I can’t name all of Mozart’s forty symphonies, maybe name a couple of them, but I can tell you pretty much everything about the nine Beethoven symphonies. Is Beethoven that girl next door for you, if you have to pick a classical guy?īecause everything he wrote was exactly right. I didn’t give him any money, but I gave him a credit on the album.’ So I listen mostly to classical music now. Now, I’ve rediscovered the girl next door. Then, when I was a teenager, this rock ‘n’ roll girl came along, with fishnet stockings and smeared lipstick, smoking cigarettes - and she dragged me away from the girl next door, and we had a passionate affair for a good forty years. I always refer to it as the sweet girl next door. My mom brought me to a teacher who lived down the street, and I was fascinated with classical music for the first sixteen years of my life. I started taking piano lessons at an early age. Fortunately, in New York, you got such a wide spectrum of different kinds of music listening to the radio - so I was exposed to it at an early age and fell in love with it. And we always played the radio in my house. My mom was always bringing home records in the library: Broadway shows, classical music, opera, Harry Belafonte records. He had taken piano lessons and we had a piano in the house, an old upright that wasn’t very good, but my father could make it sound good because of the way he played. I fell in love with music at an early age. There’s doo-wop, the Beatles, rock ‘n’ roll, and I know you’re a Beethoven guy! What else is it that all goes into that aesthetic for you? Tell me a bit about your aesthetic and what this alchemy comes from. I think once you dissect it or postmortem it, you can kill it. There’s an alchemy, there’s a sorcery, there’s a wizardry to it that musicians do.
I’ve never been able to figure that out, but I don’t know if I want to, either. I don’t know how that translates into the kind of success that I’ve had. I was thinking about what I want to hear - and maybe I’m fortunate that other people wanted to hear the same stuff I did, but that’s really who I was writing for: I was writing for my own enjoyment. I’ve never really been able to figure that out. Could you talk a bit about what you see is the staying power of your music? Then afterwards, I’ll probably be able to get my hands around it.Īs a hit maker, as a platinum songwriter, you’re in Lennon–McCartney territory right now. I’m going to make sure everything is running the way it should.
I’m just looking at doing the show today. I think it’s going to take a little time after I’ve done it to fully appreciate what it means. I can’t even get my head around it still. Can you put it in perspective for me, the capstone of one hundred shows at Madison Square Garden? Ben Finane, our Editor in Chief, interviewed Joel in July on the eve of his hundredth sold-out show at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, where he has performed monthly since January 2014.ĭownstairs you said it was “a peak of your life” to have this hundredth show. He hasn’t released an album since 2001, but he continues to compose at the piano. Joel, despite his myriad influences, now listens mainly to classical music. Steinway Artist Billy Joel has sold more than 150 million records and is among the most popular singer-songwriters in the world.
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