Billy Joel | Club Random

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We're not non-existent.

We do exist.

But we also were aware of our own lameness.

Yes, we were very much aware of that.

You don't think you've written a song as good as Wichita Lineman?

No.

Oh, stop it.

Why do you think it's a good idea?

I tried.

This song called Stop the Boy.

Hey.

Belly.

Beautiful piano.

Do you play?

A little bit.

A touch.

Thank you for having me to your beautiful.

Oh, this is not your home, right?

This isn't my house.

It's your manager's.

He's my lighting designer, my documentary producer.

I know you've never had a problem with a manager.

I saw the documentary.

It's awesome.

How fortuitous on my network, HBO.

I learned learned so much about you.

First of all, your health.

I mean, all your fans are

wanting to know you had something.

Did we fix it?

It's not fixed.

It's still

being worked on.

You look good.

You sound good.

You look and sound like you.

I feel fine.

Oh, okay.

My balance sucks.

It's like being on a boat.

Why?

That's a good question.

It used to be called water on the brain.

Now it's called hydrocephalus, normal pressure hydrocephalus.

What causes that?

Nobody knows.

They don't know.

What is it?

Idiomatic, idio,

idio-something.

They don't really know what cause.

I thought it must be from drinking.

But you don't drink.

Not anymore.

Yeah.

But I used to, like a fish.

But you're good.

You look good.

I feel good.

I think they keep referring to what I have as a brain disorder.

So it sounds a lot worse than what I'm feeling.

Well this really came about because I wrote you a little note and said

that everybody, you know, the music is so awesome that nobody can kind of not recognize that.

But I never thought you really got your due as a lyricist because pop music, you know,

the number of times you can find

really great lyrics in pop music, not that often.

Yours stand alone, I feel, as poetry even without the music, which I think is very rare in music.

So

can you enjoy a pop song if the lyrics are shit?

Probably, because I'm tuned into the music before I even understand what the lyrics are.

That's the first thing I hear.

There's the rhythm, the melody, the chords.

the production, the sound of it.

And then I start to dig into what the lyrics are.

If they're really cornball and awful and packy, probably not.

But I let a lot of that go.

I let all of it go.

If I made that the bar, I would throw out 80% of my music.

You're probably right.

I mean,

and that's okay.

You know, I used to have this little argument with Clive Davis.

who I know was instrumental in your career, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

And, you know,

he was was of the opinion that lyrics were more important

than the music or as important.

And I would say, well, there are certain people for whom lyrics are very important.

They're called women.

I mean, we all like lyrics, but I don't, I honestly don't,

it doesn't have to be the case.

And lots of people who we really love wrote some pretty horrible lyrics, including the Beatles, who we love more than anybody, right?

But

some of their lyrics are just gobbledygook.

I don't know what I am the walrus means.

You know, I don't know what yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye means.

A lot of it is how you listen to it.

Not necessarily what the meaning of the lyrics are, but what the sound of the lyrics are.

And Lenin got that when he wrote I Am the Walrus.

It was all about what it sounded like.

Remember when we were kids listening to the Beatles.

4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Wow, he's talking about Blackburn, Lancashire.

Where the hell is that?

It was so exotic sounding.

Like, remember the song Norwegian Wood?

Girl.

She's a Norwegian.

You know, what does that mean?

It all was kind of...

But that song, I feel like, has, I can kind of

understand

basically what it's about.

It's sort of like a veiled

telling of a groupie encounter.

Yes.

You know, okay, in an era where you couldn't be too explicit about it, and probably where he didn't want his wife to know.

I fell asleep in the bath.

And, you know, I don't know what, I don't think Wood was, was he saying erection with Wood?

Is that now we can say that?

But I know, but was Wood a term back then for a hard time?

I don't think so.

I don't think so either.

I mean, I just feel like some of these lyrics are daring you.

They were so good at music.

They were like, I fucking dare you to like this song.

Yeah, Lennon would do that.

Yeah.

And McCartney would write, hello, goodbye, or, you know, I mean, get back.

Did you watch the business?

Okay, so we saw him writing it.

Remember, Lennon was late one day, and you saw him writing on a bass.

And we saw how the lyrics evolved.

I mean, there's only like four lyrics to the song.

You know, it's just a sound collage, and it's like, and it's okay.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing.

I don't know, and I don't care.

I don't care either, but I've been listening to that song for 50-something years.

And it's just sounds great, right?

Yes, it's about sound.

That's what first hits us is the sound of the lyrics, not the meaning.

Okay.

But I came here to say one thing, which is that you never do that.

You either write a love song, which is awesome, lyrically, poetic.

stands alone without the music, even if I had never heard the music, or when you're not writing a love song, it's about something.

There's some nutrition to it.

there's some meaning to it.

I hope so.

There is.

And you say it eloquently.

You don't just put it down.

It's just not like, oh, well, good enough.

So, you know, I know in the documentary you said, I

said something like, I write the way I speak.

I mean, you don't really believe that.

I think so.

I use plain language.

I don't get flowery.

Yes, you do.

You think so?

I try not to.

Okay.

When I wore a younger man's clothes,

you could have said when I was younger.

But it wouldn't have rhymed.

But

and also when I wore a younger man's clothes, that's between a poet and a schmuck.

Wouldn't say it that way.

Well, as the smile ran away from his face.

That's a poet.

You know, I mean, it's all through.

I mean,

can you play a little of Summer Highland Falls?

Do you remember the lyrics to that?

Yeah.

I hope so.

You want me to sing?

What?

Should I...

You want me to sing?

No, no.

What if...

They say that these are not the best of times.

These are the only times we know.

These are the only times I've ever known.

Right.

It was the best of worlds.

It was the worst of worlds.

It was the Tale of Two Cities.

Oh, is that where you got?

Yeah, I stole it.

A little bit.

Okay, so you're stealing from Dickens, the best.

I'm trying to.

Yeah.

Yes.

But then in cathedrals of our own...

What's the next line?

I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own.

Okay, you've got to admit that's a little more sophisticated than Woolly Bullet.

It's a little artsy-fartsy, yes.

Okay.

Well, for us English and history majors, we appreciated it in a very big way.

Well, do you know that there's a song I wrote called You're My Home.

It was on the Piano Man album.

I love it.

It's on my top 50 of yours.

Well, I got beat up for a lyric in that song.

The lyric was,

let's see, You're My Home.

You're My Castle, You're My Cabin and My Instant Pleasure Dome.

And it was a lot of

Instant Pleasure Dome.

What a reach.

And I say, Excuse me, that's from Xanadu

by William Golden.

You know, I stole it from a poet.

Kubla Khan, yes.

The historian Zana.

Kubla Khan, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, again, not everyone's going to appreciate all this, but I'm telling you, a lot of people do.

And I think you are...

I mean, I have heard you always say that you write the music first.

Yes.

Okay.

So, and you still write music?

Yes.

Okay, so it's really the fact that it's the lyrics.

You set such a high standard that I think you

that's probably what is holding you back and why you haven't released music in so long is because how do I

it seems like that's the part

you said at one point in the documentary even you said you got tired of the tyranny of the rhyme.

Yes.

Okay.

And you know what?

I'll tell you a little story.

I tried to write a song once.

It's hard.

It was during the pandemic and like we were all home with nothing to do, right?

And it's like bored.

I'm like, oh fuck, when am I going to, it's like, you know what?

I always thought I could write a song.

Maybe not the music, but I'm a writer, excuse me.

I've written six books.

The editorial every week at the end of the show, I pretty much write that, I mean, with help, but that's my baby.

And like, you know, a 13 stand-up special.

I can write a song.

No.

No, I can't.

I tried it sober.

I tried it stoned.

I tried it in a car.

I tried it in a bar.

I tried it on Mars.

I tried it from afar.

I couldn't do it.

And, you know, it's just a special different kind of skill than the one I have.

And I even had a good

premise and a title.

It's called The World Makes Us Lie.

Okay, that's a good premise.

It is.

Because it was about someone in a relationship with someone who the world deemed age inappropriate.

I don't know where I got the idea.

But, and it could be more universal than that.

The world does make us lie about things.

And it's sometimes appropriate.

If you believe what they were saying in the the tabloids you deserve to be lied to well just to get along you've got a lie right

so

if you want to

if you're bored one day and you want to noodle with that please don't

because I couldn't but I couldn't do it I just couldn't do it it's hard it is hard it really is hard it is so how when you listen to music what I was reading in the Times two days ago they said the kids are back into buying DVDs because they they got the memo that on digital, you don't ever really own anything that you think you own, but you really don't.

So, like DVDs, yeah, that it's not my format.

But what do you do?

Do you stream?

Do you have an 8-track?

Do you have a jukebox?

I don't know.

I don't even get to it anymore.

I can't even turn my TV on without going through four or five different permutations.

Oh, I know.

But like, what do you, but when you listen to music, what are you listening on?

What's

the got to find

the right medium to hear it.

I don't always, you know, I hardly play vinyl anymore, although I have a turntable, a really nice turntable.

I got a nice stereo, Macintosh, and you know, analog equipment, and I don't know how to use it.

So I try to find a radio station.

I like to listen to classical music.

That's where.

Exclusively?

Pretty much.

You never want to hear Crimson and Clover.

No, I do.

My kids make me listen to pop music.

Daddy, put on the pop station.

Okay.

Which on my radio now?

Yeah.

In the car.

In the car.

Yeah.

So it's easier for me to find a radio station in the car than it is at home.

But

what I do to listen to classical music when I want to hear it, I put on the T V and I try to find

this classical symphony station on T V so I can hear music.

It's so ass backwards.

That's how I hear music nowadays.

I put the TV on.

Weird.

I mean,

for me, the iPod,

because I'm an anal retentive person, was like the perfect medium, and I still use it.

It's not easy.

You have to buy them on eBay.

They don't make them anymore.

Apple just definitely doesn't want you to.

It sounds like ancient technology.

It is, but it's superior technology.

I'll tell you why.

First of all, on the iPod, you know, first of all, it's all in your computer and then you sync the iPod.

Do you remember that?

When you sync it to you.

So your playlists,

all your music is there.

So for someone who just wants exactly what I want, streaming is all about, you like this, so you'll probably like this.

And my answer is, no, I won't.

But more than that,

it just clarifies to me how great an artist is or not.

How many songs do I have up there?

Do I have eight or a hundred?

You know

that to me is very valuable.

It's one reason why I never understood why like you performed with Elton John.

Why would two guys who each have so many songs that you could fill more than the concert,

why would you do it?

Why would you join forces?

You don't need to join forces.

Like I understand bands do that.

Like they're, you know, if you want to have soul asylum, go out with sixpence, none the richer.

Makes total sense.

No offense to the bands.

It's no offense to only have four or five hits.

But why you and Elton John?

Well, that goes back a long ways.

I actually met Elton in Amsterdam back in the early 70s, the Sinesta Hotel in Amsterdam.

So

Elton was at the hotel.

Steve Cohen, who I was just talking about earlier, knew his manager, John Reed, and got us together.

But we met and

we were saying, you know,

I hope you don't believe what they write about me and you with this rivalry because I don't have any rivalry towards you.

I admire your work.

And we said, someday maybe we should get together and play together and show people how we are different.

Because there was a lot of comparisons going on.

Neither of us were comfortable with that.

So we talked about how do you overcome something like that.

And it was an early idea, let's play play together and let's see let people let the chips fall where they may let people decide for themselves you really gave a shit that much what they that they said that i mean to to the point where you would didn't you go out i think the doc said you were 16 years on the road with him yes on and off 16 years together

again it's just crazy to me that somebody who could do more hits than we have time for of his own

would then like

do a show with another guy.

It seems like it's an embarrassment of riches.

It was, but it was the fun part about it was I got to play his shit, and he got to play my shit.

What did you play of his?

Oh, I played Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road, which I loved.

Love that.

I played your song.

You know, a lot of his big hits, I got to play.

And I didn't have to play the Billy Joel stuff, which was kind of a nice relief.

I mean,

double albums, remember?

Yeah.

Very few

good all the way through.

I mean, it's hard enough to make a single album good all the way through.

You always did.

Right.

And we appreciate that.

Name like your top five, or like maybe the only five good double albums.

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road is definitely one of them.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

That was a good one.

That's an amazing double album.

Yes.

That was a good album.

The white album.

I'm not a big fan of the white album.

Like I say, not the white album.

But some people love it.

I hear it as a collection of half-assed songs that didn't finish writing because they were either too stoned or they didn't care anymore.

Really?

Yeah.

Like what?

A lot of stuff on that album.

Well, certainly Revolution No.

9.

No one's going to defend that.

Okay.

But, you know, it's a double album.

I think they had fragments and they put them on the album.

I think John was kind of disassociated somewhat at that point.

I think Paul was

carrying them weight

at that point.

That point since before then.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, my theory with the Beatles has always been that what really broke them up was what they cared about more than anything else was A-sides of singles, of singles themselves.

I mean, they were, after all, the only band ever who did not put the singles on the album until the very end.

That's how much they valued the single.

That was state of the art.

There were no such thing as album artists.

It was all about hit singles.

For them.

Yeah, and usually you would buy an album or often, and for the hit single, which was on the album, and then the rest of the album didn't live up to the single.

They didn't even put the single on the album.

And I think at a certain point, Lennon was not getting the A-side.

Imagine writing a song as great as Strawberry Fields.

It's not the hit.

It's not the A-side.

Penny Lane was the A-side.

It also was

like it charted on its own.

But of course, it's a little moodier and not quite as mass appeal as Penny Lane, right?

So it wasn't as big.

And then you write revolution, and you lose out to Hey Jude.

You know, this was like a pattern.

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well i think i have a theory that we don't know about which is i think they almost broke up a couple of times I think just like a marriage.

What ban doesn't.

Right.

Right.

But it was never talked about.

It had to look smoothed over for the 10 years that they were, you know, famous.

I think they almost broke up a few times and they had their ups and downs.

And sometimes they were more prolific and sometimes they weren't.

And I hear that in some of those things.

Did your band ever want to be named?

Like, did they, was there ever a talk like, why isn't it Billy Joel and the Toon Masters?

Yeah, we talked about it.

Billy Joel and

Fire Dog.

Exactly.

Exactly.

We tried to come up with names, and they always have these cockney-sounding names.

Really?

Like what?

Until it was.

BJ and the Affordables.

It was like a joke.

And we did it on a video with Rodney Dangerfield.

What do you think it was that?

Oh.

Tell her about it, which is a song I don't like.

Yeah, I was trying to do a Motown song.

I was trying to be, what's the name?

Diana Ross and the Supremes.

I opened for Frankie Valley as a comic in 1984, right after the

50s tribute album came out, which is an opus.

It's an opus.

It's not just a record.

And

I'm sure he somehow got the message to you, but if he didn't, I remember him saying how flattered and thrilled he was.

By what you did with that album.

Oh, with Uptown Girl?

Yes.

They knew.

I mean,

you weren't hiding it.

You were just...

No, it's an homage.

An homage.

But like, you know, a lot of your stuff is an homage to classical music.

I feel like you were the one guy who, like, channeled

classical music into pop music in such a way as an idiot like me who has no interest in classical music loves.

I take that as a compliment.

It just should.

I was trying, I'm maybe unconsciously trying to do that.

Because I hear it when I listen back to this stuff.

So you didn't think the white album, okay, like...

Nah.

White album.

What about Tommy?

Nah.

Double album.

To me, it was a lot of filler on Tommy.

It was a lot of instrumental guitar playing that I didn't care about.

A double album, Cream Wheels of Fire.

No, not good.

I love that.

I loved it.

You thought that was a great double album?

I loved it.

I loved everything on that.

White Room is on that.

Yes.

I didn't

showed.

Well,

I remember the titles.

I obviously don't remember the music because I listened to them and then forgot them.

Okay.

So, but you know, you can't, you cannot, and people try to do it all the time.

Like, tell a person

you should like this.

They do it.

Here, listen, you should, I, no, I shouldn't.

There's no shouldn't.

It either hits me or it doesn't.

I hate it.

I hate it.

You know.

How about Axis Boulder's love, Jimi Hendrix?

Hendrix never tickled my ear the way you do.

I know he's awesome and great and the fire and the played Sgt Pepper the day it came out and great stuff and 27 Club looks like a cool dude who was always having threesomes with a joint in his mouth.

But I just never got into the music.

See, I loved almost everything he ever did.

It was as if he squeezed his entire life into three years.

He only had a three-year career, and I mean, he was dead.

Hendrix, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, 27.

Guy to 27.

He was just getting started.

Right.

But you look at this, the amount of work he was able to do, there was so much crammed into a short amount of time that I loved everything he did.

But I mean, I saw in the doc, you love Zeppelin, as I do.

I love Zeppelin.

But

that to me,

you know, you sound nothing like Zeppelin in most of your Billy Joel music.

Maybe Zeppelin.

Maybe a Tilly, yeah.

I tried to.

It was to complete this.

No, no, no.

I think you found your niche.

I think that's been decided.

Why did you ever put out a double album?

Well, I did.

I think a double Greatest Hits.

There was Greatest Hits Volume 1 and Volume 2.

But that's not like putting out a...

That's not a real album.

No, it's clear.

No, but you were wise to.

Because you're right, it's very hard I mean George Martin

he said exactly what you said he he said in the Beatles documentary and he says

I thought we should have just made one really good single album

out of the white album yeah but you know what I got to tell you you people in the business you just have a different view I'm just a I'm just a young man in the 22nd row you know I see you as something more than sexual, more than just our Marilyn Monroe.

And to us,

like a lot of the things you guys do and talk about and think are important, like George Martin I saw in the documentary, wanted to

produce you, which is a great compliment and makes perfect sense of all the people who he thinks he could follow the Beatles with.

Okay, but then he wanted to fire your band.

And I don't know what George Martin was hearing.

from your band, but I promise you, the regular guy did not notice that.

Did not think that band, oh boy, Billy Joel's records, if only he'd fire that band and hire a good one.

It's ridiculous.

That was one of the most traumatic things I went through was deciding not to work with George Martin, who was one of my heroes.

I thought he was an integral part of the Beatles, and I love the Beatles more than anybody.

Completely.

And he was the fifth Beatle.

Right.

And wait, you're not going to have George Martin produce you?

Your big problem is the production.

You need a good producer.

I know, but he wants to not use my band, and that's part of my sound, I thought.

But also,

what are you talking about production?

There's so much production, like on Billy the Kid.

Yeah.

Dun, dun, dun.

I mean, so many of your songs, I'm telling you, it's an opus.

It's not just a record.

That's production from early on.

You know, I mean, one of the things that blew my mind in this documentary was how big you were, how not big you were, at a time when I thought you were huge.

Like when I was in college, that we're talking about turnstiles,

you know, had enormous songs on it.

Like people, I'm sure, think today.

The East Coast, right?

Yes, but like New York State of Mind, Say Goodbye to Hollywood.

What else?

James, nobody talks about that.

Also, the Angry Young Man.

I was a regional artist for a long time.

Yeah, I mean, that really blew my mind that you were staying in holiday inns and scrounging for money at a time when I thought we all did in college because Piano Man, that album had come out, turnstile, streetlight serenade.

I was still in college when the big one came out.

It was a long slog.

And the critics were not kind.

I mean, do you think that did that affect you?

Like you said, the thing with Elton John moved you to do something.

Because were mean and wrong.

I thought they were wrong.

They were wrong.

Okay.

Definitely.

Time has proved it, and it was easy to know at the time.

Sometimes people are just wrong.

But, you know,

again, the stupidest, I think, thing in the world is a music review because you can't put in words whether I like this song or not.

You have to hear it.

Well, talking about music, who said that?

It's like dancing about architecture.

What's the point?

It's no point.

No point.

You can't get the sound from the story in a magazine, which I'm quoting myself.

It's like writing a review of mustard.

I either like it or I don't.

It's all subjective.

And

there's such, you know, just looking for ways to be stupid and snobby.

Another thing I learned in documentary that I had no knowledge of before was that you were at one point appreciated ironically.

And I was like, you know what?

I never felt, I was never aware of this.

I never felt the need to distance myself from my appreciation of Billy Joel.

Were you aware of that?

I know that there was some speculation about what the songs were really about, but I was just being literal.

Like piano man was about a gay bar.

Oh, oh, oh.

You know what I mean?

It was like,

I didn't know that until recently.

No.

But I mean, they just, they just,

I feel sometimes they, something is so popular that then it, they decide it's corny.

You know, like I saw it happen a stairway to heaven.

You know, one of the greatest songs ever.

And the song didn't change.

But it just got played so much.

Is there a bustle in your hedgerow?

Do you know what that means?

Because I don't get that one.

Exactly.

And that's what I appreciate about you.

You never do that to me.

You never make me go, what the fuck?

You know, could you replace the placeholder lyric with a real one?

Would you put in the time to do that?

Do you buy Davey in the Navy?

Yes, totally.

Okay, a lot of people don't.

They go, that was a stretch.

Wow, what a cornball lyric that is.

The guy's name was Davey, and he was in the Navy.

Even if it wasn't, it rhymes with Navy.

Exactly.

Thank you.

And it makes sense.

Again, it's couched in this song that has so much poetry in it and also moves people in a very big way.

But again, that song is kind of like the Stairway to Heaven song.

It's just so fucking good and played so much that at some point

Some group of people have to come along and go, oh boy, yeah, Stairway to Heaven.

You know, I remember when Neil Diamond suddenly sucked, and I was like, you know, I didn't get the memo.

I like Neil Diamond and always will.

And Barry Manilow, same thing.

Like him, don't need to be ironically in the middle.

You're entitled to like what you want.

Especially when it's good.

Well, I have to disagree with you, piano man.

I don't think it's that good a song,

even though it's.

I know.

Okay, I don't care.

Okay, no, I know.

It's fun.

Literally, as

much as I can say, you know, I don't care if you don't like it, and I appreciate you bearing with us who love it to play it all the time.

When I'm sure you're, look, I got bored telling the same jokes when I'm

for 43 years I was in the road as a stand-up.

I just stopped doing it.

That's part of what, yeah, I've told this joke a hundred times, and I know when I go,

they go mad with laughter.

Watch this.

And if I go,

it won't get any laughter.

So I like hit the pedal and make the hamster dance.

And, you know, I feel like a hack sometimes.

It's showbiz.

But okay, I got a great question for you.

So when you were the piano man, like

making them forget about their troubles for a while,

you must have been playing certain songs.

I was just kind of this sound coming out of the corner of the room for the most part until I started to sing something on the mic.

And it looked like sometimes that annoyed people.

They didn't want to hear a singer.

They just wanted some background music.

I got something for you.

When I was 12, I sent away, I bet you we listened to the same

W ABC Cousin Brucey radio when we were a kid, because that was Long Island in New Jersey.

WMCA Good Guys, yeah.

Good guys, and then Cousin Brucey on ABC.

Yep.

I sent away for this when I was 12, the top 100 hits of 1968.

You're bowled over by it, I guess.

Am I supposed to know?

No, I'm just saying.

I still have it.

Why?

Aren't you glad I...

Now I can tell you what the top 100 hits of 1968 are.

Go ahead.

Let me know.

Right.

See, now you're glad I saved it.

Number one, hey, Jude.

Biggie.

Two, young girl by Gary Puckett.

Very inappropriate today.

I keep it.

Absolutely.

Just the fact that she's in his mind.

Right.

And his love for her is way out of line.

Yeah.

Not good.

Number three,

I hope

you love this song as much as I do.

People gotta be free.

The Rascals.

The Rascals.

I love The Rascals.

That song also was a giant, right?

You remember how big a hit that was?

I love the Young Racers.

They were my favorite band at that time was the Young Rascals.

For Mrs.

Robinson.

Great song.

Yeah.

Great song.

No drummer.

There's no drumming on that song?

No drummer.

What's driving the rhythm on that?

The guitar.

The guitar is a percussive instrument.

Was that a Roy Halley engineered guy?

I think all Paul Simon stuff is, right?

I remember that name.

Five, Love is Blue, Paul Moriat.

Didn't like it then.

Hasn't improved with age.

Not really.

I love it that you're like a human jukebox.

I could say any song, and you could just start playing it.

I don't know why I want to.

It's just the driven sound.

No, but the fact that you can do that, it can so quickly translate from your ears to your fingers.

That's my life.

No, it's amazing.

All right, I'm going to give you one more.

Oh.

MacArthur Park.

Jimmy Webb.

He's a friend of mine.

But isn't that a great song?

It's a great song.

The lyrics get

poke fun at a lot.

Oh.

Someone left the cake out in the rain.

Well, okay.

I've been listening to it forever.

You're right.

And never really...

Comics made jokes about that.

You know, it's just a cake, pal, you know, Carol Leifer used to say.

It's just, yeah, because if people don't know, the lyric is, somebody left the cake out in the rain, I don't think I can take it, it took so long to bake it, I'll never have this recipe again.

I was playing it this for a much younger person, and she immediately understood.

She said, of course I get that.

It's the metaphor is the cake is a relationship and you fucked it up.

You left it out in the, somebody left it out in the rain.

That's suspicious.

Somebody, I don't know who fucked this relationship up, but somebody left the cake out in the rain.

I'm not pointing any fingers

and I'll never have this recipe again I'll never find a

songwritery yeah that's what it is but what's wrong with it is in the middle section which is it's almost like I would wouldn't even say it's a B section because almost like a whole different song you know the way it went away to a whole other thing yeah and then it came back with an instrumental like bumping

and then back to

yes but the middle was so

a lot of moods okay it contradicts what he's saying about the cake.

He's saying there will be another one.

I'll have another dream and someone will bring it.

Well, you just said.

I'll never have that recipe again.

And you never do that.

You never

make me go, that doesn't make sense.

Yeah, but if I could write a song

as good as Wichita Alignment that Jimmy Webb also wrote,

I'd be a very happy man.

That's in here somewhere, Wichita Lineman.

Wichita Lineman.

Yes, I was looking at it here somewhere recently.

I saw it.

Yeah, I'm not going to look at it.

Would you call it song?

Yeah.

I mean, you don't think you've written a song as good as Wichita Lineman?

No.

Oh, stop it.

Why do you think it was?

I tried.

There's a song called Stop in Nevada.

I was trying to write Witchman.

What's Stop in Nevada?

I was trying to write Wichita Lineman.

I was thinking Midwestern guy climbing a telephone pole with the barren fields of Kansas.

And, you know, how do you evoke that?

How do I

write that?

What do you want to?

You know, your songs are about something.

Like, you know, you could have written,

when you start a song with somebody's name, like Anthony

works in the shop.

You got the guy.

Saving his money for someday.

See, that's poetic.

Not for, it's someday using someday to evoke the thought of it someday as a specific holiday.

Savings money for someday, right?

Yeah.

So, okay, but that song gets at something.

It's very McCartney in the sense of he did it often.

He would just take a name and imagine a life.

Working-class stuff.

Eleanor Rigby, you know, Lady Madonna, just Jojo.

Who are these people?

We don't know.

You know the story of that song moving out?

Why it is what it is now?

It started out as something else.

I had a different melody, a completely different.

First, I write the music first.

What I was writing was somebody else's song.

It was a Neil Siddatka song.

So I show it to the band, the band goes, that sucks.

That's why.

Because it's a Neil Siddatka song.

Oh.

You mean I have to write a whole...

But that still sounds like the song to me.

It's this rhythm is the same.

The pattern is the same.

I mean, there's only so many notes.

There's some songs are going to.

Yeah, but you want them to be.

Yes, and they are.

I never heard that from that song.

I had to rework the whole thing.

And then it became

because I didn't want to have to write a whole other bunch of lyrics.

Yeah.

So I wrote all the lyrics.

That was such a pain in the ass.

I got to change it now.

No, keep the lyrics and rewrite the music.

So it was one of those.

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But it's about something, you know.

I mean, it's not just, well,

I mean, Eleanor Rigby, that's about something.

Loneliness.

And that's a haunting, that's a great lyric.

Yes.

But Desmond, you know, these are just like, I can imagine I'm this other person.

Whereas your thing is, you know, I I mean, I would say that song fits into your

sub-genre of your sly commentary on the

disintegrating American dream, Allentown, you know,

moving out is one of those songs.

You have a number of them, I think.

Well, you're picking up on something that I've, that's what I like about reading your book.

I'm tipping over sacred cows all my life.

That's what I like to do.

I like to do that.

A Catholic girl song.

It had to be done.

But

it did have to be done.

But I was surprised to

realize watching the doc that it was that controversial in the 70s.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I guess it, look, I've had many letters from William Donahue, the head of the Catholic League.

He literally has challenged me to a fight with me, really, like

two 60-something-year-old men in the parking lot with our shirt sleeves rolled up, really.

But that's how the Catholic Church feels about me.

So I can, but they were really upset.

Yes, they were.

And it's such a clever, energetic, oh, it's just great, you know, and it's funny.

And it's one of yours that's like in triplets, right?

Which is to me a comedy rhythm.

Like Captain Jack is in triplets.

And it's like, see, comedy is always threes, like blah, blah, blah, blah, and then the thing

doesn't fit.

And every triplet in Captain Jack, it's almost like a,

you know,

you're on the

street clothes from your head down to your toes, but so your finger's going to pick your nose.

You know, like every, and your father's in the swimming pool.

Like every trip, it's almost, you know what I'm saying?

When's the shoe going to drop?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

that's interesting, you know, and the ironic thing about Only the Good Die Young is that

in all honesty, the Catholic girls were the easiest ones.

They were the, you know,

the least pure of all the young girls were the Catholic girls.

Everybody knew that.

They were the easy girls.

Really?

Yeah.

I did not avail myself to, and I was raised Catholic, to either this knowledge or these women.

That was the way it was on Long Island?

I think so.

That was the way it was.

And they were attracted to you because you were not

forbidden fruit.

Yeah, I think so.

As a Jew?

I didn't even have Jewish Jewish upbringing.

I just, my family was Jews.

Yep, same thing with my mother's Jewish heritage, but I was never in a temple, and neither was she.

But that would make you a Jew.

Yeah, that's what they say.

But you know what?

I don't like when people say something that is an opinion, and a religion is just an opinion.

Don't tell me what it is.

Like, that's just, that, first of all, comes from Roman law.

We're not going by Roman law anymore.

Yes, in Phyllis.

In some ways, we are.

Yes, we are going backwards in some ways.

I think it's settled backwards.

But that's another thing I learned in the doc about you.

You're German.

This explains so much.

Because like, who are the great composers?

All Germans.

I guess

there's the Russians.

But like, who dominated first Bach,

17th century?

Then Mozart in the 18th century was the man.

Then it was Beethoven, Schubert.

It's a German thing.

Wagner.

It makes, yes, it makes sense that there's something in the Teutonic blood.

But I'm not Teutonic.

Well, that means German, doesn't it?

Yes, it does, geographically.

Yeah.

But my family were Jews.

Yeah, but you were still German Jews.

And they were more German than they were Jews in their minds.

I mean, the seat of anti-Semitism before Hitler was not Germany, it was France.

The Dreyfus affair.

And Spain.

Everywhere.

It's amazing the way the one thing the two political sides can agree on is hating everybody.

Everybody hates Jews.

It's like, what can bring us together?

Jews.

They quoted me,

I don't remember what it was about.

Oh, there's

an Israeli magazine called The Forward.

You ever read The Forward?

And

they quoted me as saying, no matter what, I'm always a Jew.

Because I wore the Jewish star,

the yellow star.

And my point was, it's not not just I'm saying that people who think you're Jewish say he's a Jew.

No matter what you do, you're always going to be a Jew.

You can't not be a Jew if you were Jewish.

I think that's what you're saying.

Yeah.

See, again, back to the lyrics.

Like, all those dudes, they never had to write lyrics, right?

Bach never wrote a lyric.

No.

So he didn't have that burden.

And, well, Mozart wrote operas, right?

Did he write lyrics?

Mozart wrote operas.

He had De Ponte, who was his lyricist.

Oh, so he didn't write lyrics?

He didn't write libretto.

He wrote music.

Beethoven stole from the famous Goethe,

who wrote the

Ode to Joy.

Freuder Schenegato Funken Rapper Altilesium.

He borrowed from the famous poet, Goethe.

So, did you ever think about, like, okay, Brachrach had Hal David,

and

your boy Elton had Bernie.

Bernie Talpin.

Did you ever think, oh, why don't I get me a...

I thought about it.

You made the right decision, because you would have been disappointed.

You would have.

Maybe.

I mean, look, I love Elton John,

but some of those lyrics, Rocket Man, if somebody handed you Rocket Man, come on, man.

You would not do it.

You would not.

That shows me what a great music writer

Elton was.

And stupid lyrics.

I mean, come on.

He's an astronaut, but his wife is packing his bags.

And all the science, I don't understand.

But the music

makes you get it.

But you know what?

I'll tell you something about astronauts.

They do know the science.

They really do.

They just don't send people up there.

Like, it's not the Katy Perry girls trip.

You know, it's NASA.

Anyway, but that.

Part of the magic of music, though, I think.

Because

there is a code within the music itself that has nothing to do with the words that takes you to this place if it's done right of course

exact why do you think we like you

that's why we like you you do you perform that and and it's it's there is something about music

um

that just is

you know, primus inter pares among the arts because it just gets to people like on a very deep level.

And it can be intellectual too, but it just goes right to the solar plexus or whatever.

Yeah, and I think it's the mistake to try to over-intellectualize it.

Music, you know, to me,

what I love about classical music is its purity.

There's no lyrics in a lot of symphonic music and a lot of classical music.

It's just music.

And it can take me away somewhere else completely.

I get stolen from it.

I literally get carried away listening to beautiful music.

I don't know why that is.

No.

So do I.

There are some songs that, very few, but I can think of one for sure that make me cry.

Yeah.

Samuel Barber's Adagio.

I'm not a crier.

You know the adagio?

No.

No, no, no.

That's

your function.

But if you heard it, Take that and make it pop music for me.

Okay.

Because I'm just a guy.

Well, how about...

Yeah.

It's almost like a medieval thing.

But music does that.

It also makes me think of the Civil War.

Good.

That's good.

That's Stephen Foster.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

You could play that behind Ken Burns showing.

he was an influence on me, Steven Foster.

Oh, and all those

Civil War-era songs, they're stirring.

They are.

Well, again,

this documentary made me realize that, like,

so many songs

of yours that I had been listening to for so long and appreciated the lyrics on one level because they are universal.

And then this put color to this black and white drawing of your life that I had had.

Really?

Yes, because so many of your songs are very literal as to what was going on in your life.

Whoever put this documentary together had a very easy job matching the song to what was being said because, you know,

say goodbye to Hollywood.

That's when Billy was leaving Hollywood.

You know, it's like,

who can't put that?

You know,

New York state of mind.

I'm loving New York now.

There's a story.

Piano man.

I'm working in a piano bar.

You know,

it's pretty straightforward.

Well, I got advice when I was starting starting out was to write what you know.

And that's how I wrote, when I wrote it.

Yeah, I mean.

I'm very literal.

I get angry with you.

No, and I was so interested in the documentary to learn about the whole relationship with you and your first wife and how many of the songs were about her.

That's something I really didn't understand.

And the complex...

situation of having your wife then be your manager.

Like, like,

now I understand she's always a woman.

Because,

you know, in the song that I've been listening to all these years and loving all these years, you know, she steals like a thief.

What's up with this chick?

And she's casually cruel and she'll, you know, make you bleed and then laugh about it.

I'm like,

like a fun girl, but he loves her.

And then I realize it's, that's

how she is with, in business, on your behalf.

She's always a woman.

To you.

Hello.

Yeah.

Well, we don't know this.

What am I?

Kreskin?

I don't know.

No, I know.

But people used to tear that apart.

Well, how can he like this person because they're so horrible?

I said, no.

Well,

it's duality.

But even if you don't know the backstory, it does make sense in a way because I've had that kind of relationship.

Thank you.

Where,

just put it this way,

I thought this woman was horrible, and yet if you asked me to explain to somebody why, I couldn't do it.

So I would, you know, I think I would just, the essence of the song, so I just blame myself.

If you don't get it, I'm kind of talking to myself.

You don't get it,

look in the mirror.

So that's kind of, you know that you wrote three she songs, of course.

You must know this.

Three that start with.

She's got a way.

She's got a way.

She's always a woman.

She's right on time.

Yeah.

Do you like She's Right on Time?

Love it.

I think that's one of my favorite songs I wrote.

Love it.

That and Laura are very, Laura's to me the most beetle-esque.

Absolutely.

Isn't that a beetle?

It's like, and I say that as the ultimate compliment.

I was channeling John Lennon.

But like, yeah, that part, what am I supposed to do?

That sounds so Lennon-y.

And then, but although the, uh,

yes,

it's, it's awesome.

It was Beetle-esque.

I couldn't deny it.

There could be no greater complimentary adjective than beetle-esque.

I appreciate that.

So that's what I was going for.

And you got it.

And I had to say fucking.

I loved it.

Feeling like it's time to drop the F-bomb.

Fucking.

That wasn't done a lot in those days.

No, it's the only time I think I've ever done anything like that.

Right.

Well, no.

I got a thumb and it's a son of a bitch.

Oh, well, that's light.

That's obscenity light.

Okay, but even back then, that was a couple of.

That's true.

That's on Piano Man.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, that was a bit.

That was early.

early we're talking mid-70s they didn't people didn't say son of a bitch on records no bitch bitches back that was shocking billy why did you feel this need to work blue

it worked

no but uh

well yeah three she songs

yeah i mean we have such a different um

view of like relationships, I think, and yet I'm so on the same page with you when you sing about how, don't anybody tell me what to do.

I mean, this is a theme that comes up a lot in your songs.

And again, makes you very lovable to a lot of people.

You know, just

do what you want.

This is my life.

Who can't relate to that?

Some people probably

don't have that gene like we do.

Like, I don't want, even like,

you know,

the one where you're driving the motorcycle in the rain.

Like,

I know it's stupid.

You are probably right.

But I still want to do it.

Don't tell me what to do.

That's what used to get my backup about in the early days when I would read these negative reviews.

Basically, they were saying, no, he shouldn't be doing that.

He should be doing this.

This is the right way that he should be doing it.

And I was like, no, that's not the way I want to do it.

That's not the story I want to tell.

I don't want to tell your story.

I want to tell my story.

But it's curious to me that someone who has that gene gets married a lot.

See, like, I never got married.

So for me, it makes sense.

You don't tell me what to do.

I find it irreconcilable, but maybe.

I understand.

I do too.

But I know you said in a documentary,

you don't want to die alone.

But don't you always die alone?

Isn't that the one thing we always just...

You can't take them with you?

You can't.

I mean, in India, sometimes the widow throws herself on the funeral pyre.

I mean, I don't think a lot in...

I think I just have this

uncontrollable adoration of women.

All your exes like you.

I mean, the fact that your first wife is a big part of the documentary says a lot.

They're still friends.

Being friends with exes, I think, says a lot about a man.

And they all seem to like you, and there's no animosity, and they have good things to say.

I appreciate that, too.

Yeah, well, I'm sure you do.

You should.

And,

you know, I know the first one ended with that motorcycle crash.

Well, it had been coming on for a while even though.

Of course.

But, you know, sometimes people do something

subconsciously.

Maybe so.

I mean, my

doctor friend, he's a,

you you know, not a MD, but a holistic doctor, also a shrink.

And he said, he once said to me, I've seen people give themselves cancer to get out of a relationship.

I wonder sometimes if I have a self-destructive tendency, because

you know the song The Entertainer?

Of course.

All right, well, that came out after Piano Man was kind of a semi-hit.

Piano Man was like a well-known song.

Yes.

And The Entertainer was kind of a commentary on how they chopped it up and they edited it in the music business and you got to be another can of beans.

Another can of beans.

So here I was, things are going well.

And it was almost as if I was saying, let me see if I can screw this up somehow.

And it wasn't a good idea to release that song based on the music business response to it because they didn't like that.

That was not a popular song with them.

So, oh, he's he had a hit and now he's bitching about it.

That's how it was received.

So I always wondered about something like that.

Do I have that self-destructive tendency?

Well, you did try to, you almost died three times.

There was the motorcycle crash, then there was like, well, you know what?

Those early ones, I had the same, you know, I'm going to kill myself when I was 19 years old.

If I could have gotten laid once at Cornell.

You probably would have been better.

Are you kidding?

My depression would have lifted it.

I would not be suicidal.

But, you know, there's that era of your life where you do kind of have this, you have to get over the idea of feeling sorry for yourself.

Yes.

And that's what, you know, the one where you...

That's a big one.

You drank Lemon Pledge.

I saw that in the documentary.

That's what they said.

Yeah, it was Lemon Pledge.

That's right.

You remember that?

It's hard to forget that.

Lemon Pledge?

I mean, in your defense, lemon is a flavor.

It would look tastier than bleach.

There were two things in the closet.

I said, I'll take the lemon pledge because it's lemon flavored.

It'll be tastier.

Wow.

All I did was fart furniture polish.

I polished my mom's wooden chairs.

I remember that.

I feel like our generation, so much more stoic.

I mean, when you were playing Summer Highland Falls, the end of the chorus is always, it's either sadness or euphoria.

Which

I don't know if I completely relate to that.

I mean, I certainly remember sadness.

Euphoria?

They used to call it manic depression.

And that's how I was feeling at the time.

That's that age, like you said, 19 to early 20s.

You got your head so far up your ass, you can't see straight.

And you have to get out of yourself.

You have to start empathizing with the rest of the people.

You also had family stuff.

I mean, that's really a big part of the first one, your father.

Yeah.

Or lack of, you know, I didn't know all that.

You know, you kind of like

he left and then even when you found him,

it was not.

What is the lesson there?

That like

even when you're related to somebody, they don't have to be kind.

They don't have to be good to you.

They don't have to care.

What is it?

Don't don't meet your heroes because they're going to let you down

somehow.

When it's your own kin.

I mean, you know what?

My mother told me a story.

My mother did not have a father.

He left as soon as she was born.

This is in the 20s.

And so she was raised by my grandmother and the immediate, you know, the larger family, the grandparents.

But she, I remember she told me she was in World War II, as both our fathers were,

a nurse, and I forget how it came about, but her father, she was going to meet her father for the first time.

And she was in her Army uniform.

And she was super excited.

She didn't tell me a lot of stories like this, but she met him and she just said, it wasn't like he was mean or anything.

He just was like cold.

You know, it was like he just had to be there.

He didn't really want to be there.

And it just, you could tell it just was devastating.

Almost worse than if he had hit her or something.

So.

It's one of those things I don't know if you really ever get over.

No, not family stuff.

I mean, I realize, you know, the song Vienna.

I didn't realize until recently, it was me writing about me.

Yes.

I just thought it was about my friends.

I was seeing my friends drive themselves crazy trying to live the American dream.

And I thought I was talking about them.

And I watched the doc and I went, wait a minute, this is me looking for my dad.

That's what this is about.

And I'm still trying to work all that out.

All those songs you have about going home to your family,

like you cannot understand how interchangeable, like

people of our age who grew up like in the suburbs of New York, our lives were.

You know, I bet you you grew up in an all-white town.

Yep, all white.

So did I.

Rivervale, New Jersey.

And, you know, this is supposedly the liberal

East, Northeast, right, New York City, but that's where people were in the 50s and 60s.

But all those songs, like, it's like, wow, this guy's so in my head, you know.

You know, well, our fathers fought the Second World War.

My father fought this.

It's like, spent our weekends on the Jersey Shore.

We spent our weekends on the Jersey Shore.

Or the one about the suburban showdown.

Again, what an opus.

I've had that feeling when I lived in L.A.

and I was going home for Thanksgiving or something, and it was like, ah, going east on a plane, drinking all that free champagne.

I know it's supposed to be fun, but I wish I took my gun.

And then, you know, sitting around with the neighbors there and the TV on the kitchen chairs, all those details were exactly my life.

Well, it was what I knew.

But you remember when we were growing up,

the prevailing literature at the time was trashing the suburban culture.

So we were kind of made to feel non-existent almost, useless, vanilla.

What's the point of existence?

We're just existentialists.

I remember feeling insignificant because of that.

And

I was trying to present, present, hey, I'm here.

We're here.

You know, there is, we have something to discuss.

We have something to talk about.

We're not non-existent.

We do exist.

But we are also aware of our own lameness.

Yes, we were very much aware of it, I think.

Look, we're beaten over the head with it.

I never liked living in New York City because I grew up in the suburbs.

I like LA

because

it's the suburbs.

I like a lawn

and a single family, even if it's a shitty one.

Our house is very small, probably like your, maybe like a Levitt town house.

Levitt Townhouse, yeah.

It was, yeah, yeah.

Houses were so much smaller.

Yep.

But you had a quarter acre and it was your property.

But it was yours.

Yeah.

It was enough.

My whole universe.

But, you know, you really write about the stultifyingness of the suburbs.

I mean, that Captain Jack is really about that,

moving out.

So many of these songs evoke that era, that post-World War II generation

that was just very different.

And it's like I think of Angry Young Man,

which is

one of my faves of all.

I figured that.

It's an amazing record, so prescient, so fitting of this time.

I don't know if it was ever a single, no?

No.

Okay.

I figured you liked that song.

Oh.

I mean,

I'm not going to recite the lyrics.

I'll just do the B section.

I believe I passed the age.

Of consciousness and righteous rage.

I found out that just surviving is a noble fight.

I once had...

Well, it's pleased and caused by the...

Because of two, I had my pointless point of view, and life went on no matter who was wrong or right.

I feel like that is the message of the age, even though some people will hear that and say, look at these two assholes.

Boomers.

You know, who aren't just like, Trump's the worst.

Okay, but even if we admit that,

this is also true.

And I feel like that is a theme, you know, in your last album.

Shades of Grey.

Shades of Gray, that's sort of that theme.

It's even in Saigon, you know, like in the middle of the fight.

fight

who was wrong or right.

Right.

You still feel that way.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you don't care what they say about you, the woke or the.

At this point, no, I'm

inured to it.

But

there was always this, I don't know if it's rabbinical or what, but it was, on the other hand, I'm always trying to find out the other point of view.

What's, you know, not my point of view, somebody else's point of view.

Well, okay, I'd like to understand why they think that way.

It's so difficult in this day and age because everybody is in.

It's almost impossible.

It is almost impossible.

I mean, it is what I am always trying to do on my show.

Look, this is one safe space for everybody, and I will take the heat from both sides.

I mean, I do feel like the left, who ironically I'm more actually aligned with, is more snippy about it and has a worse attitude about it and makes me viscerally not like them more sometimes.

But that's what I'm trying to do.

I get that from your books.

Yes.

You do this.

Of course.

Like who the hell are you throwing stones in that direction?

Look at me.

That kind of thing.

Well,

listen,

I really...

wanted to say to you, among other things,

you know, I appreciate you as much for the records you did not put out as for the ones you did, because very few had it in them to go, you know what,

if I can't be at the tippity top as I always was, I'm not going to put my fans through the downside of my career.

Not that there hasn't been some fine stuff from lots of artists who were heroes of my youth, but in general, it's harder to do.

You did that and you know, and then when you did finally put out a record, it was absolutely as good as the stuff in the, it fits seamlessly.

If I play Turn the Lights Back On, it fits seamlessly in between any two of the other ones that I love.

That's as good as you can do.

Good.

But, you know, there's only one record in 32 years.

So, that's why I got two.

I didn't write that one.

Oh, shit.

Well, I might have changed a lyric here and there.

I liked the song.

It sounds like one of yours.

Yes.

Maybe that's what I liked about it.

It felt familiar to me because I'd had those thoughts for a long time.

But I just, I enjoyed listening to that song.

I said, yeah, I could have sung that.

Well, it definitely works on two levels.

Obviously, it's about some romantic relationship.

But it also,

we can't help but think a guy who hasn't put out a record in this long,

when he's saying, can I turn the lights back on?

Lights back on.

It has to be about that too.

Yeah.

Are we wrong?

No, I think there's a couple of different levels to it, and that's one of them.

I like songs like that.

Some of it is just, Eagles did it a lot, you know, like just the philosophy, and then it goes into a story.

You know, like New Kid in Town.

First, it's like, you know, there's talk on the street,

you know, there's a new kid in town.

And then it goes into like this whole section about the music and

talking about a girl and you know and it it does kind of comment on each other I feel like that's what's kind of the thing that's going on I think Don Henley does that very well I think he I admire him as a songwriter oh such a great songwriter and and people have this

deep

animosity towards the Eagles they've been so successful that's my stairway to heaven theory exactly what is that

it's people wanting to be snobby.

It's people wanting to feel like they're...

Why does clubs have a velvet rope?

Because everything has to be about I'm cooler than you, so you're over here.

You're over here with Neil Diamond and the Eagles and Billy Joel or whoever.

It's like, shut up, you asshole.

I thought we were past that era.

Why did you get that impression?

You thought humans got

evolved to a greater

smarter.

Social media, the phone, made all of that shit worse.

All of that shit got worse because you could do it.

It dumbed it down.

What?

It might have even dumbed it down.

Well, it's dumbed down, but it's also you can be a prick anonymously,

which allows people who want to be a prick and

right?

I mean, people say things all the time that they would never say if they had to say it to your face.

It just always surprises me how people

they express this hatred.

It's like you hate a musician because he wrote something.

When I was first on Twitter, it's like 2011, and I haven't been on it in a very long time.

Well, once in a while I say something,

but it was like the very beginning, and I answered somebody once.

You know, you can answer people.

And she was like, just really tearing me into asshole about religion.

And I said something back, like, very short and then like, enjoy your myth.

And she wrote back and and immediately was just like, can we be friends?

You know, like, can I

take in?

Like, okay, the second I responded, all this hatred of me went away

because now I'm saying, oh, here, you're inside the velvet rope.

So that's what that's all about.

But,

you know, you transcended it all.

You know, you gave us an incredible body of work that

really, I mean, you're not just a great composer for my era, any era.

Well, that's interesting because I've never really done any kind of discussion about lyrics with my music.

It's always been about my piano playing, my singing,

performing music, but not lyrics.

So that's interesting to me.

I'm glad you dug out that part.

Yes, and I do think, just like I have my theory about the Beatles, with the singles, I have my theory about you, and it's lyrics.

It's like that was, you said it, the tyranny of the rhyme.

To come up with the music, you could, you know, that's probably more fun and easy.

But I also was influenced by people that, we're talking about over 150 years ago, you've heard of Gilbert and Sullivan?

Yeah, of course.

My mom and my dad used to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, these are operas.

And they were very clever lyrics.

I mean, you know, these

sarcastic English,

you know, 19th century topics, but they were so brilliantly written.

I admired that kind of lyric.

That's what I was kind of going for when I was writing my lyrics.

You got there.

But, you know, it's almost like something that good,

it's like a lot of things where

after a certain age, I mean, there are no old physicists.

Like Einstein did all his work when he was like in his young 20s.

Even as a teenager.

Yeah.

Athletes, nobody expects them to work past 40.

Maybe, you know, you put out albums from basically early 70s to early 90s, 20 years.

It's enough.

A score.

They don't use that word anymore, but it's in the Gettysburg Address.

20 years.

Yeah, he said four score and seven years ago.

He could have said 87 years, just like you could have said a younger man

instead of, yeah, but that's between a poet and not a poet.

But, you know, to all those people who are always, you know, Billy Joel, why doesn't he put something out?

You know what?

He gave you a lot.

And, you know, get off his case.

You're like the Fran Leibowitz of music.

You know, like, why don't you write another book?

Maybe they know something you don't.

You know what?

He gave a lot.

He wanted to like

get every last speck of who would just grind you into dust and drive them back to drinking to get one.

You know what?

He's given a lot, and his last one even was great.

And I guess what I'm saying is, don't take any shit from anybody, Bill.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

No one's ever told me that.

They should, because you earned it.

Thank you.

Okay, I appreciate this so much.

This special is awesome.

It's on HBO, which makes me proud, my network of 22 years.

And I hope everybody sees it because your life is worthy of all the accolades you're getting.

If anyone should get a victory, laugh at you.

Thanks.

All right, pal.

Very good.

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