How Billy Joel became “The Piano Man”

Monday's Billy Joel show at Madison Square Garden will be his 47th at the venue, and the first in a potentially never-ending monthly residency there. After Elton John and the Grateful Dead — who have played the Garden 64 and 52 times, respectively — Joel is the third-most prolific performer in the venue's history, including a record 12-show run in 2006.

Even before the residency was announced, his status as a New York institution was already chiseled in stone. Born in the Bronx in 1949 and raised in Hicksville, Long Island, William Martin Joel joined his first band, the Echoes, as a teenager. Since then, he's sold over 150 million records, received the Kennedy Center Honors and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

While Joel is a superstar now, his early days held more than their share of struggle and chaos. We spoke with people who've worked with the musician to compile an oral history of his late 1960s and '70s — when Joel's New York state of mind was often one of desperation.

Irwin Mazur (Billy's first manager): My dad had a rock 'n' roll club on Long Island called My House. So this group comes in, around 16 or 17 years old, doing top 40 songs. I didn't love the band, but I did love this kid — Billy — and I convinced him to leave his band and join mine, the Hassles.

At the time, Billy was a shy performer who often refused to face the audience.

Mazur: There was always a darkness about Billy. You ever know people who, even when they're having a good time, they're not really having a good time? I always thought it stemmed from his dad abandoning his family. [Billy's parents, Howard and Rosalind, divorced when he was around 10, and his father moved to Europe.]

In 1969, after the Hassles, Billy and the band's drummer, Jon Small, formed a heavy-metal duo called Attila. When that failed, Billy found himself adrift.

Circa 1977, Joel's band included drummer Liberty DeVitto, bassist Doug Stegmeyer, Joel and sax player Richie Cannata.Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Hank Bordowitz (author, "Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man"): Billy was trying everything to earn money. He became a rock critic for a magazine called Changes, writing reviews for $25 a pop, but he didn't like criticizing other musicians. He tried house painting, he mowed lawns. He worked at a typewriter factory, and on an oyster dredge. One guy [there] told him, "You'll get a raise when you're 40, and a pension when you're 65," and he thought, "I gotta go."

Broke, Billy would sometimes crash at a laundromat. It was a place open all night, where he could stay warm. Sometimes, he lived with Jon and his wife, Elizabeth Weber. Around this time, Billy and Elizabeth began an affair.

Bordowitz: The closet in Billy's room adjoined the closet in Jon and Elizabeth's room. Jon was a womanizer, and Elizabeth knew it. So Jon would go to work, and apparently, Billy would go to Elizabeth's room.

Billy Joel and wife Elizabeth Weber were married from 1972 to 1982.Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage

In time, the guilt of sleeping with his friend's wife — in the man's own home, no less — weighed on Billy. He wanted to come clean, but Elizabeth, who had a son with Jon, made it clear that if he told Jon, she would leave them both. The situation was driving Billy mad.

Mazur: He called me one night after midnight and asked me to meet him at a diner. So I go, and he tells me he's been having this affair, and Elizabeth is threatening to leave everybody. Billy was not in the best of places. I think he was drinking. My wife and I were living in Far Rockaway, and we took him to live with us, sleeping on our couch.

I get up one morning, and on a table are the words to a song I had never seen, called "Tomorrow is Today." One of the key lines is, "What's the use of always dreaming if tomorrow is today." It was like, "Give me the sleeping pills and let me die." It was like a suicide note. The next thing I know, Billy is in a coma at Meadowbrook Hospital. He drank furniture polish.

Billy spent about four days in the psych ward, but told Irwin that all the polish did was make him "fart lemon juice." When Irwin took him home, Billy said he was quitting the music business. He didn't, but he did eventually tell Jon that he loved Elizabeth. Jon responded by breaking Billy's nose with one punch. Elizabeth eventually left Jon for Billy.

On the musical front, Billy gave Irwin 30 days to get him a record deal. Irwin managed to get Billy's demo to Artie Ripp, who owned a small label called Family Productions.

Mazur: Family Productions was distributed by Paramount, which was as good as breathing farts. They were an awful record company. I saw quickly that things were not going to go well with this record.

Artie Ripp produced Joel's 1971 debut, "Cold Spring Harbor," which sank like a stone. In addition to weak support on the business end, Billy has long contended that the album was recorded at the wrong speed. (Artie denies this.) The first time he heard it, he was reportedly so angry that he threw the album out the window. He blamed Artie for the album's failure. That said, the record demonstrated Billy's talent for turning his life into memorable, meaningful songs.

Artie Ripp: Most of the songs on that album are about Elizabeth. Look at the titles: "She's Got a Way," "You Can Make Me Free," "Everybody Loves You Now," "You Look So Good to Me." There's a whole cycle of life there, going from "I'm in love with her" to "I can't have her" to, finally, the reality of "I'm at the end of the road, where do I go from here?" You read those lyrics, you'll know everything about his love for Elizabeth, including his loneliness.

Billy Joel circa 1978.Photo: Everett Collection

Billy and Elizabeth moved to Los Angeles in 1972. Billy began playing piano at a bar called the Executive Room, under the name Bill Martin. Elizabeth worked there as a waitress. Billy spent six months there, and wrote his signature song, "Piano Man," based on that time.

Bordowitz: When he sings, "the waitress is practicing politics," that was Elizabeth. There really was a Davy who was in the Navy, and probably would be for life. [Another guy,] Paul, was a real estate broker, but he wanted to be a novelist.

Later that year, Billy signed with Columbia Records and hit the road, opening for such acts as Yes, Captain Beefheart and the Beach Boys.

Richie Cannata (Billy's former sax player): They had us open for the Beach Boys. Think about that combination. A bunch of guys from Long Island with dark shirts and sunglasses, playing outdoor sheds in the afternoon, when the sun is very bright and people are waiting for the Beach Boys. That was hard on Billy. These people couldn't have cared less. They were waiting to hear "Help Me, Rhonda." He's trying to be serious, playing "New York State of Mind," and he gets hit in the head with a beach ball.

Larry Russell (Billy's former bassist): I did all this for free. There wasn't any money to pay the band.

Billy and Elizabeth married in 1973, and she took over as his manager soon after (they would divorce in 1982 and her brother, Frank, would later become Billy's manager). Billy's fortunes improved with the next two albums, "Piano Man" (1973) and "Streetlife Serenade" (1974).

Cannata:We were in the south of France, and a promoter took us out to this restaurant. We were throwing plates into the fireplace, and before we knew it there was a donkey in the place. It was absolutely rock 'n' roll crazy. Elizabeth organized that. She was very strong.

As Billy gained confidence as a live performer, a surprising talent revealed itself.

Russell: There's a little bit of the comedian in Billy. He tends to emulate other people's voices.

Cannata: We did a few recordings at [the now-defunct New York City club] the Bottom Line for WNEW-FM, and Billy, who did these great impressions, said on the radio, "In the house tonight, we have Bruce Springsteen. Come on up, Bruce." Then Billy did his Bruce impersonation. I think he sang "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out."

As his popularity grew, one group was not on board: critics.

Billy Joel screaming into the microphone.Photo: GAB Archive/Redferns

Howard Bloom (Billy's 1980s publicist): The LA Times' Robert Hilburn did a piece comparing Bob Seger to Billy Joel, and wrote that one artist is s–t, and the other is a great lyricist. Guess which one he picked as a great lyricist. I was furious before I even met Billy, because Billy at that point was one of the great poets in rock 'n' roll. And Bob Seger, whose music I adore, was nowhere near Billy's level [as a lyricist].

Despite the critics, both the song and the album "Piano Man" hit the Top 40 in 1973, a feat Billy would duplicate with 1974's "Streetlife Serenade" and its song, "The Entertainer." While 1976's "Turnstiles" failed to crack the top 100, the following year's "The Stranger" made him a superstar, producing four hit songs (including "Just the Way You Are," which went to No. 3 on the Hot 100 and won the Record of the Year Grammy) and earning him a five-night stint at Carnegie Hall. Now, relocated back east, Billy's striving days were officially behind him. He would wrap up the decade with 1978's "52nd Street" and its hits, including "My Life," which also reached No. 3. It wasn't until 1980 and the song "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" that he finally had his first No. 1.

Cannata: Playing Carnegie Hall was an amazing feeling, and then every place we played was larger than the last. The band was awesome, the music was awesome, the performances were awesome. Everybody was in love with the music. It was just a great time in our lives.

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