Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
WASHINGTON – Most songs are love letters, a way to get the girl, Billy Joel, the thrice-married singer-songwriter, told an audience Thursday.
“I don’t write for fans. I write for me. I don’t write for the record company. I don’t write for the radio. I don’t write for critics. I write for me, or I’ll write a song to a friend, or I’ll write a song to a woman I’m in a relationship with, or a woman I want to be in a relationship with. It works great,” he said in an hourlong interview at the National Press Club.
Joel peppered the question-and-answer session with snippets of his songs, imitations of other performers and his observations from the perch of a career that spans four decades.
Which songs were courting songs?
“Oh, most of ’em. It was all about, you know, meeting girls.
“I remember the first gig I ever did. It was at a church dance. I was about 14 or 15. And I’m playing with these other guys in the band. And this girl, who I had a crush on – her name was Virginia, by the way. ‘Come out, Virginia,’ you know? – she was looking at me, first time she ever looked at me. And I’m, ‘She’s looking at me. She’s looking. This is working. This is cool.’
“And then at the end of the night, the priest gives us each, like, $15, which, in 1964, was, like, $1,500. And you go, ‘You mean we get paid for this?’ And that was it. I was in.”
He’s stayed in. Joel began studying piano when he was 4, encouraged by a family of music lovers and performers.
“The predominant male figure in my life was my mother’s father, this English, happy-go-lucky guy. And he would sing these songs at our parties, these English musical songs,” said Joel, singing a few bars. “Embarrass the hell out of me. But my friends loved him. ‘Get your grandfather out here,’ the straw hat and the cane, and he’d do that whole bit.”
Joel has won six Grammy awards, performed songs hundreds of times before millions of fans. But there’s one song that still gets to him every time he sings it: “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel).”
“There’s a lullaby I wrote for my daughter. And I can’t think about the lyrics when I’m (performing). I can’t.”
When “I wrote the song, my marriage was coming apart. And I was worried. ‘When am I going to see my kid?’ I wrote the song for her to let her know ‘I will never leave you. I will always be there.’ ”
His daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, is now a musician and performer.
Joel said he’s puffed with pride when he watches his daughter in front of an audience.
“There’s a Yiddish word, it’s called ‘kvelling.’ You know the word?” he said. “I see my kid and I (think) ‘That’s my baby. That’s my kid.’ I get very, very proud. And I’m always a little bit nervous before she goes on. And then she steps up to the plate and just knocks it out of the – And I just start laughing: ‘Of course. Of course.’ ”
sylviasmith@jg.net
