Billy
Joel by Fred Schruers
(Random House, October 2014, 400 Pages, $29.00/11.99) is the right
book written at the right time by the right person. Fred Schruers, a
deeply experienced writer/editor at Premier Magazine, Rolling Stone,
and other entertainment publications and now with Crown Publishing,
has been given unfettered access to Billy Joel, his former wives and
girl friends, members of his band, and archives as wide ranging as
the pages of the tabloid press and the archives of the Holocaust
Museum. From this he has fashioned a well-written and thoughtful
biography of one of the icons of pop music whose songs are a part of
the musical DNA of millions of fans, and whose life has been widely,
critically, and often superficially examined in the serious and
tabloid press. Using hundreds of hours of interviews with Joel
himself, his family and associates, Schruers has produced a piece of
celebrity biography that examines the man for his genius and his
faults. Billy Joel, now age sixty-five and still performing at a back
breaking pace, has wisely provided the insight without especially
limiting the analysis for this biography that treats the man and his
music in detail and with deep respect while never shying away from
the flaws which have made Joel and world renowned singer/songwriter
as well as a tabloid personality. For those interested in Joel
himself, rock and roll music, or the music business, Billy
Joel is highly readable and
informative.
I
must admit that while I have long loved much of Billy Joel's work,
even considered myself a fan, I've had a superficial picture of the
man himself. My impressions: Long Island, Christie Brinkley, frequent
meltdowns, mammoth tours, and a wealth of songs written over a long
period of time, were at best superficial. I almost put the book down
after several chapters of feeling mired in Long Island's rock scene
during the early and mid-sixties, when Joel dropped out of high
school, formed, joined and left several bands, and became a locally
popular rock singer while experimenting to discover his voice. The
names were unfamiliar to me, and I almost quit. Then, as Joel begins
to emerge, so did my interest, and the book took on a life of its
own, as I moved through it with joy and enthusiasm. The book is
sparsely illustrated and contains, insofar as I can see from the
galley I read, no index or list of sources, although credit is freely
given within the text. I supplemented my reading by using three
resources: Spotify to
listen to Joel's recorded work, especially the live concerts,
Wikipedia for
additional details about individuals mentioned in the book,
especially those from the recording industry, and Google
Images to allow me better to visualize the people, although I
really needed no help when it came to Christie Brinkley. All three of
these resources were enormously useful to me, as a casual fan, but
would probably prove unnecessary for one more knowledgeable than I.
Billy Joel as a Young Rocker
The
biography generally maintains a chronological view of Billy Joel,
presenting a detailed account of how the Joel family, prosperous Jews
from Germany escaped the holocaust, arriving in Cuba and then
immigrating, penniless, to New York City. Billy's father, Howard,
was a classical pianist, who soon deserted the family and eventually
returned to Vienna. Joel was born in the Bronx in 1949, and his
mother Rosalind soon moved to Hicksville, Long Island, in the heart
of what emerged under the generic name of Levittown. Billy early
studied classical piano, but in the musically overheated environment
was attracted to rock and roll, and never left. While never finishing
high school, Joel emerges as a voracious reader with a leftward lean,
and a student of classical as well as contemporary music. From his
early teen years, he asserts he wanted nothing more than to be a
musician. Joel performed with several bands to increasing notice, and
signed several early contracts in which he gave away most of the
rights to his own compositions, an error which took him many years
and millions of dollars to extract himself from. The cost of his
early misplaced trust in shady characters in the recording industry
probably is responsible for keeping Joel on the road much more
intensely than he otherwise would have been, however, it's as a
performer of his own highly autobiographical and emotive songs in
concert and on recordings that his reputation stands. These people
and errors are carefully discussed and analyzed in the book.
Despite
the fact that Joel entrusted his career to many people whose efforts
were not in his best interests, he emerges as a person who prefers to
approach to world from a position of trust and relative lack of anger
at those whose greed no doubt damaged his career from financial,
personal, and artistic perspectives. As he catalogs in his hundreds
of songs, his life has been a search for love and acceptance which
has involved him with some of the most beautiful and fascinating
women in the world, each of whom manages to leave a scar while,
remarkably, still remaining in a friendly relationship with Joel. The
costs of these relationships is fully cataloged without the
scatological details the tabloid press is constantly seeking. Joel
himself emerges, in his off-stage self, as pretty much a homebody who
wants to have fulfilling relationships with beautiful women, but
whose continuing life on the road always interferes with this ideal.
Similarly, he surrounds himself with large and elaborate homes, cars,
and boats around the world, only to discover that while he enjoys the
perquisites of being a “rock star,” they don't bring him the
internal happiness he seeks. The place where he seems most fully
alive is on the stage performing before huge crowds in stadiums and
arenas, although there are moments when a classroom audience or a
lecture seems to give him as much satisfaction. Often the grind of
the road, the boredom and the over-indulgence that goes with that
life, hurts him emotionally and physically.
Fred Schruers
Fred Schruers has enjoyed a successful
high-profile career as a writer at Rolling Stone, chronicling an
impressive body of musicians and actors, including Fleetwood Mac,
Bruce Springsteen, Jack Nicholson, Sheryl Crow, Matthew McConaughey,
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Chris Rock. His writing has also
appeared in Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, Men’s Journal, GQ, the
Los Angeles Times, and Columbia Journalism Review. Billy
Joel appears to be his first
full-length book.
Billy Joel - 2014
Rick Diamond - Getty Images
Billy
Joel by
Fred Schruers (Random House, October 2014, 400 Pages, $29.00/11.99)
is an intriguing portrait of the man in full. Music, romance, love,
marriage seem to form the cornerstones of Billy Joel's life. When
they fail, he becomes distraught. He says, you “need to know who
you are, before you can look for who's next.” His life, career, and
music have been defined by Levittown, an absent father, the baby
boomer generation, a search for love and beauty, which seem to be two
different, but often complementary ideals. During his life he has
earned and spent hundreds of millions of dollars and sold over
140,000,000 records, making him one of the most successful of all
rock artists. While Billy Joel has not written songs since 1993, he
continues to write music, often in a classical vein, to present
lectures and workshops on college campuses, and to perform
incessantly around the world. In this very readable biography, he
emerges as an interesting and thoughtful man who seems to have come
out the other side with his life and many of his relationships
intact, even when it isn't always happy. Billy
Joel was
provided to me by the publisher through Edelweiss
as an electronic galley, which I read on my Kindle
app. Highly recommended!
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