Famous last words

There are three things that I've loved for basically as long as I can remember: The Muppets, the San Francisco Giants, and Billy Joel. I can remember other musicians I loved before I became enamored of him – the Oak Ridge Boys, Kenny Rogers – but Billy Joel was my first capital-F Favorite Musician. I remember being in my mom's car and her playing the still-pretty new Greatest Hits Vol. I & Vol. II, circa 1986, and every single song that came up on the tapes was an absolute no-brainer all-time bop. By that time, I'd already been steeped via cultural osmosis in his An Innocent Man singles and MTV staples "Tell Her About It," "For the Longest Time," and of course "Uptown Girl," but the Greatest Hits really hammered home that this guy – this guy – could write some fucking music.

Funnily, when I was conceiving of this newsletter many months ago, one of the very first things that it occurred to me to write about was the "Uptown Girl" video, but somewhere along the way that completely skipped my mind until I watched the recent HBO And So It Goes documentary, a bafflingly constructed two-part, five-hour telling of Joel's life that illustrates how thoroughly weird the life and career of one of history's all-time best-selling musical acts has been.

"Uptown Girl" was essentially my anthem for all of elementary school, even though almost no one really knew that. Joel's public persona was "funny charismatic little goblin somehow married to the eight-foot-tall most beautiful woman in the world," and the "Uptown Girl" video (and song) played that conceit to the hilt. Joel starred as a (literally) greaseball auto mechanic from nowheresville (Joel is, hilariously, literally from Hicksville) who somehow wins the heart of a rich babe whose Rolls breaks down through the sheer power of "I'm gonna try."

Watch this video and realize what a shame it is that Joel is only an Oscar shy of an EGOT:

The reason this song was my anthem was because from about first through sixth grade, I, the son of a cowboy and dock worker and the grandson of pure white trash, had a terrible crush on a rich, blonde Mormon whose family was a pillar of the community. I would sing this song loudly and often in my home, placing myself in the Joel/goblin role and my crush in the Christie Brinkley role, and naturally that story ends in deep disappointment. Nevertheless! Joel remained, unabashedly, my favorite musician, and was the main reason I stuck with piano lessons even though I had no talent or dedication to practicing.

The nothing-but-bangers Storm Front album in 1989 gave me my favorite Joel song to that point, "And So it Goes" (also the title of the HBO documentary), and my final act taking piano lessons was to learn a nearly-passable, dumbed-down version of that ballad. Sometimes I can still nearly remember the chords! In junior high, I started listening to mostly hair metal – Aerosmith, Poison, Mötley Crüe – which was not a far leap from Joel, in all honesty, and still felt of a piece listening back to back with, say, Michael Jackson's Dangerous. MTV was the great melting pot at that time: if it was on MTV, it was good enough to listen to.

I moved into harder metal by the end of junior high in accordance with my friends, and I remember that during an ice-breaker partner activity my freshman year of high school, I answered "Billy Joel" to the "Favorite Singer" question before hastily asking my partner to change the answer to "Dave Mustaine" so I wouldn't look lame in front of the class. (Tactically choosing Mustaine over James Hetfield, whose voice I liked a lot better but who seemed like the "obvious" pick among the major metal vocalists.)

I didn't actually realize at that time that Joel was considered to be "lame" by a huge swath of adults; I just thought it seemed like an uncool or soft option when so many of my peers were listening to Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera and others. It was interesting to learn from watching the HBO doc that Joel has been fighting against the "uncool" label for nearly his entire career, while selling millions of albums, winning awards and selling out stadiums the whole time. I appreciated that the documentary highlighted Joel's lack of metaphor or subtext in his songs, which is probably a big reason why I was able to latch onto the emotion and meaning of his output while I was so young. His songs aren't subtle, but they're exquisitely crafted, and they all harness something that a lot of "better" musicians struggle to evoke.

In 1999, Joel pretty inexplicably appeared on Inside the Actor's Studio, which I already loved. His episode knocked my socks off, not just because all of his insights were incredible and it was beyond fascinating to get the stories behind his songs and compositions, but also because, especially at that moment in time, Billy Joel looked and acted exactly like my dad.

The entire episode can be viewed on archive.org and I can't recommend it enough for anyone who enjoys the creative process. But I was a strange thing to watch this man who I'd strangely identified with for my entire life and realize how much and how thoroughly he reminded my of my father – who was also named Bill.

That episode was also where it was underlined that the closing track off of the then-six-years-old River of Dreams album, "Famous Last Words," was literally intended to be his final bit of pop music, as he had intended to retire to compose classical music (and did eventually release an album of classical music that he composed, although he enlisted a virtuoso pianist to actually perform it). That plan got sidetracked by a sixteen-year stint of playing sold-out arena shows with Elton John before settling into a retirement consisting of playing like 200 concerts a year.

To date, River of Dreams remains his last studio album (although he's released like six compilations, seven live albums and a Broadway show since then), and "Famous Last Words" hits harder with every passing year. It's joyous, wistful, bittersweet, and nearly moves me to tears every time. It's a tremendous bookend with "Summer, Highland Falls," one of my other favorite Joel tracks.

"Summer, Highland Falls" was another song I desperately wanted to learn how to play on the piano, but unlike "And So it Goes," that one was beyond me. Maybe one day!

I'm glad I latched onto such an unhip, charming, funny little goblin all those years ago, one who wrote so many painfully straightforward and undeniable pop hits. He taught me a lot about how the world both does and doesn't work. He taught me about stage presence and not being afraid to show your ass. He taught me about unions and Long Island fisherman. He taught me what the theme song to Bosom Buddies was. And he taught me to always write the best ending you can, even if you have a long way left to go.