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

by Steffen Radlmaier

  In the meanwhile, producer Artie Ripp and manager Irwin Mazur argued over their next move. Ripp did finally manage to terminate the contract with Paramount. He doggedly searched for a new record company – after all, having invested so much money in Billy Joel, his own existence was also on the line. Two offers finally turned up: Ripp managed to get Atlantic Records interested and Mazur had an offer from Columbia.

  Of course, Billy went for Columbia, the record label of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, and it also had better sales and distribution.

  In the spring of 1973, the newcomer became a Columbia recording artist, signed by legendary talent scout Clive Davis. Ripp also profited from the new status as he still had a watertight contract with Billy. He earned money with every single record that was sold, 25 cents per album. This deal was valid for ten studio albums and a ‘Best of’, and made Artie Ripp – who had invested half a million dollars in the then unknown artist – a very rich, if very unpopular man. Insiders estimate that he earned a total of around 20 million dollars in royalties. Without lifting a finger, but completely legally.

  Billy’s enthusiasm was revived and he dived head first into his work, wrote new songs and, together with a whole host of top studio musicians, recorded the “Piano Man” album, which was released in November 1973. It was considered his real début and was to become his trademark. However, that was still to take a while.

  Columbia selected the album’s title song to be the first single, and it eventually made its way into the Top 40, even though it was in waltz time, had a relatively simple melody and was atypical of Billy Joel’s style. The song’s success had more to do with the true-to-life lyrics than with the music: Inspired by the clientele of the Executive Lounge, the songwriter had created a microcosm based upon real, living characters. The man at the piano is not just a silent observer, but a kind of group therapist and soul-comforter, giving new courage to the lovelorn and down-and-out customers at the bar. “Piano Man” encapsulates Billy Joel’s relationship with his audience and, even today, is often one of the emotional highlights of his live concerts.

  The album contained some older songs too, including “Captain Jack”, the portrait of a New York drug dealer, “Billy the Kid”, a country-rock portrayal of an American Western legend, and “Travelin’ Prayer”, a musical benediction for a loved one on the road.

  Among the new songs was “You’re My Home”, which Billy had written as a Valentine’s Day gift for Elizabeth, whom he married in 1973. There’s a story about that song too. “I didn‘t have any money to give her a present, so I said, ‘This is for you’, and she said, ‘Does that mean I get the publishing rights?’ That’s when I started thinking about her getting involved in management.”65

  The album sold well, and most of the reviews were positive, including this one in The New York Times, dated February 23, 1974: “Mr. Joel […] is fast developing into an important artist. Mr. Joel plays the piano, rather than the more customary guitar, and he plays it both versatilely and virtuosically. His backup quartet is similarly proficient: tight and subtle. But what is important is Mr. Joel’s songs and the way he sings them. There is an overt theatricality in his work […]. The tunes and arrangements court the bombastic […].”

  In April 1974, “Piano Man” finally made the charts, getting to number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100, and reaching number 4 on the Adult Contemporary charts. The follow-up singles “Travelin’ Prayer” and “Worse Comes to Worst” also made it onto the charts. This meant Billy Joel’s album was enjoying more success than Bruce Springsteen’s début album “Greetings from Ashbury Park”. However, when the album went platinum four years later, Elizabeth broke the news to Billy that “Piano Man” had hardly made the songwriter 8,000 dollars.

  It was, therefore, of no wonder that after all these bitter experiences, Billy Joel repeatedly saw himself as a victim of managers and the music industry. He wanted nothing more to do with Artie Ripp, and split up with Irwin Mazur when “Piano Man” finally started to take off. Elizabeth Weber, who now had experience and education in the music business, slowly but surely took over Billy’s management. Being still unsure of herself, Elizabeth decided to work together with the professional Caribou agency, who also represented The Beach Boys and the jazz-rock band Chicago. Besides, Caribou had its own recording studio in Boulder, Colorado. The studio was famous for being the place where Elton John recorded his “Caribou” (1974), “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” (1975) and “Rock of the Westies” (1975) albums. Caribou wanted to establish Billy Joel as the American Elton John. The similarities between the two were plain to see.

  After a six-month promotion tour, Billy was back in the studio in Hollywood to record a new album that was to be produced by Michael Lang. “Streetlife Serenade” was released on October 11, 1974, not even one year after his CBS début album. This time Billy thematized the music business and the attitudes towards life of a New Yorker in California. A team of crack L.A. studio musicians had been hired, but Billy couldn’t come to an agreement with his producer on the direction the music was to take: the question being whether more piano-based ballads or more rock-influenced guitars should dominate. The end result was correspondingly half-baked. The simple fact that nine different guitar players were involved in the recording goes somewhat to explaining the inconsistent sound.

  Billy once again proved himself to be a superb eclectic, drawing on all kinds of influences and sounds, and making use of the then fashionable moog synthesizer.

  “Streetlife Serenader” is a hymn to all street buskers and “The Entertainer” tells of the enormous pressure of show business, where only chart positions and sales figures count for anything. “Los Angelenos” describes the people of L.A., and “The Great Suburban Showdown” is expressive of the aspirations for happy family life in America’s suburbia.

  Stephen Holden wrote a scathing review of the album in Rolling Stone, something that badly hurt Billy Joel and permanently tarnished his relationship with music critics as a whole: “Billy Joel‘s pop schmaltz occupies a stylistic no-man’s land where musical and lyric truisms borrowed from disparate sources are forced together. A talented keyboardist, Joel’s piano style creditably imitates early Elton John, while Joel’s melodic and vocal attacks owe something to Harry Chapin. […] “Piano Man” and “Captain Jack”, the centerpieces of Joel’s last album, compelled attention for their despairing portraits of urban fringe life, despite their underlying shallowness. By contrast, “Streetlife Serenade” is desiccated of ideas. […] Joel’s keyboard abilities notwithstanding, he has nothing to say as a writer at present.”66

  And in the years to come, Billy remained anything but a darling of the critics despite his growing success. They didn’t buy his rock rebel image, he wasn’t exactly a symbolic figure, he didn’t set trends and he played great piano. In other words, he didn’t fit into any of the established pigeon-holes, although serving the mainstream.

  This disdain by the critics, widespread even during the late 70s and 80s when his success was so huge, was a hurtful blow for a musician who had always yearned for recognition.

  Say Goodbye to Hollywood

  It was time for another change. Things were still not quite right. Billy Joel had released three albums and played numerous successful concerts, but was still waiting for the big breakthrough.

  Furthermore, the superficial way of life in sunny California was getting on his nerves: he was homesick for New York, and hoped to get new inspiration for his work there.

  “The weather was nice, the rent was low, everybody was easy to get along with. Then I woke up one day and screamed, ‘What the hell am I doing here? I’m from New York!’ L.A. is very seductive: ‘Like wow man!’ Views of the Pacific, palm trees, sport cars, everybody’s beautiful. The whole fuckin’ town is full of gorgeous people. Everybody who thinks they’re pretty moves out to L.A. to become a movie star. But after a while it’s like ‘Where’s the crap?�
�� You know? I need some variation. There’s no winter. No contrast. It’s too hypnotic. I’m not putting down California. Native Californians are good people, very welcoming.”67

  As was so often the case, he expressed his feelings the best way he knew – in a song: “Say Goodbye to Hollywood”. So it happened that, in 1975, Elizabeth returned with her son Sean, in order to look for a new home for them. She finally found an old house in the tranquil village of Highland Falls on the Hudson River, a place where Billy would have the peace he needed to write. And it wasn’t too far from New York, with its lively music scene.

  Billy followed soon after, taking the last leg of the journey in a Greyhound bus along the Hudson River, excited by the prospect of his return to the East Coast. It was on the bus that he suddenly had the idea for a new song: “New York State of Mind”, a declaration of love for the Big Apple.

  “I get to the house that my wife, at the time, had found for us to rent and I got in the house and she said, ‘What do you think of the house?’ I said, ‘Great, great, where’s the piano, where’s the piano, where’s the piano?’ Elizabeth pointed to the staircase. I ran up the stairs and started writing this song, and about an hour later, had the whole song done.”68

  It was a good sign: the change of scenery seemed to have paid off.

  The song was also in a way a retrieval of the city’s honor – it was going through a bad crisis at the time. New York was bankrupt, entire districts were becoming increasingly squalid, crime was getting worse, traffic was on the rise and with it the pollution – and the politicians were unable to solve the problems. Lots of people had written off New York, including the then president Gerald Ford.

  Billy was under pressure and planning his next album. But how to go on? The artist, his management and the record company were anything but in agreement. Columbia still believed in the 26-year-old songwriter, but were impatient for a top-ten hit.

  But Billy saw himself as a live artist, records weren’t that important to him. “Nobody appreciated the tour work. For me, the quintessence of our work is on the road. Records are secondary. It doesn’t matter how many you sell, it doesn’t matter how successful you are. The reason I do what I do is not to become a recording star – the reason is that I want to go on tour and play.” One of the high points of 1975 was a sold-out concert in Carnegie Hall.

  It was plain that Billy was enjoying more success on stage than in the record stores. As a result of their tireless touring, he and his band had built up a good fan-base; but in the studio he was always working with different musicians.

  Caribou’s Jimmy Guercio and Larry Fitzgerald had the seemingly ingenious idea of having Billy Joel record with Elton John’s band. Nigel Olsson (drums), Davey Johnstone (guitar), Dee Murray (bass) and Ray Cooper (percussion) had excellent reputations as studio musicians. They recorded some of Billy’s songs in Caribou studios, but he was far from happy with the results.

  Michael Stewart, who had already produced two of Billy’s albums also wanted to produce the next one with different studio musicians.

  Billy wasn’t having any of it, and decided he would produce the album himself, using the musicians he toured with.

  He’d always dreamed of having his own band with whom he could work together long-term and who would give him the sound he wanted. This was another reason why New York was a good place to be.

  A friend introduced him to Doug Stegmeyer, bass player with a band named “Topper”. Guitarists Russell Javors and Howard Emerson and drummer Liberty DeVito also played in the band. They were all baby-boomers from Long Island, came from similar backgrounds and had similar tastes in music. Saxophonist Richie Cannata completed the line-up. Billy felt he had finally found his band. Stegmeyer, DeVito and Javors remained the core of the Billy Joel band for many years to come.

  So, once again a new start was on the cards, and not just musically. Billy, Elizabeth and Sean left Highland Falls at the end of 1975 and moved into a town house with swimming pool on East 62nd Street in New York City.

  At the beginning of 1976 Billy produced his “Turnstiles” album, recording with the new band in Ultrasonic Studios. The album was released in May of the same year. It was the first time he was really satisfied with one of his albums, and considers it his masterpiece. The cover features a photograph of Billy with a group of people (including his stepson Sean) standing next to a turnstile at the entrance to a New York subway station. The album contains just eight very different songs, including two that address the move from the West to the East Coast, leaving and homecoming. “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” invokes Phil Spector’s famous ‘Wall of Sound’ from the 60s; “New York State of Mind” combines classical piano quotes with a beguiling jazz theme. Barbra Streisand and Frank Sinatra were soon to cover the song, causing Billy to remark, rather ironically, that now at least his mother would take him seriously as a songwriter.

  “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” is an apocalyptic vision of the demise of New York, seen from the perspective of a pensioner living in Florida and observing New York’s destruction from afar. Joel wrote the song as a reaction to the crisis the city was going through at the time. The vision depicted in the song came to be awful reality with the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

  Columbia Records were still hoping for Billy’s big breakthrough, but they had difficulty marketing the album. Was it rock or was it jazz-rock, or was it the work of a singer-songwriter? Billy didn’t care about such definitions but chose the hard-grind of touring in order to get the songs out to the public, only this time he wouldn’t be the opening act, he’d be headlining. However, record sales of the album were disappointing; “Turnstiles” only made it to number 122 on the Billboard charts, and the reviews were not that great either.

  Still, record companies tended to plan more long-term in the 70s, taking more time to build up their artists. Columbia boss Walter Yetnikoff, who had replaced Clive Davis, didn’t give up hope and subsidized the tour with 80,000 dollars. He’d seen one of Billy’s shows in the Hollywood Bowl and was impressed by the euphoric reaction of the audience. And reactions from abroad were equally encouraging: Holland and Australia in particular seemed to be getting very fond of Billy’s music.

  Nevertheless, things still floundered. Billy Joel held his management responsible for the failure. He’d fired Irwin Mazur and, understandably, he no longer wanted anything to do with Artie Ripp, he’d taken over from producer Michael Stewart and had now decided to part with Caribou Management. The obvious solution was to put his management into his wife’s hands. “One day I turned to Elizabeth half jokingly and said: ‘Why don’t you manage me’? We had moved from Highland Falls to Manhattan, and the very next day, there were phones and shelves and typewriters and secretaries in our apartment. […] She’s seen managers and agents come and go. She knew what had to be done. Also, if you can’t trust your wife, who can you trust? And I figured this will be the first case of Artist Screws Manager! Really, I knew she was smart. I knew she could do it. […] It was funny. The record company considered her just another rock and roll wife. A lot of people underestimated her. They turned around and it was like, bang! They didn’t know what hit them. It worked to our advantage. She did a really good job while they were thinking she was this dumb chick who could be conned and not know it.”69

  It was obviously the right decision: Elizabeth knew Billy like no-one else; she’d taken management courses and had gained lots of experience in the music business. Her clever negotiations with Columbia resulted in changes that were to her husband’s advantage, meaning he would earn more royalties than he had before. It was she who hired experienced road manager Jerry Schilling, who had previously worked for Elvis Presley.

  Elizabeth enjoyed Billy’s trust, she took a lot of weight off of his shoulders and watched his back – they seemed to be the perfect team. In the long run, however, this business relationship wasn’t good for their
marriage, which became less and less about love and more about money and financial success. They called their small but well-organized New York family business “Home Run Systems”. Elizabeth not only managed the finances, but built up a helpful network of attorneys, advisors, media experts and record company employees.

  However, her best idea was probably getting Phil Ramone to produce Billy’s next album.

  “I wasn’t a good producer at that time. I couldn’t translate things correctly onto a record. And I couldn’t really work with other producers who wouldn’t let me use my own band. Phil had been an engineer on a lot of records for people like Paul Simon, and somehow Elizabeth knew we would hit it off. She put us together and it was magic.”70

  Phil Ramone was already a legend in the industry: He’d made a name for himself in the 60s, producing the ground-breaking bossa nova album by Stan Getz and João Gilberto, which featured the legendary “The Girl from Ipanema”, sung by Astrud Gilberto. This was followed by recordings with Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach, Phoebe Snow and Paul Simon, whose “Still Crazy After All These Years” album won a Grammy in 1975. Ramone seemed to be the right man for the delicate task of finally producing a hit album for Billy Joel, after negotiations with other favored candidates had foundered. There had also been talks with no less a figure than former Beatles producer George Martin, whom Billy deeply admired. Although the two took to each other, the project fell through because George Martin did not wish to use the live band to record the album. But this time Billy refused to budge on the matter.