The artist Billy Joel said turned him into a rock star: “A funny-looking guy like me”
Billy Joel is a hard artist to categorise. He doesn’t feel like a rock star; he doesn’t sound just like a pop star. Especially as a piano player, there’s no one genre stereotype for him to fit into to the point where even he felt lost at the start of it all – until another star paved the way.
Born and raised in The Bronx in 1949, Billy Joel had everything on his doorstep. The inspiration of New York surrounded him, but also, growing up as a teenager in the 1960s, he was witnessing counterculture unfold and music change first hand. He was the target audience, the perfect crowd for acts like The Beatles, Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. He was fully enamoured with the dawning rock and roll sound and its tight melodies but, he played piano, not guitar.
The start of his story as the ‘Piano Man’ was a reluctant one. His mother put him in lessons and he hated it for a long time. When rock and roll began to influence him, and became his dream, he still only played the piano. He tried his best to make it work, becoming a session musician and playing with several different bands that all failed to launch. But rock and roll was the realm of guitars. The artists he revered were all guitarists or frontmen; they weren’t trapped behind the keys. So Joel was unsure of where he stood, and the industry was too, as no one seemed to know what to do with him.
That was until 1970, when Elton John emerged. Across the bond, he’d really been going through the same thing. Somewhat in the London rock and roll scene but mostly caught in the strange in-between of that and the jazz world, John, too, wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, and the industry wasn’t sure what to do with him. But still, he made it work.
As he kicked down the doors to the music world in the early 1970s, setting out on a golden run of hit albums and establishing himself as not just a name to note but a true star, John was proving that you could do all that on piano. Back in the States, Joel was paying attention.
“When Elton was in his first band, Bluesology, he never thought he could be a rock star. Same as me,” Joel said. It wasn’t even just about being a piano player, it was about looking and sounding different to the typical image of a star. He continued, “I didn’t look like Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney or Jim Morrison,” but said, “Elton gave a funny-looking guy like me — and so many others — an opportunity to be a singer-songwriter.”
They’re two artists that defied the odds, not only when it comes to putting piano tunes in the charts, but as two unlikely musical icons. In Joel’s eyes, they’re two outsiders who essentially pulled off a coup, embedding themselves amongst the elites despite forever being the awkward kids. “Sure, we thought we’d be piano players for big rock bands, but funnily enough, he ended up with big, silly glasses and crazy outfits, and I ended up with my dopey stage behavior, both of us rock stars,” he said, adding fondly of their friendship now, “To this day we laugh about that.”
