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Billy Joel "Billy Joel was inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999." was inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999., is a pianist, singer and songwriter. He recorded a staggering number of pop music hits from 1973 (beginning with the single "Piano Man") to his retirement from recording pop music in 1993. Joel could be considered, with Elton John, the father of piano rock. He has sold well over 100 million albums worldwide and is the sixth best selling artist in the United States. Joel's induction into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame (Class of 1992), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Class of 1999) has further solidified his status as one of America's leading music icons. He has continued to tour occasionally (usually with Elton John) in addition to writing and recording classical music.

Joel "was born in 1949, a Cold War kid in McCarthy time," as he wrote in his song "Leningrad." Joel first lived in the modern-day South Bronx, an ethnically white neighborhood at the time. His family then moved to Long Island, to Levittown and then to Hicksville, both working class towns in Nassau County [1]. His father, Howard Joel, was a Jewish refugee from Germany and his mother, Rosalind Hyman, was born in England, to an agnostic Jewish family. His parents later divorced, and his father moved back to Eastern Europe. His half-brother Alexander Joel is a musician.

From an early age, Joel had an intense interest in music, especially classical music. He began piano lessons at an early age, and his interest in music instead of sports was the source for much teasing and bullying in his early years. As a teenager Joel took up boxing so that he would be able to defend himself. He boxed successfully on the amateur Golden Gloves circuit for a short time, but abandoned the sport when he became more involved in music as a career.

Joel attended Hicksville High School, and was to have graduated in 1967. However, he was found to have had one gym class left to meet the graduation requirement due to excessive absences from the class, due to oversleeping from already being a professional musician with nighttime concerts. Faced with a summer in school to complete this requirement, he decided not to continue, telling an interviewer years later that he told school officials, "I'm not going to Columbia University, I'm going to Columbia Records!" He left high school without a degree to begin a career in music. In 1992, his requirement was waived, and he received his diploma at Hicksville High's graduation ceremony 25 years after he left the school.

Joel joined his first band, The Echoes, at age fourteen. In the later 1960s, he performed with The Hassles, a Long Island band that had some local success ("Every Step I Take," "You Got Me Hummin'") and then formed the prog-rock band Attila with Hassles drummer Jon Small. Attila released a single album which bombed, and the duo disbanded. Small and his wife broke up as well, as Joel had started an affair with her at about this time.

Upon losing his record contract with Attila, Joel suffered severe depression, and he was admitted into Meadowbrook Hospital after ingesting furniture polish in a half-hearted suicide attempt. [2] The note he left eventually became the lyrics to his song "Tomorrow Is Today."

Joel signed his first solo record contract with Artie Ripp of Family Productions and subsequently recorded his first solo album. (a reference to the Long Island town of the same name), was released in 1971. However, the album was mastered at the wrong speed, and the album was initially released with this error. Combined with the onerous terms of the Family Productions contract that guaranteed him very little money from the sales of his albums, Joel fled to Los Angeles, California with Elizabeth and played in the "Executive Lounge" under the name Bill Martin. Joel married Elizabeth in Los Angeles in May, 1971.

His experiences in Los Angeles connected him with executives from Columbia Records, who bought out his contract with Ripp, with the condition that the "Family Productions" logo be displayed alongside the Columbia logo for the next five albums. His brief tenure in Los Angeles also inspired his signature song "Piano Man." The album was released in 1974 and was certified Gold. To this day it has sold over four million copies. However, due to the large sums of money involved in the legal tangles of the contract buyout, Joel netted less than $7,000 in profit from his Gold Certified record.

Joel remained in Los Angeles to write Streetlife Serenade, his second album under the Columbia label. References to both suburbia and the inner city pepper the album. The standout track on the album is "The Entertainer," which picks up thematically where "Piano Man" left off. Joel was upset that "Piano Man" had been significantly edited down in order to make it more radio-friendly, and in "The Entertainer," he bites the hands that feed him with sarcastic lines such as, "If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05." The instrumental "Root Beer Rag" is a rollicking trip reminiscent of Scott Joplin.

, an appropriately titled album about transitions, both geographical and professional. Written to mark Joel's move back to the East Coast after spending three years in California, the opening track, "Say Goodbye To Hollywood," serves notice that Joel is cutting ties and making a fresh start. While "I've Loved These Days" looks back with a mixture of longing and regret upon an early-70s L.A. characterized by excess, ultimately makes it clear that Joel is ready to go home again. Indeed, "New York State of Mind," a love song to Joel's native state, has become a classic, and one of the , Joel used his own hand-picked musicians in the studio for the first time, and he took a more hands-on role, producing the album himself. These risks all paid off, and the album boasted a considerably more "live" feeling than prior efforts. Nevertheless, Joel's signature blend of cynicism and self-consciousness continued to find expression in songs such as "Angry Young Man," a song that (thanks in part to its blistering piano "Prelude" that introduces it) would become a mainstay of his concerts for years.

, Columbia Records united Joel with producer Phil Ramone. The album cranked out four Top-40 hits on the Billboard Charts in the US, and was a worldwide smash. Album sales exceeded Columbia's previous top album, Simon Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water and was certified multi-platinum. It was Joel's first Top-10 album as it rose to # 2 on the charts. Phil Ramone eventually produced every Billy Joel studio release until 1989's netted Joel Grammy nominations for Album of the Year and Song of the Year, for "Just the Way You Are," which was written as a gift to his wife Elizabeth and became his highest charting song to date in the United States.

was conceived as a day in Manhattan, and was named after the block where Columbia Records' office was located. The album did not disappoint, as fans purchased over seven million copies on the strength of songs "My Life", "Big Shot" and "Honesty." This helped become Joel's first # 1 album. "My Life" eventually became the theme song for a new US television sitcom, "Bosom Buddies," which featured actor Tom Hanks in one of his earliest roles.

Joel stated that his next album would be more of a hard-rock record, as he was trying to prove that he would not turn into a crooner. was released in 1980, and the first thing heard after taking the album out of its sleeve was the sound of breaking glass introducing the guitar-driven "You May Be Right," also the album's first single (#7, May 1980). However, its followup, "It's Still Rock And Roll To Me", was more of a toe-tapper. It eventually became Joel's first Billboard Number 1 song in July 1980. His third single, "Don't Ask Me Why" (#19, September 1980), incorporated a Latin rather than rock beat. Although it became a ubiquitous AM radio staple during the summer of 1980, his critics were disappointed at his choice of singles. in terms of the number of records sold, as it soared to the top of the charts becoming his second consecutive # 1 album.

was considered by many Joel's most ambitious album, but it came with a high physical and emotional price tag. He had begun work on it in the spring of 1982 when he was involved in a motorcycle accident; a woman in a car ran a red light and hit Billy on his Root-Beer colored Harley-Davidson Electra Glide motorcycle. His left wrist was broken and his hand badly damaged. When Joel tells the story he says that the police officer on the scene read his license as "William Joel," put two and two together, and said, "Hey lady, you just ran over Billy Joel!" After the woman learned who she hit, she asked for his autograph. He offered to use his bleeding wrists to write her an autograph. Due to surgery (which included the temporary insertion of five pins into his wrist) and a month in the hospital, production of the album was temporarily shut down while Joel recovered.

An additional obstacle for the singer was the breakdown of his marriage to Weber, an event partially blamed on the stress created by Weber's management of her husband's career. In the fall of 1982, Joel and his wife separated. In an interview, he said that the recording of The Nylon Curtain was his way of dealing with his separation from Weber.

In the meantime, Joel's first video special, , was recorded at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on December 9, 1982.

On July 20, 1983 the couples divorce was finalized. In accordance with the divorce agreement, Joel's ex-wife took half of the singer's assets. "You're always in the desert looking for the oasis and all that's out there with you is the piano — this big black beast with 88 teeth ... 50,000 packs of cigarettes later, you start getting it."

All of his sacrifices paid off, however, as peaked at # 7 on the charts behind the popular singles "Allentown", "Goodnight Saigon", and "Pressure".

Following his tour supporting , Joel retreated to the island of St. Bart's for rest and relaxation. At the hotel's bar, he met supermodel Christie Brinkley, who had been divorced from her husband Jean-François Allaux. They eventually became a couple, and married in March 23, 1985.

The song "Uptown Girl" was one of the first songs written when Joel returned from vacation. "Uptown Girl" was conceived as Joel wondered aloud how the gorgeous Christie Brinkley could wind up with such a guy like himself. It became a worldwide hit upon its release. The resulting album, was compiled as a tribute to the Doo-Wop music of the 1960s, and also resulted in Joel's second Billboard #1 hit, "Tell Her About It." The album, which reached # 4 on the charts, boasted six top-30 singles, the most of any album in Joel's catalog.

, Joel had been approached to release an album of his most successful singles. This was not the first time this topic had come up, but Joel had initially considered "Greatest Hits" albums as marking the end of one's career. This time, he agreed, and "Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and 2" was released as a four-sided album and 2-CD set, with the songs in sequence of when they were released. The new songs "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" and "The Night Is Still Young" were recorded and released as singles to support the album. "Greatest Hits" was a monster success, selling over twenty million copies worldwide and becoming the top selling double album of all time.

It has since been certified Diamond by the RIAA, and is the 5th best selling album in American music history.

Coinciding with the "Greatest Hits" album release, Joel released a two-volume "Video Album" that was a compilation of the promotional videos he had recorded from 1977 to the present time. Along with videos for the new singles off the "Greatest Hits" album, Joel also recorded a video for his first hit, "Piano Man" for this project.

Joel had already scored a hit with "Modern Woman" from the 1985 movie, "Ruthless People," (starring Bette Midler, Danny DeVito and Judge Reinhold) when he began work on the album that would become in early 1986. As a father for the first time, Joel's perspective had changed dramatically and he had found the process of songwriting to be difficult. The song "Temptation" brought out many of the feelings he had about relating to his new daughter. Joel wound up having to start recording before he completed all of the writing he wanted to do, and the process proved to be difficult. Fortunately, he had scheduled time with some friends in the studio. Ray Charles contributed vocals and music to the song "Baby Grand" with Joel, and Steve Winwood played Hammond Organ on the song "Getting Closer." The final song recorded for the album was "Code Of Silence." Cyndi Lauper, who was recording her album in an adjacent studio had heard that Joel was having problems finishing his album, so she helped him complete this song and contributed backing vocals. To return the favor, Joel backed Lauper up on the song "Maybe He'll Know" off of her album.

was not a success in relation to some of Joel's other albums, but it yielded the hit "A Matter Of Trust." In a departure from his "piano man" persona, Joel is shown in its video as playing a Les Paul-autographed Fender guitar. The ballad "This Is The Time" also charted, and has been a favorite on the prom circut ever since.

At around this time, Billy completed voice work on Oliver Company, released in 1988. A loose adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, Billy brought both his acting and musical talents to the film as Dodger. For the film, Billy recorded a memorable number titled "Why Should I Worry?" Critics were generally positive towards the film, and pointed to Billy's acting contribution as one of its highlights, despite it being his first acting job. In interviews, Billy explained that he took the job due to his love of Disney cartoons as a child.

, Joel and his handlers started planning a trip to the Soviet Union over the summer of 1987. He would be the first American rock act to play there since the Berlin Wall went up, a fact not lost on history buff Joel. There would be six live performances, three each at indoor arenas in Moscow and Leningrad. Joel and his family (including young daughter Alexa) and his full touring band made the trip in June, 1987. The entourage was filmed for television and video to eventually offset the cost of the trip, and the concerts were simulcast on radio around the world.

The audience in at least the first Moscow shows was filled with members of the Communist Party, who received tickets from the government as a perk. Most of that audience took a long while to warm up to Joel's energetic show, something that never had happened in other countries he had performed in. As a result of that a minor international incident occurred when he famously flipped over an electric keyboard during the second Moscow show as a show of frustration.

, Russian for "In Concert," was released in the fall of 1987. As a live album, it captures the energy of a Billy Joel show during this period, however it became painfully obvious that his voice had lost some of its youthful timbre. In one particularly difficult section during an energetic "Uptown Girl" he has trouble catching his breath and the vocals of backup singer George Simms, specifically brought to hit the high notes in his vocally challenging songs, become more prominent.

It has been estimated that Joel lost over US$1 million of his own money on the trip and concerts, but he has said the goodwill he was shown there was well worth it.

, was released in September, 1989. The song was meant to convey the fact that the world has never been stable, and nostalgia for "good old days" glossed over difficult times as well. Conceived as a rap or a more rhythmic song than anything in Joel's career previously, the lyrics of the song consisted of names and phrases relating to newsmaking events of the 40 year span of Billy Joel's life to date. Critics assailed Joel for this approach, but the song generated significant buzz and quickly became Joel's third US Number 1 hit after its release. The song has spawned a number of web sites that hyperlink the words of the song to historical news articles on the internet. Joel has stated on numerous occasions that the song stands on its own, and he does not feel the need to update or rewrite the song to take news since 1989 into account.

to have been recorded without Phil Ramone as producer. For this album, he wanted a new sound, and worked with Mick Jones of Foreigner fame. Joel also brought in some fresh faces to join the band, including talented multi-instrumentalist Crystal Taliefero, who would go on to become Joel's musical director and architect of his live sound. After "We Didn't Start The Fire," also produced the hit "I Go To Extremes." The album was also notable for its song "Leningrad," written after Joel met a clown in the Russian city during his tour in 1987, and "The Downeaster Alexa," written to underscore the plight of fishermen on Long Island who are barely able to make ends meet.

In 1992, Joel sued former manager and ex-brother-in-law Frank Weber (ex-wife Elizabeth's brother) for $95 million after accounting irregularities were discovered. The case was later settled out of court.

in early 1993. Released under fanfare that August, the album art was a colorful painting by Christie Brinkley that was a series of scenes from each of the songs on the album. The lead single quickly moved up the charts, and the album sold very well. A worldwide tour followed, and Joel devised his schedule such that he wouldn't spend more than a few weeks at a time away from his family during his tour. However, Joel and Brinkley separated and divorced on August 25, 1994. Brinkley's separation from Joel and subsequent marriage to developer Richard Taubman took place after surviving a helicopter crash with Taubman.

In August of 1995, Billy Joel's long-time bassist Doug Stegmeyer committed suicide in his Long Island home. Stegmeyer had played on every one of Joel's albums from .

Joel has toured extensively with Elton John on a series of "Face to Face" tours. During these shows, the two have played each other's songs and performed duets.

In 2005, Joel released a compilation, "My Lives," which is largely a compilation of demos, B-tracks, and livealternate versions to hit songs. The compilation also includes the Umixit software, in which people can remix "Zanzibar" and a live version of "I Go To Extremes" with their PC. Also, a DVD of a show from the River of Dreams tour is included.

On January 7, 2006, Joel began a tour across the United States. Having not written any new songs, he featured a sampling of all his songs in his career, including his major hits. His tour includes an unprecedented twelve sold-out concerts over several months at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Joel's songwriting cannot be separated from the life that inspired so much of his work. He has made many references in his lyrics to locations in the New York City metropolitan area, particularly the Island, in his songs. For example, the Miracle Mile line in "It's Still Rock Roll to Me" refers to the affluent shopping district located on Northern Boulevard in the community of Manhasset. Also, in his early song , he describes a certain "Billy" as being from the Town of Oyster Bay, the municipality in which the hamlet of Levittown is located. His song New York State of Mind — a track from 1976's album that has since become a standard — also demonstrated his affinity for his home state.

Several of Joel's songs have grown out of specific personal experiences, including "Piano Man", which he wrote out of his experience of regularly playing at a Los Angeles piano bar in the early 1970s, and "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant," purportedly written about either the Syosset mainstay Christiano's or a similar eatery in New York City's Little Italy. His song "Vienna" was supposedly written based on a visit to his father in Europe. And "Big Shot" is based on a bad date with Mick Jagger's ex-wife Bianca.

Joel was not raised very religiously, and in fact attended Roman Catholic mass with his Catholic friends, inspiring some of his religion-themed lyrics. "Only The Good Die Young" is supposedly about a high-school crush with a very religious girl.

Joel paid tribute to life in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania in one of his most popular songs, "Allentown," released in 1982. The song depicts living in industrial Allentown, Pennsylvania during the economic recession in the early 1980s.

Joel's family has also been a motivation for lyrical content; he penned "Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)" for his daughter, after she asked what happens when people die. Similarly, his song "The Downeaster Alexa" combined his love for his daughter with a depiction of the plight of boat captains in the offshore fishing industry. "Uptown Girl" was a love song about the seemingly mismatched romance between himself and Christie Brinkley, Alexa's mother and his second wife.

Joel has always had a trusting, open attitude in both his business and personal relationships. This attitude was manifested as advice in the song "Tell Her About It", as well as in an expression of his own needs in "Honesty" and "And So It Goes." It can also be found in his deion of the elements needed to make a relationship work in "A Matter of Trust."

The song "We Didn't Start the Fire" lists historical events from his birth in 1949 through the mid-1980s — the first thirty-five years of Joel's life, reflecting his fascination with culture and history. The song "Leningrad" shows Joel's appreciation for the history of the Soviet Union and his feelings about the Cold War in which he was raised. Before Joel went into the music business, he had considered becoming a history teacher; later in his career, he earned a New York state teaching license.

In addition, having attempted suicide earlier in his life, Joel composed a song on request called "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" specifically to strengthen those contemplating suicide to choose life instead.

Joel has recently been returning to his fascination with classical music and has been experimenting in that area. , his first album of classical pieces, got a tepid response from critics but went to #1 on the classical charts.

Billy Joel's music has been influenced by many periods in history, from European classical composers to 1960s doo wop, and music of the gospel genre to Russian folksongs. This has, in part, lead to his broad success over a long period of time.

Some of his main individual musical influences included:

Joel has denied any influence of Elton John on his music, but there exists some similarity between the music at the beginning of each performer's career. Joel was also declared "Best New Artist" in Cashbox magazine after the success of . The magazine declared him "the next Jim Croce" based on the storytelling of the "Piano Man" single. Joel had also been compared to James Taylor and Arlo Guthrie early in his career.

Joel married his business manager, Elizabeth Weber, on May 20, 1971. The marriage ended in divorce on July 20, 1983.

Joel went on to marry supermodel Christie Brinkley on March 23, 1985. Their marriage produced one child, daughter Alexa Ray Joel, born December 30, 1985. Alexa was given the middle name of Ray after Ray Charles, one of Joel's musical idols. This marriage ended with divorce on August 25, 1994, although the couple remains friendly.

In 2004, Joel married 23 year-old Katie Lee. Lee is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. At the time of the wedding, Joel was 54. Joel's daughter, Alexa Ray, 18, served as maid of honor. Joel's ex-wife, Christie Brinkley, attended the union and gave the couple her blessing. Lee works as a restaurant correspondent for the PBS show,

Joel entered the Betty Ford Center in March of 2005 for treatment of alcohol abuse after what his publicist called "a recent bout of severe gastrointestinal distress". He checked out of the center in April of 2005. A friend who saw him after he checked out said that Joel has completely sworn off all alcohol. Joel was treated previously for alcohol abuse in 2002 when he spent two weeks at Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut.

Joel has a history of car accidents, including several that occurred while he allegedly was under the influence of alcohol.

As a result of his love of teaching and music, Joel has been passing on his hard-learned experience with the music industry and as an artist to a new generation. Some of these have been recorded and are available, such as the fourth CD in his Greatest Hits Box Set. The classes are structured as a question-and-answer session with the audience in a small amphitheatre or collegiate lecture hall. Joel appears alone with a piano and without the benefit of his full band for the roughly two-hour program. He speaks candidly about his life and his music, with interspersed musical requests from the audience. Some of the most entertaining segments of his program are when he explains the inception and development of his songs from the genesis of the initial idea.

Joel brought some of this material to James Lipton's "Inside the Actors' Studio" for a two-hour episode in 1999.

(1985) (compilation) #6 US, #7 UK, US sales: 21,000,000 (5th best selling album of all time - certified Diamond in 2000)Movin' Out (2002) — musical — composer, lyricist, and orchestrator — Tony Award for Best Orchestrations