Q&A: Billy Joel at 60

What kind of music did you love growing up?

I liked all music. All my life I've loved rock'n'roll, I've loved jazz, I've loved classical, I loved Broadway shows, blues, country, every kind of music I ever heard. And the Beatles kind of synthesized it for me when I saw these guys on "The Ed Sullivan Show." You have to remember, the Beatles hit in America right after [President John F. Kennedy] was assassinated. JFK was killed in November of 1963, the Beatles came here in February of '64, and this country had the blues. Especially young people. They took the young guy away from us and it was back to the old-boy network.

And when the Beatles came, we all went nuts, because they were the alternative. I saw these four guys, working-class guys, from a town called Liverpool. What a name; that's worse than Hicksville. They weren't made in Hollywood, they weren't pretty boys. I mean, girls thought they were cute, but they weren't the typical Fabian types. They wrote their own songs, they played their own instruments, they were kind of like a little gang. And I said, "This is possible, this can be done."

Was there a healthy music scene on Long Island at the time?

There were a lot of garage bands. There were a lot of music clubs on Long Island, so there was a pretty healthy music scene, very competitive. There were bars and nightclubs, there were Sweet 16s, weddings, bar mitzvahs. This was the era of "goodfellas," and they always had bands playing at their parties and stuff. We actually used to play for those people; we didn't know they were connected. All we knew was they paid good and they always had booze in the house. I think they were part of the Gambino family. We were trying to make out with their daughters and stuff, not knowing we probably would have been killed had we been able to do that.

The big band in the New York area at that time was the Young Rascals—they were like our Beatles. And then there was a pecking order. You had a band like the Vagrants; Leslie West from Mountain was in the Vagrants—they were a great band. You had the Vanilla Fudge, who used to be called the Pigeons. There were the Rich Kids, the Illusion, the Hassles, which was the band I was in. It was a thriving music scene, lots of bands.

Were the Hassles any good?

Uh, no. We weren't bad. The Echoes were pretty much a cover band; we would do jukebox songs. We did all kinds of stuff: instrumentals by the Ventures—"Apache," "Wipeout," "Let's Go." Then we would do Beatles songs, Dave Clark Five, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Zombies, Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, Roy Orbison, R&B music—anything that was popular, we'd play it in the Echoes. The Echoes became the Lost Souls about '65-'66. Then I joined the Hassles in '67, in the Summer of Love.

Were you the lead vocalist for the Echoes and the Hassles?

I was the lead vocalist for the Echoes and the Lost Souls, and then the Hassles actually had a frontman—his name was John Dizek; they called him "Little John." Really good-looking guy, he had all the Mick Jagger moves—he was jumping around, banging the tambourine. I eventually became the lead vocalist because Little John, he was a great frontman but he wasn't a great singer. But he was a lot better-looking than I was, so they kept me in the background and I did a lot of vocals.

The Hassles got a record deal, didn't they?

The Hassles got signed to United Artists. We made records with the Lost Souls, too. We were signed to Mercury, we made a few singles; nothing happened with them. When I went to the Hassles, we signed with United Artists. We did two horrible albums with UA, and nothing happened with that, thank God. And then when the Hassles disintegrated it became just two guys, me and the drummer [Jon Small], and we became a heavy metal duo called Attila.

I've heard some Attila. It has its appeal.

Oh, God; well, maybe. There's probably somebody out there who liked it. We were trying to be Led Zeppelin with two guys. We had an album deal with Epic; nothing happened with the album. It was terribly recorded. We didn't know what we were doing. We were trying to be as loud as possible, destroy the world with amplification. It's a good thing it didn't work because I never could have continued to sing like that. I was screaming my head off, trying to do the Robert Plant thing, and play the organ and play the bass. Lot of stuff going on. And after that was when I decided I just wanted to be a songwriter.