Billy Joel was born in the Bronx, New York and raised in Hicksville, New York. His father, Howard (born Helmut), was originally from Germany, where his father (Billy Joel's grandfather) Karl Amson Joel had owned a department store, which he had been forced to sell below its market value to avoid being dispossessed by the Nazis.
The new owners turned this into a large mail order business in the 1950s. His mother, Rosalind Hyman, was born in England, to a Jewish family (Philip and Rebecca Hyman). His parents divorced in 1960, and his father moved back to Vienna, Austria. Billy has a sister, Judith Joel, and a half-brother, Alexander Joel, who is an acclaimed classical pianist and conductor in Europe, now living in California.
Joel's father was an accomplished classical pianist. Billy reluctantly began piano lessons at an early age, at his mother's insistence, including with the noted American pianist Morton Estrin and musician/songwriter Timothy Ford. His interest in music, rather than sports, was the source of teasing and bullying in his early years. (He has said in interviews that his piano instructor also taught ballet. Her name was Frances Neiman and she was a Juilliard trained musician. She gave both classic piano and ballet lessons in the studio attached to the rear of her house, leading neighborhood bullies to mistakenly think he was learning to dance.)
As a teenager, Joel took up boxing so that he would be able to defend himself. He boxed successfully on the amateur Golden Gloves circuit for a short time, winning twenty-two bouts, but abandoned the sport shortly after having his nose broken in his twenty-fourth boxing match.
Joel attended Hicksville High School, and was expected to graduate in 1967. However, he was one English credit short of the graduation requirement; he overslept on the day of an important exam, owing to his late-night musician's lifestyle. Faced with a summer at school to complete this requirement, he decided not to continue. He left high school without a diploma to begin a career in music.
Despite the Vietnam War and the draft, Joel performed no military service, because he was the sole provider for his mother and sister, the selective service gave him a draft exemption. In 1992, the English credit requirement was waived by the Hicksville School Board, and he received his diploma at Hicksville High's graduation ceremony 25 years after he left the school.
Upon seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, Joel decided to pursue a full-time musical career, and set about finding a local Long Island band to join. Eventually he found the Echoes, a group that specialised in British Invasion covers. The Echoes became a popular New York attraction, convincing him to leave high school to become a professional musician. He began playing for the Echoes when he was 14 years old.
Joel began playing recording sessions with the Echoes in 1965, when he was 16 years old. Joel played piano on several recordings produced by Shadow Morton, including (as claimed by Joel, but denied by songwriter Ellie Greenwich) the Shangri-Las' Leader of the Pack, as well as several records released through Kama Sutra Productions. During this time, the Echoes started to play numerous late-night shows.
Later, in 1965, the Echoes changed their name to the Emeralds and then to the Lost Souls. For two years, he played sessions and performed with the Lost Souls. In 1967, he left that band to join the Hassles, a Long Island band that had signed a contract with United Artists Records. Over the next year and a half, they released The Hassles in 1967, Hour of the Wolf in 1968, and four singles, all of which failed commercially. Following The Hassles' demise in 1969, he formed the duo Attila with Hassles drummer Jon Small. Attila released their eponymous debut album in July 1970, and disbanded the following October.
In late 1975, he played piano and organ on several tracks on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album.
Whereas most records are owned by the recording company, Billy Joel is one of a number of performers — including Paul Simon, Johnny Rivers, Pink Floyd, Queen, Genesis, and Neil Diamond — who have their own name as the copyright owner on their recordings.
Joel signed his first solo record contract with Artie Ripp of Family Productions, and subsequently recorded his first solo album. Cold Spring Harbor (a reference to the Long Island town of the same name), was released in 1971. However, the album was mastered at the wrong speed, and the album was initially released with this error, resulting in Joel's sounding a semitone too high. The onerous terms of the Family Productions contract also guaranteed him very little money from the sales of his albums.
Hits such as "She's Got a Way" and "Everybody Loves You Now" were originally released on this album, although they did not gain much attention until released as live performances in 1981 on Songs in the Attic. Since then, they have become big concert numbers.
Cold Spring Harbor gained a second chance on the charts in 1983, when Columbia reissued the album after slowing it down to the correct speed. The album reached #158 in the US and #95 in the UK nearly a year later. Cold Spring Harbor caught the attention of Merrilee Rush ("Angel of the Morning") and she recorded a femme version of "She’s Got a Way (He’s Got a Way)" for Scepter Records in 1971.
In addition, a Philadelphia radio station, WMMR-FM, started playing a tape of a new song of Joel's, "Captain Jack", taken from a live concert. It became an underground hit on the East Coast. Herb Gordon, an executive of Columbia Records, heard Joel's music and made his company aware of Joel's talent. Joel signed a recording contract with Columbia in 1972 and moved to Los Angeles. He lived there for three years (and has since declared that those three years were a big mistake), returning to New York City in 1975. While in California, he had a paid job in a piano bar, The Executive Room on Wilshire Blvd, (using the name Bill Martin), so his superhit "Piano Man" is seen as autobiographical.
Joel's experiences in Los Angeles connected him with record-company executives, who bought out his contract with Ripp, under the condition that the "Family Productions" logo be displayed alongside the Columbia logo for the next five albums. Also in the contract was the agreement that Family Productions would receive a 25 cent royalty for every album Joel sold – a stipulation which would come back to haunt him when he hit it big. The stand out track for Piano Man was the title track, which still stands as one of Joel's anthems.
Joel remained in Los Angeles to write Streetlife Serenade, his second album on the Columbia label. References to both suburbia and the inner city pepper the album. The stand-out track on the album is "The Entertainer," which picks up thematically where "Piano Man" left off. Joel was upset that "Piano Man" had been significantly edited down to make it more radio-friendly, and in "The Entertainer," he refers to the edit with sarcastic lines such as "If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05", alluding to shortening of singles for radio play, as compared with the longer versions that appear on albums.
Although Streetlife Serenade is often considered one of Joel's weaker albums (Joel has confirmed his distaste for the album), it nevertheless contains some notable tracks, including the title track, "Los Angelenos" and the instrumental "Root Beer Rag," which was a staple of his live set in the '70s and was resurrected frequently in 2007 and 2008. Streetlife Serenade also marks the beginning of a more confident vocal style on Joel's part.
Disenchanted with the L.A. music scene, Joel returned to New York in 1975. There he recorded Turnstiles, for which he used his own hand-picked musicians in the studio for the first time, and also adopted a more hands-on role. Songs were initially recorded at Caribou Ranch with members of Elton John's band, and produced by famed Chicago producer James William Guercio, but Joel was dissatisfied with the results.
The songs were re-recorded in New York, and Joel took over, producing the album himself. The minor hit "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" echoed the Phil Spector sound, and was covered by Ronnie Spector (in a 2008 radio interview, Joel said he doesn't perform "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" in his live shows anymore because it's in too high a key and "shreds" his vocal cords.) The album also featured the song "New York State of Mind," a bluesy, jazzy epic that has become one of Joel's signature songs, and which was later covered by fellow Columbia labelmates Barbra Streisand, on her 1977 Streisand Superman album, and as a duet with Tony Bennett, on his 2001 "Playing with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues" album. Other songs on the album include "Summer, Highland Falls," and "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)". Songs such as "Prelude/Angry Young Man" would become a mainstay of his concerts for years.
For his album The Stranger, Columbia Records united Joel with producer Phil Ramone. The album yielded four Top 40 hits on the Billboard Charts in the US: "Just the Way You Are" (#3), "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" (#17), "Only the Good Die Young" (#24), and "She's Always a Woman" (#17). Album sales exceeded Columbia's previous top-selling album, Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, and was certified multi-platinum. It was Joel's first Top Ten album, as it rose to #2 on the charts. Phil Ramone subsequently produced every Billy Joel studio release up to Storm Front, initially released in 1989.
The Stranger netted Joel Grammy nominations, for Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Record of the Year, for "Just the Way You Are," which was written as a gift to his wife Elizabeth. He won for the latter two.
Joel faced high expectations on his next album. 52nd Street was conceived as a day in Manhattan, and was named after the famous street of same name which hosted many of the world's premier jazz venues and performers throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Fans purchased over seven million copies on the strength of the hits "My Life" (#3), "Big Shot" (#14), and "Honesty" (#24).
This helped 52nd Street become Joel's first #1 album. "My Life" eventually became the theme song for a new US television sitcom, Bosom Buddies, which featured actor Tom Hanks in one of his earliest roles. 52nd Street was the first album to be released on Compact Disc in Japan (1982). The album won Grammys for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male and Album of the Year.
Despite all the cover art for the album showing Joel holding a trumpet, he does not play the instrument on the album, though two tracks on the album do feature trumpets. Freddie Hubbard plays two solos in "Zanzibar" and joins Jon Faddis in the horn section for "Half a Mile Away."
The success of his piano-driven ballads like "Just the Way You Are" and "Honesty" never sat well with Joel, as many critics were quick to slap the "balladeer" tag on him. With Glass Houses, he attacked the new wave popularity with aplomb and delivered several harder-edged songs custom made for the live shows in arenas and stadiums he was now playing almost exclusively.
The front cover consisted of Joel's real-life modern glass house. The album spent 6 weeks at #1 on the Billboard chart and yielded such classics as "You May Be Right" (#7, May 1980), "Close To The Borderline" (B-side of the "You May Be Right" single), "Don't Ask Me Why" (#19, September 1980), "Sometimes a Fantasy" (#36, November 1980) and "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me", which became Joel's first Billboard #1 song in July, 1980. Glass Houses won the Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male. It would also win the American Music Award for Favorite Album, Pop/Rock category. The album's closing song, "Through The Long Night," was a lullaby that featured Joel harmonizing with himself in a song he says was inspired by The Beatles' "Yes It Is."
His next release, Songs in the Attic, was composed of live performances of less well-known songs from the beginning of his career. Songs in the Attic is regarded as one of Billy Joel's better albums, raw and to the point and was recorded during larger US arenas and intimate night club shows in June and July 1980.
This release introduced many fans, who discovered Joel when The Stranger became a smash in 1977, to many of his earlier compositions. The album reached #8 on the Billboard chart and produced two hit singles: "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (#17), and "She's Got a Way" (#23). It sold over 3 million copies. Though not as successful as some of his previous albums, the album was still considered a success by Joel[citation needed]. The track "Los Angelenos" was recorded live at Toad's Place in New Haven, CT in July of 1980.
The next wave of Joel's career commenced with the recording of The Nylon Curtain. Considered his most audacious and ambitious album, Joel took more than a page or two from the Lennon-McCartney songwriting style on this heavily Beatles-influenced album.
Work began on The Nylon Curtain in the spring of 1982. However, Joel was sidelined when he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident. Because of the ensuing surgery, production of the album was shut down temporarily while Joel recovered.
Once The Nylon Curtain was finished, Joel embarked on a brief tour in support of the album, during which his first video special, Live from Long Island, was recorded at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, on December 30, 1982.
The Nylon Curtain went to #7 on the charts, partially due to heavy airplay on MTV for the videos of "Allentown" and "Pressure", supported by the popular singles "Allentown," "Goodnight Saigon," and "Pressure." "Allentown" rose to #17 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it one of the most-played radio songs of 1982 and the most successful song from The Nylon Curtain album, besting "Pressure," which peaked at #19 and "Goodnight Saigon" which reached #56.
The song "Uptown Girl" was one of the first songs written when Joel returned from vacation. "Uptown Girl" is widely considered to be about model Christie Brinkley, whom he started dating during the song's creation (the music video also included Brinkley). The song became a worldwide hit upon its release, #3 in the U.S. and Joel's sole #1 in the United Kingdom.
The resulting album, An Innocent Man, was compiled as a tribute to the rock and roll music of the 1950s and 1960s, and also resulted in Joel's second Billboard #1 hit, "Tell Her About It," which was the first single off the album in the Summer of 1983. The album itself reached #4 on the charts and #2 in UK. It also boasted 6 top-30 singles, the most of any album in Joel's catalog. At the time the album came out that summer, WCBS-FM began playing "The Longest Time" both in regular rotation and on the "Doo Wop Shop."
Many fans wanted this to be the next single released in the fall, but that October, "Uptown Girl" would be released, peaking at #3. In December the title song, "An Innocent Man," would be released as a single and would peak at #10 and #8 in the UK, early in 1984. That March "The Longest Time," a Doo Wop song, would finally be released as a single and peak at #14 on the Hot 100 and be a number one Adult Contemporary hit. That summer, "Leave A Tender Moment Alone" would be released and hit #27 while "Keeping the Faith" would peak #18 in January of 1985.
In the video for "Keeping the Faith", Christie Brinkley also plays the "redhead girl in a Chevrolet". An Innocent Man was also nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy, but lost to the inevitable winner that year, Michael Jackson's Thriller. |
