Billy Joel Stole My Life

My parents are rock fans but fans in the barest and most conventional sense of the term “rock fan.” They completely date themselves. They wholeheartedly, without knowing it, believe in generationalism and ironically laugh when I tell them I like bands such as The Byrds, (to this day my mom will walk into my room when I’m playing Beatles albums and say something like, “Oh wow. Getting into the Beatles now?” forgetting that I’ve had their entire discography since I was 11.). They believe there are only about three good bands in the history of rock music (Fleetwood Mac and John Melloncamp reign supreme over The Beatles any day in their book). If my parent’s knew the date of their impending deaths, they would be utterly content knowing they would die with only ten different band’s Greatest Hits c.d.’s sitting in our living room. To their credit, they have expanded their musical tastes. However, these expansions tend to drift down the dark alleyways of Bed, Bath, and Beyond Easy Listening compilations and Enya singles off Barnes and Nobles Café rack. That is their life and they enjoy their limited knowledge of the powerchord. Still, my mother, whether she knows it or not, turned me into the person I am today (a music nerd). This, in turn, I credit for morphing me into a book and film nerd, which in turn kept me indoors for most of my life. This has made me the happiest man alive. But just how did this happen? Billy Joel.

Above any band or artist, the boxing pianist who once drank a bottle of furniture polish before striking gold rules my mother's world. As the tortured songwriter. for every bell-bottomed, satin short clad rock fan from the '70's, this man represents all that is right with song writing in the history of music. Bob Dylan and Beethoven never existed in her eyes. When I was three years old, my mom would put her Billy Joel tapes in my Teddy Ruxpin doll. To the syncopated bass drum beats of Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway), Teddy would blink his eyes in time with the music. I fell asleep listening to Songs In the Attic and The Nylon Curtain albums as the toy’s gears wound noisily to the fury of safe piano rock. During the seemingly endless car trips to my Grandma’s house in Allentown, PA (a city of same name as a 1983 Joel Top 40 single), my mother would blast The Piano Man’s Greatest Hits Vol. I & 2. I played air piano on the dashboard. It was during these long drives I became fascinated with the concept of rock albums as an entity, song structure, and a musician’s career. An hour and a half in a car lasts three weeks when you’re four.

Although completely unconscious of the fact at the time, I was becoming a rock snob, cataloging all the Billy Joel tapes we kept in the glove compartment of our Toyota Corolla.
“Mom, do you have all of the Billy Joel tapes?,” I asked one day.

“Yes, I do. All of them so far except Kohuept,” she informed me. I later found out Kohuept was an unnecessary live in Leningrad album recorded when Mr. Joel became one of the elite few to play in Russia during the dwindling years of the Cold War. See. All you need to spearhead world peace is 88 keys and Christie Brinkley for a wife. “I even have two of his albums on these new things called CDs” my mom added.

I began to stack all the tapes on top of each other, reading the liner notes. I became fascinated that the sax player on his second album was not the same as the one on his sixth album. I noticed the name Phil Ramone showed up under the title of something called Producer on a few of them. Song titles began to intrigue me more than episodes of Eureka’s Castle. I was hooked.
“Mom, one day I’ll buy you Kohuept and you can have all the Billy Joel albums,” I told her once, trying to be mommies little hero, even though I probably only had six dollars in my Dick Tracy wallet and knew not where these tapes were sold.

As I got older, I began to find out exactly where tapes were sold. My musical tastes shifted from kid rap groups who wore their clothes backwards to radio safe alt-rock singles before I knew what “alternative” music was. Still, I never forgot about Billy Joel. And as my mother began to replace her tape collection with CDs, the impression had already been cast upon me. I knew that if I did like a band, you MUST, under all circumstances, collect everyone of their albums ever made, whether the album fell hard off the edge of mediocrity (Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor and Storm Front) or equivocally ended world hunger upon repeated listens (Glass Houses and The Stranger). And this is where I expect a check of compensation from Billy Joel. Through his albums, I learned that a songwriter or band goes through phases, releases chunks of brilliance and moments of uninspired filler. I learned that creative growth occurs through experience and so does commercial complacency. This fascinated me and has since cost me thousands in music related purchases. Still, after all this, I never seemed to notice that my parent’s never owned all of The Moody Blues’ or Genesis’ albums. If they did, who knows, I may have become a politician or a driving instructor?

Instead, I became a slacker. The same mother, who once told me she never liked Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors, and more than six Rolling Stones songs, turned me into a music hoarding geek, spending every dollar I could on shiny 5 inch pieces of plastic in square cases. In fifth grade, when I finally got my first c.d. player, I went to Tower Records and bought all of the overpriced They Might Be Giants albums available, because that’s what I thought you were supposed to do. Then, I repeated this process with the next band, and the next. Eventually, my action figure/comic book fund became an all out conquest to obtain every cool band’s complete musical history.

It wasn’t until eighth grade when I was chatting to my friend about NOFX that I realized everyone wasn’t like me.

“I don’t really like their third album, S&M Airlines. How ‘bout you?”
“Uh…. what’s that?” my friend said.
“Oh, never mind. How about the album Liberal Animation? Do you like that one?”
“No. I guess not?” he said.
“What the hell? You said you thought they were fucking awesome!?”
“Dude, I’ve only heard three songs by them.”

It was then I came to the conclusion the term, “I like that band,” did not mean you had to own all of their albums. Or did it? Still, I could not fathom this concept. How could one wholeheartedly devote themselves and study the emotions and maximum guitar riffage of a band without listening to every song you could possible wrap your ears and mind around?
I once watched a television special about a two year old girl who got stranded in the woods. A pack of wild dogs ended up raising her. When she was discovered as a young teen she walked on all fours, growled incoherent gurgles, and ate dirt and berries off the ground. It seems that we are inherently nurtured through the nature that surrounds us. In which case, I accidentally became a record collector, going into over draft protection several dozen times on the debit card I didn’t ask for when I turned 18. I’ve spent my brother’s birthday present money on new Pavement re-issues from Matador Records. Weeks of running on fumes and canceling social plans because I had spent all my money at the Princeton Record Exchange the week before is now a way of life. All because my mother, a women who knows way more about baking than rock music, kept all the goddamn Billy Joel tapes in the car.

Today, I now look at all of the NOFX c.d.’s on my shelf and ask my-eighth-grade-self, “What were you thinking?” I also have 13 awful c.d.’s from The Queers, all of The Ramones useless late 80’s albums (including 4 live albums), and plenty of forgettable audio yellowing in the dustbin of my mind and left wall of my bedroom. These were not the best purchases, but at the time, it was the only means to an end. These were dire times of consuming, listening, memorizing, filing, and shaping my true identity. Some kids go out for sports. I spent hours in my room hitting the repeat button, memorizing liner notes incase anyone I talked to would ever want to know that Keith Richard’s co-wrote the last song on Tom Waits’ Bone Machine album. Did you know that? Did you want to know that? Oh well, now you know. So what if I became a fat kid who didn’t get much sun? Vitamin D is overrated anyway. Especially when you’re the first kid on your block to know all of Minor Threat’s lyrics and own The Clash’s god-awful Cut the Crap album. Billy Joel, you stole my life, and I don’t want it back any time soon.