“That is not what music is about”: The one moment Billy Joel thought killed rock and roll
Rock and roll never fully dies out, no matter what generation it’s in. Thre have been times when there was a limited interest in the genre and bands found it hard to compete with the rest of the world, but when someone was brave enough to make a song that made people think, that was enough to get the next generation on board with the likes of Chuck Berry and Little Richard from back in the day. Granted, there have been a few moments when the genre was on life support, and Billy Joel could see rock moving in all the wrong directions more than a few times during his life.
When looking at Joel’s music, though, not all of it is the purest form of rock and roll most people expect. No one figured that a man primarily known for the piano who received classical lessons would be their first choice for a rock star. Still, listening to Joel’s music, it seems to have all of the same qualities of rock but filtered through a much different lens than most people were used to.
His influences were everyone from The Beatles to Beethoven, and he was never afraid to wear them on his sleeve when he wanted to. There are different movements in ‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’ that seem like they take their cues from classic arias, but the idea of combining three songs in one feels like something ripped directly out of the back half of Abbey Road.
But for Joel, it all came down to whether the song was any good. He knew that there were plenty of ways to write a rock and roll tune that wasn’t the same kind of 12-bar blues, and despite most people not seeing a song like ‘Honesty’ or ‘Just the Way You Are’ as purely rock and roll, Joel has enough grit in his voice to put him on par with some of the legends of the genre like Ray Charles.
While Joel’s music has toed the line between being sophisticated for some and embarrassing for others, he never underwhelmed his fans. He might have a few songs that he doesn’t like, but every one of his tracks has enough punch to be someone’s favourite Billy Joel song, but when ‘The Piano Man’ reached the 1980s, he realised that not everyone was taking their craft seriously once MTV rolled around.
“Television is prepackaged and sanitised and unintellectualised, you know, it’s like – I call it, what you see on MTV, they call them videos, I call them musical suppositories.”
Billy Joel
Now that the biggest radio station in the world was in people’s living rooms when they turned on the TV, Joel felt that something was being lost in translation, saying, “I knew a long time ago actually in the earlier era of rock and roll that television was gonna pretty much kill rock and roll. Television is the antithesis of music. Television is eye candy. Television is prepackaged and sanitised and unintellectualised, you know, it’s like – I call it, what you see on MTV, they call them videos, I call them musical suppositories. That is not what music is about. Music is interpreted by the individual, not by the masses.”
But did that mean Joel swore off making videos? Hell no. He knew exactly how to play the game, and if that meant him strutting his stuff like Frankie Valli did when making the video for ‘Uptown Girl’, that’s what he was going to do. And if the viewers were treated to something a bit more refined than the hair metal bands of the world, that was practically an extra bonus.
And while Joel would pivot away from making new music, he never once felt that he had to cheapen himself by going along with the MTV trends by going grunge or having an unplugged session. Some people may have complained that his schtick had been played out and he didn’t represent what people were feeling, but even if they thought his new sound was funny, it was still rock and roll to him.
