The one singer Billy Joel said the world needs to hear: “This country’s been hijacked”
Billy Joel was never one to consider himself a political figure.
He liked the idea of making the best music that he could and making people happy, but the idea of working on the greatest songs of all time didn’t normally mean talking about the greater problems with the world or the civilians that were getting hurt half a world away. He didn’t see himself as that kind of figure, but he wasn’t going to turn away from the kind of down-home rock and rollers that people needed to recognise over the years.
But when you listen to Joel’s music, it’s a lot more blue-collar than you probably realise. There’s a lot of work that went into every single one of those songs, and while he is effectively retired from music at this point, ‘The Piano Man’ seemed to have the same values that you would see out of every heartland rocker, which probably explains why people like Don Henley and Bruce Springsteen have such a reverence for him over the years.
If you’re growing up in middle America, though, you’re probably not reaching for ‘New York State of Mind’ as the first thing to remind you of home. Not everyone was going to know what life was like in the big city whenever they talked about the US, but even if Springsteen painted a more vivid picture of what blue-collar life was like, there was no one in the same league as those who came out of the breadbasket of America.
Bob Seger was taking everyday stories to the top of the charts since the early 1970s, but when John Mellencamp appeared on the scene, everyone saw a face that they could recognise when they were walking down the street. Mellencamp was proud to come from a small town in Indiana, but when you look through a lot of the work that he was doing behind the scenes, he never wanted to worry about the glamorous side of fame when he worked.
He was more than happy to give back to the community he came from, and even after Joel felt like a fish out of water playing Farm Aid with him, he felt that America needed that voice behind them, telling him, “We need you to be angry and restless, because we know that this country is going to hell in a handcart. This country’s been hijacked. You know it and I know it. People are scared and people are angry. They need to hear a voice like yours to echo the discontent out there in the heartland.”
And the same thing applies to every other heartland rocker worth their salt. Even when Henley ended up going back to his home in Texas, Cass County was a reflection of the kind of music that seemed to be slipping away, and even if he was more than a little bit angry on his records, people like him and Mellencamp were the kind that actually wanted to use their platform to make some form of change.
While the music industry ended up collapsing beneath their feet once the streaming era began, Mellencamp hasn’t let that stop him from making the best shows that he can. Anyone else would have been able to retire happily at his age, but even when he’s delivering some of his older songs, you can feel him reaching deep into his soul to get that same amount of energy that he had back when he didn’t have a pot to piss in.
Because when times are at their darkest, the people need someone like Mellencamp to root for when it feels like no one else is rooting for them. It’s not an easy job for anyone to have, but rock and roll was never meant to be easy, and Joel has done everything he can to try to match what he saw in his friend whenever he could.
