And So It Also Goes

Is it okay to think about Billy Joel?

I should probably be talking about my upcoming tour, the Girl To Country book release, and thanking folks who pre-ordered for the support, and telling you how much it means to me (thank you!) Or how the mother of the bride dress search continues, along with attempts to grow my eyelashes, try to tackle that pesky acne scarring I struggle with and get ready to be away from home for a month and a half. But I guess it can all wait for another time, maybe when the results of all these endeavors are in.

Or I could give you a recap of the gigs with Eric, and my own festival turn in Norfolk the other day, where a toddler seemed poised to rush the stage, but then just turned and…toddled off (I’ll simply post a photo of that).

Suffield fest pic courtesy of Big Steve

Instead, I really want to talk about Billy Joel. That is a sentence I never imagined myself saying, which is why I must say it—life will keep surprising us if we allow it and hopefully not all of the surprises will be bad ones. This was one I never saw coming.

People kept raving about this Billy Joel documentary on HBO and there was something enough to compel me to watch the six hour story of an artist I’ve never cared for or about, would probably sometimes go out of my way to avoid or deny.

So why am I crying over a Billy Joel song this morning?

Because my eyes have been opened.

It really doesn’t matter if I never listen to a note of Billy Joel’s music – no artist or art is for everyone and he certainly hasn’t needed me to appreciate him, the man has done just fine without my love. Over one hundred sold out shows at Madison Square Garden over the last ten years. Many many millions of records sold. His popularity through the decades has been so huge as to almost repel me.

Also there was only one piano man for me, and that was Elton John. Nobody asks you to choose but that’s just how it’s been. Billy’s playing was too flowery, his melodies too showy; style too referential; his persona too arrogant and New York, kind of like the New York Post used to be for me—fine for a little color, but not the New York I’d come to The City to get away from Pittsburgh for. When Elton and BJ spent years touring together, I kind of pushed it to the back of my mind.

I won’t lay out the story told by the documentary, just suggest that you watch it yourself. It might drag a little here and there but the details make it a compelling watch: humble upbringing, absent father with a backstory and followthrough you couldn’t begin to imagine. The lean, striving years—deep depression, humiliation, betrayal. Love, band loyalty—more betrayal. I just thought he was a simple guy from Long Island!

Maybe I started softening my “No Billy J, Billy J no way” stance last month when I read Christie Brinkley’s memoir. She’s so charming on Instagram – a gorgeous supermodel you wish you could hate cause she’s so perfect but she’s just total sunshine. I thought it would be a fun read and it was more than that—I found myself rooting for her. Her romance with Billy Joel was authentic and cute, reminding me of Eric and me— not like we’re both super-famous, and fabulously wealthy like they were—but their little comedy routines and in-jokes she depicts so sweetly. Christie’s affection for Billy started softening my resolve.

Then I read Wayne Robins’ great Substack post about being the “Billy Joel beat” reporter circa 1975-85 in his role as arts editor for years at Newsday, Long Island’s paper. Wayne was editor of Creem magazine before that, his writing about the experience makes those rock and roll days come alive again, “ah so this was it was like!” to someone who pored over my older brother’s copies of the mag in wonderment. Wayne’s post brought Billy Joel to life, or made me interested, in a way I hadn’t been before. It was all creating a perfect storm for my—I won’t say conversion. Billy is the opposite of a god, though his musical gifts come from somewhere not of this earth, and in the end that’s partly what begins to win me over: the montage of this guy over the years driving a procession from humble to stately boats across Long Island Sound (at least I think that’s where it is—the geography of Long Island is too complex to even begin to understand even staring at a map) after a lifetime of questing and falling short, usually in his own eyes; maybe I’m that shallow because I’m partial now to boating (I promise a budding interest in golf partly thanks to Happy Gilmore 1 & 2 and Stick with Owen Wilson won’t make me soften towards Donald Trump!) but I’m appreciating that this simple guy from Long Island is so much more complex than all the jokes and Post headlines—like everybody, his story is deep, you never really escape your childhood, just try to find ways to cope though most of us don’t sell out Madison Square Garden one hundred times.

I felt my heart going out to the Billy in this story and every American (maybe not the hateful ones) as I sit here in another country, looking back towards America and all that makes it up. As I watched footage of his hands flying over the keyboard, heard his blunt lyrics achieving poetry, saw the shining, exultant faces of his audience – noticing how white they are, thinking of the Levittown color barrier where he grew up and how that could include Jews like his family—how in America there’s white (privileged white or just stupid white) and black but then there’s every other kind of person who came by boat or plane or foot to America either by choice or often not—that defiant expectation alternating with innocent hope “there’s something for me here”— it all reinforces how precious and maybe also doomed the whole experiment of the US is. Isn’t music miraculous, that it can make a little harmonic order of the chaos and mayhem, even for just three minutes. You couldn’t blame anyone for being a Billy Joel fan, for wanting that solace and sense of belonging.

I’m sitting here listening to a Billy Joel song this morning after finally getting it (it’s not something I’ll ever get all the way—he’s endorsing Andrew Cuomo in NYC’s mayoral race). He has plenty of fans and doesn’t need me, but there’s some comfort in taking tentative steps towards a hugely popular, prolific artist, especially far from home where the feeling of dislocation makes me appreciate what I left behind, at least the good, human parts.