The artist Billy Joel thought was a musical god: “His music is perfect”
Every generation has those few musicians who seem like they are from another planet altogether. There might be reference points for where they got all of their material, but the idea of them channelling all of their influences into their own beautiful music is something that no one can quite figure out. But while Billy Joel has been open about his influences, he knew there was a difference between someone who knew what they were doing and someone who was touched by musical angels when they rose to prominence.
Then again, Joel never claimed to be a legend in his own right. He may have written some of the most complex songs that the pop charts have ever seen, but he always approached his craft like a normal guy who happened to be playing stadiums for a living, and looking at his lyrics, it’s not like he was trying to be anything other than an average Joe when writing tracks like ‘Vienna’ and ‘Movin’ Out’.
But the biggest hurdle that Joel had to get over in the early days was the instrument he hid behind. The piano has proven to be a fine rock and roll instrument when used in the right context, but whereas Elton John and Little Richard brought a sense of showmanship to get themselves to the top of the musical food chain, Joel always counted on his goofy stage banter to do most of the talking whenever he played. Because when looking at his chops, most rockers would have given him the side-eye.
Whereas most people would have gladly picked up a guitar or bass without a care in the world and tried working out their own tunes on them, Joel was always aware of where he was going. He had taken lessons for years, and while that might have been the go-to sign for kids getting picked on at school, it didn’t matter to Joel when the music sounded so beautiful.
There are a handful of tunes in his catalogue that stand up next to other classical composers, but Joel was never trying to match what the most celebrated artists had done. He was more interested in making pop tunes, but while he could sprinkle in Beethoven into his music now and again, he remembered that he wouldn’t dare touch anything that Mozart had ever played.
“Mozart, to me, is almost god-like because his music is perfect. It ties into itself with no friction.”
Billy Joel
Joel always felt a kinship to Beethoven because of the human nature behind his music, but Mozart’s writing was something that felt almost unattainable for mortal hands, saying, “Mozart, to me, is almost god-like because his music is perfect. It ties into itself with no friction. With Beethoven, I can hear the stops and the starts and the struggles that he had when he was writing.”
That’s not to say that one is technically better than the other, though. If we were to transfer this over to the world of guitar, it would be like comparing Jimmy Page to Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix played so fluidly and created different textures without thinking about it all that often, but when listening to Page, you can hear all the blues records that he was listening to and the desire to create something a bit more edgy for rock and roll than the same Robert Johnson licks.
So while it’s easy for many rockers to talk trash on the sophisticated side of music, Joel knew that there weren’t as many parameters between rock and roll and classical. They were all still music at the end of the day, and as long as they had a melody to hook him in, there was hardly anything to complain about once the piece started.
