Billy Joel
by
Chris Micheals
"Piano Man" Billy Joel was a glue-sniffing, belligerent hood
during his youth. His father, Howard, a Jew who immigrated to New
York via Cuba after surviving internment in the Dachau concentration
camp, settled his wife Rosalind and their two children in Levittown,
New York, where the seed of young Billy's discontent took root.
Levittown, built in the years following World War II to offset the
housing crunch created by returning vets, was by design a rabbit
warren of tract houses, executed in mind-numbing sameness. For
William "Billy" Martin Joel, the alienation he felt living in the
oppressive suburban development erupted into rebellion, sprees of
gang crime, general antisocial hell-raising, and, fortuitously,
music.
When the spirit of the British invasion blew across the
country in the early sixties, Joel became convinced that he, too,
could achieve coolness by performing in a band; suddenly, the pansy
piano lessons his father and mother (by then they had divorced, and
Howard had returned to Europe) made him take as a youngster seemed
pardonable. Never having taken to his parents' musical predilections
(his father was a classically trained pianist), Billy fancied
boogie-woogie, rock and roll, and early soul. He formed a group
called the Echoes; bedecked with blue jackets and velvet collars in
knock-off Beatles fashion, they took the Teen Canteen at Hicksville
High by storm. The Echoes saw a couple of name changes--the Emerald
Lords, the Lost Souls--but no change in status or recognition. Joel,
still struggling against his shabby economic and social
circumstances, was denied his high school diploma due to excessive
absenteeism, ran away from home, and was arrested on suspicion of
burglary. The charges were dropped, but a terrifying night in jail
did little to build a happy outlook on life.
Joel had his first glimmer of rock-and-roll hope at
eighteen, when he joined the Hassles, a relatively popular club band.
In the late sixties, the group cut two forgettable albums, The
Hassles and Hour of the Wolf, before breaking up. Joel fell back onto
hard times after the dissolution of the Hassles: his longtime
girlfriend broke up with him, and the distraught young man attempted
suicide by drinking furniture polish. When that didn't solve the
problem, he committed himself to the mental ward at Meadowbrook
Hospital for three weeks observation and quickly discovered that he
was quite sane. A Thorazine nightmare, the hospital visit steeled his
resolve to make it in rock and roll, and after checking himself out
of the ward, he formed a two-man psychedelic band, called Attila,
with Hassles' drummer Jon Small. The duo released one self-titled
album, which flopped.
Joel didn't have any more luck with his next project--a
solo album called Cold Spring Harbor, which was mismastered to the
point that he sounded like Alvin the Chipmunk. Embittered by the
album's failure and the frustration of having signed away his
publishing royalties, Joel and his girlfriend (and future wife and
manager) Elizabeth Weber took off to Los Angeles, where he played in
piano bars under the pseudonym Bill Martin. In 1973, good fortune
finally stumbled into Joel's life in the form of a contract with
Columbia Records; that year, he released Piano Man, which sold over a
million copies. But Joel's dark cloud wouldn't seem to go away: he
earned a whopping $7,763 for his effort.
His next album, Streetlife Serenade, delivered up his
first Top 40 hit, "The Entertainer," which articulates the
bittersweet reality of a performer's life--something Joel was all too
familiar with. In 1977, he broke through commercially in a big way.
The Stranger went multi-platinum and yielded five huge hits, one of
which, "Just the Way You Are," earned him a Grammy Award for Song of
the Year. By the end of 1979, sales of The Stranger had surpassed the
five-million mark. Joel could finally thumb his nose at the critics
whose lumps he had endured for his economy of style and apparent
disdain for addressing issues of the era. His acerbic themes and the
structure of his anthems--which merged Tin Pan Alley composition with
Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney sensibilities--began to attract
hordes of fans, and his follow-up albums, 52nd Street (1979), Glass
Houses (1980), Songs in the Attic (1981), Nylon Curtain (1982), and
An Innocent Man (1983) all went platinum. His subsequent releases,
Greatest Hits, Volumes 1 & 2 (1985), The Bridge (1986), Kohuept
(the record of his 1987 concert in Leningrad), Storm Front (1989),
and the critically acclaimed River of Dreams (1993), have sustained
his gilded winning streak.
Joel made headlines in 1985 for his second marriage, to
"Uptown Girl" model Christie Brinkley--the unlikely couple met and
became involved, in 1983, after Joel's divorce and Brinkley's breakup
with French race-car driver Olivier Chandon. Their union yielded one
daughter, Alexa Ray (named after Ray Charles), but the couple
divorced in 1994, after Brinkley survived a close brush with death in
a helicopter crash with real estate developer Rick Taubman, whom she
married shortly thereafter. You just never know how people will react
to crisis.
Chris is a man full of energy and talent, and is able to capture any crowd
with his outstanding stage personality.
Chris has won over 100 singing contests in the New England area. His goal
in life is be to a well-known famous entertainer, and someday win a Grammy.
These are some of the songs you might hear at a show:
Piano Man
Just the Way You Are
My Life
You May be Right
Honesty
She's Always a Woman
Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
Allen Town
"An Evening With The Stars!"