The one singer Billy Joel said he could never be like: “One of the greatest of all time”
Billy Joel didn’t get into the music business trying to be one of the greatest frontmen the world had ever seen.
Other musicians like Mick Jagger and Robert Plant were able to command their audience every single time they performed, but with Joel, it was much better for him to relate to the audience in a natural way every single time he played his songs than worry about how he came off to the crowd. But even if he had a more natural charisma than everyone else, he was no match for those singers who could get their point across with just pure music.
That’s not to say that Joel didn’t have a healthy amount of musical brilliance in his arsenal, either. Some of the finest songs in his catalogue are worthy of being played as a classic composition without any lyrics or words, but what makes them unique to him is how well he sings lyrics like ‘Just the Way You Are’. You can hear the sincerity in his voice, but that only came from him trying to imitate a lot of his favourite singers.
As the old adages go, geniuses are the ones who steal, and you can hear moments when Joel is trying to sound like other artists every now and again. ‘Big Shot’ was already an homage to Mick Jagger’s style of singing, and there were moments where he could really get guttural and almost go for a Joe Cocker-style vocal, but there was no point in him trying to compete with anything that Ray Charles ever sang.
Charles was the epitome of what rock and roll was supposed to be when it was still technically R&B, and when you listen to his music, a lot of his best songs are about the simple pleasures in life. The rock and roll pioneer could wrap his voice around nearly anything from country to jazz, but the idea of playing with him on a song like ‘Baby Grand’ was like Joel putting his voice next to a piece of musical history.
There were plenty of other keyboardists that were able to inhabit their music, but Joel felt that Charles was in a class by himself most of the time, saying, “As good a pianist or as big a star as I could ever become, I could never be Ray Charles, who is a total natural and one of the greatest singers of all time.” And when you hear their voices together, you really understand what Joel is talking about.
Joel has a fine voice for this kind of laid-back ballad, but Charles seems to sing every single line as if he’s lived through every single thing he’s talking about. His delivery on this is exactly the same kind of voice that made people love songs like ‘George On My Mind’, and given what the song’s about, it’s not hard to see what connected him and Joel when they first started working together.
It’s not like one of the pioneers of rock and roll and a kid from Oyster Bay were going to have that much in common, but whenever they started talking about the piano, it was like they were speaking the same language. Charles eventually did the same thing when he worked with Jamie Foxx on his depiction in Ray, and all he needed was to hit the right notes for Charles to realise that he was playing him correctly.
Because even if he couldn’t see everyone who idolised his music, Charles didn’t really need the praise to understand how the music made him feel. There are some artists who treat their music like a nine-to-five job every now and again, but for Charles, playing the piano was as important to him as the blood that ran through his veins.
