The one singer Billy Joel called rock and roll royalty: “Big, silly glasses and crazy outfits”
The music business never really had a place for Billy Joel when he first started making music.
There had been countless pianists who had reached the big time, but when looking at the way that he crafted songs, he didn’t seem to have the same degree of cool that everyone else did when he put out tunes like ‘Piano Man’. While he quickly turned into the everyman’s songwriter once he started notching up major hits, it’s not like he could hold a candle to the true rock and roll personalities.
To put it bluntly, Joel was never someone who called that much attention to himself whenever he was off the stage. He was a fantastic songwriter, to be sure, but when looking at his track record as a high-profile celebrity, he was one of the few guys that someone could bump into walking down the street in the middle of Manhattan and not think about getting mobbed by millions of people.
Even if he is known as the patron saint of New York in lots of ways at this point, it’s not like he goes around flaunting it by any means. He was more interested in working in the same way that a nine-to-five blue-collar man approached their jobs, but when he first started gaining traction, he was far from the only one who was making a name for themselves as a piano-centric rock and roll star.
The language of the day may have been centred around the guitar, but what Elton John brought to the table was like a breeding ground for what Joel could be. The ‘Piano Man’ had already been influenced by some of the greatest artists of his time, but whereas he would throw in his own classical favourites into the mix, John was the complete inverse of him when it came to stage persona.
No one was going to pay money to see a humble Reginald Dwight play his tunes for them, so getting the best stage outfits in the world was the next best thing. There was no such thing as “over-the-top” as far John was concerned, and when looking at the massive run of concerts that he played in Los Angeles, it seemed like he was doing everything he could to be looked at as the reigning king of rock and roll in many respects.
Joel never bothered trying to infringe on John’s territory, but he did like the fact that he was watching what looked like a musical piano God whenever he toured with him, saying, “Elton John defines himself as a rock star, and he really lives it. He’s fucking royalty, and I love it. 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 behaviour.”
While anyone remotely close to John onstage would look like a lowly peasant by comparison, it was never about John trying to appear superior to anyone else, either. Throughout his time in the spotlight, John has always been one of the more selfless rock stars when it came to working behind the scenes, and given his knowledge of every new artist that comes out, he’s still as interested in seeing where music takes him after over half a century of classics already under his belt.
Nothing that Joel did was ever going to match what his British counterpart could do, but both of them seemed to be content with being musical partners in a strange way. Neither of them sounds remotely alike whenever they play, but there’s something about watching them play piano together on their joint tours that just feels so right.
