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May 9, 1949 - Present
1950 | 1960
| 1970 | 1980
| 1990 | 2000
1949:
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.
1960:
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.
1970:
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),
1980: 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.
1990:
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.
2001:
Billy Joel is alive and well touring America with Elton John in the "Face
To Face Tour".
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Biography