with my father
if he'll come up and do it.
There was always a remoteness,
there was always a distance.
He was one of those people
who kind of held you off.
I wanted to be close to him.
I would have liked my father
to have been proud of me.
I would have liked to have talked to him
about music and life.
But we never really made
a strong connection.
Never really had that magic moment.
It's disappointing.
Where's the orchestra?
Wasn't this supposed to be a musical?
Here I am in the balcony
How the hell could I have
missed the overture?
I like...
"Where's the Orchestra?" was
the last song I wrote
on "The Nylon Curtain" album.
Even though I have
Absolutely no
Idea at all
It was a song of disillusionment.
It's a summation of life for me.
Life is not a musical,
it's a Greek tragedy.
Where's the orchestra?
Goodnight, D.C. Don't take
any sh*t from anybody.
I was wiped out emotionally,
physically from doing "The Nylon Curtain."
I felt like I was close to death.
I'd been on the road
year after year after year,
writing, recording,
touring, on and on and on.
And I'd really never taken a vacation.
So I was talking with
Paul Simon, who was a friend.
He said, "Why don't you go to this place
down in the Caribbean called Saint Barts."
I never heard of it.
"It's really quiet. It's real chill.
"You'll really like it.
Nobody's going to bother you."
So I took his advice
and I went to Saint Barts.
I just thought this is going to be
a quiet little island.
Let me tell you a story
There you go.
Christie Brinkley
has hooked the brass ring
on the modeling merry-go-round.
This golden girl from California
has run up the astounding record
of appearing on more than
She was always Christie Lee
I was on a sh**t.
We were in Saint Barts.
One of the people from our crew
comes running in and goes,
"Oh, my God, you guys,
Billy Joel's at the PLM."
We zip over to the PLM,
and he's sitting at the bar.
One of the things I love about Billy
is he's never comfortable in a room
until he sees a piano.
He doesn't perform so other people
can hear him play.
It's like his security blanket.
So it isn't surprising he's down there.
He's in Saint Barts.
He's in a bar. There's a piano.
He sits down to play.
And he looks up, and there are
these amazingly beautiful
models staring down at him.
He's burned to a crisp.
He's got, like, a Hawaiian
shirt on or something,
you know, like his holiday shirt.
I said, oh, my God,
this is fantastic.
Thank you so much, Mr. Piano.
Right away, he cracked me up.
He was so funny.
And he's like, "Let me play
a couple songs for you."
There's a piano bench,
so I go over and sit next
to him and he goes,
"What kind of music do you like?"
And I just launch into,
Olha que coisa mais linda
mais cheia de graça
And I'm doing the singing,
and Billy's kind of like,
you know, "Okay, alright."
He's playing the song, and I'm singing.
And then, in comes Elle MacPherson.
She is a huge Billy Joel fan.
She's got this gorgeous body,
and she's draping the gorgeous body
all over the place to try
and get his attention.
So I'm chatting up Elle,
I'm chatting up Christie.
All of a sudden, this young girl
comes over and goes,
"Well, I can sing too."
Yeah, yeah, sure you are.
Like, hey, don't bother me, kid.
This young, beautiful girl
comes out with this voice.
It was Whitney freakin' Houston!
It was like
her first modeling job.
It was amazing.
They were all beautiful.
They were all models.
And I was just a schlub
with a sunburn playing the piano.
And then Billy, you know,
finally got a chance
to sing a couple songs.
He was just so fun and funny
and pink and shiny.
And...
there was something
very endearing about him.
We just had a great time
laughing, talking, all of that.
And so we decided
that we would stay in touch.
We both lived in New York City,
and we started to hang out
and liked each other.
I said to my mom,
I'm seeing this guy who's so sweet,
but he's, like, you know,
not really my type.
He's kind of got, like,
the Long Island bubble hair.
But he's really interesting and fun.
And she said, "Honey,
you can change the hair.
"You can change his shoes.
But if he's got a good heart,
you should follow your heart."
So we went out, like, on a real date
to a Beach Boys concert.
And, of course, Billy ended up on stage.
There was something really sweet
and old fashion-y about him.
So that's how our friendship
turned into our romance.
Whoa
For the longest time
You know, here I am dating
this beautiful supermodel, and me?
I'm from Hicksville.
What am I doing with her?
What's she doing with me?
But it was a very productive time for me.
I wrote a lot of songs for her.
She was a muse.
It was like being
a teenager all over again,
experiencing those same emotions
that I had when I was first discovering
romance and love.
We're having the best time!
Whoa
For the longest time
Whoa
For the longest...
I'm that voice
You're hearing in the hall
And the greatest miracle of all...
It was fun to be having
this whirlwind romance
and having certain aspects
of that turn into music.
Some people stay far away from the door
If there's a chance of it opening up
I wanted to do something simple
and dumb and happy.
And I did "An Innocent Man,"
which is really an homage
to all the music of my teenage years.
Some people live with the fear of a touch
And the anger of having been a fool...
Like the song "Innocent Man"
is done in the style of The Drifters.
...cry, because I am an innocent man
...with an uptown girl
With "Uptown Girl,"
I wanted to recapture
The Four Seasons with Frankie Valli.
And when she's walkin' she's lookin'
So fine
We were all bar band guys,
and it was kind of like
the '50s and the '60s again,
playing the music we grew up
learning how to play.
Under the boardwalk
Down by the sea, yeah
Under the boardwalk
Boardwalk
We were having a blast
making those recordings.
And all those songs for "An Innocent Man,"
they came fast.
I mean, just...
This is how I'm feeling.
This is what I'm writing.
This is what it is.
I want the easy
Easy, easy money
Billy Joel is in the middle
of a national tour that was sold out
before he ever hit the road.
Tell her about it
On the tour,
there's a whole new audience.
A lot younger kids who didn't know
anything about "Piano Man,"
who don't even know "The Stranger,"
who may only know
from the videos of "Pressure"
and "Allentown" and the new videos
we did on "An Innocent Man."
They've just discovered me
through that, which is great.
Billy's incredible, man.
- How old are you?
- Sixteen.
This was the early '80s
when MTV came to be.
MTV Music Television!
Video music 24 hours a day!
Billy didn't really enjoy
having to do videos.
He wanted his music to just paint the air
and for people to use
their own imagination,
which is limitless.
Plus he didn't think he was
a matinee idol type for these videos.
We want to look good on camera, don't we?
That's right, and Paula makes sure we do.
But he realized
they were important.
So these videos ended up
being a big part of his career.
This is not a video. This is
a mini major motion picture.
It's a three minute movie.
At that time, I had just started
doing music videos.
I had my own little production company.
So I call Billy
and I tell him what I'm doing.
- Quiet!
- Rolling!
The first one they wanted to do
was "Tell Her About It."
And Dennis Arfa, Billy's agent,
said, "I could get you
Rodney Dangerfield."
Hi, this is Rodney Dangerfield.
I'll be on MTV, the world premiere
of the Billy Joel video.
Listen, boy, I don't want
To see you let a good thing slip away
Slip away
So we made "Tell Her About It."
It came out great.
They ended up doing
some of the real standouts
of that period.
I had to wait forever
But better late than never
Hi, I'm Billy Joel, and you're watching me
on MTV, Music Television.
The next video was "Uptown Girl."
Billy said so we'll get Christie.
I go, yeah, but she's in the newspaper
with you every day.
It only makes sense to be her, you know?
So then I went to Christie.
Christie goes, "You see this?
This is money."
So I said, look, you're only
in it for a little bit.
We'll get the hair and makeup
you want, whatever you want.
Just tell Billy you want to do it.
So she told Billy she wanted to do it.
With an uptown girl
You know I've seen her in her uptown world
She's getting tired of her high class toys
And all the presents from her uptown boys
She's got a choice
I felt comfortable
in the gas station outfit
because I used to work at a gas station.
...white-bred world
As long as anyone with hot blood can
And now she's looking for a downtown man
That's what I am
And when she's walkin'
She's lookin' so fine
And when she's talkin'
She'll say that she's mine
Billy said, "Well, I don't want to dance."
I said, well, you're not dancing.
You're just going from A to B,
and you're doing it
with some style, you know?
Oh oh oh oh oh oh
It was upspirited,
and it showed the celebrity power.
Uptown girl
She's my uptown girl
You know, they were the most powerful
celebrity couple at that time.
I mean, the ultimate rock-pop star
and the world's greatest model
now in this celebrity video,
which is still legendary to this day.
...I'm in love with an uptown girl
My uptown girl
"Uptown Girl"
was a monster worldwide record.
- Are you the man singing "Uptown Girl?"
- That's me!
Oh
The momentum, the album had, like,
four hit singles on it.
But again, it was battling the critics.
Particularly in the early '80s,
people if they felt something
wasn't, quote, rock and roll,
you know, it came in for
a certain sort of criticism.
All the rock critics
were totally interested
in blues-based rock.
Well, Billy Joel did not fit
into that mold.
And, as such, awakened
their indifference or scorn.
We had that in common with Bill.
We got a lot of bad reviews.
And I took it personally.
You know, it hurt.
I thought, who are these guys?
You know? And they don't know me.
I know that he hated the rock critics.
I know it bugged the f*ck out of him.
Piss on a bunch of critics.
Every critic that ever criticized Billy,
where are they?
Where are all these people
that knew so much
about what we should be doing?
Billy put so much
of himself in these songs.
I mean, so many of them
are autobiographical
that he is kind of spilling
his guts and his life
and his soul, putting it out there,
and then have somebody slap them down.
You know, it's very painful.
Though he's sold over 40 million albums,
won five Grammys,
and seen over a dozen singles go gold,
critical acclaim has, for
the most part, eluded Joel.
Critics charge that his varied styles
deprive him of an authentic
musical identity,
and others label him
an unoriginal imitator.
A musical chameleon of sorts.
The charges have understandably left
Billy Joel perhaps
a bit defensive overall.
I don't think that's bad.
To me, it means renaissance.
I do change all the time.
I'm interested in all kinds of music.
If you aren't inclined to like Billy Joel,
his versatility actually
becomes a liability.
A lot of critics looked at Billy Joel
as almost like a carpetbagger.
This is a guy who doesn't
have his own identity.
That he would do anything
to get on the radio.
He would, you know, just chase any trend.
And yeah, you know, he writes nice songs,
but he's unoriginal and derivative.
The critics didn't appreciate
Billy Joel's musicality.
For that crowd, musicality is a bad word.
But even with all of
the eclecticism of his influences,
there is an authenticity about him.
And people respond to that.
They think they know him,
and they respond
to what he says and feels.
If you look at Billy Joel's songs,
he doesn't beat around the bush.
He doesn't write these obscure lyrics.
He's very straightforward
and he's very openhearted,
and you know exactly
where he's coming from
and what he's saying.
I don't dwell in a lot
of metaphor and simile.
I write like I talk,
and I write how I think.
I think that's another reason that critics
sort of look down on him.
But this is exactly what some
of the greatest songwriters
of the popular era,
you know, of the American Songbook did.
He's one of the few
contemporary songwriters
who can write a standard by those rules,
you know, where there's verse,
chorus, verse, chorus,
middle eight, key change, coda.
That art is dying out.
He's a structural songwriter,
and that's really what I appreciate.
I think it also is what makes songs last.
Tell her about it
Tell her everything you feel
A lot of critics didn't like
the "Innocent Man" album. Tough sh*t.
It's like, I want to do
what I'm interested in.
I want to do what I want to hear.
The greatest rock and roll show ever!
Billy! Billy! Billy!
I never saw him
on the cover of magazines
with his arm around anybody until then.
Then he's like, pff,
the paparazzi couldn't get enough of them.
It exploded.
There you have it,
the paparazzi of London.
During the Christie years,
there was a super intensity.
He became a celebrity.
But I don't think I ever saw him
being comfortable with any of it.
Christie, can you look this way?
She does. Look, look.
Our first ever argument was because
we got surrounded by paparazzis
and Billy was really rude to them.
And I said, it's so much easier
just to give them a smile.
Now they're going to probably
get a picture of you going
grr, arr, ahh, you know,
and they'll run those.
If you just see the camera, smile,
they'll get their shot and leave us alone.
And so we used to joke.
Every time we'd see a camera,
I'd strike a pose, and he'd go...
We started doing this shtick everywhere.
But she's always a woman to me
Oh, and she never gives out
You know, I remember they were going out,
they were dating.
And I remember saying, like,
you going to get married?
And he goes, "You think I should?"
I said, I think you should.
Yeah, I think you should.
Pop-rock singer Billy Joel
is tying the knot tonight in New York.
His bride is fashion model
Christie Brinkley.
Even though I'm in love...
We wanted
to get married in the harbor
with the New York skyline,
the Statue of Liberty.
The wedding was great. We all went.
Me, Steve, and Brian
were in the bridal party.
He borrowed all my 45s
and gave them to the DJ,
and we played all that kind of music.
We had a lot of people.
Record industry people,
some model industry people,
the whole band was there, friends, family.
It was really fun and glamorous.
It was a big deal.
It was like, this is fame.
Didn't I say I wasn't ready for romance?
Shoop, shoop-ahh
Today is December 15th, 1985,
and this is our new town of East Hampton.
Isn't it beautiful?
A slow dance
Hello!
This comes up our driveway now.
...there and then
Those first couple years,
it was just so much fun.
It was so great.
And here it comes! Oh, yay!
Oh, yeah.
...who's seen it all before?
Now that you're here
it's not the same situation
We made it back home!
The sailors! Yay!
Tomorrow
Is a long time away
This night
Can last forever
Someone's looking
a bit larger these days.
Only four weeks to go now.
Three and days.
Three and a couple of days.
Well, this is the 16th of December,
so the next time we film,
maybe we'll tell the tale.
Cover girl Christie Brinkley
and singer Billy Joel
are now proud parents.
Brinkley gave birth to a six
and a half pound baby girl
last night at a Manhattan hospital.
I don't think you really can grow up
until you've had the experience
of being a parent
and all of a sudden,
the emphasis of everything isn't you.
It gives you
a whole different perspective.
Unconditional love.
I never knew a feeling like that before,
till I held this little child in my arms.
This is more important than me.
This is everything. This is the future.
And I'm responsible for it.
I better make sure I do the right thing.
Here we go.
This is the time to remember
'Cause it will not last forever
I didn't have a dad.
I wanted to be the dad that I didn't have.
It was very important to me.
- Hi!
- Hi!
I grew up in East Hampton.
And I thought, wow,
my parents are really popular.
I didn't know that my
parents were the celebrities.
I thought I was the star
because that's how
they treated me as a child.
They were always filming me
and building me up
and always making me the star
of their family musicals.
Daddy, daddy, daddy, da
- That's me.
- Daddy, daddy...
Billy would sit down at the piano
and start playing,
and she would just tune in to the piano
and then start singing.
The Yanks are coming
The drums rum-tumming everywhere
Every day we would sing.
And when my grandmother,
I call her Nanny Roz,
was with us, she was always singing.
She loved musical theater
with such a passion.
There's a song
from the musical "Showboat:"
Because he's just my Bill
She named my father after that song.
Roz was one of a kind.
When she and Billy would get together,
they always loved singing
little songs from Broadway,
and they would go in and out of accents.
You never come to my house
anymore for coffee.
They loved putting on a show together.
One more for my baby
And one more for the road
My grandmother
was extremely extroverted,
almost to a fault.
Just such an endless well of emotion
always bubbling up inside of her.
She would just start singing something,
and then she would become overcome
with the emotion, she'd just start crying.
She was unpredictable.
Very erratic moods, oh, yes.
You know, that was hard for him,
to have his mom act erratically like that.
But I think that he felt
an enormous amount of sympathy
for her plight as a single mom.
She was always there. Always.
She was the original motivator.
She was my champion.
Through thick and thin, he loved her.
And she was so proud
that he was so successful
and traveling all over the world.
There's Big Ben, Alexa.
See that big clock up there?
Il Torcello. De prima capital
en de Venezia.
And I loved being on the road.
And I just loved being part
of that big road family.
Volaré
Oh-oh
Cantaré
Oh-oh-oh-oh
So I did try to go as often as I could.
And I felt it was
really important for Billy
to have that time with Alexa.
I am
An innocent man
Oh, yes, I am
Do you feel like
your fans are really going
to get everything that they're after?
No, they're not going
to get everything that...
She's got dressing room stuff.
- You know, makeup things--
- Oh, yeah?
And yeah.
Yeah, she's got some great stuff.
People really connected
to them as a couple.
I think it was fun for people to see
that opposites can attract.
- Hi, I'm John Malkovich.
- I'm Billy Joel.
I have to tell you, I admire the fact
that you're married to Cindy Crawford.
No, I'm married to Christie Brinkley.
You wish.
I had put out "Nylon Curtain,"
and then I had put out "An Innocent Man."
I had a brand new baby daughter.
I didn't want to be slaving away on my own
in a room by myself,
trying to come up with song after song.
I wanted to be enjoying my family.
So I kind of resisted it
for a couple of years.
But I knew that eventually,
I had to get back to work.
Do the harmony.
It was kind of a struggle to write.
I didn't have the ambition
that I did on the previous albums.
I can hear it on the album.
I gotta come up with another section
for it though.
Bridge or a...
Writing a lot of times, I see
the piano as this big black beast
with 88 teeth trying to bite my hands off.
And it won't come. And it won't come.
And then when I start to get it,
I better, you know,
make sure that I stay there
until I get it.
Because the dry feeling is the worst.
I've always written alone.
It's very lonely.
There's solitude that I have
to have when I'm writing.
Otherwise, I get distracted.
I have to completely be in my own cave,
like a caveman.
I get grouchy, I get cranky, I get moody,
I go through all kinds
of emotional feelings.
I feel completely isolated
from the rest of the world.
But it has to be like that
if I'm going to write on my own.
I just have to be able
to be completely in a vacuum.
So it is a lonely job.
To me, the main language is the music.
There's always a message in the music.
Even before the words.
There's something in there.
But the work is digging it out,
figuring out what that is.
Wow. Drums sound great in this room.
Yeah. You don't hear the drums?
- Did it sound good?
- It was incredible.
Hey, Lib, you can go home.
Sing. Come on. Sing.
When I'm blue
When I'm lonely...
I was told by Phil Ramone,
who was a friend of Ray Charles,
that Ray wanted to do a song with me.
"Do you have anything in mind
that you could write for Ray and you?"
I mean, I idolized
Ray Charles all my life.
He's probably my
favorite singer of all time.
So I thought I'll write a song
about something we have in common.
What's been the most consistent thing
in our lives?
The piano.
So we flew out to Los Angeles
to do this session,
and in walked Ray Charles,
and I almost went into a freeze-up.
Oh, my God, he's really there.
That's really Ray Charles.
I got you singin' "I've come
far from the life..."
Well, I'm going to finish up the bridge.
You want me to keep on singin'?
Yeah.
Phil Ramone suggested,
"Why don't you just both play the piano?"
And it broke the ice immediately.
That's a bond between people.
It's a very emotional attachment
that we both have to this thing.
And now I'm going to sing
with Ray Charles!
I was so intimidated.
She comes through
She's the only one who can
My Baby Grand
Is all I need
I love the extended metaphor of the piano
as a lifelong love affair.
I adore that song.
And then getting Ray Charles
to sing with him.
That's, that's genius.
All it takes
Is the power in my hands
And this Baby Grand
Is good to me
- That's the one.
- Oh, yeah, that's fine.
- That's soup.
- Soup!
Soup time. Soup time.
Soup du jour, oh, yeah it is.
That's what happens when you relax.
Yeah, that's right! No, that's it.
A-one, a-two a-one, two, three, four
After "The Bridge,"
we were touring all over the world.
Some love is just a lie of the heart
The cold remains of what began
With a passionate start
We were all over the place.
We played a lot of France.
- We were in Holland.
- Flew to London.
We played in Berlin in 1989.
- The wall came down.
- Right.
We were the first act to get there
when the reunification of Germany.
I had this whole speech.
My sense of it is that
you would always want
to go someplace unique,
where people couldn't
experience this kind of stuff.
And you would say yes to those things
that other guys wouldn't do, like Russia.
What's the maximum
benefit you would like
to achieve out of this entire
two-week experience?
Make a lot of friends,
hopefully make some people
happy with my music
and get something that can be continued.
Swing low
Sweet chariot
This guy just
invited us to his house.
- You have good music.
- Thank you.
Pop music is a universal language
among young people in any country.
You know, the politicians
don't seem to be able
to make any major breakthroughs.
I think sometimes
maybe it's up to the artists
to open up a dialogue.
Bye-bye. Thank you.
We had a great audience
who were all excited
to hear rock and roll.
They wanted to rock out.
That was like the spirit
of those people in Russia.
They wanted to hang out with us.
The vodka bottle would come on the table,
they'd take the top, throw the top off.
I remember they didn't have
screw-on tops on the vodka.
It was a thing you took off
and you threw it away.
And I would say to them,
don't you have a top
that you can put back?
And they said, "Why?"
"Why?"
- "What for?"
- What for?
When I trashed the piano,
- the crowd loved it.
- Oh, yeah.
They'd never seen that before.
Rich Americans,
they smash their equipment.
Is he mad at us?
What are you going
to trash tonight?
Whoa
Da da!
It's Daddy, Alexa, in a helicopter!
It's Daddy!
I'm two days back from Leningrad.
How does it feel to be home?
I'm so glad I'm-a livin' in the USA
Whoa, yeah
I'm so glad livin' in the USA
Hully gully
Great to be back.
We're on the road again, folks.
This time, we're going up to Maine.
So far, we've gotten to here. Bantam Lake.
Christie, why don't you give
'em a look at Bantam Lake.
We actually set about
driving the coastline from Maine,
zigzagging in and out of the shoreline.
It was a magical trip
discovering little towns.
Billy and My kind of town
Menemsha is
And it was funny
'cause every town
that we went in, the waiter
or the owner of the restaurant would go,
"Oh, yeah. You guys own
that huge property up the street."
We're like, no, no, we don't.
And then they would say, "Oh, yeah, yeah.
You bought a horse from me, you know."
We'd go, no, no, we didn't.
This is interesting. I'm kind of glad
we're going to stay in the area
instead of driving further down.
Because we're running out of daylight.
We were bumping into people,
and then it was like,
"Oh, yeah, you bought
this old hotel in,
you know, North Carolina," or something.
It's like, no, not us.
I started getting, like, a little feeling
that his manager was
buying things with his money.
I thought, wow, he's flying everywhere
on, like, a private jet.
He's buying racehorses galore.
And everybody thinks
we own property near them.
Well, I know you got your troubles
Something's not right here.
But I've got problems of my own
I said to Billy,
Frank Weber is ripping you off.
And he did not want to hear that.
I had an apartment in Manhattan,
and I went to look at a house
that needed to be renovated.
And I heard that there was issues
with the expense of that.
And people in the music business
that I knew were telling me,
"You shouldn't have a problem
coming up with the money to do this.
You just had all these hit records.
Where's all your money?"
And I didn't have an answer for that.
I really hadn't stayed on top of that.
Into each life must fall some rain
Billy called me and he goes,
"I don't have enough money
to pay for my house."
I go, oh, but Frank can pay for his house?
He goes, "Well, he doesn't
have the expenses I have."
I said, Billy, man, you're so naive.
We all walk in darkness sometimes
Frank had become
like a confidante,
a trusted advisor.
Billy told me that he doesn't have
a lot of money.
I mean, at this point in his career
for Billy Joel to say,
"I don't have money,"
is ridiculous.
Something is wrong.
You've had top ten records.
You have tours, which you should have
a lot of money.
Why don't you have a lot of money?
What is the problem?
And he said to me,
"Mind your own f*cking business."
When I first said it to him, he said,
"Hey, I've known him
a hell of a lot longer
than I know you."
He felt like this was his family,
the family that he chose.
I said, look, I love you,
I'm trying to protect you.
I see people ripping you off.
Billy trusted him.
He trusted him more than he trusted me,
which of course hurt me to hear that.
And I said, why don't you get an auditor?
Get an auditor.
Not saying anything is wrong,
but you ought to have someone take a look.
So I had an audit authorized.
And after the audit, I found out
I didn't have anywhere near
the money I should have had.
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
I should have been worth this,
and I was worth this.
Yesterday,
Joel filed a $90 million lawsuit
against Frank Weber,
his manager since 1980.
An independent audit of Weber
and his company,
Frank Management, has found that, quote,
Weber used Billy as
his personal bank, unquote.
Now, it's bad enough that the manager
used to be Billy's brother-in-law,
but he's also the godfather
of Billy Joel's daughter.
I owed Uncle Sam five million dollars.
I didn't have the money I thought I had.
And it was devastating.
Billy can have a blind loyalty,
and he had a blind loyalty to Frank.
And finally, that loyalty was broken.
It was an emotional shock.
If I can't trust this guy
to look after my best interests.
How stupid was I?
How naive could I have been?
It was a very depressing thing.
When I started working for Billy,
he didn't even own all of his copyrights.
Under my direction,
we reacquired all the rights
to his to his songs.
Frank Weber says he always acted
in Billy Joel's best interest
and was totally unprepared
when he was hit with a lawsuit.
Billy used to say that
he would take care of the music
and I would take care of the business.
Frank denies these charges
and counters that the investments
in question failed
because of the recession
and other factors.
That was a life-changing,
tragic event for my father.
Well, if money makes a rich man
When he betrayed his trust
and betrayed his friendship...
Then I might never make the grade
...I think that that
was absolutely devastating.
He had a great deal of pain about it.
I'll be a small time operator
When I found out that my money
was pretty well spent,
I was furious.
I realized I gotta start all over again.
I gotta go right back
to writing new songs,
recording the new songs,
and go out on the road
and try to make that money back.
You know, I got a family, I got a kid,
I got a wife, I got relatives,
I gotta take care of everybody.
Because I was taking care of everybody.
- You tired?
- I'm exhausted.
I haven't stopped.
...spender
I was worried about,
this is going to not be good
for my marriage.
This is not going to be good
for my relationship with my daughter.
I am bitter about it. And it gets me mad.
I want to be with them.
I don't want to be doing this
because of financial problems.
But I had no choice.
I had to go out and make a living.
I believe 'cause I've been there too
At this point in his career,
he was able to book multiple nights
at Madison Square Garden,
multiple nights in Boston.
So the possibility of earning it back
was probably a better idea
than trying to just keep fighting
and draining your energy
and dragging you down
and just...
So, the decision was made
to just roll up the sleeves
and get to work replenishing.
Long Island's own writer, composer,
singer, concert performer.
Billy Joel comin' to Yankee Stadium.
The guy gets bigger,
I think, every single album.
Probably because he stays a regular guy
despite all those incredible talents.
You like the way this feels
down at the end?
Doing a three song encore?
That's really good, man.
Rock and roll, Billy Joel!
Good times, bad times
You know I've had my share
I don't care what he sings,
I just want to see Billy Joel.
He's such an entertainer,
he gives the best concert,
- he's incredible.
- We drove all the way
from Ohio just to see
Billy Joel play "Piano Man" once.
Well, I'm on the downeaster "Alexa"
And I'm cruising
through Block Island Sound
I have charted a course to the vineyard
But tonight, I am Nantucket bound...
It happens to a lot of musicians.
I got bills to pay
And children who need clothes
We're not financially oriented.
It wasn't about the money.
It was about being a musician.
Like all the locals here
I've had to sell my home
Too proud to leave
I worked my fingers to the bone
So I could own my downeaster "Alexa"
I didn't like thinking as a businessman.
I wanted to be an artiste.
I just wanted to think about the music
and the creativity, bah bah bah.
And I'm above all that.
Well, bullshit.
I wasn't above all of that.
...and a good captain can't fall asleep
I needed to protect these songs.
These were my children.
They were orphans
until I asserted my parenthood of them.
...from the bell in Gardiner's Bay
So I took over my management,
and I never looked back.
But I got people back
on land who count on me
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
of great change for Billy Joel.
He turned 40, fired his manager,
added some new members to his band,
and recorded his first album
in three years.
It's called "Storm Front."
The flag is a hurricane flag.
It's a red flag with
a black square in the middle.
When you see that flag,
you don't go anywhere.
- Is it a warning?
- Yeah.
It means something's going to happen, man.
Means a storm front's coming.
And I am restless
For the open water
Red flags are flying
From the Coast Guard mast
They told me...
Name your favorite Billy Joel album.
That's tough.
But for me, "Storm Front."
People go, "Oh, man,
if you're a Billy Joel fan,
that was so late in his career."
How many other artists do you know
that late in their career
has an album that f*cking moving?
There's a storm front coming
After being in the music business
for more than 16 years,
Joel says it's a challenge
to make every new album different.
This time, he tried to accomplish that
by working with a new producer:
Mick Jones of Foreigner.
On the radio
I never had a problem with Phil Ramone.
I just wanted somebody
who was a songwriter this time
and someone who also played an instrument,
which is Mick Jones.
I had been working with Phil Ramone
up until the late '80s,
and we were sort of falling into
what I thought was a rut.
And I recognized it's time for a change.
Phil was really hurt.
And I knew he was.
Because the relationship was so tight.
It was like a breakup.
Well, I'm shameless
The personnel you're working with,
they become like a family.
And it's hard to break out of a family.
It's not always easy when you get used
to doing things a certain way.
Well, I'm standing
Here for all the world to see
But it was something
that Billy had to do.
He had to change to stay current
and a different sound.
I just wanted you to wanted you to know
Shameless
Billy did that with every album,
he changed things.
But I mean you can see
the difference on the album.
Harry Truman, Doris Day,
Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell
Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon
Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe
"We Didn't Start the Fire"
was the first single
from the "Storm Front" album,
and it was a huge hit.
Rosenbergs, H-b*mb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King and I
and The Catcher in the Rye
Eisenhower, vaccine,
England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's...
When I was writing that song,
I was starting to come up with an idea
of headlines.
And I went year by year by year.
The headlines keep coming.
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov
Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
There's a palpable sense of history
because of these headlines.
Dien Bien Phu Falls
"Rock Around the Clock"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle
California baseball
Today at 41, the punk
who never finished high school
has a surprising new following:
school children.
We didn't start the fire
Some educators say Joel's song
is the greatest teaching tool
since Sesame Street.
"We Didn't Start the Fire"
just propelled Billy to probably,
at that time, the pinnacle of his career.
He's one of America's hugest stars:
- Billy Joel.
- Billy Joel.
Billy Joel.
We just started rehearsing for a tour,
which we'll do in,
beginning in December.
We're going to be out
for a long, long time.
I don't like the travel part.
I like to play.
When musicians are having
a good time playing together,
you remember why did I do this
in the first place.
You're on top of the world.
Call me a joker call me a fool
Right at this moment I'm totally cool
Clear as a crystal sharp as a knife
I feel like I'm in the prime of my life
"I Go to Extremes" was
kind of what was going on in his life,
because he was boomeranging
between being a family man
and tortured artist.
Darling, I don't know why I go to extremes
I don't know all that
he was going through during that time.
But I saw a struggling person.
But what musician doesn't feel safe
onstage or in their music?
I mean, that's the only thing
that won't stab you
in the back, you know?
I'm sure that that was his safe place.
Darling, I don't know why I go to extremes
It's kind of manic.
Why do I go to extremes?
Why am I always at the end of my tether?
It's not always pleasant.
You're being torn one way,
torn the other way.
And when you recognize that, you go,
I must be difficult to live with.
It kind of reminds me of my mom
because she was very up and down.
She was depressed then she was euphoric.
So, it probably runs in the family.
We were on the "Storm Front" tour.
And I've seen Billy lose it.
And this time, he really went...
just bad.
He would come into rehearsal
and sometimes be so out of it,
between what's going on
and trying to soothe the pain,
he would tell me to do
something on the drums
and then the next day come in
and ask me why I was doing what I'm doing.
And the rest of the band
would look at him and go,
"You told him to do that yesterday."
He goes, "I did?" He just didn't remember.
This is the period
where Billy was reeling.
You know, there was just
too much unraveling
in his life.
One night, I woke up in bed,
and I was like, where's Billy?
And I literally started calling
different bars out there
and found him.
They said, "Yeah, he's here."
And I said, okay, don't say anything.
I just wanted to make sure
he was someplace.
But a few incidents
like that were starting
to sort of seep in here and there
that I was aware of
that was disconcerting.
But he didn't really like
to talk about it.
He preferred to just
push it down deeper, away.
So many artists
struggle with addiction.
They just need that outlet.
That, and on top of the endless pressures
of being in the entertainment industry.
The pressure of being on stage.
The pressure of trying
to please everyone at once.
The pressure to keep his marriage together
with my mother or to stay going on tour.
I just think that he felt
the weight of the world
on his shoulders.
And it led him to drink.
So can you tell me what
you're working on now?
Yeah, I'm writing
and recording a new album
out here, actually, in
the east end of Long Island.
I have a little studio set up.
China, very rough mix, 12/16/92.
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah
He wanted to do this on Shelter Island
because he felt so grounded
on the east end of Long Island.
I'm compiling recordings.
The working title for this thing now
is the Shelter Island Sessions.
Hey, hey
Advice is cheap...
His thoughts were like let's keep it
where it was born and raise it here.
Billy was going to produce it himself.
So now Billy's writing the songs,
writing the music, writing the words,
running the studio.
He couldn't do everything.
There's too many hats.
He said, "I have to get a producer."
So he calls up Danny Kortchmar.
We originally took the tapes
back to a different studio
so we could listen to them
and see what he had on tape.
He asked me, "What would you think?"
I said,
there's three things I really love.
I love the songwriter. He's fabulous.
I love the keyboard player.
And I love the singer.
Everyone else sucks.
Now, I felt that these guys
had gotten so complacent,
it just sounded like
they were phoning it in.
I said, just let me bring in my own guys.
And if it doesn't work out,
you can go back
to doing what you were doing.
No harm, no foul.
I don't want to shut myself
off from a novel idea
because I'm used to doing
things a certain way.
And I kind of liked what I was hearing.
But in the darkness
I see your light turned on
I hear Billy's back in the studio
with another band.
I said, I'll call Billy.
He says, "What do you want?"
I said, well, what's going on?
He goes, "What do you mean,
what's going on?
You called me. What's going on?"
I said, Billy, I know.
He said, "Lib, I have to try this.
"I just want to try it.
I'm going to do it for one song."
One song turned into two songs,
turned into three songs,
turned into the whole album.
It was time to turn the page.
Billy turns the page in a hard way.
He was my drummer for a long time.
It just wasn't working
with me and Liberty.
There were differences in tempo.
There were differences
in our personal lives.
And it was like a divorce.
And it was acrimonious.
There was tension created because of that.
There was a lot of friction.
There was a lot of hard feelings.
I can remember being upset about it.
I sent him a fax and I said, Billy,
I realize you've got to do
what you got to do.
Your name's on the record.
But if you ever need me,
if you need my help,
call me, I'll be there.
But if Danny Kortchmar needs my help,
tell him to kiss my a*s.
Well, Billy took that fax
and just stuck it
on the wall at the, at the studio.
A lot of people are angry at me
because they think I did
something bad to Liberty.
And I'm not going to make
an excuse for it.
It wasn't working out with us,
and that's what happened.
I think Lib was kind of bitter about it.
But we made up, and we're friends again.
B, D, and F sharp in our right hand.
B, D, E.
Just to A, C sharp.
I knew he was brilliant,
but I had no idea what a badass he was
until I got in the studio with him.
His adaption of
European music into pop music
was something that
practically nobody was doing.
Everyone else is coming
from folk music, blues,
or pop music of the day.
He started using elements that
weren't being used that much.
G, D, F sharp on the right hand.
I saw a quote from Neil Diamond,
who I think is a terrific songwriter,
and he was talking about
how he's become comfortable
with his songwriting.
He said, "I forgave myself
for not being Beethoven."
And as soon as I read that,
I realized that's my problem.
I have not forgiven myself
for not being Beethoven.
And I would beat myself up because, to me,
Beethoven was the greatest
composer who ever lived.
My own history as a musician started
with me hearing classical music,
because my father was
a classically trained pianist,
and those were the radio
stations my mom listened to.
A lot of kids first started
listening to the radio,
they listened to pop music.
I heard Mozart, I heard Bach,
I heard Beethoven.
And it was entrancing.
I actually brought
that classical education
into my writing.
It was whether it could be played
as a piece on its own without words.
Take, for example, "Uptown Girl."
It could have been a Mozart piece.
And that's imbued a lot of my songs.
This night...
Like, "This Night" is actually
a direct lift from Beethoven.
It's from the "Pathétique."
It was Beethoven at his most melodic.
But I use his theme for the "Pathétique"
to have the chorus of "This Night."
But I gave him credit.
It says it on the back of the album:
"L.v. Beethoven."
People said, "He ripped off Beethoven!"
I didn't rip him off.
I didn't pay him,
but I didn't rip him off.
We go back a long time.
I played violin on "Downeaster 'Alexa.'"
And I noticed that he's
a real classical music lover.
He can play the piano,
he can do the orchestration.
What I admire is
his harmonic progressions.
Like "Allentown,"
it's full of little harmonic modulations.
I'm always fascinated how
he maneuvers the harmonies.
In classical music, it's the same thing.
All of us are standing
on the shoulders of giants.
Music doesn't just come out of the air.
It comes from work and study.
You take what's been done.
You hear it, you absorb it,
and then you execute it,
but you enhance it with your signature.
That's how music lives on.
I don't really know how to play it.
So this is the left hand arpeggiating.
Nobody grew up in a test tube.
We all grew up with influences,
and I'm probably stealing all the time
and not even aware of it.
G...
He has all this
harmonic stuff in his head.
Remember, he's just
following his instincts
when he sits at the piano, you know?
And his instincts have a lot
to do with classical music,
and also blues and rock and roll,
which he loved.
That album is a journey.
One song begat another song.
There's a song cycle here.
A lot of it was how I write.
There's this dream state I get into,
almost like a trance.
There's a flow to it like a river.
Oh, another thing I thought of:
when we do the stops...
Da da da da da
How do you pick up...
The song "The River of Dreams"
came to me in a dream.
I woke up hearing the rhythm,
hearing the call and response,
the gospel aspect of it.
I'm not a gospel artist,
but that was so different to me.
And I said, I'm not going to write this.
No, no, no. I rejected it immediately.
In the middle of the, I go walking in the
Call and response,
which they do in church.
And I went and took a shower.
And I'm soaping myself and I'm singing...
In the middle of the I...
And it would not go away.
It became part of my being.
It wouldn't leave me, and it was like,
you're going to have to write this
whether you want to or not.
When something is that powerful
and that evocative,
you should usually go with it.
It needs to be written.
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Walking down to the banks
Of a river so deep
I must be looking for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
I was going through a catharsis.
I had to rediscover faith in humanity.
I needed to renew my faith in myself.
I needed to be redeemed.
Even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening
and I stand on the shore
I try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find out
what I've been looking for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
Valley of fear
To a river so deep
River so deep
I've been searching for something
- Taken out of my soul
- Taken out of my soul
Something I'd never lose
- Never lose
- Something somebody stole
By the time I got
to the end of the album,
I recognized that
the song form had come full circle.
I was tired of writing words.
Not that I was going to give up music
or that I was going to stop writing music.
But I've had my say.
This is pretty much it for my songwriting.
Sitting here in Avalon
Looking at the pouring rain
I was tired
of the tyranny of the rhyme.
...everybody's home again
I asked him why
he stopped writing pop songs,
and he said because it's the most awful,
excruciating experience
he will ever go through.
Because he's a perfectionist
and it was ruining his life.
These are the last words I have to say
Writing is a have-to kind of thing.
It's like being hungry.
If you don't have that in you,
you're just not going to write.
There will be other words some other day
I think by the time
he wrote "Famous Last Words,"
he was like, I don't want to
compete with myself anymore.
I don't want to be compared
to "Just The Way You Are"
or "The Stranger" or any of that.
I think there's a time when you have to be
a philosopher and say, oh,
now is the time to be silently stoic.
And I respect that.
These are the last words I have to say
I still feel like it was
the natural progression of things.
Say
So I kind of closed the book.
Thank you.
When Billy stopped writing,
he talked about how once he became famous,
everybody read too much
into whatever he had to say in his songs,
and everything got seen or heard
through the filter of his celebrity,
of his private life, his marriages.
And something snapped. Something broke.
I think some of it might
also have to do with fear.
He didn't want to be someone
doing lesser work
as he got older.
I think Billy wanted a certain type
of recognition that he had never gotten.
Kind of serious, literary, poetic.
The critical response to Billy
kind of improved over the years,
but I don't think it was
quite enough for him.
There's something a little sad about it.
You know, here's this person
who was like a fount
of creativity who's gone dry.
To see that person still around
as a very much functioning artist,
performing with as much, sort of,
vivacity as he had before,
but having stopped writing,
it's almost like a puzzle.
In the middle of the night
Middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the desert of truth
- To a river so deep
- River so deep
- We all end in the ocean
- End in the ocean
We all start in the streams...
After I wrote "River of Dreams,"
it was necessary for me
to stop writing songs.
But it was a hit. Go figure.
...the middle of the night
I go walking in the
in the middle of the...
Not only did
he make that money back,
he came back bigger and better...
maybe because of the adversity.
You knock me down, f*ck you.
I'm coming back with a vengeance.
It has been three years
since his last tour,
but having a number-one album
to take to the road
makes getting on stage a whole lot easier.
With the crowd screaming for
more at the end of the night,
Billy ducks out the back door
and it's on to the next show.
And that next show is in Boston.
Then it's on to Philadelphia and New York.
The River of Dreams tour
will be on the road
for two years.
We were just wondering
how your daughter, Alexa,
and Christie handle you being
out on the road for so long.
Do they go along with you?
Well, from time
to time, they will join me.
The fact that Alexa
is in second grade now
tends to make it more difficult
for her to come out.
But it's one of the reasons
that I've referred to this
as the last long tour
that I'm going to do.
I really don't want to continue
to live a life of Willy Loman.
You want to watch your kid grow up.
Yeah. I don't want to become Uncle Daddy.
Our relationship went from lots of fun
and really totally enjoying
each other and everything
to his work consuming him.
And if I did go on the road,
I wasn't seeing him
because the unwind period after the show
was going on till late into the night.
And it's like, what am I even doing here?
And I just got like,
I don't know what to do.
But I can't be lonely, just me and Alexa
in this big old house
that was supposed to be so full of life
and love and music
and laughter and all of that.
Things were starting to deteriorate.
I was in a relationship with someone
who I cared deeply about,
but I was not able to be at home.
I was not able to be with my family.
It was a very sad time for me.
Goodnight, my angel,
time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
At that time, I think Alexa knew that
her parents were going to split up.
And for a child, that's
a very traumatic thing.
She needed to know
I would always be there.
I promised I would never leave you...
"Goodnight, My Angel," "Lullabye,"
I can't even really talk
about it without choking up.
Wherever you may go no matter where...
He wrote that song
saying no matter what,
I will never leave you.
...far away
Goodnight, my angel
Now it's time to sleep
And still so many things I want to say
I just remember that it was
a very emotionally tumultuous time.
When we went sailing on an emerald...
I don't think it's a secret
that his drinking got pretty bad,
and he couldn't really remember
what he did when he was drinking,
and so he didn't really know
how he could hurt people.
The water's dark and deep
Inside this ancient heart...
I would just pretend
that I was sleeping
when he'd come in, because I didn't want
to see him in that condition.
And one night,
we had an argument and I said,
I really can't take this anymore.
And I'm just going to take Alexa
back up to New York and leave.
And he said, "Yeah, fine. Go."
I realized love is not concrete.
You know, you feel like it is.
But there are things eating away at it.
And in the end, it all catches up.
And it's hard.
And I was so devastated.
Someday your child may cry
And if you sing this lullaby
Then in your heart there will always...
I tried. I wanted it to work.
I knew how lucky I was,
having music and all of that,
but... it just didn't work.
" playing)
Someday we'll all be gone
But lullabies go on and on
They never die
That's how you and I
Will be
In every heart
There is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds
From lovers past
Until a new one comes along
I would say
if there was a skeleton key
to unlocking what's behind the songs,
it would probably be
my relationships with others.
Everything I write is influenced
by someone else.
And still I feel
I said too much
You know, true love
isn't always floating
on clouds and ecstasy.
A lot of it's pain.
And every time I've held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose
It's so hard to write something
very simple and very profound.
It only happens once
in a lifetime, sometimes.
Then that would be my worst mistake
It's got discords in it.
It's got a sour note
in almost every chord.
It's a note that needs to be resolved.
It's a suspended chord.
And it builds tension.
That's if the choice were mine to make
It's sort of like the end of a romance.
No resolution, which is
terrifying to consider.
And you can have
This heart to break
That's why I wrote it.
Unresolved chords.
And so it goes
And you're the only one
Who knows
He is back.
The one and only Piano Man, Billy Joel,
has just kicked off his East Coast tour.
The first reaction
when you hear that an artist
is going back on the road is, oh,
he's promoting a new album.
This is a unique concept.
This is the first time we've gone on tour
without a new studio album.
So it's new for us too.
Between now and the end of the year,
he'll travel Europe, Asia, and the US,
nearly a hundred performances.
He is road weary,
but for those two hours he's onstage,
he still loves it.
Come out, Virginia
Don't let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late
Sooner or later, it comes down to fate
I might as well be the one
Performing music,
you have to leave it
all on the stage.
You can't hold back.
And there's a euphoria to it.
I think I needed that
at that point in my life.
...have done
Only the good die young
That's what I said.
Only the good die young
And that's when I started
doing the Elton tours.
Tonight, the Piano Man
met the Rocket Man onstage.
Thus, the stage was set for what some call
the tour of the century.
Friday night I crashed your party
Saturday I said I'm sorry
Sunday came and trashed me out...
Well, I was aware
that the perception was
that there was a rivalry.
I always got compared to Elton
because he hit big first.
And I did resent it at the time,
but I got over it.
You may be right
I may be crazy
There was a healthy competition
going on between the two of them.
They're different kinds of piano players,
so I thought they complemented
each other fantastically.
Don't try to save me
Our time touring with Elton,
it was like being in camp. It was fun!
And I enjoyed watching that camaraderie
between the two there.
Well, how many outfits backstage?
I got rid of a lot recently,
so I probably have about 20 outfits.
- Twenty!
- And I've got more coming.
And, now how many do you have?
This is it.
We enjoyed it and the audiences liked it,
and it got bigger and bigger and bigger,
where there's 50, 80,000 people.
And it went on for 16 years.
You may be right
I said a-one, two one, two, three, four
And we've been reading so much lately
that pop may be a thing
of the past for you,
and that classical music
is now the direction
that you're going in full time.
- Any truth to that?
- Yeah.
I'm not saying I'm, you know, good enough
to be a classical composer yet,
but I'm starting.
You know, I've been writing music
for this guy named Billy Joel
for all these years.
I'm kind of getting tired of him.
When I first started writing music,
classical music was the girl next door.
And then I was swept away
by this temptress of rock and roll,
you know, in black fishnet stockings
and smeared mascara who smoked cigarettes.
And that was a hot affair for,
you know, 25 years of my life.
And then all of a sudden, I discovered
the girl next door again.
The first piece that
I finished in its entirety
was called "Soliloquy on a Separation,"
which was about my daughter
visiting with me
after we got divorced and then leaving.
And those emotions I was having
weren't something I could
easily write with lyrics.
Like, I see my kid come, I see my kid go.
It hurts so bad to want to be a father
and not be able to be one.
And I wrote these chords:
"We say goodbye."
"And then I watch as you leave."
"And then I slowly return..."
"...to this quiet house."
And I said, why do I have to say that?
The music is saying it.
Maybe at that point in my life,
I was ready to express myself
purely with music.
But I realized when I had
been writing these pieces,
I'm not the guy to play this stuff.
I can play bits of it in increments,
and I can compose well enough
to have somebody do the notation.
But I can't play the bravura
the way it should be played.
Hyung-ki, that's his expertise,
is Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Tchaikovsky.
And this is the guy
who I want to play my stuff.
Do you want the first time to be
like a suggestion or you want, you want...
- No, it can be stronger.
- It can be stronger, right?
So it's already present.
He lost the ability to read music
and to notate.
And so everything he does from ear,
which is absolutely mind boggling to me.
It's incredible.
A lot of people who are his fans
don't actually understand.
Wait a minute. He's the Piano Man.
He's a great pianist.
What does he need you for?
And of course, he's a fantastic pianist.
But it's a bit like asking
a ballet dancer to breakdance,
or vice versa.
I mean, they're both brilliant
in their field and virtuosic,
but one can't necessarily do the other.
And then it has to go...
And then that F would open it up there.
He hears a certain way.
Classical music is something
that really is
very close to his heart.
And you feel it.
We worked on these ten piano pieces
which would eventually become
the album "Fantasies & Delusions."
The reason I named it
"Fantasies & Delusions,"
because I recognized
I'm delusional to think
I'm a classical composer.
You know, I'm a rock
and roll piano player.
It's a fantasy. It's a delusion.
Let's call it what it is.
The album has some amazing moments.
I mean, this is from "Innamorato."
There's an inherent
lyric in that, which is...
..."You are my heart's desire."
And I keep repeating it.
It's an obsession.
One, two, three, four.
This album stands out in many ways.
It was certainly number one
on the classical Billboard
charts for 18 weeks.
I think it's one of the most successful
classical albums of all time as well.
I knew I was going to get savaged
by the classical critics,
but I was trying to convey what I loved,
which is the romantic piano music.
I think, in a way, that album for me
is an homage to Dad.
It's an homage to our father.
I don't know if Bill sees it that way,
but maybe it's subconscious.
He was still alive when I did
"Fantasies & Delusions."
But I never heard what he, like,
what he thought about my piano pieces.
I know that my father has
a lot of abandonment issues.
His father left when he was seven.
He never got over that.
It was a very impactful moment in his life
when he tracked him down,
but he had to find him.
You know, I think it broke
his heart a little bit
that his father didn't come to him.
He had to go to Vienna.
He was always looking
for that deeper connection.
If anything, I think he found it more
through his brother, Alex,
who's a conductor.
And I think it meant a lot
to be able to finally connect
with that part of his family.
It's a shame
Dad didn't become a musician.
I could have seen him being very happy
just working in a little opera house.
I think the same thing.
He used to play all the operas to me
on the piano
before we used to go see them.
I know he loved music.
He really and truly loved music,
but he hated his own musicianship.
We had a piano in the back room,
and he'd go in and he played.
He's probably playing a Chopin piece
or a Beethoven sonata,
and he'd come out of the room
all dark and pissed off
and, "Ah, I suck."
- To me, it sounded great.
- Yeah.
I thought, wow, if I can play
like that, I'd be so happy.
But he was never content
with what he was playing.
And I, I said to myself when I was a kid,
I don't want to be like that.
I don't want to have that kind
of relationship with music.
So I never tried to become
a concert pianist.
I went kind of in a different
direction where I was,
I wanted to create my own music.
He was very proud of you. He really was.
Dad was incredibly proud of Bill
and everything he's achieved and, uh...
Do you think Bill knows
that his father was proud of him?
I don't think so, you know.
I've told him, but he doesn't believe me.
I think my dad was the missing link
in a lot of things.
And when he passed away,
I kind of freaked out a little bit.
Wow, he's gone,
and I'll never get to know him.
But I had no animosity towards him.
I just had a sense of loss.
And I think he wanted to say
"I love you" to me,
but I never heard it.
When Howard was dying,
we stood at his bedside.
And I remember Billy and Howard
looking at each other,
and there's just a blank look
on each of their faces.
No emotions, no anything.
I'm sure it made a terrible void
in my brother's life,
and it left a hole in his heart.
My mom used to tell me,
"The quality of mercy is not strained."
I didn't understand it when I was little,
but I understood it when I was growing up.
So I forgave him a long time ago
You have to be able
to forgive to heal yourself.
After "Fantasies & Delusions,"
I felt like, okay, I've done it.
Not just with classical music,
but popular music.
I mean, I had been performing
and been a rockstar for a long time.
And I thought, what else is there for me?
I was feeling that
I was missing something.
The Daily News is reporting
that the singer just got engaged
to his girlfriend Katie Lee.
In terms of long-term relationships,
I was g*n shy about making a commitment.
But it was kind of fresh,
and I think all the rules
went out the window.
When you fall in love, you fall.
It's not like you're flying.
You're falling.
When we first got together,
Bill wanted to take a break from touring.
And so, I just took him
for his word at that
and I thought that's what he wanted.
He would say a lot, like,
I'm just tired of being Billy Joel,
tired of playing these same songs.
And I think that that dissatisfaction
with the thing that he loved so much,
I think that was tough for him.
When you don't have anything new to offer,
you don't have anything to hide behind.
And I think that exposed him to the world
and made his difficulties more acute.
At that time in his life,
he was drinking a lot.
And over the years,
he had sort of a series of calamities.
He was making a mess of it in public.
And when that happens,
the public chorus can turn on you.
We begin with Billy Joel's car accident
in Long Island,
New York, just this morning.
The singing superstar is recovering
from a big scare.
You know, along with fame
comes a lot of gossip, rumors.
I didn't like the tabloid kind of press.
Him being here in one
of the biggest media centers
in the world was difficult for him,
because there was a lot of scrutiny.
They love to capitalize
on the mistakes that we have all made.
And Billy Joel's got another smash hit,
but not one he wanted.
The singer crashed his car
into a house yesterday,
his third wreck in two years.
The question this morning, obviously,
Eric, is: did someone put more than bread
in Billy Joel's jar last night?
For example, there's this rumor
that I have all these DUIs.
That never happened,
but people keep repeating the myth.
Oh, he's got so many DUIs.
I never had a DUI, so f*ck you.
There was kind of a fallow period
where he wasn't writing and didn't have
much of a profile.
He became the butt of jokes.
I can drive these streets blind.
Watch out!
When I say that he was a punchline,
they treated him as an unserious person.
That was close.
Almost gave me a heart attack
ack-ack-ack-ack-ack.
Well, the press can be mean,
so having that much attention
paid to you is not easy.
It's really hard for me
to talk about that time.
I felt like he needed to be creating,
he needed to be making music, performing,
to turn down that anxiety
of not having an artistic outlet.
And there were struggles with addiction.
It was really hard to navigate that
because I had no experience with it.
But he went to Betty Ford for rehab.
She kind of gave me an ultimatum.
Either you do something
about your drinking,
or this isn't going to work out.
When he first got home from Betty Ford,
it was a really fragile time
for both of us.
I always wondered about
that particular period of time with him,
because at that point Billy was sober.
I always felt that he was rediscovering
a different part of himself.
And when you rediscover
a new part of yourself,
you change.
He had experienced everything.
He had lived this huge life.
But I was young and had not
experienced anything.
So I always wanted to go out,
and Bill wanted to be at home.
At that point,
yeah, the relationship wasn't doing well.
Our own Katie Lee is going to show you--
She became very career oriented,
and she wanted to be in the city,
she wanted to socialize.
There's a theory that she was having
an affair with some guy.
That's a bunch of bullshit.
We just drifted apart from each other.
I wanted to be doing
all of the things together.
But I think that that's where
our age came into play.
Also, I think that there was, maybe,
always a little bit of resentment
that I had really pushed him
to go to Betty Ford.
With rehab, you
don't go for somebody else.
You have to go for yourself.
You have to want to do it.
I didn't want to do it.
It was hard on our relationship,
and in a lot of ways,
it was hard to recover from that.
I don't think either one of us wanted it
to not work out,
but it just became obvious
that it wasn't working.
And I remember one night we had dinner,
and I said, Bill, I'm unhappy.
And he said, "Do you want
to get a divorce?"
And I said, yeah. And he said, "Okay."
And that was it.
I was going
through another divorce.
Three times. A three-time loser.
And the fear of being
alone again, dying alone...
not having that person
in my life anymore...
and getting old.
So, I was drinking again,
just to kind of ease +that pain.
So it was... Yeah,
it was kind of a lost time.
We were having dinner one night.
Billy was just basically devastated.
Tears coming down his eyes and said,
"I got a half a billion dollars,
and I have nobody to love."
And it just hurts you, tears your guts out
to watch somebody fall down that hole.
And that time period coincided
with working with Elton again.
The Billy Joel/Elton John
concert was canceled.
Joel and John canceled their show
in Detroit last night.
He canceled Thursday's concert.
Of course, everyone was
worried about Billy Joel.
The story I remember is Elton John
accusing Billy Joel of drinking too much,
which Billy Joel did not care for
when he read that.
Billy wasn't really
open to hear about it
and certainly not publicly.
And it led to certain questions
about where he's going in his career.
I think he didn't want his demons
and his issues out there.
So that kind of pissed him off.
Elton had made a comment
that he thought I needed real rehab.
He chalked it up to, "Oh, he's a drunk."
And that really hurt me.
I said, wait a minute.
Don't you know me better than that?
And there was bad blood
for a little while.
There was a dovetailing of things
that happened during that time.
I felt like I was clobbered.
So, yeah. That was rock bottom.
I was disillusioned
with what I thought
it was all supposed to mean.
It's like all signs
were pointing to me: Enough!
And I wrote this letter to the band:
I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm going to, I'm going to stop.
I think he was trying
to save his own life.
It's hard to have control over yourself
when you work that hard.
To survive, you need to leave that behind.
He had spoken about
taking time off for years,
but this was really a goodbye.
He became very uncommunicative.
I didn't talk to him a lot
during that period of time.
And I have to say
that I was worried about him,
because I believed that Billy,
without this outlet,
that he wouldn't have
anything to live for.
And I thought that the...
I honestly thought that that was...
that the clock was ticking.
In the beginning
There was the cold and the night...
When I was 18, I got my first boat.
It was about 18 feet long.
Rowing it was a heart attack,
and it leaked like a sieve.
But it was my boat.
Being on the water,
it means a lot of things.
Part of it is freedom.
You've left the land,
and you are on your own.
You're navigating.
You're controlling where you're going.
Too many kingdoms
Too many flags...
So you've gotta always be in control.
And there's something
exhilarating about that.
So many wounds to be healed
Time is relentless...
I am in control.
I am the captain of my ship,
against all the forces of nature.
And it's a, it's a strong feeling.
It's very powerful.
It's been a long time
And now I'm with you
After two thousand years...
It's similar to music. It's healing.
I've made a lot of mistakes in my life.
But I've grown from them.
I've learned from them.
And even after everything
I've gone through...
Okay, so when you get home--
...I still believe in love.
I still believe in relationships.
And it's always a big factor in my life.
I probably am a romantic at heart.
When you meet someone
who captures your imagination,
it renews, it revitalizes.
I remember the first time I met Alexis,
we went to my house, and I wanted
to play the piano for her.
It's a form of communication for me.
There's a scene in a movie called
"The Seven Year Itch" with Tom Ewell,
and he wants to impress Marilyn Monroe.
So he plays Rachmaninoff.
You came. I'm so glad.
And he's got the ascot on
and he's puffing on a cigarette.
Don't stop. Don't ever stop.
So I'm playing that,
and she's completely
unimpressed with it. Totally.
She couldn't care less what I'm playing
and I'm thinking,
oh, okay, this isn't working.
She was very unimpressed with
the whole Billy Joel thing,
which impressed me
because I thought, okay.
Maybe she's just here
because she likes me,
not the Billy Joel guy.
We stayed in touch
after I met him originally.
We would speak on the phone,
we would exchange emails,
and we got to know each other really well.
And I felt really comfortable with him.
I don't know if I was open
to starting a new relationship.
I thought that wasn't going
to be possible.
How am I going to be able
to do that again?
I can't go through that again.
But all of a sudden, something happened.
Something popped. And I was open to it.
When Alexis and I got together,
she was still working.
She was in charge of a whole section
of a financial company,
and she was successful at it.
And I wasn't really thinking
about working anymore,
so I was home a lot.
And when she got home,
there I was cooking and serving dinner.
He makes a mean salmon teriyaki.
He would have it marinating
all day for me,
and have it ready with my vegetables,
and I would come home
to my salmon, my vegetables,
and glass of wine.
So it was wonderful.
I hadn't really thought
about having children again.
I thought I was too old.
Look at you, big girl.
But having these little kids
at this time in my life is such a joy.
I have time to be with them.
I don't have to be recording.
I don't have to be writing.
I can just hang out with my children.
Can you say, "I love you, Daddy"?
Love you, Daddy!
Bill's number one saying is,
"I'm going to be the best dad I can be,
because I didn't have a dad."
And after years of learning
and personal growth,
my kids have the most
amazing version of him.
They're really lucky.
And I wanted to make sure
that they got everything
they needed from me.
So I kind of knuckled down
and took fatherhood very, very seriously.
I felt like, oh,
these are things I missed.
I want to make sure they don't miss it.
I didn't know if they were
going to be musical or not,
but there must be something
to the genetic aspect of it.
My parents had this
incredible musical ability.
And my brother has it.
My eldest daughter Alexa has it.
Just in a New York
State of mind
Yeah
Della has it.
Keep it to yourself it's my life
She can pick out
melodies on a piano
without even knowing
how to play the piano.
And I see it in my youngest, in Remy.
She's picking out melodies. She's singing.
It's part of the DNA.
It's history.
And it goes on.
In the beginning,
we had a couple years together
before we had kids,
and he had completely stopped doing shows.
We traveled everywhere.
We did a motorcycle trip from Maine
back down to Long Island.
We were on boats 24/7.
We were in Europe. We had so much fun.
I was pretty much retiring.
I just... I didn't want to do it anymore.
I thought that part of my life was over.
I think that he was enjoying
not going on the road and not working.
But then everything changed.
Sixty-six million Americans
are bracing for impact.
The weather is intensifying,
and it's just going to get worse.
Oh, my God.
Sandy may go down
as one of the costliest storms in history.
Sandy destroyed a good amount
of the south shore of Long Island.
I was here during the storm,
and I saw boats being torn off moorings,
crashing onto the shore.
Houses being flooded.
It was scary.
I'm a Long Islander.
And these are my roots.
This is my home.
And it was hurtful to see the damage
and how those lives were wrecked.
They were putting together
a benefit concert
for the recovery effort,
and they called me.
I said yes, even though
I wasn't really performing at the time.
How do you want the vocal?
This was something I could do.
I couldn't be a first responder,
I could be a second responder.
Live from Madison
Square Garden, 12/12/12:
The Concert for Sandy Relief.
That was quite the hallway.
Everybody was there, right?
I mean, McCartney, Daltrey
and Townshend, Keith Richards.
When we did 12/12/12,
Billy hadn't done any shows
in several years
and, at the time, hadn't seemed interested
in really doing any.
We got the spirit here tonight.
We're going to be okay.
We're going to get through all this.
We're going to be alright.
He came out on stage very nervous.
We hadn't played in a very long time.
And he was going to do four songs.
Anthony works in the grocery store
Savin' his pennies for someday...
But his voice was pure,
the band was great.
...note on the door
Said, "Sonny, move out to the country"
Ah, but workin' too hard
can give you a heart attack
Ack, ack, ack, ack, ack
You oughta know by now
He just came in, and his voice
sounded like a million bucks.
He had all of this energy
that I think he wasn't
even sure that he had.
And it seems such a waste of time
If that's what it's all about
Mama, if that's movin' up
Then I'm movin' out
We knew at that moment
that guy had everything back.
Like, nothing had left.
Sergeant O'Leary is walkin' the beat
At night he becomes a bartender
Billy gets up there and blows it away.
...down on Sullivan...
And I'm watching television
saying, oh, my God.
These songs are not just dead songs
that are in amber.
These songs are alive.
They still come across.
You oughta know by now
You can pay Uncle Sam with the overtime
Is that all you get with your money?
And if that's what you have in mind, yeah
If that's what you're all about
Good luck movin' up
'Cause I'm moving out
During the 12/12/12
concert, you know,
which I watched while looking
at my social media feed.
And they were just having a ball
ripping on all these, like,
classic rockers on stage.
You know, these guys look old.
They're over the hill.
We're sick of all these songs.
The one person they liked...
...Billy Joel.
You look at a lot of artists
from his generation,
they're trying to look like
they did in the 70s.
The songs that they wrote work better
if you imagine
a younger person singing them,
and I don't think
that's true of Billy Joel.
Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
I actually think
that there's a lot of songs
in his catalog that make more sense
for him to sing as an older man.
They have a certain gravitas to them
that his age enhances.
But I'm taking a Greyhound
On the Hudson River line
I'm in a New York state of mind
For years, there were critics
that didn't like him.
Then there were people that liked him
only ironically, you know, as like,
"Hey, Billy Joel, Long Island."
Suddenly, it seemed like
there was an expl*si*n
of unironic appreciation.
The songs themselves were
standing the test of time.
He, as the guy who had written the songs,
was now getting not even grudging respect,
like actual respect.
People were talking about him
as an American treasure
as opposed to a celebrity
that was a punchline.
That was when his sort
of renaissance began
in the world of popular music.
And I don't want to waste more time
Just in a New York state of mind
When I look back to that time,
I was very humbled.
And I think it made me realize
there's still some gas in the tank.
Maybe I shouldn't throw this away.
Good evening, New York City!
First night of our
Madison Square Garden run here.
I have no idea
how long this is going to go.
My booking agent, Dennis,
came to me with the concept:
what about doing a residency
at Madison Square Garden?
Seen the lights go out on Broadway
I saw the Empire State laid low
I said okay, maybe that'll last six gigs
or something like that.
I thought it was just going to go
ehh, womp,
and then we'd run out of ticket buyers.
To watch the island bridges blow
But the demand
for tickets never dropped off.
They turned our power down
They drove us underground...
It got bigger and bigger and bigger.
But we went right on with the show
The first time I played
the Garden was 1978.
And now, almost 40 years later,
it felt like I had come full circle.
I've seen the lights go out on Broadway
And I'm playing with these guys
who I've been with for years and years.
They really are my extended family.
And we were like the house band
at Madison Square Garden.
Maybe the best-known venue in the world
for rock and roll.
This is a dream come true.
...on 42nd Street
New generations of people
were the ones filling out the audience.
I was seeing that every night.
And they were making a lot of noise.
They love to sing his songs.
And that's what it's all about,
is that collective experience
of people coming together.
Billy Joel is unmistakably New York.
I've seen the lights go out on Broadway...
So how come if this guy is unmistakably
from one pinpoint on the planet,
why do we feel that
he belongs to all of us?
He was born to do this.
He's so good, I don't even know
if he knows how good he is.
And as big as he is,
he comes off as an everyday,
around-the-way guy.
He's like us. He sings
from that point of view.
You feel that truth.
You feel that honesty. Powerful.
Long Island loves Billy Joel.
This is my 123rd Billy Joel show.
His music has become
a part of our everyday lives.
I want to see Billy Joel
every month at Madison Square Garden.
They say he's the soundtrack
of our lives, and it's true.
I saw him play at Yankee Stadium in 1990,
and it blew my lights off.
His music just rocks.
There are not many who remember
Tonight, we're going to commemorate
the 100th consecutive sellout
of the Madison Square Garden residency.
...to tell the world about
The way the lights went out
And keep the memory
Alive
It lasted for 10 years.
It gave me a whole new appreciation
of what I did and the power of music.
Check how much film I got left.
Sorry, fellas. Hold on one second.
Take two.
It's nine o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sitting next to me
Making love to his tonic and gin
He says, "Son, can you play me a memory?
"I'm not really sure how it goes
"But it's sad and it's sweet
"And I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"
Oh, la da da didi da
La da didi da da dum
I don't know what I would've been
had I not been a musician.
I don't know where I
would've been in this life
had it not been for the piano.
And he's quick with a joke
Or to light up your smoke
But there's someplace that he'd rather be
He says, "Bill, I believe
this is k*lling me"
As the smile ran away from his face...
We're now 50 years
into Billy Joel's music
being a huge part of American culture.
Why are these songs
still speaking to people?
Don't take any sh*t from anybody.
He is this guy who by any measure
has achieved all of the dreams
that any singer/songwriter would want.
A dream of mine.
And yet, the overriding theme of his songs
is sort of this, like,
existential dissatisfaction.
Well, we're all
in the mood for a melody...
There's something at his core
that's still searching for something.
And that's the human condition.
So, to me,
I think that's why
people connect with him,
still, after all this time.
Paul is the real estate novelist
Who never had time for a wife...
You can hear all of the complexities
of his life in those songs.
You know, I think the songs are
the best expression of Billy.
And in Billy's case, I think
that's where he wanted things to end up.
And the piano, it sounds
like a carnival...
The main thing that
he would always say to me is,
"If you do what you love
then you'll love what you do."
And that that's really the secret to life.
And I think for him,
through all the sadness
and all the struggles
that he went through,
he was still doing what he loved.
Are you not entertained?
And that's really what kept him going
and kept the music coming.
Sing us a song you're the piano man...
I think music saved my life.
...song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a...
It gave me a reason to live.
And you've got us feelin' alright
My hope was that my music would continue
to resonate.
And I'm glad it has.
There'll be a part of me that goes on.
You created something.
You made a mark on your time.
I don't know why
that's so important to me.
It just is.
But I'm not finished.
I'm as lost as everybody else.
I'm still looking. I'm still searching.
I may not ever figure it all out,
but I'm trying.
Slow down you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart
Tell me why are you still so afraid?
Mm
Where's the fire what's the hurry about?
You'd better cool it off
before you burn it out
You've got so much to do
And only so many hours in a day
Hey
But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off
Before you even get halfway through
Ooh, when will you realize
Vienna waits for you?
Slow down you're doin' fine
You can't be everything you wanna be
Before your time
Although it's so romantic
On the borderline tonight
Tonight
Too bad but it's the life you lead
You're so ahead of yourself
That you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong
You know you can't always
see when you're right
You're right
You've got your passion
you've got your pride
But don't you know that
only fools are satisfied?
Dream on but don't imagine
They'll all come true
Ooh
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you?
And you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you could just get old
You're gonna kick off
Before you even get halfway through
Ooh
Why don't you realize
Vienna waits for you?
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you?
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01x02 - Part Two
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Showcases an extensive look at Billy Joel's life and music career, featuring exclusive interviews, performances, home movies, and personal photographs.
Showcases an extensive look at Billy Joel's life and music career, featuring exclusive interviews, performances, home movies, and personal photographs.