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Billy Joel has done alright, hasn’t he? Since his breakout with ‘Piano Man’, the man himself made himself a star, carving out a niche as keys player amongst a landscape of rock and rollers. Yet still, there’s one act he’d more than happily swap places with.
While by now Joel is a household name, he was once an unlikely success. It’s tough to imagine a world without timeless tunes like ‘Vienna’ or ‘Uptown Girl’ as they’re now written into the global songbook, but the artist’s victory was a somewhat odd one.
Think about it – this was the 1970s. Rock and roll was still the way as bands like Led Zeppelin dominated, while slowly, things were getting heavier and heavier, moving towards the emergence of punk and the boom of glam rock.
It was all about the guitars. The instrument reigned supreme as the signature look and feel of the industry was long-haired players thrashing around grimy venues. The music world was in an enduring love affair with bands, so where did Joel fit?
As a classic lounge pianist singing storytelling ballads, the short answer is that he didn’t. Joel’s music certainly wasn’t what the era was typically into but somehow, he broke through. Perhaps it was his obvious rock and roll influences, maybe it was the energy of his live band, or it might have simply been that talent gets noticed. Either way, the piano player broke through at an unlikely time and as an artist who stood out from the guitar-wielding pack.
You don’t need me to tell you that since then, Joel has done well. He still packs out huge venues as generations remain desperate to see him play the hits. With 13 studio albums under his belt from a decades-long career, he’s a globally renowned talent whose contributions to music can’t be understated. Around the world, people would be desperate to live a day in his shoes, meanwhile, he’d like a vacation in the life of someone else.
For one day, Billy Joel would like to be The Boss.
“We talked about it with Bruce last night, ‘Why don’t we switch off once in a while? you come do the garden, I’ll do your gig for a couple of days’”, Joel said to Jimmy Kimmel about the offer he’d put to Bruce Springsteen. The pair could trade places; Springsteen could come play Joel’s more demure shows at Madison Square Garden, while he could go rock out in a stadium.
This came after the two performed together during one of Joel’s New York shows. Sharing the stage for ‘Born To Run’ and ‘New York State Of Mind’, Joel clearly got a taste for Springsteen’s brand of epic, atmospheric performance. Talking about his favourite track from the Boss, he’d be particularly excited to play ‘Meeting Across The River’, calling the 1975 track “very atmospheric.”
Their trading of places has yet to happen, but their coming together was something special as the kid from the Bronx and the kid from New Jersey came together to sing anthems for the city that loomed over their childhoods.
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