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45s.com -- Recording Artist Information: Billy Joel
Date Born May 9, 1949 Location Hicksville, New York Music Rock and Roll singer, pianist Charted Pop/Rock Hits 41 and counting.... Period Active February 23, 1974 to.... Biggest Hits It's Still Rock And Roll To Me; We Didn't Start The Fire; Tell Her About It; Uptown Girl; My Life. Music List and Data Search Music List Notable Information Other Names Born William Martin Joel Other Web Sites Usenet - alt.music.billy-joel Billy Joel was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. The following information was obtained from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Billy Joel is one of rock and roll's most versatile songwriters and accomplished musicians. With a track record comparable to Paul McCartney (a professed influence) and Elton John (a peer and occasional tour mate), he ranks in the upper echelon of pop craftsmen. His classical training and reverence for Broadway musicals has been counterpointed by his early grounding in the Long Island bar-band scene and his love of rhythm & blues, resulting in Joel's enthusiastic but sophisticated approach to rock and roll. His range of influences includes Beethoven, the Beatles, Dave Brubeck, George Gershwin, Phil Spector and Ray Charles. From romantic balladry to hard-rocking material, with elements of jazz, pop and soul figuring into the mix, Joel has applied his compositional skills in a diversity of settings. He is the pop crooner of "Piano Man" and the jazz-tinged romantic of "Just the Way You Are." Yet he's also tried his hand at mainstream arena rock (Glass Houses), ambitious late-Sixties-style pop (The Nylon Curtain) and streetcorner rock and soul of the late Fifties and early Sixties (An Innocent Man).
The professionalism of his recordings and the dynamism of his live shows has kept him at or near the top of the charts for much of his three decades as a solo artist. Joel's popularity is such that he's tied the Beatles for the most multi-platinum albums in the U.S. With the success of "Piano Man" - his slice-of-life autobiography, written about his extended gig as a lounge pianist - Joel inaugurated a run of hit singles that is almost without equal in extent and duration. Between 1974 and1993, Joel landed at least one single in the Top Forty in every year but three. To date, 13 of Joel's 33 hits have made the Top Ten, and three of them - "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" (1980), "Tell Her About It" (1983) and "We Didn't Start the Fire" (1989) - reached Number One.
Billy Joel was born on May 9, 1949, in the Bronx. He displayed an early aptitude on the piano and began taking lessons at age four. The training continued until he was sixteen, by which time Joel was already a veteran of three bands. In 1967, Joel was invited to join the Hassles, a popular Long Island group that played blue-eyed soul with a twist of psychedelia. They cut two albums for the United Artists label. Joel and drummer Jon Small left to form Attila, a short-lived organ-and-drums duo that recorded one album for Epic Records. Gravitating back to the acoustic piano during the early stirrings of the Seventies singer-songwriter movement, Joel recorded Cold Spring Harbor - his debut album as a solo artist - in California. In a self-penned bio included with review copies, Joel wrote: "After seven years of trying to make it as a rock star, I decided to do what I always wanted to do - write about my own experiences."
After the album flopped, Joel dropped out of sight, working as a lounge pianist in Los Angeles. The song he carried away from that experience, "Piano Man," served as the title track from his first album for Columbia Records. (He remains with the label to this day.) His next album, Streetlife Serenade (1974), included "The Entertainer," a withering portrait of the music industry. On Joel's third album, the self-produced Turnstiles (1976), the singer/pianist stretched himself as a songwriter and stylist on a varied set that ranged from a Phil Spector homage, "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" to a cabaret-styled number that paid tribute to his home turf, "New York State of Mind." Joel made his commercial breakthrough with The Stranger, a hit-studded album that became the biggest-selling album in Columbia's history. That record would stand until Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. surpassed it in the Eighties. With its fluid, jazzy sheen and compositional cunning, Joel hit his stride on The Stranger, which yielded a string of infectious singles: "Just the Way You Are," "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "She's Always a Woman" and "Only the Good Die Young."
52nd Street (1978) also produced numerous hits, including "Big Shot," "My Life" and "Honesty." Beneath the polished surface of Joel's ingenious, fluid popcraft, his songs teemed with a brash New Yorker's attitude. "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me," from 1980's Glass Houses, rebutted punk and New Wave acts who'd taken potshots at perceived old-wavers like Joel. Critics eventually came around to Joel's corner on the strength of such albums as The Nylon Curtain, which couched social themes in ornate pop productions inspired by the late-period Beatles, and An Innocent Man, his tribute to the vocal music he'd grown up with. Greatest Hits Volume 1 & Volume 2 (1984) became his seventh consecutive Top Ten album.
Joel further refined his craft on The Bridge (1986) and Storm Front (1989), mature later works on which he assimilated various genres into a cohesive personal style. A history-making tour of the Soviet Union in 1987 resulted in a double live album. Joel also turned history into a hit with his rapid-fire recitation of 20th-century names and places in "We Didn't Start the Fire," from Storm Front. Both single and album reached Number One, as Joel's superstar status showed no signs of waning, despite ongoing shifts in musical trends. In 1993, Joel released River of Dreams, his first album of new material in four years, which entered Billboard's album chart at Number One.
Subsequently, Joel has toured extensively with Elton John and on his own. He has also lectured on college campuses, released Greatest Hits Volume III (1997) and composed instrumental pieces in a classical vein. As Stephen Holden noted in the New York Times, Joel "is one of a handful of pop entertainers who need not fear middle-aged obsolescence. Like Frank Sinatra, Elton John and four or five others, he has the magical combination of talent and populist instincts that transcend pop fashion."
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