STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A documentary reveals the life of Billy Joel, a story he's previously told only through his songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY LIFE")
BILLY JOEL: (Singing) I don't care what you say anymore. This is my life.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BIG SHOT")
JOEL: (Singing) You had to be a big shot, didn't you?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOVIN' OUT (ANTHONY'S SONG)")
JOEL: (Singing) Oh, but working too hard can give you a heart attack.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG")
JOEL: (Singing) Well, only the good die young.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UPTOWN GIRL")
JOEL: (Singing) Uptown girl. She's been living in her uptown world.
INSKEEP: That last song references Christie Brinkley, one of his wives. In the documentary, Billy Joel sits at his grand piano in his Long Island home and reflects on his life. It's the HBO film called "And So It Goes."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILLY JOEL: AND SO IT GOES")
JOEL: I was never really comfortable with the rest of the world. I felt like an outsider. Let's put it that way.
INSKEEP: He talks there of growing up. He was bullied and learned boxing to fight back. Both his parents played piano, though it was a troubled childhood. His dad left the family, and his suddenly single mom suffered from mental illness and alcoholism. But she encouraged his music, and Joel says he started writing songs as his salvation.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILLY JOEL: AND SO IT GOES")
JOEL: You don't have to worry, Mom. I'm not going to Columbia University. I'm going to go to Columbia Records, and you don't need a high school diploma there.
INSKEEP: He told his story to Susan Lacy, who co-directed the film with Jessica Levin.
You inform me in this documentary that he didn't even graduate high school. And he's always had this particular kind of almost blue-collar sensibility about him, but he's doing these very ambitious intellectual things - the length, the complexity, the storytelling, the lyrics. Where's that coming from?
SUSAN LACY: Well, he's a consummate musician. I mean, he's a savant. He studied classical music for 14 years, classical piano, and he instinctively understands composition and harmony. And I think a lot of it is because he was exposed to so much music as a child. In addition to the classical music, his mother listened to Broadway, jazz, the American Standards, American Songbook, Tin Pan Alley, and, you know, rock and roll, of course. But all of those elements found his way into his music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SCENES FROM AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT")
JOEL: (Singing) A bottle of red, a bottle of whites. It all depends upon your appetite. I'll meet you any time you want in our Italian restaurant.
INSKEEP: This song reflects on two high school students who had an idyllic youth, only to burn out later. Joel followed a different pattern. As a broke young singer, he moved to LA for a time and paid the bills playing piano in a cocktail lounge.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILLY JOEL: AND SO IT GOES")
JOEL: It was a small local bar, and it had one of these pianos that had a leatherette rim around it so people could lean on the piano while they were drinking.
LACY: "Piano Man" is based on the characters he met there.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PIANO MAN")
JOEL: (Singing) He says, son, can you play me a memory? I'm not really sure how it goes. But it's sad, and it's sweet, and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.
INSKEEP: I'm thinking of another song, maybe a little less known, called "The Entertainer," where at the end, he talks about having the song cut down. If it's going to be a hit, they've got to make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05.
LACY: Right. And that's - that - he was talking about "Piano Man" there because Piano Man is - as you know, is a very long and lilting ballad. And it was, like, five-plus minutes long. And the record company was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not going to be able to play on the radio. We're going to have to cut it down to 3:05. And Billy was - you know, this was one of his early songs, and he was pretty touchy about it. He was like, hey, you know, don't mess with my work.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
LACY: So he wrote about it in "The Entertainer."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE ENTERTAINER")
JOEL: (Singing) You've heard my latest record. It's been on the radio. Oh, it took me years to write it. They were the best years of my life. It was a beautiful song, but it ran too long. If you're going to have a hit, you've got to make it fit. So they cut it down to 3:05.
INSKEEP: When Billy Joel abandoned LA to return to New York State, that became another song.
LACY: He was on a bus, going to his new house up in Highland Falls.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILLY JOEL: AND SO IT GOES")
JOEL: And it was fall. It was just gorgeous. The colors were ablaze. The trees were, like, gold and red. And I remember thinking, this is the New York State that I loved when I was a kid.
LACY: He had this melody, and he didn't want to lose it. And he gets to the house, and he says, where's the piano? Where's the piano? And he runs upstairs to the piano. And he wrote "New York State Of Mind" in probably less than an hour.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW YORK STATE OF MIND")
JOEL: (Singing) Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood.
LACY: And it's become a standard. It's really right out of the American Songbook tradition. He didn't know he was writing a standard, but it was instinctive for him.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NEW YORK STATE OF MIND")
JOEL: (Singing) But I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River Line. I'm in a New York state of mind.
INSKEEP: This documentary shows how long it took Joel to make it. He went so long without a hit that he expected to be dropped. Instead, his first wife and manager, Elizabeth Weber, persuaded him to publish a song he thought he shouldn't.
LACY: "Just The Way You Are," which was written for Elizabeth. It's a very beautiful love song, but he thought it was too mushy. He didn't want to put it on the album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JUST THE WAY YOU ARE")
JOEL: (Singing) Don't go changing to try and please me. You never let me down before.
LACY: Elizabeth is the one who insisted that that be a single from the album. The record company, when they all sat and listened to the album - they said, well, it's all very nice, but we don't hear a single. And she said, you better because we're not changing one note. One of my favorite lines in the film - we're not changing one note.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JUST THE WAY YOU ARE")
JOEL: (Singing) I took the good times. I'll take the bad times. I'll take you just the way you are.
INSKEEP: Joel is in poor health these days. But he's had a long coda to his career, including a residency at New York City's Madison Square Garden, which he sold out once a month for a decade.
LACY: People want to hear those stories over and over and over again, and everybody knows the words - all the words. First time I went to one of Billy's concerts, I literally couldn't believe that the entire audience was singing, and they knew all the words. It was amazing.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILLY JOEL: AND SO IT GOES")
JOEL: (Singing) Seen the lights go out on Broadway. I saw the Empire State laid low.
INSKEEP: "Billy Joel: And So It Goes" airs in two parts on HBO. Part 1 is tonight, part 2 next Friday.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILLY JOEL: AND SO IT GOES")
JOEL: (Singing) They all bought Cadillacs and left there long ago. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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