Being the Billy Joel Beat

A Matter of Trust Was Essential

Some years ago Caroline Miller, a much-loved Newsday arts editor, left the paper to continue the journey that would lead her to becoming editor of New York magazine. At a party organized by those who worked with her, she was given a farewell t-shirt. The t-shirt had the newspaper's font and logo, a replica of the fish-shaped map of Long Island, and a slight variation on the paper's slogan: It read "Newsday: The Billy Joel Newspaper."

Covering Billy Joel was of no small importance for Newsday, and for me, as the paper's pop music critic from 1975-1995. Whenever Billy Joel sneezed, Newsday caught pneumonia. He was Long Island’s biggest homegrown star, and a major community booster. And for the first 10 years, until the arts staff assigned and hired some reinforcements, it was me and Billy the Kid. Every concert tour, every album release, every interview: it was all my beat.

I understood from day one that this would have to be a carefully calibrated relationship. Long Island and its newspaper was as important to Billy as he was to us, as he made evident when he changed the lyrics to "New York State of Mind" during a concert at Nassau Coliseum on December 11, 1977. To the line about missing the hometown newspapers, "the New York Times, the Daily News," he added "Newsday too." I was at the concert, of course, and in my review I noted dryly that "the audience actually cheered."

But I could not get too close, I could not be a shill, especially for the hometown hero. As Billy sang in "Honesty" in 1978: Honesty is hardly ever heard/And mostly what I need from you. That was my fallback if he ever complained about a review.

But I couldn't take wild swings if one of his songs, or shows, was not to my taste. The first time I reviewed him for Newsday was June 2, 1977, the first of three nights at Carnegie Hall. It was a mixed review; some good moments, some dull moments. Some highs, some lows. I tried my best to describe precisely what was wrong with the less entertaining parts.

I'm sure I noted that Carnegie Hall, despite its prestige, was an acoustic jungle for amplified music. I thought I heard cues missed, the rhythm section sometimes not in synch, musicians having trouble hearing each other. There may have been unfamiliar new tunes, always difficult for a performer to introduce to a concert audience. These new songs would have been from the album Billy Joel was recording that summer, his first with producer Phil Ramone, the album that would move him from regional big shot to worldwide pop star: The Stranger.

I also remember it having been an uncharacteristically hot day for early June, that I had worked the three previous nights, that I was not in the mood for a fourth concert in a row, and that I had no date, so my plus-one ticket went unused. Real life, the writer's mood, can always influence a response to a show. There is no such thing as "objective" opinion writing, there is only fairness. Musicians have bad nights; so do critics. I don't recall an avalanche of hate mail after the review appeared. I thought I was fair.

A few months later, Newsday needed what we call an "advance" feature before the December 11 Nassau Coliseum show, the great homecoming. For this review, it was easy to write about the audience and atmosphere of celebration. Those new songs from The Stranger sounded pretty great too.

I arranged a phone interview with Joel in Buffalo, about two weeks before the show. Joel was muted, indifferent, monosyllabic during the conversation. I asked if something was wrong, if he wanted to talk at a different time.

"I don't know, Wayne, I guess I'm on a 'roller coaster.' " I heard the sneer; I knew what he meant. I had used the term to describe the ups and downs of that Carnegie Hall show almost six months earlier. He had not been pleased.

It was then we had what I call "the talk." He thought the review unfair; I told him I had to call it like I saw and heard it, and that show had been inconsistent. More to the point, the gist of the conversation, was this: I am answerable to the newspaper, and to its readers. The readers would think I was bush league if I raved over everything that Billy did, but they would not tolerate it if they perceived me taking cheap or unfair shots. Billy and I were likely to be engaged for a long time, and that we should maintain a cordial, mutual respect, and treat each other professionally. By the end of the conversation, we had metaphorically agreed to the Treaty of Buffalo that would characterize our relationship for the next number of years.

It was fortunate for both of us that the next few years would be Billy Joel's golden era: The Stranger followed by 52nd Street (1978), Glass Houses (1980), The Nylon Curtain (1982), An Innocent Man (1983). (I'm using the years as listed in the official BillyJoel.com timeline, in case actual release date differs.)

These were multimillion sellers, multiple Grammy awards and one or two were even embraced by critics. I loved them because I knew the people and places of the songs. We were both what he called during a lunch in 1989 "49ers," that is, baby boomers born in 1949. I was interviewing him for the Storm Front album, featuring the love-it-or-hate-it boomer history lesson “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” We were both turning 40 that year, and it was relaxed and comfortable as any conversation we'd had. It was at a midtown Manhattan Italian restaurant, just us, between the normal lunch and dinner crowd: around 4 pm. No bottle of white, but a very nice bottle or two of red.

Getting there from his 57th Street office was illuminating. The restaurant was just a few blocks away, but Billy thought we ought to take his limo. I was thinking this might be a little bit showy until we were stuck in gridlock half a block from the restaurant. We got out of the limo and started walking down the street. Pandemonium. Cab drivers honked, truck drivers waved, pedestrians stopped and gawked, crowded, pointed, stared. Tourists looked dizzy. It felt like A Hard Day's Night: I wondered if we'd need a police escort to keep from getting torn apart.  

The only time I’ve had my picture taken with an artist during an interview. With Billy Joel at the Hotel National (гости́ница «Националь») near Red Square. Moscow, August 1987

The rock press has often been less than generous to Billy Joel. The disdain of many of my rock critic cohort always struck me as excessive: each harsh, resentful review struck me as shooting craps with loaded dice. The verdict was predetermined.

The hate has run so deep and so long that in 2009, Ron Rosenbaum, a writer I once admired, wrote an article for Slate called "The Worst Pop Singer Ever: Why, exactly, is Billy Joel So Bad?" Rosenbaum missed his target by so much that it came back at him like a boomerang. Calling Joel "the Andrew Wyeth of Rock," showed Rosenbaum's irrelevance, mistaking riffing for writing, taste for judgement. Billy's reaction, which I read somewhere, was, "what's wrong with Andrew Wyeth?"  

I identified with Joel's songs because of shared roots and values: we were both born in 1949, Billy six months older. His Hicksville was much like my Franklin Square: blue collar yet middle class. I identified with these story songs. And as a songwriter-first music listener, his craftsmanship is undeniable.

In a New Yorker profile by Nick Paumgarten in 2014, the author spoke to Bruce Springsteen's manager and producer Jon Landau. A former rock critic himself, Landau was not a fan of Joel until Springsteen excitedly told him what it was like to actually play Joel’s songs. The New Yorker writer wrote: "[After] Springsteen joined Joel onstage for an Obama fund-raising concert, in 2008, and played a bunch of Joel’s songs with Joel’s band, he came off and told Landau, “Those songs—they’re built like the Rock of Gibraltar. Until you play them, you don’t realize how well they play.”

Springsteen also made an appearance at Joel's 100th Madison Square Garden concert (not “franchise concert”) and they knocked out a pair of Bruce's songs. I have not seen any of the Joel concerts as a Madison Square Garden "franchise" artist, the monthly sold out shows interrupted for almost two years by the pandemic: They started up a few days ago. I would not even know who to call anymore.

I stopped reviewing Billy Joel for Newsday after the 1987 Russia tour, which required me to see and review six Joel concerts in almost three weeks: Three in Moscow, three in Leningrad. The opening night show made headlines because Joel, angry on stage, tossed his piano bench and was visibly upset. At the post-show news conference, I'll admit a bit of pride when I raised my hand and was one of the only members of the press corps Joel knew to call my name. (Billy was angry that the best seats all went to Communist Party VIPs; all he could see was the party elite, not exactly the most enthusiastic audience to play to.)

At the end of the tour, back in Moscow a day before our departure, Billy and I did a kind of recap of the tour interview in his hotel room. When it was over, I checked my tape recorder. There had been a malfunction, and the tape was blank. We fixed the malfunction (otherwise known as remembering to press record and play at the same time), and Billy delayed his next interview with a U.S. TV network so that he and I could quickly recreate the questions and answers. We knew each other well enough by that time to do the shorthand quickly, and my story, and life, went on.

Back in the U.S.A., my editors understood my exhaustion, my Billy Joel concert burnout. Other music writers were hired, and I could move off the primary Billy Joel beat. After I left Newsday in 1995, I went to his house on a rainy day in the Hamptons, and we went out to lunch to discuss a book project that did not pan out. Christie was outside in the rain, gardening in the mud.

I did speak to him again for a story when the paper sent me to Washington, D.C., in 1990, to cover a forceful lobbying effort by the music licensing organization ASCAP for a copyright extension law. At the dinner banquet I sat next to Jimmy Webb, who was one of the performers, and whom I had interviewed a few times over multiple bourbons at the Old Town Bar in Manhattan. Against my objections, he told me what "MacArthur Park" is about, what it means. I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss this right now, although I may at a later time.

Garth Brooks was the headliner; Billy Joel was there too. During the cocktail hour, I was interviewing to one of the bill's co-sponsors, songwriter turned Congressman Sonny Bono, (R-Palm Springs). The bill, signed into law in 1998, is known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

While I'm carefully listening to Bono and taking notes, Billy Joel walks up behind me, and Sonny Bono says to Billy: "Do you know Wayne here?" And Billy says, "as a matter of fact, I do."

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