The song Billy Joel wishes he had written: “I’d be a very happy man”
According to Billy Joel, the best types of music are the ones that can transport you somewhere entirely new, and you could probably look at his breakthrough in a similar way, especially considering the fact that, at first, Joel was something of an underdog when it came to making a splash in the music scene.
Most were looking the opposite way, immersed in different types of styles and genres, and while Joel was also a huge fan of those things, he somehow carved out his own niche, too.
What worked for him didn’t work for others, likely because there were several reasons why he didn’t particularly ‘look’ the part or even seem the part when observed by casual audiences. He had the passion, something that still rings true to this day, but when it came to adopting traditional rock ‘n’ roll traits, both in aesthetic, appearance, and sound, Joel wasn’t really it.
However, that’s also another major reason why, in many ways, he was the guy for it, as, unlike many of his peers, Joel was always able to see the broader contexts within music, observing entire worlds in short, two- to three-minute-long compositions beyond what they actually were.
It’s difficult to pinpoint where this started for him, but classical music was a significant influence, teaching the future star about the interplay between emotion and storytelling, which became clear during a talk in the 1990s, when he launched into a rendition of Beethoven’s Eroica while narrating each part with jubilant interpretations of the emotion at its core.
It’s a common thread within his music, his ability to see deep beneath the surface, not just with the emotional response itself but with the broader-reaching strands of sociopolitical contexts.
It’s also a major driving force beneath many of his biggest hits, with ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ being the most obvious, but it also guides him when it comes to pushing himself further, creating music that feels intimate and original but plays on the work of his heroes. In this, one of the songs that he wishes he had penned himself is the song that’s considered the first-ever “existential” country song, ‘Wichita Lineman’.
Written by Jimmy Webb in the 1960s for Glen Campbell, the song tackles the loneliness that occurs while working in solitude, a theme that hit home so intensely with the addressee that he cried when he first heard it, and was a common response among listeners, as the lyrics take on the emotional strain that comes with pining for someone far away: “I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time / And the Wichita Lineman, is still on the line”.
When Joel first heard it, he was floored, so much so that he tried to emulate it with one of his own songs, ‘Stop in Nevada’. “If I could write a song as good as ‘Wichita Lineman’, I’d be a very happy man,” he said, adding, “I tried. There’s a song called ‘Stop in Nevada’, I was trying to write ‘Wichita Lineman’. I was thinking, ‘Midwestern guy climbing a telephone pole with the barren fields of Kansas. How do you evoke that? How do I write that?’”
One thing about his attempts to channel Webb’s masterpiece wasn’t just the feel of the song but the way he applied his own experiences. Listening to the two side by side, you can clearly see it wasn’t an exact imitation, but an inspired piece based on Joel’s travels from one place to another while navigating his own needs and the perils of letting go.
