Billy Joel
A storyteller who, at a piano in a New York suburb, set down in song the daily lives and dreams of ordinary Americans.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people around him ⏳🌊
- FamilyHoward Joel
His father, who left Germany to escape the Nazis; a fine classical pianist, he settled in Vienna after the divorce.
- FamilyRosalind Joel
His mother, who loved music and theater, started her four-year-old son on piano lessons.
- InfluenceRay Charles
His childhood idol, who joined him as a duet partner on “Baby Grand” in 1986.
- PatronageClive Davis
As head of Columbia Records, he signed the unknown Joel and had him release “Piano Man.”
- CollaboratorPhil Ramone
He produced Joel's peak-era albums, from “The Stranger” through the mid-1980s.
- FriendshipElton John
A fellow piano man of the same generation, who from 1994 toured with him, two pianos set face to face.
I. The boy from Levittown · 1949–1966
(Birth) In May 1949, William Martin Joel was born in the Bronx, New York City. The following year the family moved to the Levittown section of Hicksville, Long Island, a suburban development where identical houses had been built in rows for soldiers returning from World War II. This ordinary middle-class neighborhood would become the home his songs always returned to. (Parents) His father, Howard, came from a Jewish family in Nuremberg, Germany; he had fled the Nazis to America and served in the U.S. Army. He was a fine classical pianist but a man of few words. His mother, Rosalind, came from a Jewish family of English descent and loved music and theater. The couple divorced in 1957, and his father left for Europe and settled in Vienna. Joel grew up with his mother and his sister Judy in a household that was never well off. (Piano) Around the age of four, at his mother's urging, he began piano lessons. He studied Bach and Mozart, but he was drawn less to playing what was on the page than to reshaping pieces however he pleased. To withstand the teasing that came with being a boy who played piano, he took up boxing in his teens and fought in amateur bouts, breaking his nose along the way. (The Beatles) In 1964, the Beatles he saw on television's “The Ed Sullivan Show” settled his course. Ray Charles's soul, Phil Spector's dense sound, and the doo-wop the neighborhood boys sang on street corners all piled up in his ears. By night he played piano in bars; by day he went to school with sleepy eyes. As graduation approached, he missed an English exam after playing late into the night and never received his diploma — he is said to have declared that he was going not to college but to a record company. His old school finally awarded him the diploma in 1992.
II. Bill Martin at the piano bar · 1967–1974
(Bands) In the mid-1960s he joined the Long Island rock band the Hassles as keyboardist and made two albums with them. After the band broke up, he formed Attila, an organ-and-drums duo, with drummer Jon Small, and released one album in 1970 to no response. He made his living as a session musician, adding his playing to other people's records, and by writing for music magazines. (Depression) Around this time, as he later revealed himself, he sank into a deep depression and briefly received hospital treatment. Coming through that period, he resolved to become a singer-songwriter — singing his own songs under his own name rather than in someone else's band. (The contract) In 1971 he signed with Artie Ripp's Family Productions and released his first solo album, “Cold Spring Harbor.” But during mastering the tape speed was set wrong, so his voice came out higher than it really was, and the album quietly sank. The terms of the contract tied him down for years as well. In 1972 he moved to Los Angeles and for about six months played at the Executive Room, a piano bar on Wilshire Boulevard, under the name Bill Martin. Elizabeth Weber was by his side, and the two married in 1973. (The turn) When the Philadelphia radio station WMMR kept playing a live recording of his “Captain Jack,” the record labels took notice. Clive Davis of Columbia Records landed him, and Columbia bought out his contract from Ripp's company. In return, Ripp collected royalties on Joel's records for years afterward, and the Family Productions logo remained on the albums. “Piano Man,” released in November 1973 — a song portraying the customers he had watched at the piano bar — first made his name. The next year, on “The Entertainer” from “Streetlife Serenade,” he skewered the coldness of a music industry that sells a song and throws it away.
The six months he spent working as Bill Martin in a Los Angeles piano bar became the song itself. With this piece, sketching the customers one by one, he made his name.
- In the introduction, piano and a harmonica worn around the neck trade off — the folk singer's way of hanging a harmonica on a holder and blowing it while playing the piano.
- It is a three-beat waltz rhythm, counted one-two-three. A sway like barroom patrons raising their glasses and rocking carries the whole song.
- Each verse brings a new character. Notice the storyteller's manner of introducing them one at a time — the bartender, the waitress, the would-be novelist.
- In the chorus the accompaniment grows and swells like a choir. In concert, tens of thousands in the audience singing this passage together has become a long tradition.
III. Back to New York · 1975–1979
(Homecoming) In 1975 he returned to New York. His 1976 album “Turnstiles” included “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” a farewell to Los Angeles, and “New York State of Mind,” which poured his love for his home city into a jazz ballad. He first began recording with outside musicians, but dissatisfied with the results, he recorded it all again from scratch with his own touring band. From around this time his wife, Elizabeth, took over as his manager and put his scattered business affairs in order. (Ramone) Meeting producer Phil Ramone in 1977 changed everything. Ramone brought his live band — drummer Liberty DeVitto, bassist Doug Stegmeyer, saxophonist Richie Cannata, and the rest — straight into the studio and worked to capture the energy of the stage on tape. “The Stranger,” released that year, is said to have outsold the Simon & Garfunkel album that was then the best-selling record in Columbia's history. (Love) “Just the Way You Are,” dedicated to Elizabeth, was a song Joel himself wanted to cut from the album as too sentimental. The story goes that Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow, visiting the studio, urged him to keep it. The song won the Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1979. “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” from the same album, a suite weaving the story of Long Island youth into three parts, remains at the heart of his concerts to this day. (52nd Street) “52nd Street,” named in 1978 for the street of jazz clubs, joined forces with jazz musicians for a more polished sound and won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1980. The boy from Levittown was now one of the best-selling singers in America.
A homecoming song written the year he wound up his California life and returned to New York. It appeared on “Turnstiles,” which he rerecorded with his own touring band.
- The opening piano speaks the language of blues and jazz standards, laying bare the roots of a man who loved Ray Charles.
- Richie Cannata's tenor saxophone fills the spaces between the lines and the interlude — the key to the late-night Manhattan street mood.
- The vocal begins calmly in the low register, then in the chorus he roughens his voice to a rasp and pushes harder.
- After the 9·11 attacks in 2001, he sang it at “The Concert for New York City,” cementing its place as the song of New York.
A song dedicated to his wife, Elizabeth. He himself wanted to drop it, but it stayed at his colleagues' urging and won both Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the Grammys.
- The main keyboard is not an acoustic piano but a Fender Rhodes electric piano, with an effect that makes the sound ripple like waves, giving it a soft, dreamy texture.
- Drums and percussion lay down a light, shimmering rhythm in the manner of bossa nova. Though it is a ballad, it never slackens but flows quietly forward.
- Backing harmonies built from Joel's own voice, overdubbed many times, wrap around the chorus.
- An alto saxophone solo by jazz saxophonist Phil Woods graces the latter part of the song. The result of producer Phil Ramone bringing in a jazz player himself, it is cited as a classic example of a jazz solo inside a pop ballad.
A suite of more than seven minutes that strings together the story of Long Island youth in three short songs. It holds his memories of growing up in Levittown more densely than anything else.
- It opens as a piano ballad, beginning in a calm, conversational voice, as if meeting an old friend again at a restaurant.
- Soon the tempo shifts into old New Orleans–style jazz, with clarinet and tuba entering — the moment the scene is swapped out within a single song.
- The third part is upbeat rock and roll, racing in fast storytelling through the tale of the high school's brightest couple, from marriage to breakup.
- At the end it returns to the opening ballad melody and closes the circle. It sounds as if it took its cue from the medley on side two of the Beatles' “Abbey Road.”
IV. Homage and experiment · 1980–1986
(Rock and roll) Rock critics tended to write him off as a soft balladeer. In 1980, “Glass Houses” answered them with rough guitars out front, and “It's Still Rock and Roll to Me,” from that album, became his first Billboard Hot 100 number one. (Nylon) “The Nylon Curtain,” from 1982, was his most ambitious work. Carrying a homage to the sound of the Beatles, John Lennon above all, it held “Allentown,” a portrait of a Pennsylvania steel town in decline, and “Goodnight Saigon,” written from the point of view of Marines sent to Vietnam. That April, with the recording sessions still ahead, he injured his hand in a motorcycle accident on Long Island and spent some time in treatment. The same year, his first marriage came to an end. (Tribute) “An Innocent Man,” from 1983, was an album dedicated to the doo-wop, soul and Motown of the 1950s·60s that had raised him. He recalled that the songs of this period poured out of him in a matter of weeks. “Uptown Girl,” which borrowed the falsetto style of the Four Seasons, and “Tell Her About It” were major hits. The model Christie Brinkley, whom he was dating at the time, appeared in the “Uptown Girl” music video, and the two married in 1985. (Solidarity) In January 1985 he took part in the recording of “We Are the World,” the African famine-relief song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, taking a solo line alongside Tina Turner and others. The following year, on “The Bridge,” he sang “Baby Grand” as a duet with Ray Charles, his childhood idol. In this song, which sings of the piano as an old friend, the two singing pianists traded voices.
He first began writing it about his hometown of Levittown, then shifted it to the story of a Pennsylvania steel town in decline. It captures the frustration of a generation of workers who lost their jobs.
- Sound effects like the clang of hammers and the blast of steam whistles in the intro paint a factory district. The stage is set before the singing even begins.
- The drums move in a march-like stride, pounding hard on beats two and four (the backbeat). It calls to mind the repetitive labor of the assembly line.
- Rather than erupting in anger, the vocal keeps a calm tone tinged with resignation. So when the voice swells in the chorus, it carries all the more weight.
- At its heart is the way it packs into the name of a single town the story of a promise kept by the fathers' generation and broken in the sons'.
The signature song of “An Innocent Man,” his album dedicated to the music of the 1950s·60s. The tale of a working-class young man courting a girl from a wealthy family, it reached number one on the UK chart.
- He deliberately imitated the falsetto of the Four Seasons' Frankie Valli, pulled high above the chest voice. It is one of the songs in which Joel's voice climbs highest.
- The handclaps and the back-and-forth harmonies of the male chorus are the language of doo-wop, once sung on street corners.
- The music video, built around dancing and acting in an auto repair shop, featured Christie Brinkley and became an iconic image of the MTV era.
- A bouncing bass and a brisk tempo push on without rest from start to finish. Even as it imitates the old music, it is polished with the crisp sound of 1980s recording.
V. From Leningrad to the river of dreams · 1987–1993
(Soviet Union) In the summer of 1987, as the Cold War was thawing, he played concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. It was an early instance of an American rock star staging large concerts in the Soviet Union, and the live recordings were released as the album “Концерт.” Viktor, a circus clown he met and befriended in Leningrad, became the subject of the 1989 song “Leningrad.” It is the story of Viktor, born in the Soviet Union in 1944, and Joel, born in America in 1949, growing up differently on opposite sides of the Cold War. (Lawsuit) In 1989 he sued Frank Weber, the longtime manager to whom he had entrusted his finances, over financial mismanagement, and the court sided with Joel and awarded damages. In the wake of this he restructured his business affairs and set out once more on long tours. (Fire) That same year he released “Storm Front,” made with Mick Jones of Foreigner. Its track “We Didn't Start the Fire” came about after he heard a twenty-one-year-old say these were terrible times; he answered by listing the events of the 40 years since 1949, the year of his birth. The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. (River) “River of Dreams,” from 1993, was steeped in the colors of gospel and blues. The title song is said to have begun with a melody that came to him in a dream. The album also includes “Lullabye,” a lullaby he wrote for his young daughter. After this album he released no more pop albums. He explained that he had said everything he wanted to say in song, and from then on his interest turned to piano music without words.
A song that lists events and figures in chronological order from 1949, the year he was born, through 1989. It was a middle-aged man's reply to the lament of a younger generation.
- The verses tell no story. Their hallmark is a rapid, almost rap-like recitation that breathlessly pours out more than 100 names and events.
- The drums drive a machine-steady beat, and a chronological list piles up on top of it, giving the effect of time being fast-forwarded.
- The chorus repeats like a short chant and lodges in the ear. The contrast between information-packed verses and a simple chorus carries the song forward.
- Joel himself has said many times that the song's melody is not good. Even so, it went to number one on the charts, and today it is even used as material in history classes.
The title song of his last pop album. With this song, said to have begun with a melody heard in a dream, he brought his long era as a songwriter to a close.
- The humming and seemingly unaccompanied voices of the intro were made by Joel alone, recording himself in layer upon layer. Harmonies stacked like a church choir open the song.
- The gospel device of handclaps, lead vocal and choir trading lines (call and response) forms the backbone of the song.
- Over a swaying, bouncing rhythm (the shuffle), the vocal sings in a restless, yearning tone, like someone searching all night for something.
- The sound, made with guitarist Danny Kortchmar, puts rhythm and voice ahead of the piano. This is where its grain differs from his other signature songs.
VI. Piano instead of song · 1994–2013
(Companionship) Starting in 1994 he toured with Elton John on the “Face to Face” tour. On stage, two grand pianos were set facing each other, and the two took turns singing each other's hits. The two men, who had sung at the piano in the same era, were often compared as rivals, but this joint tour returned again and again into the 2000s. (Honor) In 1999 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He wrote no new songs, but he kept taking the stage. (Classical) In 2001 he released “Fantasies & Delusions,” an album of solo piano pieces he had written. They were performed by the pianist Richard Hyung-ki Joo. Works in a Romantic style recalling Chopin and Schumann, they marked, in effect, a return to the classical piano his father had played when he was a boy. The album went to the top of the Billboard classical chart. (Stage) In 2002 “Movin' Out,” a dance musical the choreographer Twyla Tharp built from his songs, opened on Broadway. Without dialogue, using only song and dance, it portrayed the lives of young Long Islanders before and after the Vietnam War, and Joel shared the 2003 Tony Award for orchestrations. (Recovery) Around the same time, he disclosed that he had undergone rehab for drinking. In 2008 he played the final concerts at New York's Shea Stadium before its demolition, and Paul McCartney came on stage to sing with him. In 2013 he received the Kennedy Center Honors, one of the highest distinctions in American arts and culture.
VII. The piano man at the Garden · 2014–2026
(The Garden) In January 2014 he began a residency at New York's Madison Square Garden, taking the stage once a month. Filling the house month after month with old songs alone and no new album, the run lasted more than 10 years before closing on July 25, 2024. The residency alone topped 100 shows, and his concerts at the venue reached 150 in all. In 2014 he also received the Gershwin Prize, which the Library of Congress awards to popular musicians. (Family) He has married four times and has three daughters. On stage he often shared brief stories about his family, and Long Island remained his home base. (New song) At the Grammy Awards in February 2024 he performed a new song, “Turn the Lights Back On.” It was his first new pop song in about 17 years. A ballad in which a man who had long stopped writing songs looks back on time and regret, it showed that he was still a composer. (Record) In 2025 HBO released the 2-part documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes.” Through the testimony of family and colleagues and his own voice, it retraced how his songs and his life were intertwined. (Health) In May 2025 he announced publicly that he had been diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus, a brain disorder, and canceled his scheduled concerts. As of 2026 he is seventy-seven. Begun at a piano in Levittown, his songs remain a catalog of half a century in the lives of ordinary Americans.
Lesser-known stories
The Joel family originally ran a mail-order clothing business in Nuremberg, Germany. In 1938, under Nazi pressure, his grandfather Karl Joel sold the company for a pittance and left Germany with his family; the buyer was Josef Neckermann, who went on to build Germany's largest mail-order company. The story was rarely spoken of even within the family until it became widely known through “The Joel Files,” a 2001 documentary by the director Beate Thalberg. Joel traveled to Nuremberg for the project. On his first album, “Cold Spring Harbor,” the tape speed was set incorrectly during mastering, so his voice came out higher than it really was. For a long time it could be heard only that way, and not until 1983, after he had become a star, did a speed-corrected reissue appear. So the original release and the version heard today sound different, though they are the same album. His 1978 album “52nd Street” was released in Japan in October 1982 alongside Sony's first CD player, going down in history as the world's first commercially released CD. A footnote, as it were, in the history of recording technology, this fact is seldom mentioned in the story of his music. The name Bill Martin, which he used at a Los Angeles piano bar, was not an invented alias but his real name, William Martin Joel, minus the surname. It was a choice made to keep his own name out of sight while a dispute over his record contract was still unresolved.
Glossary notes 📚🔎
Singer-songwriter
(Meaning) A compound of the English words singer and songwriter, meaning that the person who sings the song is also the person who writes it. (In pop) It refers to a singer who, instead of taking songs written by other composers, performs songs of their own writing. In the early 1970s, as more and more singers began to sing candidly about their own lives, it became a movement. Billy Joel is a quintessential singer-songwriter who sang of his own neighborhood and his own story at the piano. Think of the difference between reading a statement someone else wrote for you and reading aloud, in your own voice, a diary you wrote yourself.
Session musician
(Meaning) A session is an activity in which people gather for a set period of time. Here it means someone called in to play for a single recording session. (In pop) A player who is not a formal band member but is called in whenever there is a recording, adding their playing to other singers' records for a fee. Their names rarely come to the fore, but they must be highly skilled and able to play even a song they have never seen before on the spot. It is like the dependable supporting cast in a school play: not the lead, but called out for every scene that needs them, to fill out the stage. (Elsewhere) In computing, a single period of access, from logging in until logging out, is called a session.
Mastering
(Meaning) A master here means the original from which every copy is struck. Mastering is the work of making that original. (In pop) The stage after recording and mixing are finished, just before the record is pressed, when the volume·tone·spacing between tracks are given a final polish. A mistake made here is stamped onto every copy. On Joel's first album, the tape speed was set wrong at this stage, and his voice came out high. It is like a last check of spelling and font size after finishing your homework and before handing it in; imagine printing 100 copies from the wrong file, and you will grasp the weight of that mistake. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech, to master something means to have learned a skill completely.
Producer
(Meaning) From the English "produce" (to bring forth), it means one who brings something into being. (In pop) The person responsible, when a record is made, for deciding what it should sound like, which musicians to call in, and which takes to keep. Even when singers write and sing their own songs, the same song can become an entirely different record depending on the producer. Phil Ramone created the sound of Joel's prime by bringing his live band straight into the studio. In sports terms, the producer is like a coach who builds the game plan around each player's strengths. (Elsewhere) In film and broadcasting, the word refers to the person who gathers money and people to oversee an entire production; in economics, to a producer of goods.
Doo-wop
(Meaning) The genre takes its name directly from the meaningless syllables, like "doo-wop" and "shoo-be-doo," sung as backing behind the melody. (In pop) A style of harmony singing from the 1950s, performed with voices alone and no instruments by young Black and Italian American men on the street corners of American cities. One singer carries the melody while the others stack harmonies above and below. Joel grew up listening to this sound, and in 1983 he paid tribute to the style with the album An Innocent Man. Think of a break between classes when one friend sings and the rest supply the accompaniment with their mouths: "doom-doom, ba-ba."
Billboard Hot 100
(Meaning) "Billboard" originally means an advertising board; it is the name of an American music magazine founded in 1894. "Hot 100" means the hundred most popular songs. (In pop) The American singles chart that Billboard publishes every week. Rankings combine record sales, radio airplay and, today, streaming counts as well. Reaching number one on this chart is considered the most iconic success in American popular music. It is a bit like a class voting each week on its favorite school-lunch menu and pinning the result to the bulletin board, except that the class is all of America.
Orchestration
(Meaning) It means to fit music to an orchestra (gwanhyeonakdan, 'wind-and-string ensemble'). In Korean it is also called gwanhyeonak pyeongok ('orchestral arrangement'). (In pop) The work of taking an existing melody and harmony and assigning which instrument plays which passage. The same song feels completely different when played on piano alone and when it is divided among brass, strings and drums. Joel won a Tony Award for reworking his own songs for the stage band of the musical Movin' Out. It is like music class, when the same children's song is split among recorder, xylophone and tambourine groups, and someone decides who plays which part.
Residency
(Meaning) The English word "residency" means living or dwelling in a place. Here it means settling into one venue to perform. (In pop) Instead of touring from city to city, a singer performs regularly at a single venue over a set period. Las Vegas shows are the classic example; from 2014 to 2024, Joel kept up a residency at New York's Madison Square Garden, taking the stage once a month. It is like a sports team that, instead of traveling to away games, plays every week at the same home stadium. (Elsewhere) In medicine, residency is the period of hospital training a doctor undergoes to become a specialist, and that doctor is called a resident.