Billy Joel
Billy Joel
William Martin "Billy" Joelis an American pianist, singer-songwriter and composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States. His compilation album Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2 is one of the best-selling albums in the US...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth9 May 1949
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I hate making videos. Songs are not visual. You get it out of the air. You don't watch it on MTV.
I look at some of the songs I wrote years ago and I can't believe I wrote such crap.
I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording.
I started just concentrating on songwriting when I was abut 20; I'd been in rock bands six or seven years, kinda got that out of my system, I said, "ok, you ain't gonna be a rock star, you don't look like a rock star, it probably ain't gonna happen. So what you should do is write songs and maybe other people will do your songs."
I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.
I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.
I was thinking of the Four Seasons, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and when I was thinking "Uptown Girl!" I was trying to sing like Frankie Valli. They had a song called "Ragdoll," which was about a poor girl and a rich guy. So I just flipped it around and made it about a rich girl and a poor guy.
I actually wrote the song first as "well, it's 9 o'clock on a Saturday." That bit. Then I said, You know what? It needs some kind of an introduction to kind of set the mood and set the flavor. So I just played this kind of cocktail lounge thing, the hustle and bustle of waitresses going by - that kind of thing.
I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 - to meet women.
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.'
My songs are like my kids.
Don't go changing, to try and please me You never let me down before.
She's got a way about her, And everywhere she goes, a million dreams of love surround her, everywhere.
Sing us a song you're the piano man. Sing us a song tonight. Cause we're all in the mood for a melody, And you've got us feeling all right.