Billy and the Joels--The American rock star and his German family story

by Steffen Radlmaier

  It wasn’t easy for a teenage rebel to develop a personality in the small-minded atmosphere of a new town, where one house looked like the other. However, music could be the answer to even this problem too. Besides, musicians are very often particularly attractive for the opposite sex. The Beatles were a revolutionary role model for innumerable teenagers throughout the world: Do it your way, reinvent yourself! Even if one couldn’t look as good as Elvis Presley or write as well as Bob Dylan, one could start a band with some pals and get playing original songs.

  Whatever the case, Billy didn’t waste any time when his school friend Jim Bosse asked him to join his band as piano player. “The Echoes” played cover versions of chart hits at small functions in the local area. Joining this school band changed Billy’s life dramatically: all of a sudden he had some money in his pocket, a new perspective and that something special. “I was playing all these golden oldies: “Wooly Bully”, “Wipe Out” – and I got paid! It was only five dollars or something, but I said, ‘Man, you get paid for this too?’ And that was it. I really didn’t have any choice after that.”49

  It was in that same year that Billy, by coincidence, got his first studio job: producer Shadow Morton was working with the girl group “The Shangri-Las”. They were recording in Dynamic Studios on Long Island, producing the songs that were later to become hits: “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” and “Leader of The Pack”. Billy played the piano on these tracks. It’s uncertain, however, as to whether his takes are the ones that finally made it onto the Shangri-Las’ record. Whatever the case, this experience in a recording studio was definitely a key moment for the young musician – he had tasted blood and was hungry for more. “Since I was 14, a professional musician earning my money with music, I knew that I was never going to be living an ordinary life.”

  In the meanwhile, the shy, slight youth had also discovered a new hobby: boxing. It helped him prove his manliness, but would also be a good way of defending himself, if need be. At any rate, it was a hobby that could impress his pals. Piano playing was considered something girls did.

  Billy learned to box at a gym in a shopping center in Levittown. He let off steam in the ring between the ages of 16 and 19 and, for a while, toyed with the notion of becoming a professional boxer. He fought 26 official bouts, winning 22 of them. During one particular fight he was caught off guard and had his nose broken and misshapen: “I lost my first fight and I lost my last fight. The last one was enough to convince me to stop. This guy’s arms were the size of my entire body. I was dancing around this guy like a fly buzzing around. I couldn’t hurt him. I thought, ‘if this guy don’t know I’m a better boxer than he is, I can’t convince him’. He got me with a left hook – boom! I went right down. I could have gotten up, but I decided to hell with it, who needs this?”50 The heart and the nose of a boxer remain part of Billy to this day.

  He played in rock bands throughout his teenager years, and often went to see Broadway musicals such as “My Fair Lady” and “West Side Story”. The first album he ever bought was pianist Dave Brubeck’s legendary “Time Out”, which featured the rhythmically intricate but unbelievably successful “Take Five”. Some years later Billy had the pleasure of meeting the classically-trained jazz star. Like Helmut Joel, Brubeck had served as an American soldier during the Second World War. Towards the end of the war he was with the U.S. Army when they marched into Nuremberg. He was there until the 1945, playing swing and jazz for the GIs with the military band.

  Rock and Roll was for the post-war generation what the music of Stan Kenton or Glen Miller was for their parents: the sound of freedom. Only now it was aimed at social constraints instead of political oppression. And rock and roll was the perfect outlet for frustrated teenagers. “I was 16, very hormonal, very angry, needing to release a great deal of pent-up hostility: anger at my mother’s situation, not liking school, sexual frustration,” remembers Billy.51

  In the meantime, “The Echoes” had had to change their name as another band already existed with that name. They were now known as “The Lost Souls”. Billy Joel’s CD-box “My Lives”, which was released in 2005, features a couple of early recordings from this time.

  He was now more or less the band’s frontman, playing organ, singing and writing the band’s original songs. They played these along with the current hits from the ‘British Invasion’, which was led by groups such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Dave Clark Five and The Zombies. There were numerous garage bands around at the time, all dreaming of the big breakthrough, and Long Island was a hotbed for this young music scene. “The Lost Souls” enjoyed the reputation of being local heroes, and Billy and the band would play wherever there was a mains socket to plug into. They played school dances, private parties, in church and in the bars. And they played so often that it had consequences. Late-night rehearsals and gigs meant Billy was sometimes unable to get out of bed in the mornings, and often played truant from school. Music had long become his life.

  In his Joel biography, Mark Bego has documented one of Billy’s school assignments from January 11, 1966. It offers some telling insights into the workings of the 17-year-old.52 The task was to complete a questionnaire with short sentences that related to specific terms. The answers are witty, clever and amusing:

  I LIKE: good music, New York City, pretty girls, Chinese food

  THE HAPPIEST TIME: recording a record in Mercury Studios

  I HATE: loud-voiced people, phony people, prejudiced people

  WHAT ANNOYS ME: uncleanness, cold weather, getting up early

  I AM BEST WHEN: I have slept well and eaten well

  SOMETIMES: I wish I was older

  WHEN I WAS YOUNGER: I was a perfect student

  THE BEST: swinger of popular music was Nat King Cole

  I AM VERY: aware of how people think about me

  I SUFFER: from a lack of taking things seriously

  I WANT TO KNOW: why Negroes are persecuted

  AT HOME: I read a lot and listen to records

  AT BEDTIME: I read and eat something

  A MOTHER: Is indispensable

  I CAN’T: be what I am not

  I NEED: a good shot of confidence

  A BROTHER: never had one

  WHEN I AM ALONE: I eat or read

  MY FATHER: left when I was younger

  WHEN I GROW UP: I want to be successful

  I AM SORRY: that I got in with the wrong crowd

  THE ONLY TROUBLE IS: what’s done is done

  PEOPLE: make you or break you

  I FEEL: uncomfortable in this chair

  I’M MOST AFRAID OF: ruining someone’s life

  OTHER KIDS: have their own lives

  MY NERVES: are pretty good

  I WISH: I had a million dollars

  I SECRETLY: want to do something no one has ever done

  MY GREATEST WORRY IS: what my family thinks of me

  BOYS: today are in sad physical shape

  I CAN’T: stand a loud voiced person

  IN THE LOWER GRADES: I was an especially good student

  SPORTS: I love boxing and swimming

  I SUFFER: when my family is angry with me

  I FAILED: to enter the Golden Glove finals because of my wrist

  READING: is one of my favorite pastimes

  MY MIND: is slowly falling asleep

  AT SCHOOL: I try to listen to what is being taught

  DANCING: today is for the birds

  MOST GIRLS: can’t stand being spoiled

  Billy Joel usually managed to complete tests and exams, but he often missed lessons. It was only really for his mother’s sake that he stayed at school until it was time to leave. But Rosalind was anxious about her son, as revealed in a letter she sent to the school psychologist on June 15, 1966. She wrote about how she worried over his deteriorating results and increasing trua
ncy. She did also proudly mention his musical talent: “Did you know that Billy has extraordinary talent for playing classical music? This is not my opinion alone. Morton Estrin, one of Long Island’s foremost concert pianists, saw in Billy (he was his teacher) at the age of six (6) an unusual talent, not only in performing but in composing. He begged me to continue the lessons. The separation of myself and husband prevented me paying for it. (He was expensive – but worth it – but at the time we were very lucky if we had enough to eat.) He had various teachers since then. His next to last one (Paul Rudoff) recommended that he take lessons from a student connected with Duke Ellington (the student was a talented Juilliard scholarship graduate). Billy resented taking lessons from 1) a woman. 2) I had to drive him to Queens (ugh! Sitting that long in a car with a mother!). 3) He refused to practice. […] Sincerely yours, Rosalind Joel”.

  Billy finally had to leave his Hicksville school without a diploma: In April 1967 he was told he wouldn’t be allowed to take his final exams as he had missed too many lessons. The underachiever told his mother not to worry: “Well, the hell with it. If I’m not going to Columbia University, I’m going to Columbia Records and you don’t need a high school diploma over there.”53

  The 18-year-old was now facing conscription, and many of his friends were being drafted to the Army to fight the war in Vietnam. This senseless war in the Far East – the consequences of which can still be felt today – led to fierce debates and demonstrations in the USA. The protest movement, supported by artists, musicians and writers, had reached a highpoint.

  It wasn’t for political reasons that Billy became a conscientious objector. But the thought of dying in an Asian rice field didn’t particularly appeal to him. And: “I had nothing against the Vietnamese.” Initially, he was able to avoid going to war by arguing that he, as musician, was the main provider for his family. When the army later introduced a lottery system for the draft, Billy was simply lucky: his number just didn’t come up. He wasn’t particularly proud of the fact.

  In 1967, Helmut and Rosalind Joel were officially divorced. Billy was now of age and wanted to stand on his own two feet.

  No Easy Start

  In 1967 – the year the Beatles released their revolutionary “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album – a band named “The Hassles” were looking for a new keyboarder. They’d heard of Billy Joel, who at that time was still playing with “The Lost Souls”. After some back and forth, and after drummer Jon Small had offered him an expensive Hammond B3 organ, Billy joined The Hassles. Like many other teenagers rehearsing in their garages and cellars for the rock revolution, The Hassles too had dreams of fame and riches. They had reason to be hopeful as bands such as “Vanilla Fudge”, “The Loving Spoonful” and “The Young Rascals” also all came from Long Island. Billy Joel had only two things on his mind: music and girls. “I became a musician partially because of my physical limitations,” he admits. “I wasn’t tall, I don’t have Cary Grant looks. I had to transcend somehow.”54 Without doubt, Billy had the talent and the voice, but – much to his own chagrin – he had to admit that he didn’t really look like your regular star. And the piano wasn’t exactly the ultimate rock and roll instrument either. Real rock stars played guitar. However, even at that time Billy had the stuff entertainers are made of: audiences loved his captivating imitations of stars like Ray Charles and Joe Cocker.

  The band’s manager was Irwin Mazur, who ran a popular club on Long Island called My House, where the Hassles regularly performed as resident band. Mazur knew an enterprising if somewhat shifty businessman by the name of Morris Levy, owner of a record store and a record label named Roulette Records. Through these men, The Hassles landed a record deal with United Artists, who cooperated with Roulette Records. The band’s untitled début album was released in 1967, featuring rhythm and blues covers. Two years later “Hour of the Wolf” was released with original songs and Billy Joel on vocals. But the big breakthrough didn’t happen, even though The Hassles already felt like real rock stars and, at any rate, behaved as if they were.

  The band’s biggest success was in 1969 in New York’s Central Park, when they opened for José Feliciano. Shortly after this concert The Hassles, most of whose members by now couldn’t stand the sight of each other, came to an end. Just another day in the life of a rock band. Jon Small and Billy had become good friends and decided to leave to do their own thing, something different. “Attila” was the name of their heavy metal duo, with its rather unusual line-up of drums and keyboards. The two went on the musical rampage in the cellar of the house of Jon Small’s parents, turning their huge amplifiers up to 11 to make a diabolical noise that was supposed to have something to do with Led Zeppelin. In hindsight, “Attila” was not so much an experiment as an offence against good taste.

  In July of the same year, 1969, the Americans put the first man on the moon, and in August the legendary Woodstock Festival was the highpoint of the so-called Summer of Love. At the movies Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper were searching for America and its lost ideals in the film “Easy Rider”. This was a time in which anything seemed possible, and all kinds of utopias were more attractive alternatives to petty-bourgeois everyday life. Love & Peace was the romantic motto of the young, starry-eyed idealists.

  Billy Joel grew his hair and a mustache, but didn’t really relate to the flower-power and drug philosophy of many of his contemporaries. The lover of music that he was, he did make his way to Woodstock, pilgrimage destination of the young; but he went home after just one rainy day as he didn’t fancy sitting or sleeping in the mud next to 500,000 others, meaning he didn’t get to see guitarist Jimi Hendrix and hear him tear the American national anthem to pieces as a protest against the war in Vietnam – something that would very likely have impressed Hendrix fan Billy. “I’m a Jimi Hendrix freak. To me, he was a genius. And I don’t throw ‘genius’ around. To me there’s only a few of ’em. Jimi Hendrix was a genius like Mozart was a genius, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Bach.”55

  Thanks to Irwin Mazur’s contacts, “Attila” was able to release an album in 1970 on the Epic label; but the album went largely unnoticed and, after around 20 appearances, the musical Hun-project ran out of steam. In honesty, nobody really regretted it.

  However, Billy Joel was left with nothing and slid down into a deep personal crisis for several reasons: love-sickness, money problems, self-pity, no perspectives and much frustration. After the failure of “The Hassles” and “Attila”, rock stardom seemed farther away than ever. Joel had to take casual labor just to make ends meet, working at times as an oyster fisherman, a gardener, and in a factory that made tapes for typewriters. For a while he worked as music critic for a couple of local newspapers, but got no pleasure out of judging or slating other artists and bands. At times when he had no roof over his head, he would sometimes sleep in empty houses or laundromats.

  The deeply depressive 21-year-old felt like a complete loser, and couldn’t see a way out. Tormented by thoughts of suicide, twice he tried putting an end to it all. As luck would have it, both attempts – once with sleeping pills, once with furniture polish – failed. His suicide attempts were really just a dramatic cry for help. Nowadays Billy Joel can joke about it: “I was 21 and I had no prospects: no high school diploma, my band had broken up, the girl I was with had split up with me. It was a period of intense self-pity. I thought, ‘This is the easy way out.’ I looked in the closet, and there was chlorine bleach, with that skull & crossbones warning. And then there was some kind of furniture polish, with a smaller skull & crossbones. So it really came down to a matter of flavor. I drank the furniture polish. I’ll never forget: I was sitting on a chair, waiting to die. All of a sudden, my stomach starts to process this stuff. I ended up farting furniture oil. It came out in little dabs.”56

  Billy Joel’s self-preservation instinct won the battle, and he realized that he needed professional help. He had himself committed for three weeks to Meadowbrook H
ospital, a psychiatric clinic on Long Island. “It was just a real shock to be in a ward where there were bars on the window and electric sliding doors. You were given a robe – no clothing, no laces, no belts. You weren’t allowed to carry matches or razors. And you couldn’t leave. You’re in the snake pit. And I would go to the nurse’s station and knock on the window, just like in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, and say ‘Hey look I’m ok. These people are crazy, but I’m really ok. Let me out of here.’ They’d say, ‘Sure Mr. Joel. Here’s your Thorazine.’”61

  The experience in the clinic worked like shock therapy on the sensitive musician, and strengthened his will to live. Having seen the pain and suffering of those other psychiatric patients, he realized he had no reason for self-pity. The traumatic period between adolescence and adulthood – a period of self-doubt and setbacks – turned out in truth to be a painful ripening process for the young artist. Looking back, Billy Joel admits: In 1970 I went through some incredible mental changes. 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 and chuck the commercial influences. My friends encouraged me to go out as a single act: ‘Oh well, what the hell, here I go!’”62

  During this difficult period, Billy moved in with his pal Jon Small, who lived with his wife Elizabeth Weber and their son Sean in a house on Long Island that had been built out of large blocks in the style of early American farmhouses. As was often the custom at the time, Jon and Elizabeth kept an open house, people were always coming and going in their ‘rock house’, as it was known in the scene. Of course, numerous musicians were among the guests, often giving rise to spontaneous jam sessions. Billy felt at home in this creative chaos. And to top it all, there was a piano in the house that he could play on.