Q&A: Billy Joel at 60

When did you start writing songs?

I was writing songs since I was a little kid. They were kind of like ersatz Beatles tunes, kind of Merseybeat British pop tunes. Then when I was in the Hassles I was writing stuff that was more R&B-influenced, more like soul music, like Sam & Dave songs, stuff like what the Rascals were doing, that was a big influence on me. I wrote all the stuff for Attila, then I got the rock'n'roll star stuff out of me. I just wanted to be a songwriter and have other people do my stuff.

So I compiled a demo of all these songs I had written, which eventually ended up becoming the "Cold Spring Harbor" album [in 1971]. It was really not meant for me to be the singer or the recording artist. I just compiled these songs with hopes some other singer would do them. But the advice I got from the music industry was, "Make your own album." This is the beginning of the era of the singer/songwriter.

So unwittingly I kind of got swept up in the whole singer/songwriter thing and became a recording artist and a singer. I was touring to promote this album I had done, which was supposed to be a demo tapes of songs. Kind of a backward way of becoming a pop star.

Even as you went solo and pursued the singer/songwriter thing, you always seemed to have a band mentality.

I always thought of myself as part of a band. Knowing I was going to go out and play these songs to promote the album, I recognized [that] I didn't want to be this stand-up crooner kind of guy, I wanted to be in a band, like I always had been. I think people have this mistaken story about me playing in piano bars all my life. I only did that for six months while I was trying to get out of a bad contract that I had signed. All of my life prior to that I'd been in rock'n'roll bands, so for me it was quite natural to be in an ensemble. There are other singer/songwriters that have that same mentality, [Bruce] Springsteen, for example. He's a songwriter but he's part of a band. We both came from kind of the same place—New Jersey, Long Island, very similar kind of music scene going on.

When you're trying to find your first success, do you kind of take direction from how the record label sees you?

No, not really, I never really got directed by a record label to go in any particular direction. Of course, they were always looking for hit singles. If you had a hit single like "Piano Man," I'm sure they would have liked to have had "Piano Man II" or "The Piano Kid," "Son of Piano Man." But I didn't go in that direction, I just went wherever I was going to go.

The only pressure I remember getting from the record company was about scheduling: "We need new stuff, next album, next, next, next." I think whenever there has been a misstep in my career it's when I put out an album that I wasn't ready to put out. "Streetlife Serenade" [in 1974] was not a good album, I was not ready to put it out, but I got pressured to put it out. And I can hear it to this day—it's a weak album. The same with "The Bridge" [in 1986]. There's a live album, the Russian album [1987's "Kohuept"], that never should have come out. That was a deal that was cooked up between my ex-manager and the record company. They figured out they could get an advance and do a little money sharing among themselves if we get Billy to put out this live Russian album, which is horrible.

When was your first national tour?

That would be "Cold Spring Harbor" in 1971.

Any memorable stories from that tour?

We didn't make any money, nobody got paid. We were touring around in one of these little camper trailer things, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And there were these two groupies that were following us around. We really weren't sure who they were. This was when I was signed to Artie Ripp's label [Family Productions]. And as it turned out, these girls, their job was to follow the band around and bang the DJs so they'd play our records. They were two hookers. We thought they were groupies. But no, it was kind of a payola thing. It was quite a wake-up call to find out that's what's going on. That's when I thought, "I've got to get out of this deal. This is really corrupt stuff."

Would a song like "Captain Jack" get on the radio today?

I really don't know what the state of radio is today. I was fortunate enough to be writing albums in the era of progressive FM radio, when disc jockeys could spin whatever they wanted. Even "Piano Man" was a turntable hit. It wasn't a big record-seller, it was a big radio record. Those were the days when FM radio could create a big, big following for acts.

Look at [Jimi] Hendrix. He never had a hit single. "Purple Haze," that was it. Look at Led Zeppelin. They didn't have a hit single until "Whole Lotta Love"; they had a huge following. Bands like Traffic, Cream, Procol Harum, a lot of their success came from album tracks. You didn't get typecast based on one single, which I think is problematic for a lot of acts. I think there was a good balance to people hearing album tracks as well as singles. I like stuff that's all over the place. I need dynamics in music, not just one level of dynamic. I need soft, hard, loud, fast, slow, all that stuff.

You signed with Columbia Records and had that red label on your albums. Was that significant for you?

Oh, hell yeah. I had to get off a terrible record label I was on at the time—Family Records, a Gulf & Western distribution deal. The two labels I wanted to be on at that time were Atlantic Records, which was the hip, hard rock label, and Columbia Records, which was the label that had Bob Dylan. I met with both companies, Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic and Clive Davis at Columbia, and we decided we were going to go with Columbia because Columbia just seemed like more of a career-oriented company.

If you think about it, I put out "Cold Spring Harbor," then I put out "Piano Man," then "Streetlife Serenade," then "Turnstiles." "The Stranger" was the fifth album I'd recorded and I still hadn't been dumped by my record label. And I hadn't had a hit album. In this day and age I don't think that could happen anymore. I don't think there's any patience, I don't think there's any budget, I don't think radio support is there, I don't think the A&R talent is there, I don't even know if the audience is there anymore. This was the baby boomer generation. There's a lot of kids listening to the radio. For an artist to be able to have four bomb albums before he has a hit and still be on a label like Columbia Records, that's a testament to Columbia Records.