In January 1990, Nestor Aparicio interviewed Billy Joel during the Stormfront Tour. Joel discussed his motivation for touring despite financial struggles and past business mismanagement. He highlighted the new chemistry in his band, which revitalized his performances. Joel also reflected on his experiences in the Soviet Union, which he considered a career highlight. He expressed a desire to teach music in the future and shared his thoughts on the challenges of balancing family life with his career. Joel emphasized the importance of fun and spontaneity in his music, aiming to avoid the monotony that had previously set in.
The Piano Man told the story of managers and the music business ripping him off during a lengthy and very candid interview with Nestor Aparicio, who was the pop music critic for The Evening Sun in Baltimore from 1986 through 1992.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Billy Joel, Stormfront Tour, Christie Brinkley, financial struggles, new band chemistry, Soviet Union, family life, teaching aspirations, album success, touring demands, music business, creative process, audience connection, production techniques, future plans
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Billy Joel
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Welcome back wnst Rock week. I am Nestor, and I am presenting a whole bunch of really cool interviews that I did back in the 1980s and early 1990s when I was the pop music critic at the Baltimore Evening Sun and before that, the Baltimore news American, my stuff was syndicated and lots of places. And this one’s a unique one, because, you know, there’s a handful of the really big interviews that I had done with folks that now, 30 years later, are Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and icons. And as you’ll hear throughout the series, whether it’s the black crows and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in their infancy or REM in their prime, then there are just sort of the icons. And this next interview is Billy Joel. Billy Joel called in to my radio show in 1998 when he canceled the show, but it was only because I knew him from 1990 and I’m a old school Billy Joel fan. All of these rock interviews that I’m presenting. I love music so much as a kid. Sticks was the first concert I ever went to, but Billy Joel was very early on in that after the glass houses tour, and he had his problems and his motorcycle accidents and all the hits you know from you may be right and still rock and roll to me, and of course, Piano Man was iconic. But this interview was from 1990 and I had seen Billy Joel, oh, geez, probably eight or nine times at that point, at the spectrum and at the Capitol center, back and forth. And I know he played Baltimore shows. He played at the bayou, you know, famously in the 70s, before he was a star. And of course, you know, sitting out in LA and tickle on the keyboard. This is a very, very extensive interview. I I was actually shocked when I went back, because I hadn’t listened to any of these interviews since I actually did the interviews back in 1989 1919, 9090, 91 so it had been a quarter of a century before I ever unearthed any of this stuff. And I’m just shocked at how long he is a time he spent with me. I actually met him at the show. And this the era is January, 1990s when this actual interview took place, was a storm front tour. He had played in Moscow. He was still married to Christie Brinkley. His daughter was five years old. We had, at one point during our conversation, discussed taking care of children, because his daughter and my son are the same age. We talked about the music business, and he talked about wanting to teach later in life and not write songs. I find it fascinating that 25 years later, he still plays, you know, the Raven stadium and packs him in and still plays Madison Square Garden once a month. And many of these older interviews, these were, you know, guys that were getting up on 40 years of age, which felt really old to anyone in the Rock and Roll business and but I grew up listening to Billy Joel. This was a four or five years into interviewing musicians, so I was a little bit more comfortable. But as you will hear in this and every one of these old school interviews, there was a very awkward 22 year old version of me talking to Billy Joel, who I idolized and worshiped. So there’s a couple of these in my catalog. This is the original interview. It’s extensive. It’s 38 minutes long, and as in all of these interviews, sometimes it gets a little uncomfortable between journalist and musician, and most of the musicians did not like journalists, most of the critics were just that they were critics. So was they were used to being combative, especially Billy Joel, on the phone with critics and but this is one of my favorite interviews. I think you’ll dig it. If you dig Billy Joel, you can laugh at me a little bit, because, certainly a quarter of a century later I have to laugh at myself. This is Billy Joel, about to play the Capitol center in 1990 on the storm front tour, and this is what it sounded like.
Billy Joel 03:50
Hello, hi. Can I speak with Nestor? Please? This
Nestor Aparicio 03:53
is Nestor. This is Billy Joel, how are you good? How you doing? Oh, okay, sir. I guess we did this a little earlier than we expected.
Billy Joel 04:01
But last time were you? Oh, no, this
Nestor Aparicio 04:03
is fine. In the last 30 minutes, I’ve come up more questions about your life, and you can probably imagine start firing. Why tour at this point? I know a couple years ago you said that the bridge to would probably be one of your last, if not your last big undertaking, and I saw you about 10 times to make sure I got my fill, and here you are back.
Billy Joel 04:25
Well, yeah, I remember I said, You know what? I probably said that at least more than halfway through the last tour, which was a year and a half long. So I was probably at least nine months into the tour, after nine months of touring. I think on every tour, I said, That’s it. I’m not going to do this again. But why tour now? Yeah, this is a really good album to do live. That’s one reason. I think part of the success. The album is due to the fact that we were thinking about playing this stuff live when we were in the studio. Part of the enthusiasm among the musicians was, I can’t wait to do this live. But also the band, there’s some new people in the band, which has kind of regenerated the impetus to perform.
Nestor Aparicio 05:23
So the old thing was getting a little stale. Yeah,
Billy Joel 05:25
it was getting stale. The chemistry between the musicians on the last album was just not there anymore. Not everybody, but just a couple people, was just getting it was getting stale. It was getting to be too much of a business. It was getting too much of a given. There wasn’t enough spontaneity, there wasn’t enough fun, there wasn’t enough friendship. And with the different change up in personnel, we’ve got a lot more good chemistry going for us. So
Nestor Aparicio 05:55
I just keep reading more and more about your financial situation, which I’m sure you don’t want to divulge too much information, but it just seems that, well, there’s
Billy Joel 06:02
another good impetus to tour. Do you need to tour? Yeah, sure do.
Nestor Aparicio 06:08
How could a guy with as many, you know, million dollar sellers as you’ve had, you know, have to go on the road at your level.
Billy Joel 06:17
Get my ex management, and they’ll show you how real quick, what
Nestor Aparicio 06:20
happened through all that? I mean, I really haven’t gotten the dirt to me Well, see, but
Billy Joel 06:24
way back before then, I mean, I was signed with a guy named already rip I don’t know if anybody knows that. Part of me goes back to the early 70s, my initial record contract. I signed away everything, like rip off. Well, you said it. I did. I don’t need any more lawsuits. But I signed away copyrights, publishing record royalties, you name it. And that took me actually up to this album, to get rid of him. And then there was my ex wife, who was my manager, who
Nestor Aparicio 06:55
took half of that, what was left, half of nothing. Well, just
Billy Joel 06:59
half of anything else I made. And then we’ve got these people who have been with me from the been with me for nine years and have pretty much dug me in as a whole. So I’m not a businessman, as you can tell, I’m a piano man, but fortunately, I can keep playing the piano long after these people has outlived their usefulness,
Nestor Aparicio 07:18
doesn’t it seem ashamed to all this has slipped away from you. It hasn’t slipped
Billy Joel 07:23
away from me. It’s been stolen and it’s been blown in bad business deals and it’s been very badly handled. It hasn’t slipped away from me. You know, slipping away is something that you’ve got to handle on. I
Nestor Aparicio 07:40
mean, just what about the I mean the emotional attachment you have to these, to your music, I mean, to the things that you I guess you’ll never see another nickel from still rock and roll to me, or any of that stuff, or you haven’t seen a nickel from it. Well, those
Billy Joel 07:54
are things I’m battling for now. Those are my children, and I will never give up, you know, trying to get my children to belong to me. But you know, the Beatles went through the same thing, and they don’t own their stuff either. What
Nestor Aparicio 08:09
about John Fogerty? Did you remember his battles, or every other talk to him about I haven’t talked to him, but I’ve
Billy Joel 08:14
read about what he’s gone through, and I have a lot of great deal of sympathy for him, because I know what it’s, what it feels like someone
Nestor Aparicio 08:19
five years ago, what was going on with him? Did you ever think it could happen to you, or did you know me five years ago? It
Billy Joel 08:24
happened to me 15 years ago. It’s been going on with me from day one. I mean, I don’t really want to get into Billy whining about his business stuff. That’s hope that’s not confusing. No, the interview that is not the impetus of the story at all. You know, I know I’ve been accused of by a number of critics of doing things for commercial reasons. Well, I always kind of bug me, and that’s why I’d get mad at critics say, Well, I thought I was doing this for the money. Don’t you think I’d be better at this? Wouldn’t that be a little bit smarter about money things?
Nestor Aparicio 08:58
So taking a tour out like this, and I guess you’re going to be on the road through 90 and maybe in the 90 1am. I correct in saying that? Or what do you plan to cut this thing off? Well,
Billy Joel 09:08
we’re going to go as long as there’s a demand for tickets. We toured for a year and a half on the bridge album, and this album has already gone past the bridge album. We’ve only been out for a month, so I’m assuming that will tour for at least that long, and maybe longer.
Nestor Aparicio 09:24
I keep reading things more and more about your your want for family life and want for being settled and normal. How does you know this is this is not normal to go out or not. This
Billy Joel 09:36
is completely abnormal. Fortunately, the schedule is such that every six weeks I’m going to go home and I’m going to stop be home for two weeks, which is better than the last schedule we had, because the way it was arranged by these other people the last time, I never got a two week break, but I will this time, and also my child is in nursery school. And she can come and see me on the road for extended periods of time. It’s not like she’s going to miss English Lit, you know, right, right, but it is going to be a strain on not being with my family and spending, you know, another year and a half at least in hotels and airports, is not my idea of fun. Thank God that the musicians are good people, and I’m enjoying playing with them, but this is probably one of the things I’m most bitter about with these other these people who did this to me. That’s not just the money, it’s what they’ve done to my life. I always wanted my kid to have a father now she don’t.
Nestor Aparicio 10:38
Now they pulled you away from your family, in essence, and that that makes you even more bitter than more bitter than than any the other thing that I assume, yeah, okay, I’m going
Billy Joel 10:46
to make sure that my family stays together. If they screwed up my family, then they would really win. You know, money is one thing, because
Nestor Aparicio 10:55
you can make more money, hopefully trying. All right, so was there something about the last tour that you liked it to get you back out into this mess? Was the USSR thing at the end. That
Billy Joel 11:09
was the highlight. I think that’s probably the highlight of my life as a musician. Was playing in the Soviet Union. I don’t know if anything’s really going to top that, even though this tour right now starting out to be like, probably the most successful tour we’ll ever do, because we’re playing all these multiples. I mean, we we’ve been in like three cities for a month. I’m not used to that. I actually unpack my suitcase.
Nestor Aparicio 11:37
So it’s not, it’s not so bad that you’re like hopping from Marina to Reena every
Billy Joel 11:42
night. No, it’s not, it’s not kamikaze rocking, normal rock and roll touring with bang, bang, bang, one, no one nighters. We’ve just, you know, we’ve been staying in one city for a week at a time, because we do so many days I actually put, I actually use the drawers in the in the hotel rooms. I’ve never done that, so why not? And they’re hangers. I’m actually using their hangers. Why not wait to the good weather and
Nestor Aparicio 12:05
go out and play stadiums like the other big acts of your vein tend to do? Well, I don’t think that’s the way to see Billy Joel, but, but to send my point,
Billy Joel 12:16
I just the album came out when it came out, and I’m not going to wait around for the summer time for good weather. I mean, I live in the Northeast. I know what cold weather is like. Let’s go play if the demand gets to the point where, you know, we have to, I mean, there’s, there’s an actual point where you have to do staying with the ticket demand is so great that you have to literally burn yourself out by doing one venue in one city like so long you you know I’m saying, right? It doesn’t even make economic sense anymore to tour at that point, because your expenses are so incredibly high to stay in one place for that long
Nestor Aparicio 13:00
with all those people, without buying a condo, yeah,
Billy Joel 13:03
without just getting married, settling down, having a family. But we, we’re doing some big places. We’re doing this place up in Syracuse, which is an indoor stadium, Carrie dome, the Carrier Dome. We’re doing a, I think we’re doing a stadium down in Tampa, Florida. Can we go down south? The rest of them are multiples. Who knows what’s going to happen, but by this summer, we may have to come back and do some stadiums. I don’t know if that’s the best way to see me, but damn it, I’m going to make sure it’s the best show we can do in that kind of venue. I’ve done stadiums before. I’ve done the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. I did a stadium in the hell was it? A couple of them in New Zealand and Australia. I’ve done some stadiums. We can actually do it. But right now, Kyle, same show is pretty damn good,
Nestor Aparicio 13:54
though. I bet you’re going to be here Wednesday. I went to see it. Now the USSR. Getting back to that a little bit. Did you see the wall crumbling, so to speak, when you were over there? Did you see this Glasnost thing happening? Well,
Billy Joel 14:07
when I was there in 87 I knew that it was a time of incredible transition and change. It felt like the 60s. I wasn’t really in Eastern Europe. I was in the big onion. I was in Moscow, right, right, and you could tell that there was an incredible palpable excitement about change in the air. Really felt like the 60s. Looked like the 40s, felt like the 60s. And I guess the response we got from the audience was was really encouraging. Was really hard for me. The Cold War ended in 1987 when I went there and I played, boom, that was it. I wasn’t going to bomb them. They weren’t going to bomb us. So McCarthyism is over. Well, I never really bought into it, but to see it with my own eyes was really gratifying. I. To know that what I had felt all along was was was right. You know, I mean, I used to announce in the states that I was going to play in the Soviet Union back in 86 and they blew and they was disappointed. They said, Hey, man, they like rock and roll too. And I went over there, and they went nuts. They were the I reacted just like, like a Detroit heavy metal crowd, they went nuts, broke the chairs, everybody got in trouble, which is what should happen in a good rock and
Nestor Aparicio 15:27
roll, which used to what used to happen. Now they have crowd control. Yeah. Was it your idea to
Billy Joel 15:34
go? Well, we played in Cuban, 79 Cubans. Why can’t we play for the Russians? And one of the things I wanted to do, the only way we could make the money back, was to make these films over there and bring them back and try and market them in America to try to cover the expense of the whole trip. And the biggest comment I got from people here was, hey, they look just like us. I say, Yeah, you get it, people too, yeah, they like rock and roll too. They’re just like you Oh, wow, are people. Are you scared to be there? Wife, a lot safer there. And this is Manhattan, especially when
Nestor Aparicio 16:17
you got a little bit of entourage with you and a little bit of notoriety. Yeah. So would you go back over there now? And would you like to play East Germany and Romania and the other places that maybe you could or couldn’t have gotten into three years ago? They
Billy Joel 16:27
still do that. We’re gonna, we’re planning a European tour in May. The only problem is they don’t pay the amount of money that they come up they offer Western artists is not enough to cover like half of the roadies wages for a day.
Nestor Aparicio 16:46
So you might be going over just to build the little friendship base and try to get some people to buy some albums at some point. I
Billy Joel 16:51
don’t know how they’re going to buy out. The only way they’re going to buy albums is to go to the west. They’re still not there’s no record deal in the Soviet Union.
Nestor Aparicio 16:59
I mean the places that are falling now, as we you know, we speak the East Germany and the
Billy Joel 17:04
Romanians, if it was economically feasible for me to play, but I don’t see that happening right away. I think it’s going to take quite a while. We may be able to go to East Berlin, and we may be able to play in West Berlin, actually have East Berliners come. I was asked by solidarity a few years ago to come and do a concert there, before all this stuff went down, and I was really excited about the prospect of it. Then I looked at the telegram and I realized they sent it to me two weeks after the concert happened. They don’t have it all together yet.
Nestor Aparicio 17:38
That’s like Dark Ages, facts, is the way we work in America. So would it seem like a little the second trip wouldn’t be as good as the first? If you were ever to go back to Moscow? Would I think would be a terrific,
Billy Joel 17:52
a wonderful renewal to be able to do it? But as I said, they’ve got to join the world market in terms of how finance works. They asked me, when I was leading the last time, and how can we get more artists to come here? And said, you really got to come up with a few quid, Johnny, not that we want to. We want to rip you off or exploit you, because we’re capitalists. It’s just that we don’t want to get punished for coming here. Break even. Break Even would be fine. I think a lot of artists like to do that. Even the possibility of coming out a little bit ahead would even attract more people. That’s the way the world works.
Nestor Aparicio 18:32
So I assume you’re not planning on touring forever, and I’ve seen something about you wanting to teach now. What are your plans for 10 years from now on. How do you expect to put something like that into into work?
Billy Joel 18:45
Well, I don’t have any real plan for 10 years from now, I would hope that I’m not still on a rock and roll lined circuit. Of course, Jagger said that, and he’s still doing it.
Nestor Aparicio 18:56
And he’s 40 something, 4746
Billy Joel 19:01
those guys are still blasting away. You got the job done? Yeah, yeah. I don’t know. You know, maybe 10 years from now, I want to do this again. I can’t, I can’t conceive how that would be possible 10 years from now, but maybe it will be, I don’t know, just to prove it to my kids, see, I’m
Nestor Aparicio 19:16
not an old but
Billy Joel 19:20
I don’t know. I really do enjoy when I’ve done seminars and lectures at colleges. I’ve got all this technical information flying around in my head, so I never get to use and so do a lot of other musicians and writers and people in music. And usually when you when you do interviews, you get asked questions about your career or about general questions about music and interesting stuff like that. He gets asked questions like, Why did I write a certain song in the key of B flat? You know what I mean, right? And these are questions which really are very technical, and actually, and I’m an expert on these things, and you. Can actually help students of music by answering questions like this, and that’s happened a lot. Whenever I do seminars, we do a question and answer, and it’s probably one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done, answering these questions and knowing that you’re actually helping somebody in their life, technically. So that may be a future form of touring for me, actually going out and playing, well, not playing, I mean doing a question and answer in a theater or in a lecture hall that’s either open to the public or for schools, you know, maybe playing a few songs on a piano, showing people how things got written, and talking about the music business and trying to advise people to avoid the mistakes I’ve made in the music business, things like that. You know, there’s a time to be an athlete and there’s a time to be a coach, and I’m, I’m looking at that coaching time now, I don’t think, I think it’s the natural progression of things, but
Nestor Aparicio 20:53
no one else does it, as far as you know this, this would, you’d be the innovator of the lecture touring circuit,
Billy Joel 21:00
maybe. So I don’t think it’s been explored yet. I think a lot of people would be very interested in something like this. I know when I was starting out, when I was a teenager, I would have loved to have been able to go to a theater somewhere and ask questions of somebody like John Lennon or Bob Dylan. You know, I think it would have been very helpful for me.
Nestor Aparicio 21:19
Does it seem unrealistic at this point, if you could ever pull that off being who you are. No, I’ve
Billy Joel 21:24
done it before. I don’t see why I wouldn’t be able to do it again. It matters. Fact, it would simplify any kind of performance thing for me. I mean, look, I wouldn’t be traveling around with all these people and all this equipment, all these trucks, and I wouldn’t have to be paying for all these hotel rooms and all this travel. It would probably just be me and one or two other people and just be a pretty easy way to get around.
Nestor Aparicio 21:49
All right. Well, getting back to this album a little bit on how do you write the music under, under the pressures that you’re under, as far as you know, paying the bills and stuff like that, things that you might that other people in your position don’t have to worry about. I mean, for being, you know, a world renowned performer, I mean, you got a lot of problems. I mean, I guess, just like
Billy Joel 22:08
the rest of us, but that actually is a great source of material. I mean, whenever you whenever you don’t have problems, whenever you are out of what the mainstream of life is, I don’t really think you have anything to write about anymore. To me, being a human being is dealing with problems. It’s confronting them and dealing with them and having them, worrying about them and getting over them and enjoying, get enjoying having gotten over I find, I guess, all the inspiration for the stuff I write about comes out of the experience of being a human being. A lot of people say, Wow, now that you’re rich and you’re married to the supermodel, you’ve got it made How can you write about anything? I said, Look, even if you think I got it made you think when I walk in the door that she’s a supermodel and I’m a rock star, we don’t look at each other like People magazine covers, you know, we’re a man and a woman, and we do the, you know, the same kind of things that men and women do.
Nestor Aparicio 23:12
My boss told me to ask you about your shopping experience. Did you tell a great story about going into places and buying diapers for your daughter way back when. And I guess it seemed like way back when now, and just people bumping into you and saying, Hey, are you Billy Joel? And what do you say to them?
Billy Joel 23:29
Well, I see, yeah, you know, here I am. What are you doing here? Shopping. You’re shopping. I’m not sure what the story that he’s talking about,
Nestor Aparicio 23:41
but it’s like, they think you pay somebody to do your shopping or something like that. Do you think that’s the general I would
Billy Joel 23:47
imagine some he didn’t want to drive around the car. People say, What are you doing driving like, what am I supposed to have my own private rocket ship or something? I do the same things everybody else does. And, you know, I’ve got a family, I’ve got a body, and I have medical things, like other people, I we have a great deal in common. Most people think that, if they read about you, that everything’s perfect, like your world is perfect, and that’s not how it works. I found that money has created more problems than it’s solved. As a matter of fact, Money makes people do very weird, bad, inhuman things. So I don’t think you got it made, really, until you’re dead, and then it’s too late
Nestor Aparicio 24:32
and you still have some of the answers. As far as the hurricane flag on the front of your cover. Explain this to me, I think it’s really a neat symbolism, Catcher in the Rye and that kind of thing.
Billy Joel 24:45
It does represent a storm. I don’t want to get into the trap of explaining what it is, but it does represent a force pen on the Beaufort scale, which is a hurricane. It’s the worst possible weather conditions that there are, and it’s. Warning. That means don’t go out to sea. There’s a storm front coming. I
Nestor Aparicio 25:07
think hurricanes are interesting anyway, because once you get hit with the front side, it stops, and then you get hit again, sort of like life got
Billy Joel 25:15
that little calm in the middle, and then here it comes, and it’s going in the opposite direction now. But that doesn’t mean you know you just you stay in bed. I mean, you got to go out and you got to fight the elements. I think for me personally, that that symbol represented a great deal of turbulence that I knew was going to be coming in my life. At that particular time, I knew this lawsuit was going to happen. They didn’t, but I did. There was going to be a great deal of upheaval going on with me, but that’s, you know, that happens. It’s like, you have a good year, you’re going to have a bad year.
Nestor Aparicio 25:56
So life is said you you went out to Long Island, just rented a little house and did some ditties up on the piano. And this is turned into the storm front.
Billy Joel 26:05
Well, I live out there. I mean, I have a house that’s way out on the east end of Long Island already. I just went a little bit further
Nestor Aparicio 26:13
past Montauk. Well, I
Billy Joel 26:15
went to hold on one second, sure. Yeah, we’re talking about Long Island, right? Oh, yeah, where I live, it’s just, just before you get to Montauk, and I can’t work at home, not with the family there. I have to go out and go to work. Otherwise, why work? You know, I’ll play with my kids, right? So I rented a house just a few miles away, out in month. How does the show reflect the changes in Billy Joel, as far as
Nestor Aparicio 26:48
the whole thing going on with the money and knowing you have to tour and, well, I
Billy Joel 26:52
don’t have to tour. I mean, you don’t have to do anything with pay taxes and die, right?
Nestor Aparicio 27:01
How does it reflect once? It seems like, I mean, I remember Vienna, and yes, my part of my favorite song by you. And it seems like, well, you’ve reached Vienna and and it still isn’t good enough at some point. You know, well, Vienna. What I meant by Vienna was an old age, and I’m just in middle age now. I just hit middle age. You should be relaxing. Is there reason you should be around the country like this.
Billy Joel 27:22
It’s true, but I tell you what, the way we used to tour and the way I’m touring now is a lot more relaxed. I’m very happy with the band. I’m really happy playing this album, and it’s been a successful record, and the tourist is more successful than any other tour we’ve had. So on the one hand, all that is pretty damn good. On the other hand, you know, nine months, I’m gonna hate this, you know, I’m gonna want to get off the road, but I’ll keep doing it. You know, as long as it’s fun, if it gets to be, yeah, if it gets to be slavery and indentured servitude, I’m going to jump off, you know, right? It’s really not good to do it like that, but I got a feeling we’re going to be able to do this for quite a while, especially with the new band. And I think on stage, there’s just a lot of fun going on. We really are having fun. The women in the band have made a lot of difference. This is a little bit of tension up there, which I think is good between the sexes, and it makes for interesting, interesting stage craft. So
Nestor Aparicio 28:34
what kind of things you put in the show? And there’s a changing area, and the last time I saw you, you were you were changing from night to night. I went one night thinking you were open, running on ice, you were opening with matter trust, or something like that. And just,
Billy Joel 28:46
we’re still changing it. I think it’s always going to change. And just when you think you’ve got it nailed in one town, you go to another town, and the responses are different in different places.
Nestor Aparicio 28:56
So you adjust. You’re constantly dissecting the set. And always, yeah, I
Billy Joel 29:02
think if you, if you lock yourself into one set, it’s a big mistake, because you’re going to start getting bored, and it’s going to be start to be going on automatic pilot, which is not the right way to play. You should play with some edge. There should be some tension up there, and there should also be fun.
Nestor Aparicio 29:21
So if you mean you said you’re playing three and four or five days at a time in certain cities, do you think there are people coming off our shows? I don’t know. Somebody told me that they went to every show in the last city we hit, which I think is nuts. So you didn’t the same thing every night? No, they got a different show every night. Well, tickets just went on sale here this morning for and you’ve added another show now here, like March 3, or something like that down the road. I don’t feel that you’re tearing up and putting up and pulling down every other night, it seems like. But does that affect your set at all when you make decisions as far as what goes in, what comes out?
Billy Joel 29:56
Well, with the backbone of the show remains. Are pretty much the same. There are certain songs we’ll always do, but then there are optional songs through alternates. By the time we hit Landover, I don’t know what the sets going to be. I tell you the truth, we’ll do a set tonight.
Nestor Aparicio 30:18
Where are you tonight? By the way,
Billy Joel 30:19
tonight, we’re in Hartford, Hartford, and then Monday, we have another show here. It’ll probably change again. And after that show, we’ll, you know, probably come up with something else for Washington. So who knows?
Nestor Aparicio 30:34
I see you in Philly every now and then, and you do Captain Jack there all the time. What’s, what’s the inside joke? I never do really get that. Well,
Billy Joel 30:41
that’s the city that really started my career as a recording artist. I had done a radio show.
Nestor Aparicio 30:49
Gee, hang on, I got to flip my Kate. Is that? All right?
Billy Joel 30:53
Play this song, and it became the most requested song in the city of Philadelphia’s history. So, there was all this big excitement about this guy. Billy Joel, who the heck is this guy? And what kind of places were you playing at this point, we were playing clubs. We were opening up for the Beach Boys and the Doobie Brothers and the Jay Giles band. Nobody really had heard of me. Anybody big that came through you got on the opening echo, you could sell some tickets. I don’t think we’re selling any tickets at all. I think we were just kind of put there as a favor to the the agent, you know, they asked the group’s manager, please, let me have this guy on the bill, because I think he’s going to be, you know, something interesting in the future. And that’s pretty much what it was when we got to Philadelphia. The place went nuts. What the heck is going on here? And then we heard the story about what happened with camp and Jack. So that’s why I do it in Philadelphia. It’s the only place that, as a matter of fact, the last time we played there, I didn’t even do it. You catch any flack the first night we did it, and then I said, let’s see what happens if we don’t do it. We didn’t do it, and I didn’t catch any flag. So we’ll see Philly’s famous. They’ve been pretty good to me, though,
Nestor Aparicio 32:06
yeah. I mean, it’s a good rock and roll town and all that. But it’s just, I know they’re tough on our sports people as far as the hits go. I mean, how gratifying is it to have another number one song now after five years or something? I mean, did you did you see a number one hit on the bridge when you wrote it? Some of that
Billy Joel 32:22
stuff, to tell you the truth, I really don’t think about number one hits. When I make an album, I write an album, I write on it, and I sit down, okay, here’s an album. And then I hand it in the records cup, and I say, here now it’s your turkey. You guys figure it out. I don’t really think about what’s a hit or not. I think about what I like on a record, and after that, it’s pretty much their decision what’s going to be a single or not on the bridge. I wasn’t happy with the bridge album because I thought about half of it I like and half that I don’t like. I think I could have done better had I spent more time on it. I thought towards the
Nestor Aparicio 33:01
end, it just seemed like it started to move real fast with the lopper song and the wind with song. I thought the beginning was it just seemed like you put a lot more time in the beginning. In the end is, am I correct saying that or no, probably did
Billy Joel 33:13
all more interest in the record. And then halfway through, it kind of petered out, because the band, it was a drag working with the band at that point, the magic just wasn’t there with Phil Ramone, like it used to be, I was getting an incredible amount of pressure from my ex management to get the thing out so they could get their piece of it. And I would also just had a kid, and I really didn’t want to spend my life in a studio. So I can hear the seams in that album, I see the rivets, and it doesn’t thrill me, which is why this album is so different. The whole pre, pre premise, actually, if this new album was I want to have fun. God damn it, I’m going to have fun. And if it ain’t fun, I’m going to walk away, and then I’ll start it up again, but I’m not going to stay in there if it ain’t fun. And I think it shows on the record that there’s a lot of fun on this one.
Nestor Aparicio 34:07
When did you bring Nick make challenge in?
Billy Joel 34:12
Where did we start? We got off on a tangent. Somehow.
Nestor Aparicio 34:16
We started between the bridge and storm front somewhere, and making these albums, and went into making these albums, and why one is a hit, one?
Billy Joel 34:23
Did you hear any hits on the bridge? Number one? You know what? We had a number one. And I know 52nd street album was a number one album, and like, a stranger was like a number two album. I mean, at that point, you know you’re number two. What’s the difference? All right? So you’re not number one, but you like you’re not number 89 either. You know what I mean, right? Number one, I think, means a lot in this business, but I think that’s that’s a competitive thing. The thrill for us is like platinum records. The thrill for us is sold out shows. The thrill for us is an album that lasts all. Long time on the charts, which means it’s got legs. Number one. I’d had number one records like tell her about it was number one and uptown girl was number three, but Uptown Girl sold more than tell her about it. So number one can be very misleading. It’s just a number, but it means a lot to a lot of people in this business. So it’s gratifying for me to know that the people who have hung out with me for so long, the same sound guy, the same light man, the same drummer. It meant a lot to them to have a number one record. That’s that. That’s what’s gratifying about number one, that, you know, those people can go and say, Yeah, we just had a number one record. For me, it’s not that meaningful. I
Nestor Aparicio 35:44
talked to some people from capital A few weeks ago, some ANR people, and this, this kind of things. And they talked to McCartney when he was in New York a few weeks ago, and they said that he just seemed like he wanted to hit so badly because he hasn’t had one in so long, and he just hasn’t had maybe the ego trip, maybe whatever, what you know, just wants to know they can still cut the mustard, you know, so to speak with, with the public. And did you ever feel any of that, or did you think when sore fro came out, well, maybe it’ll sell, maybe it won’t, or not.
Billy Joel 36:13
I really wasn’t worried about it, because all the albums that came out before this one had sold millions of albums, right? I mean, I may not have been number one, but I was never out of the top 10. Every album that we came in, I think the bridge went to like number seven, and innocent man was number three. The nylon curtain was somewhat like a number five. Top Five album, The Greatest Hits album was a top 10 album. They’ve all been in the top 10, and they sold, each sold millions of albums in their own right. So I guess it’s like the Michael Jackson curse. Once you’ve done a thriller, everything else after that looks like a flop, right? No matter how many millions of records you sell. And it’s a deadly game that people can get caught up in. And I really haven’t been caught up in it, to tell you the truth. And if I become an anachronism, and it’s proven to me that my music is extinct and radio will not play it, and people don’t want to hear it, and nobody buys it, hey, I’ll go through something else, you know, but I’ll always be a musician. It really don’t bother me. So you’ll write songs forever, even if no one ever gets to hear them. Or I can write songs for other people. I can write music that isn’t even songs. I can write music that has no lyric. And I can write instrumental music, symphonic music, piano music, music for movies, maybe music for Broadway and Broadway musical. I mean, there’s no there shouldn’t be any limitation to what kind of music you can write.
Nestor Aparicio 37:43
Have you ever considered any of those avenues to say, to hell with this rock and roll? I’m going to run a musical. Or have you ever gotten to the point where you just getting fed up with this? Or
Billy Joel 37:52
I haven’t done it yet, but I’m sure that a day is going to come pretty soon when I’m going to do that, when I get tired of the music business Rat Race game where, Yo, you got up, hey, top three, number five, eight, top five. Putnam, double, double platinum pick tour and say, Hey, hell with this man. You know, I want to try something else. I As matter of fact, I look at this part of my life as maybe a journeymanship where I’m going to be doing something else soon. You know, you look at these guy, Irving Berlin, live to be 101 what’s gonna happen in Billy Joel, he lives in the under but I think being productive is one of the things that keeps you alive. You know, Toscanini live to be in his 90s. The Cosby, the same thing, Rachmaninoff, Rubenstein, they all live to be old guys because they were productive. I think if you just, you know, you ride to the top of the heap and pop music and then you disappear. I think you’re not going to live too long. You know, I got a whole life to live. Do you need the roar of the crowd, though? No, I sure don’t. It’s fun to hear it. But that’s not why I do what I’m doing. I know that people, there are people who need that they crave, like the love of an audience. I got the love of a really good woman. I got the love of my child and my friends. I really don’t need love beyond that, but I like to play
Nestor Aparicio 39:16
all right with Mick. Now back to question number two. When did you bring him in, and was it through Mark Rivera that you knew Mick? Or no,
Billy Joel 39:26
I had met Mick a number of times, on and off, just socially backstage. I met him at a Steve Wynwood show, and I met him with John winter, and I met him with a couple of different people that I know. He’s always very kind of nice and polite. You know, hi, Mick, hey, doing a little chit chat, and that was it. But I was talking to Eddie Van Halen about doing CO production on this album, and Eddie was excited about doing it, and I wanted to work with him, but the schedules just didn’t work out, and he recommended Mick Jones and. Because he had worked with Nick boy 5150
Nestor Aparicio 40:02
boy ripped it off. Yeah.
Billy Joel 40:06
He said, you know, check out, Nick so I said, Well, okay. And then I was talking with someone about mutt Lang, and then I heard that mutt Lang also worked with Nick. His name kept coming back. Nick Jones, Nick Jones, Nick Jones, I call them up. You want to talk about doing something? We got together, and in five minutes, I just hit it off with this guy. We just knew we were going to be able to work together. He’s a songwriter himself, and he’s a guitarist, very good guitarist, by the way, and that gives him an insight into what I do. He’s also English, and the English are kind of kinky in terms of production. I like English records. They have strange, perverted things going on in them. They’re very adventurous that you don’t find a lot of American records. Americans tend to be very traditional approach to the recording technique. And the British kind of come in and they use whips and chains and, you know, incense, weird stuff, you know. I mean, just a very, very light hearted approach to the recording studio.
Nestor Aparicio 41:11
Where will we be without the punk movement?
Billy Joel 41:14
Even before that, you go back to
Nestor Aparicio 41:16
the Beatles British Invasion, they called
Billy Joel 41:19
it, and then you go into listen to some of these records by Hendrix that were done in England, or cream Clapton, yeah. And then you listen to these Led Zeppelin productions of what Jimmy Page did in the studio with Led Zeppelin. It’s amazing stuff. So there’s a launch edition of British production that I’ve always admired, and I gotta finally get a chance to do with Nick
Nestor Aparicio 41:40
All right? Well, no, it’s
Billy Joel 41:41
good. It’s called drums in your face. It’s
Nestor Aparicio 41:45
a big beat. All right. Well, I certainly appreciate your time. And you know, spend a 45 minutes on the phone. I think it’s the longest interview I’ve ever done, but I appreciate you talking me today in Hartford, and I.
