Introduction

Over the course of merely a few days, I found Billy Joel's music everywhere: an American football team huddled on a high school field as 'Movin' Out' streamed from a tinny speaker. Soulful sounds courtesy of saxophonist Richie Cannata and bassist Doug Stegmeyer rose above the piano man's shatter-glass chords the following day.

On Saturday morning at minigolf, Joel belted out names of the 'We Didn't Start The Fire' movers and shakers. The sun drifted below a rotating windmill, but drummer Liberty DeVitto took us to higher ground on the pulsating 'You May Be Right.'

From bodegas, strip malls and airport terminals to king-size arenas, Joel's music intersects generations. Some discovered his talent via the 1988 animated Disney musical Oliver & Company - featuring 'Why Should I Worry?', the first recorded song Joel didn't scribe, but for which he supplied New York savoir faire and gave agency to the imaginary mutt Dodger based on Dickens' irascible pickpocket.

Joel's history with producers is a story in and of itself. At 15, he ventured into a Hicksville basement - the site of Dynamic Studios - where fellow Long Islander George 'Shadow' Morton held court. In 1987, Joel told Q magazine in the UK that 'Shadow' needed a keyboardist to demo 'Remember (Walkin' In The Sand') for The Shangri-Las in 1964 (and later, biker-anthem 'Leader Of The Pack.') 'Shadow' had a peculiar way of communicating: 'He's waving his arms in the air saying, 'Give me more purple,' and I'm sitting there kinda nervous.'

What did that phrase mean? Finally, a session guitarist leaned over. 'Uh, just play louder, kid,' he snapped. (Ironically, the co-producer was none other than promoter Artie Ripp.) Covers got Joel into the studio; his originals kept him captive.

'Shadow' also recorded Joel's CBS folk singer labelmate Janis Ian, with whom Joel performed at the Philadelphia Academy of Music on 25 November 1974, and where an excited Bruce Springsteen and mentor DJ Ed Sciakey taxied to catch the double bill. Ian had also supported Joel on 15 November at two consecutive concert dates at New York's Avery Fisher Hall. In her 2008 memoir Society's Child, Ian recalled that her modus operandi for the first eight months of touring in 1974 included 'opening for bigger acts whenever I could.' While some acts invariably trumped others, she extolled, 'My favorite by far was Billy Joel, who had a terrific band and was always down to earth and fun to be with.'

When contending with 'Shadow,' Ian was proactive, particularly when he buried his head in a newspaper during her audition. She told pennyblackmusic.co.uk:

He kept saying that he was going to leave the music business, and he wasn't even polite enough to look at me, and so I set the newspaper on fire. When the lawyer who brought me asked me to sing a third song, I went ahead and set the paper on fire. Well, for Shadow, he was so used to people just thinking, 'Oh, God, this is the great Shadow Morton,' and I thought, 'Man, you have no manners.'

With melodies that feed the souls of everyday people as they perform perfunctory tasks, Joel has become one of the biggest-selling artists in the US, yet he'll often dismiss his rock-star status. He's liable to shrug and shy away from the camera or look up at a king-size screen in disbelief. Still, his studio work speaks volumes.

'Rock and Roll, it saved my life; it's my religion,' Joel exclaimed to journalist Bryant Gumbel on YouTube.

The Oxford Dictionary defines eclectic as 'A person who derives ideas, style or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.' Joel's eclecticism spans classical, reggae, jazz, blues, classic rock, new wave and punk. Did I mention bluegrass? These slices-of-life are peppered with people for whom he's felt empathy, but he has also drawn from Shakespeare, Blake, Thomas, Frost and war-centered novelists. To honor his muses, though, one needs to review the faces behind his rich catalogue. What I'm getting at is that Joel's determination to branch out musically from song to song and album to album from the inception of Cold Spring Harbor to River of Dreams and Fantasies & Delusions, has never been compromised.

Hardly a product of privilege, Joel began working at a young age. To make ends meet, he stamped typewriter ribbons, boxed in tournaments, pumped gas and fished from a Long Island Sound oyster boat at ungodly hours. The common denominator - his resilience - played a big role in the maintenance of his concert and recording career.

Fast-forward to March 2011 and The Book of Joel. Notable peers had penned memoirs, and fans were anxious to hear his story, but Joel surprised the publisher by asserting that his life would be better represented through his songs. Countless interviews and lyrics upheld that line of thought. His songs should tell the story. His children have endured growing pains, self-doubt, euphoria and trauma. Some developed early, and some will remain pubescent. Why not let them speak?

In 2002, choreographer Twyla Tharp directed the Broadway musical Movin' Out, which led to the songwriter's first Tony award. To carry out the theme, dancers enacted his vivid stories. 'One explanation for the dance piece's enormous appeal is the story of heartbreak and reconciliation that Tharp located in the semi-autobiographical material written by Joel during his 'still rock and roll to me' years,' observed theatermania.com. They spoke. To that end, Joel's songs remain in service.

This book is not a biography. The excellent books listed in the bibliography serve that purpose, yet the pathos and proactivism that Joel weaves into his canon are unique and do require backstory.

The singer-songwriter's family history was riddled with tension. Joel's grandparents Karl and Meta, fled from the Nazis in Nuremberg, Germany. Fortuitously, they reconnected with their young son Howard (Helmut), who'd been attending school in Switzerland. Determined to escape and with limited choices, the family boarded a ship in England headed for Cuba in 1939. After the harbor master's clearance, they spent three years on the Caribbean island before relocating to New York City.

Howard met his future wife Rosalind Nyman at Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, in which the musical enthusiasts took part. But their lives, too, endured a drastic change. In 1943, Howard was drafted into World War II and sent back to Europe. While stationed in Germany, he came upon the ghosts of his ancestral past: in a jeep with other soldiers, he witnessed the remains of the family's overtaken, burned-out factory.

They married in 1946. Their newborn William Martin Joel took his first breath in the Bronx under Taurus skies three years later. Joel was raised in a musical home. Though his father made his living as an engineer, he enjoyed spending his free time playing concert-pianist material. Joel shared his father and paternal grandfather's high regard for classical music. That early exposure greatly influenced his melodic and often complex harmonic arrangements.

Joel took easily to the piano and possessed another gift which would influence his future writing. With Tori Amos, Mary J. Blige and Billie Eilish, Joel shares an extraordinary condition called synesthesia which enables him to actually see the colors of the music that he plays. In January 2020, Joel explained to popdust.com in the article, '15 Iconic Musicians with Synesthesia', 'When I think of different types of melodies which are slower or softer, I think in terms of blues or greens. When I see a particularly vivid color, it is usually a strong melodic, strong rhythmic pattern which emerges at the same time.'

After World War II, urban planners built affordable housing for veterans. As such, the family relocated to a cheaply-constructed development called Levittown in Hicksville, Long Island, when Joel turned one. Life in this sheltered enclave likely inspired outsider writing, but stereotypes about suburban youth had to be addressed. Joel told Entertainment Tonight in the 1980s: 'We are people. We had loves and hates and gangs and sex and all of those things. You don't have to come to the inner city to have something to say.'

As Joel acquired monetary success, he was value-judged by certain critics who questioned his integrity. Reminders of his blue-collar background helped dispel disparaging remarks. 'How do you think I got my money? I didn't inherit it. I worked very hard. Touring is hard. Writing is work. Doing interviews is work.'

Piano lessons began at four years old. Like many American students of his era, he would sight-read from the rosy-red covered John Thompson series. His early piece, 'Music Land' was perfectly designed for little fingers but monotonous. Dissatisfied with 'reading the dots,' he ad-libbed bass lines and ornamentation.

Joel loved hearing his father play classics, but his happiness was cut short when Howard returned to Europe four years later. Despite monthly support checks, the family struggled financially. To compound matters, social biases in the 1950s created divisions. Theirs was one of the few Jewish families in the neighborhood, and a stigma regarding...