Billy Joel once named his four biggest musical influences
Although Billy Joel carved out his career in the realm of pop, it would be a disservice to his musicality to pigeonhole him solely into that category. Since childhood, the singer-songwriter has held a strong passion for classical music, which shaped his artistry more so than any other genre, and this is where his biggest influences lie.
While Joel isn’t a classical artist and would never attest to being one, he finally made an album in this mould in 2001 with Fantasies and Delusions. At this stage, Joel had no ambitions to add to his catalogue of music after hanging up his pen with River of Dreams in 1993. However, a classical album was the one element that was missing from his discography, which he sought to change on his final release.
Nevertheless, from a technical perspective, Joel still feels inadequate compared to his heroes. Therefore, he only wrote the compositions which appeared on Fantasies and Delusions, which esteemed pianist Richard Joo played.
Classical music is in Joel’s blood as his brother, Alexander, is a famous European composer. Although they grew up on separate continents, and there’s a significant age gap between the pair, their love of classical composers was an inevitable love affair.
During an interview with Billboard in 2019, Joel was asked about the biggest influences on his career. He provided an insight into his musical psyche by sharply responding: “I would say Beethoven, Chopin, Leonard Bernstein and The Beatles.”
In the past, Joel has compared his working methods to Beethoven, who tackled the creative process in a similarly unorthodox fashion. Speaking to the New York Times in 2013, he said: “I relate to Beethoven. I write backward — I write the music first and then I write the words. Most people write the words first and then they write the music.”
Furthermore, Joel explained why he felt a stronger kinship to Beethoven than Mozart, stating: “Beethoven you hear the struggle in it. Look at his manuscripts, and there’s reams of scratched-out music that he hated. He stops and he starts. I love that about Beethoven, his humanity shows in his music. Mozart was almost inhuman, unhuman.”
Although The Beatles aren’t classical by any stretch of the imagination, they equally had a transformative impact on Joel’s life. During an appearance on 60 Minutes Australia, the singer-songwriter named the Fab Four his “idols” and explained how he felt drawn to them because they seemed like regular people.
“The Beatles didn’t look like Hollywood stars. The Beatles looked like working-class guys. They had an attitude being from Liverpool, that’s a working-class town, and when we saw these guys on TV, we said, ‘They don’t look like Fabian, they don’t look like Frankie Avalon. They didn’t look like Elvis.’ They looked like regular guys that you would have hung out with,” he explained.
While Joel was influenced somewhat musically by The Beatles, it was their story that he connected with most. Unlike most famous musicians of that era, they had a sense of relatability, which inspired him to take to the stage and write his own songs.
Billy Joel’s biggest influences:
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Frédéric Chopin
- Leonard Bernstein
- The Beatles
