There are other artists I love more than Billy Joel, but I’ve always respected his talent and craft.
Paul McCartney’s comment about Just The Way You Are—that it’s the song he most wishes he would have written—I swear I’ve heard him say the same thing about God Only Knows.
Billy was right, Just The Way You Are is schmaltzy, and as a working musician back in the day I often had to play it at weddings, and the whole band would roll their collective eyes.
But I’ve since come to understand that underneath the schmaltz is a very high level of song craft and musical integrity. Plus, we get one of the very best jazz solos on a pop song from the great Phil Woods.
Same with another schmaltzy gem from the era, How Deep Is Your Love … these are both really solid songs, kind of perfect in the same way an Irving Berlin song is. That’s why they became standards.
Of course, let it not go unsaid that from a musical standpoint, God Only Knows is several orders of inspired genius higher, but then again, as McCartney has also said, it is the greatest song ever written. Or one of the greatest, at least … gotta leave room for Wichita Lineman.
Fred Simon
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As a teenager I saw Billy Joel at the small Westchester Premier Theater in December 1976 on the Turnstiles tour. Cut school to go and buy tickets when they went on sale. He was amazing. Energetic. Wise-cracking. Smoking cigarettes between songs. Jumped off stage and walked through the aisles singing. Great setlist and searing performances. I went to see him again in May 1977 in the field house at Rockland Community College. Another stellar show. He premiered songs from The Stranger which hadn’t been released yet. The audience cheered for songs like Scenes from an Italian Restaurant which we’d never heard before.
He won me over then and I’ve been a fan ever since. Billy Joel is one of a kind and his music will endure.
Joe Moss
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Bob, two more tidbits about Billy Joel when he came into my office in 1972 seeking work:
1. At the bottom of his resume that I still have, he wrote “Would like to do good steady gigs with professional people, need MONEY. Don’t call me unless you have a group together working and making money. I’m not interested in jamming or f..king around”. But a week later he came back in and crossed out the word “f..king” and replaced it with “messing”. I’m sure he thought that maybe a prospective employer may read it and be offended by his cuss word.
2. About a month later he came back in but now he was looking for other musicians for his band. I think by this time he had gotten a gig at the Roman Knight in Pico Rivera or a lounge gig on Wilshire Blvd, which I may have gotten for him but I’ve never been sure. Anyway, he was sitting at my counter looking thru the resumes of available players. A working top 40 guitarist named Mike Shure was sitting next to him. I overheard Billy asking Mike if he wanted to join his band. “Is it paying?” Mike asked. Billy said ” No, it’s my original thing”. “Sorry, I’m not interested” was Mike’s response.
I saw Billy Joel open for Pablo Cruise at the Berkeley Community Theater and knock them into the stratosphere. According to the recent Janis Ian American Masters documentary, the same thing happened to her. At that Berkeley gig, Billy had a priceless retort to a PC heckler, “Stand up and show us your white socks.” He absolutely killed.
2021, Sony released a live CD of a 1975 Great American Music Hall gig in San Francisco around the Streetlife Serenade album. It’s beautifully recorded and performed. Lots of between song banter. Apparently they had a truck outside rolling tape. Check it out.
Kent Zimmerman
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Glass Houses was my first album and it’s one of my favorites. Seen Billy countless times and love him. I get it – he’s not Springsteen, Dylan, or Paul, but who cares? His songs are great and as the documentary says (I think it was Elizabeth) something like, Billy can distill an emotion to a song so perfectly – he gets to the DNA of the emotion (paraphrasing).
All for Lenya – the yearning, the feeling, etc. is so powerful. Pick any song and he hits the nail on the head. People can make fun of him, but his songs have endured. I love all his albums, and yes, even The Bridge (Running on Ice, Matter of Trust, Big Man) and Storm Front and River of Dreams albums are still great to me.
“I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more a fool who’s not afraid of rejection…”
Nathan B
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Bob, I hated Billy Joel. “Piano Man” was all I knew – and it made my skin crawl. However, one winter while working in the frozen food dept at Kroger , I kept hearing “uptown girl” and “pressure” on the back loading dock. I started to buy his albums. I grew up 15 miles north of Nashville – my folks are session cats. My dad still plays steel on the Grand Ole Opry. My upbringing couldn’t have been further from Joel’s … but I know what all his songs are about. I just do. His music touched me even though I had never been to any of the places he sang about. Billy is one of the greats of all time. He transcends COOL. He’s the real working class hero – not Bruce. Sorry. Bruce is handsome – Billy ain’t. I saw Billy on the eve of my 30th birthday- 9/10/21. I treated myself to seats on the field – where the Reds play. The two people who sat next to me were a Mexican woman and her teenage son. They couldn’t speak a lick of English but they knew all the words to every song. THAT is what it’s all about. LONG LIVE BILLY JOEL.
Coley Hinson
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I’ve always felt that Billy Joel begat Bon Jovi as the so-called “rockers” of their respective generations — both appealing primarily to a female audience, yet possessing just enough rock sensibility to attract the types of guys into Barry Manilow and Nickelback. That said, Billy wrote Scenes From an Italian Restaurant. Wow. I take it all back. Wait. Ah I don’t know.
Cheers,
Jay Aymar
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When he (Billy Joel) is no longer on this mortal coil his natural life force will be fully appreciated with his voice/songs in the air forever more. That’s quite a life achievement.
I traveled from London to New York in December 2017 to see him perform to his locals at the Madison Square Garden just to hear 25’000 people singing his neighbor-hood songs with him. A true music moment in my life that has gone through all the street genres..
Eddie Gordon
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As Jim James recently said, there are two camps of people. Those who have seen Bruce Springsteen live and those who haven’t.
You could say the same about Billy Joel. And as the years have gone by and every emperor’s clothing has been revealed, it’s even more true. Seeing either artist live may not make you like their music too much more than when you went, but it will likely drive you to testify on their behalf if you are any kind of music fan.
Glass Houses was the first album I ever learned all the words to. Then Songs in the Attic. I was 12. Songs in the Attic may be the best live record of all time. Precisely because it managed to reveal so much in those songs that the records never did. Versus other great live albums that were mostly presenting amazing versions of songs that were already good on the OG records.
Bruce should be in a Billy documentary. As a kid growing up in New Jersey on the Asbury Park shore with cousins my same age growing up in Oyster Bay, I spent half my summers in Jersey and half on Long Island. As a teenager, it didn’t take me more than one week to figure out these dudes were living parallel lives. And that was only through the records. This is before I knew about their backstories about how they both went out to California to see if they could make it. They both had distant fathers. They both signed shi*ty deals with their first managers that they had to get out from under. They both almost got fired by Columbia after their second albums.
If they weren’t living their lives at exactly the same time, a cynic would think that one was invented precisely because the other was successful but the timelines overlap too much. Like we did a Jersey/Long Island version now let’s do the other!
Jeff Gorlechen
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In April of 1977, Billy Joel played a tiny theater at the University of Maryland, about fifty yards from my dorm. Out of the roughly thousand concerts I’ve seen, this one stands out as one of the most memorable. He just had that amazing “it factor” that’s hard to describe. The songs, the talent, the stage presence… all 600 of us in attendance knew we were witnessing a future superstar.
The show had the energy and arrangements that would later show up on “Songs From the Attic”… amped-up, rocking versions of what was then a more subdued catalog. Liberty DeVitto on drums was a huge part of that sound.
But what really stuck with me happened early in the set. At the time, “Piano Man” was pretty much his only hit, and even that was a relatively minor one. So he played it third. Before launching into it, he gave a hilarious speech about how most artists save their big hit for the end of the night, teasing it with drawn-out intros while the audience waits for the payoff. He said he preferred to just get it out of the way so we could all relax and enjoy the rest of the show. It was so cool, and so unpretentious.
Then “The Stranger” came out, and that was it. He was playing arenas, and I sort of lost interest. I didn’t want to see him jumping off pianos and playing to crowds who only knew the hits post-Turnstiles. Big mistake. I finally made it to one of the MSG shows years later, and it was incredible. Almost as good as that tiny theater in ’77.
Of course, there’s nothing quite like seeing a young artist on the rise, and I’m just grateful I got to experience that with Billy.
All the best,
Rich Madow
Baltimore, MD
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I disagree with your first sentence to not watch if you’re not a fan. I’m from Long Island but I was never a Joel fan and never bought any of his music.
The hits infiltrated my life. They were everywhere. ( even in the supermarket). When I tell people I’m not a fan, they can’t understand it. BUT, his youngest kids go to my grandkids’ school in Florida-haha, and I’ve gotten more curious about him in recent years, because of it. So I definitely wanted to watch the documentary and I’ve been enjoying it immensely Bob. To learn about a person‘s past, and to understand why certain songs were written is revelatory. When he explains about a song and then the doc shows it being played in the stadium, I got chills, because I know it, and now I understand it!
Thanks for your insight and opinions, though. Joanne Schenendorf
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Bob, it’s so good! I don’t think I would have watched it without your write-up.
Lizzz Kritzer
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Hi Bob,
After watching the recent documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes, I was stunned by what was left out. Not small details, but entire chapters of Billy’s early career…chapters my father, Irwin Mazur, lived through and helped shape.
His name isn’t mentioned… though he’s clearly featured in key photographs used in the documentary
This isn’t about bitterness or nostalgia. It’s about truth. And truth shouldn’t be optional when we’re talking about the legacy of someone as important as Billy Joel.
I grew up in a house where the music business wasn’t just something people talked about, it was lived…every day. My father built his career with real hustle and vision. He wasn’t a hobbyist or someone hanging around the edges. He was Billy Joel’s first real manager. He started managing The Hassles in 1966 and helped guide Billy through the most formative years of his music career. These aren’t vague memories. They’re backed by photos, paperwork, recordings, and real history.
I’ve had a #1 record, toured the world, and worked in this business for decades. I know how easy it is for certain names to get erased when a story needs to be simplified. But when that name is your fathers and when you saw him do for you what he once did for Billy, you can’t stay silent.
Let’s Get the Facts Straight
1966 – Billy Joel joins The Hassles
Irwin Mazur, age 24, has been managing The Hassles, the house band at My House, a Long Island rock club owned by my grandfather, Danny Mazur. The band is looking for a new keyboard player. Billy’s group, The Lost Souls, auditions for a spot at the venue. Instead of hiring the whole band, Irwin and The Hassles offer Billy the open position…along with a new Hammond B3 organ. He accepts. That’s how Billy officially becomes a member of The Hassles.
1967 – The Hassles and United Artists Records
Irwin secures a two-album deal with United Artists Records for The Hassles, an almost unheard of achievement for a young Long Island band with no national profile. The deal even includes an advance, a rare show of confidence from a major label at the time. Irwin is credited as the band’s official manager, and their self-titled debut album is released later that year.
1968 – Album Two
Hour of the Wolf is released. The Hassles’ second album comes out under the same United Artists deal. Irwin is still the manager, and credited as such.
1969 – The Hassles Split
The band breaks up, and Irwin continues managing Billy and Jon Small. Billy and drummer Jon Small form Attila, a heavy rock duo built around Billy’s organ and Jon’s drums. Irwin stays with them, managing the new project.
1970 – Attila and Epic Records
Irwin gets Attila a deal with Epic Records, with a significant advance. The album is released in July. It doesn’t do well commercially, but it’s a bold creative step for Billy.
1970–1971 – Downward Spiral
Attila ends, and Billy spirals.
After the album release, Jon finds out Billy is having an affair with his wife, Elizabeth. The band ends immediately. Billy enters a dark period …depressed, broke, and without direction, my parents give him a place to stay. During that time, Billy attempts suicide. He survives… Irwin gets him out of the hospital, remains by his side, and he slowly begins to rebuild.
1971 – A New Beginning
Irwin helps Billy start his solo career.
Still managing Billy, Irwin encourages him to regroup and write songs, his own songs…from the heart, with just piano and vocals.
1971 – Family Productions
After being turned down at nearly every record label in New York, Irwin is visiting his brother Ruby at Paramount Records, where he works as an art director. While they’re playing Billy’s demo in Ruby’s office, the door is wide open. Michael Lang (music business icon and promoter of Woodstock) pokes his head in. He says it’s not really his style but believes Artie Ripp at Family Productions would love it and makes the introduction.
Artie Ripp, who had an imprint/distribution deal through Paramount, hears the tape and makes an offer to sign Billy Joel as a solo artist.
That leads to the release of his first solo album, Cold Spring Harbor. Again, Irwin Mazur is credited as manager and executive producer. Unfortunately, the mastering is botched, causing the final product to play faster than intended—but the songs show early brilliance. It’s Billy’s first solo album.
1971–1972 – A Breakthrough
At Irwin’s request, Family Productions funds tour support to put Billy on the road to promote the album. Billy is sent on a nearly year-long tour. The turning point comes in April 1972, when Billy plays the Mar Y Sol Pop Festival in Puerto Rico. He delivers a breakthrough performance that puts him on the radar.
1972 – Leveling Up
Following Mar Y Sol, Columbia Records’ A&R department contacts Irwin to set up a call with Clive Davis. Clive expresses interest in bringing Billy to Columbia and says he wants to see him perform live. A showcase is scheduled at the iconic Troubadour in Los Angeles.
1972 – Blindsided
With no explanation, Irwin is fired before the Troubadour show.
After six years guiding Billy from a local club band to the edge of global success… that was it.
What Deserves to Be Remembered
My dad never chased the spotlight. He wasn’t in it for fame or credit. But he was there, every step of the way. He managed. He booked the shows. He bought the gear. He fought for Billy when no one else did. He gave him a place to stay, a path forward, and a belief that never wavered.
I’m not here to rewrite anyone’s legacy. I just felt that, as his son, I had to speak up. The truth matters. and this is the truth.
Bob, if you feel this is worth sharing with your readers, please feel free.
Sincerely,
Bret “Epic” Mazur
P.S. Just realized I never actually said this—my dad, Irwin Mazur, is very much alive!
He’s 83 now, still sharp, and still remembers every detail of those early days with Billy. In fact, he just attended The Hassles’ induction into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame this past June. This wasn’t meant as a eulogy, just a moment where I felt it was time to speak up for someone who deserves to be remembered while he’s here to see it.
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My family (on my father’s side) ARE the original/founding Hicks’ of Hicksville. Robert Hicks, a leathergoods merchant, arrived in 1622 on the “Fortune”, the sister ship to the Mayflower. His progeny (specifically Valentine Hicks and Elias Hicks) would eventually move to Long Island and found the town of Hicksville where Billy Joel grew up.
I’m “Robert L Hicks”, the namesake of the original Hicks. On my maternal side are the Smiths, who founded Smithtown on Long Island. If anyone goes ‘way back’ on the Island, it’s me and my family! :-). We were the early settlers and first founders there.
I feel very privileged to have worked with Ozzy .First at Virgin Music Publishing and then when I was brought in to run Epic Associated by Tommy Mottola. I hired Michael Goldstone to be my AnR guy and asked him to work with Ozzy on his next album.
No More Tears!
Goldie was brilliant.
Ozzy was a God. I loved the man and was overcome by how sad I was last night when I heard the news.
You’re right about Sharon. One of the all time great managers.
The world needs more characters like Ozzy Osbourne.
He was a superstar.
I shall miss him a lot.
Richard Griffiths
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I’m in Amalfi, Italy on vacation with my wife, at dinner, when a friend texted me the news. It took me back to being a teenager in the ’70’s, hearing the riffs like Iron Man, and diving headfirst into his first solo album And discovering the genius of Randy Rhoads! Saw the Diary of a Madman tour in Phoenix at the Coliseum on January 1, 1982, just short of being able to drive. It was spectacle and rock and rock magic with Ozzy as the ringmaster. And later I saw Black Sabbath on the tour they did around 2015, with my wife and two oldest, who were around the same age I was when I first saw him in the early ’80’s. They had found Black Sabbath and Ozzy too.. How cool?!
Love this quote: “I’m not the Antichrist. I’m just a guy from Birmingham who got lucky.” And of course we all know luck is when preparation meets opportunity. He took opportunity head on through his career.
Cheers to Ozzy and all he gave us! I will be cranking some Sabbath today in the Italian riviera and toasty the great music.
Neal Bookspan
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The scene in Spheeris Decline of Western Civilization – Nuff said: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMbc54zJcE2/?igsh=YnVyM2Z0YXBpNHhu
Luke Joerger
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Oh, that Ozzy was quite a character.
Case in point.
Back in 82 or 83, our illustrious Program Director, Ms Sam Bellamy, arranged (along with Epic Records) for the KMET staff to go up to Sharon and Ozzy’s home to listen to, and preview, his forthcoming album—can’t remember which record it was, maybe a live one (?). This was a week or so before its release. Anyway, a bunch of us drove up to their home somewhere in the hills above Beverly Hills. Very nice pad, of course. So we all got up there for lunch and beverages. Sharon was the gracious host and Ozzy kinda bounced in and out of their living room while we all hung out and listened. After it was over and we all bade farewell, we headed out to their driveway, only to discover that all of our cars had flat tires. Turned out that Ozzy had snuck outside and let the air out of our tires.
Sly. Mischievous.
Hugh Surratt
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RIP Ozzy. End of an era.
Kim Kay
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Grateful for your insights at this very sad time for music and for the world. We were all misfits and Ozzy was truly one of us. Will miss him forever.
Flo Kaczorowski
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After the final concert, I listened to the first two Sabbath albums. I bought them when they came out, during high school, based on seeing the first album cover. What jumped out most was Ozzy’s singing and the lyric writing. Ozzy was nailing it. No pitch correction, obviously, and no huge effects, etc. It’s undeniable, totally authentic and sits right in front of that heavy-weight band. Not as easy as it looks. And…creating a whole new genre of Rock, as well! As James Hetfield said, without Black Sabbath there would be no Metallica. The fact that one of the biggest touring acts of 2025 draws a line directly back to Ozzy says it all. R.I.P.
Robert Bond
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Ozzie was the Rodney Dangerfield of the Dark Side.
He was not only the inspiration for many new artists but he used Ozzfest to create a platform for them to play to large crowds. Just like the Dangerfield Club in NY introduced new comedians
You could see the excitement backstage of the early bill acts when they got to the venue…..and how they practically venerated Ozzie. Some came back to headline. I
think Ozzie saw himself as the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. He never took himself too seriously but he had a mission and vision.
Tom Rooney
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Gotta say I’m with you on your take Bob..Of all the Ozzy records through the years , No More Tears was the first one to make me go ‘whoa , listen to THAT ‘ ..Very ‘modern’ production yet still HEAVY..It had depth both musically and from a production standpoint with infectious hooks without compromising ‘the heavy’ .It was a musical statement pure and simple.
That Ozzy could not only evolve but TRIUMPH..Duane Baron and John Purdell were quite the sought after production duo in those days.Duane is brilliant engineer (I learned how to record guitars apprenticing for him for a time) and John Purdell was a musical tour de force with brilliant ideas (may he rest in peace) I circled back to the earlier stuff and came to absolutely love tracks like ‘Flying high Again’ and ‘Mr. Crowley’ but No More Tears was the record that REALLY grabbed me and wouldn’t let go …A Metal Masterpiece…Yeah we lost a GIANT yesterday , I doubt we’ll ever see another like him again (not in our lifetime anyway )
Long live the price of darkness !
Warmest Regards
Brett Chassen
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Summer of ’71, at a lake cabin in the middle-of-nowhere Iowa, that only country stations could reach, my friends and I had two albums to fill our heads, Paranoid and Led Zeppelin III. Zeppelin was fine, but nothing hit our 14-year-old heads like War Pigs and the title track.
Fast forward 10 years, and I’m hitchhiking south from London to Plymouth to catch a ferry over to the Isle of Wight (If it’s not too dear), and the artist who did the cover for LZ III, Zacron, picks me up in a van with his 2-year-old daughter in tow, and took me all the way to the docks, the whole while regaling me with his tales of the London scene past…Clapton, Page, Mayall, and the like. His last tidbit was that he had approached Ozzie to do some cover work, and even though they hit it off, Ozzie declared Zacron’s art “too pretty” and that ended there.
A year later, I’m back in Iowa, and on a whim, I scored a ticket for Ozzie’s show at Des Moines’ Vet’s Auditorium, an acoustic barn of a building where I’d seen numerous acts over the years and bore witness to the bat beheading incident that more or less put Des Moines on the map. T. Joseph Wilson
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I never got deep into metal music, just a dabbling. But I’ll always have a soft spot for Ozzy because on the way to the hospital to deliver my child, the last song I heard on the radio was “Mama, I’m Coming Home.”
Rest in peace, Ozzy. Sorry your body gave out when you had more of you to share.
– Mary Holland
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What a loss. Musically, Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s solo work are undeniable. He touched so many people. Once the curtain was peeled back on “The Osbournes,” he became someone people rooted for. He seemed like a genuinely lovely guy and a loving father. The respect he received from all those great artists at “Back To The Beginning” was incredible to see.
A cool story: My dad went to the University of Miami and saw Black Sabbath perform live on October 31, 1970. It was the Paranoid Tour and they opened for Canned Heat. Imagine hearing all those songs live at this early stage of their career?!
Two of my father’s favorite artists are Brian Wilson and Ozzy Osbourne. He’s close in age to both of them, so their passing hit especially hard for him and me.
Best
Justin Kleinfeld
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I met Ozzy a few years ago and told him my first concert was his in 1986 and “I was never the same”. He replied “me neither”.
Lou Smith
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Black Sabbath was my first concert, August 5th, 1975, at the Asbury Park Convention Hall. I was 16 years old, and begged my parents to buy tickets and drive my brother, my best friend and me to the concert from Queens. They did.
I’d discovered Sabbath in ’73, watching the California Jam on ABC. Children of the Grave, War Pigs, and I was slain. I had a new favorite band. Loved the dark tuned down guitars, loved how they lined up without fuss across the stage, with the lead singer stage left. Ozzy Osbourne was not featured, he was one of four, clinging to the mic and singing mad tales of woe. And he seemed to care about the people he was singing to.
It was not cool to be a Sabbath fan in high school. But I wore my Sabbath t-shirt regularly, and those few of us who were fans found each other.
The hall in Asbury Park held about five thousand people standing on the floor, no seats. My bestie and brother and I pushed up to about ten people back from the stage, with no idea what to expect…our first concert. We took in the wall of amps…none of these props…Tony Iommi playing through three stacks, Geezer Butler through four. The house lights went down, but not the stage lights as Ozzy (26 years old) walked out, peace signs flying. The band walked into position without fuss, and opened with Killing Yourself to Live.
The sound of Black Sabbath live, point blank, has no equal. Ozzy appeared to be as blown away by their sound as we five thousand were. Sabbath roared!
In between each song Ozzy would either A: introduce the next tune, B: say “I want to see you move!” or C: tell us how much he and the band loved us.
By the time the concert ended I was a new person, happily warped by the power and the vibe. As Ozzy walked off the stage he grabbed a handful of carnations (Ward’s drums were covered with carnations) and threw them into the audience. I caught one, brought it home and pressed it into my teenage scrapbook. I have it still.
Would go on to see the band again several times. Years later working at MTV I was once in a room when Ozzy came in. He was such a wasted mess that I chose to not to meet him. I had my concert memories.
I’m so happy he got to perform with Black Sabbath one last time. That he got to feel the love of his legions of fans. That he got to shake the earth and move hearts one more time.
Michael Alex
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Good Morning Bob,
I felt the same way yesterday when I found out that Ozzy was dead. Disbelief. I started counting back to how many days ago the concert took place. Unreal.
I got into Ozzy during the No More Tears album as well, then started working my way back, but I was only about 14 at the time. Had the cassette, then traded it in for the CD a couple years later. I still think it’s his best album, by a wide margin. Still play it today, and still love it.
I saw him live a few times and always chuckled at how he seemed to use the first 3 songs of the show to warm up his voice, instead of actually spending a few minutes warming up PRIOR to going on stage. As you said, he just didn’t care. And we always got a great show anyway.
RIP Prince of Darkness
Tim W
in Calgary
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Correct again, Bob! Let’s be honest: if you say you love Ozzy Osbourne but don’t know No More Tears — the album — you don’t know Ozzy. This wasn’t just a comeback. This was a full-blown resurrection, with Zakk Wylde summoning some kind of holy fire and Ozzy delivering the greatest music of his life. Every track is a monster. A 10 out of 10. A god-tier, A+ rock record. If Blizzard Of Ozz made him a solo star, No More Tears made him eternal. Black Sabbath was the blueprint — perhaps they “invented” heavy metal, and sure, the cool kids say they listen to Sabbath, but come on. Most people don’t. They were always the outsiders. But this. This is THE album. “I Don’t Want To Change The World,“ “Desire,” “Mr. Tinkertrain,” “Hellraiser,” “Road To Nowhere,” and of course that absolutely iconic title track — with its bassline and guitar solos that could level buildings. And then Ozzy at his tenderest on “Time After Time” and “Mama, I’m Coming Home.” This is Ozzy at full power, fully himself, and totally unbothered by the rules. The last gasp of MTV-era hard rock before grunge took over. It’s dangerous. It’s beautiful. It’s unforgettable. Ozzy Osbourne lived louder and longer than anyone ever expected, and No More Tears is the crown jewel. If you’ve never heard it front to back, tonight’s the night. RIP to the Prince Of Darkness. Loved by so many, matched by none.
Josh Valentine
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Thank you Bob. Recall seeing Black Sabbath when they co-headlined with Blue Oyster Cult—the Black and Blue tour. Then saw Ozzy with the electrifying Randy Rhoads for Diary of a Madman which was exhilarating. Both concerts contributed to a personal musical narrative that last today. My ears went a different direction since but there was a yearning to fly for the final show which wasn’t possible so attended in spirit and through the many videos. To think back now on how thrilled he must have been planning and leading up and the short time that followed, and what might have been had the timing been different, it’s unfathomably poetic and beautifully touching…huzzah to his last hurrah.
Steve Traxler
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I grew up during Ozzy’s solo career. Never got into Sabbath, but loved Ozzy’s solo music. Unlike country music, hard rock is splintered into many sub genres which unfortunately tend to compete with each other. One thing everyone seemed to agree on was Ozzy. His personality, his legend and more importantly his music transcended all of it.
I was oddly at a water park yesterday, enjoying a vacation day with my son when the alert came across my phone. Amid all the chaos of an amusement park, everything went silent as I took in the reality. I loved Ozzy, but as a teen I gravitated toward other musicians as my idols. Yet, for a few minutes I was caught off guard by the news. Even more strange, two weeks ago during the farewell concert I said to my wife, “It’s almost like the family knows he’s going to die soon, beyond what the public knows.” And, if we’re being honest, Ozzy’s lifestyle should have killed him decades ago. Living this long might be his greatest accomplishment.
His music will indeed live. As many of these legacy acts from the 70’s and 80’s have aged to the point that people are criticizing their performances and use of backing tracks I keep saying the same thing, “Once these guys are gone, they’re gone.” And maybe that’s part of the reason his death weighs so heavy. It’s a sign that the end is near for a ton of talent that we’ve all enjoyed and quite honestly, taken for granted.
Neil Johnson
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While anyone who saw Ozzy in recent years could readily see that he wasn’t well, I nonetheless never conceived of a world that didn’t include him. I first saw him live in April 1986 at New Haven Coliseum, on his Ultimate Sin tour, with Metallica opening in support of Master of Puppets. For a 13-year-old metalhead, that show was pure, unforgettable euphoria. That 13-year-old looked up to a very select and sacred few—Ozzy, Lemmy and Ronnie—as the pantheon of the world of metal, who seemed like they would forever be there. With Ozzy’s passing yesterday, the world lost a musical—and more importantly a cultural and human—legend, and we lost the final god from that pantheon, leaving a music world that’s now strangely unrecognizable to so many of us.
With all of the ickiness in the world, I dearly hope that those who are now the elder statespeople of metal will recognize the opportunity that Ozzy’s passing has presented to pick up the mantle, in honor of that great man, and lead us forward. The metal genre has long been crucially and beautifully important to such a wonderful community among us, and these times, perhaps more than ever, call for metal to provide what it has long provided, which is a safe sanctuary that feeds the soul.
If there’s an afterlife, I have to believe that Ozzy is now performing with Randy Rhoads, Randy Castillo (his drummer on that Ultimate Sin album and tour) and countless other souls whose lives were blessed by what Ozzy gave to the world.
Rest in well-deserved peace, Ozzy. You’ll be sorely missed.
Michael Rexford
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We all come to the music in our own way, via our own entry point. Once you connect, you CONNECT, and that’s that. In the fall of 1982, I actually asked my jazz-loving audiophile grandfather to take me to one of the record stores in the Baltimore area (probably the one in the Towson mall at the time) to buy Diary of a Madman on vinyl since I already had and loved Blizzard of Ozz — and he trusted my passion for the music and how I was able to articulate it to him to let me do so. I’ve never forgotten that.
Many years later, when I had the honor of sitting down with Ozzy in person at Sony’s then-HQ in New York City a decade-and-a-half ago on May 20, 2010, he told me the secret to his and Sabbath’s success: “The Beatles gave me the gift of melody, you know. You’ll hear The Beatles in a lot of other things of mine. They had great harmonies, great melodies. I’ve met McCartney a few times, and he’s a f*cking great guy. I have such great respect.”
Ozzy also freely admitted to me that (and you may have heard him say this first part before, but still!), “I wanted to be in The Beatles, and I always got a great feeling listening to them.” Then he added the kicker: “I can remember walking around the streets of Birmingham, proud, with a Beatles record sleeve under my arm. I bought those Beatles boots, and one of those cheap wigs [laughs]. It wasn’t even hair — it was a plastic f*cking cap. I had it all, man.”
You sure as f*ck did, John Michael.
Mike Mettler
Editor, Analog Planet
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“Isn’t this f*cking great?!” – Everything. Right there.
And, for the record, in England ‘69-‘70…’Paranoid’, ‘Deep Purple In Rock’, and LZII were all on the same level in our heads and hearts. It was all “heavy metal” to we 14 year-olds…and it was f*cking fantastic.
Hugo Burnhan
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So sorry for you that you didn’t get it back in the day. Big miss.
Mid-70s Sabbath was unbelievable! Nothing else like it. So powerful. So weird. Hard charging and spooky at the same time!
Plus, Tony Iommi paying with fake fingers and Ozzy being this tortured soul out of a Vincent Price movie, and the bass player (and chief writer) was named GEEZER! In the US we didn’t know that nickname. It just sounded wicked and fun.
Ah man. Sabbath…the best. We silk-screened our own T-shirts with the logo from Master of Reality in art class.
All hail Ozzy. What a possessed soul and one-in-a-million talent.
Love to his family.
Paul Gigante
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Like you Bob I was no big Ozzy fan until No More Tears. Zakk was brilliant but the song arrangement and production was almost George Martin-like.
A year later Steve Miller took four years off (and it wasn’t because of the weather!) and I found myself working at GC Hollywood in Artist Relations and helping Dave Weiderman do the Rock Walk inductions.
We inducted Randy Rhodes posthumously and Sharon and Ozzy were there with Zakk.
We snacked on Swedish meatballs and shot the sh*t. Nice people. Ozzy was a perfect gentleman. Of course he adored Randy and was on best behavior.
He is gone now but there will always be No More Tears playing on space stations along with The Joker in the near future.
RIP the harbinger of bohemian Goth Metal and new paradigm creator, Ozzy.
Kenny Lee Lewis
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When my son entered middle school in 2017, the curriculum required that he either join the chorus, or learn an instrument. He couldn’t decide, so we picked clarinet for him. I watched as he learned how to read music, and play simple songs, like “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.
At the parent-teacher conference, I ask the music teacher how he’s doing. She tells me that while everyone else is whetting their reeds and warming up, he’s playing the riff from “Iron Man”, a record we don’t own.
When I get home, I ask how he knows this song. He tells me that it’s in one of his video games. I tell him that his uncle is really into Sabbath, so he takes out clarinet and plays the riff over the phone for him. Uncle cracks up.
Stuart Taubel
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Great read. Thank you for sharing.
He meant so much to so many music fans.
I’m still buzzing from attending the last show in Birmingham. Tickets went onsale at around 10am England time, so around 2am my time. My alarm went off and I lay in bed, fumbling with my phone in the dark, blurry eyed, frantically tapping around the Ticketmaster app until I had a pair of tickets in my cart. Couldn’t believe it.
So my buddy and I booked flights from the States to London and train tickets to Birmingham. Having never been across the pond, it was a leap of faith, but I felt I had to make it there one way or another.
Arriving in Birmingham was such a wild feeling. There was so much joy in the city as we were surrounded by thousands of other metal heads. The city fully embraced all of us. They handed out free tri-folds at the train center listing all of the historic Black Sabbath attractions to visit while we were in town!
The show itself was, and I don’t say this lightly, the single greatest live music event I have ever attended. And I’ve been to a lot. Tom Morello crushed it, gathering all the acts and coordinating who played what with who and when.
The production team was also awesome. They had a rotating stage, so there were only about 10min between each band. It was all super smooth. If you went to the bathroom or to get a beer, you missed something epic. (It was the beer line that made me miss Steven Tyler’s first two songs!) It was 10hrs of incredible metal bands honoring the originators.
And seeing Ozzy, you could tell he was overjoyed to be back on stage. We all wept during ‘Mama, I’m Coming Home’. So many emotions. You could feel that we all knew the end was near. (I had no idea it would be THIS near.) But there we all were. Together. Singing our collective hearts out. Celebrating all that he has given us.
I’m so grateful I didn’t sleep through that alarm.
Adam L
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Long live The Prince of Darkness!!
I only got to see him live once about 8 years ago but he was amazing. Still jumping all over the stage like a maniac. I’m glad I got to be in the same room as him, even if it was only once. How lucky are we to have existed at the same time as Ozzy f*ckin’ Osbourne right?!?!
I got to spend a couple days with Sharon back when she was on the celebrity apprentice. They used the studio I worked at to make radio jingles for one of their “challenges” and I was the engineer that worked with her team. She was a sweetheart and she told some really amazing stories about Ozzy in the downtime and I’m so lucky to have been privy to that.
Ozzy will leave a massive void in this world but his legacy will live on forever and we’re all better off because of his music.
Beautiful tribute Bob!
Rob DiFondi
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I was a young product manager for Epic in Finland when No More Tears landed in September 1991.
Grunge was about to sweep in like wildfire, making much of 80s metal sound ridiculous almost overnight. But Ozzy? He was untouchable.
This became his biggest solo album—and for good reason. Behind the production were incredible pop sensibilities, yet Ozzy was never syrupy or pretentious. He could sing the sweetest melody (Mama, I’m Coming Home) and still sound authentic. His voice carried rawness, honesty and vulnerability that connected across genres and eras.
Best regards,
Aku Valta,
Sydney, Australia
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His duet with Lita Ford, Close My Eyes Forever, was insanely awesome. Haunting and beautiful. When he comes in you get chills. This was the power of the Prince of Darkness. Now his eyes are closed forever. RIP. Onward!
Etan G
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Iron Man was the first song that I recorded on my “Easy Listening” 8-track tape recorder for my car.
Memories……
Thank you fir sharing yours, Bob….
Marshall
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On Zep and Sabbath in the early 70s:
We loved ‘em both with all our hearts, but crucially for our teen rock band in ‘72, ‘Paranoid’ was a lot easier (on the face of it at least) to play than ‘Black Dog’ and literally EVERY young band covered it.
It was very easy to understand – and capture – the ESSENCE, even as a distinctly average 14 year old guitarist.
And that playability should not be underestimated.
Long live Rock ‘n Roll!
Simon Toulson-Clarke
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You’ve always been more of a lyrics/words guy when it comes to music it seems, and I love that you have an appreciation for Ozzy and it kind of seems for Black Sabbath as well, although not as much, but I hope you realize that Ozzy very rarely wrote any of his lyrics, especially in Sabbath, and his vocal melodies often just followed the melodic lines of the guitar.
He was blessed to work with many great musicians in his career but there was absolutely nothing like the power and genius of the original Black Sabbath. Incredibly talented musicians… Bill Ward with some amazing jazz chops and fills, Geezer playing truly incredible baselines and writing most of the lyrics, and then there is the mountain moving thunder and absolute genius of Tony Iommi. I’ve seen Sabbath multiple times over the years and never in my life have I heard a guitar sound like he is able to achieve. Truly nothing else like it. And aside from being a genius when it comes to riffs, songwriting and arrangement, he is a truly underrated lead player as well.
A very sad day to lose a legend like Ozzy, but so many of us musicians will be absolutely devastated and even more heartbroken when we lose Tony, Geezer, or Bill. Anyways, just my thoughts on the matter…. I have loved your writing for many years Bob, and especially on politics and modern society. Take care and thank you for what you do….
David Resch
working musician/ guitarist
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You are going to get a zillion responses to this however I have to add two quick stories:
1) In the 80’s I waited two hours outside the backstage door as a teen and he stumbled out and I caught his eye holding up an album and a marker and I politely asked him to sign it and ha said “OH I’ll sign the whole f*cking cover and ruin it” Still have it
2) Years later negotiating with Sharon to have a band on OZZFEST and we were going back and forth for a bit and I hear this voice in the background that we are all familiar with now “SHARON!! IT’S ON 2k quid. BOOK IT.
LOL
He was my John Lennon
Alan Stewart
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This iconic figure remains unforgettable for his daring spirit — he bit the head off of a live bat on stage. I had the incredible honor of inviting Ozzy to the first anniversary celebration of Pirate Radio in LA in 1990. In 1996, I connected with his wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, to capture the electrifying energy of his concert in Lubbock, Texas. Although we faced challenges with the initial footage due to Ozzy’s “enthusiastic” antics and “difficult” acoustics, Sharon’s “generosity” in providing an alternative recording from Jones Beach, New York, allowed us to share the magic of that unforgettable show on PBS On Tour. Rest in peace Ozzy, the Crazy Train has come to the end of the line. Yup, I had a hand in putting Ozzy on PBS!
Rob Tonkin
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Not gonna lie, I got a little choked up hearing about your nephew. It’s those little moments of connection that you remember all your life, and glad you got to be the first to rock out with him!
I moonlight fairly often as a substitute guitar teacher, gotta put that Berklee degree to work somehow (?) and I’m continually amazed at what the kids bring in to learn.
Just last week an 11-yr old came in with a kickass pointy axe (the kind I started on, and then would ridicule later on in life, and now am collecting) and busted out Crazy Train, and we spent a whole lesson helping him tune it up and play it a little cleaner. I asked him how he knew it, did his dad or mom play it for him. Nope. Tiktok.
His parents laugh that somehow they have a budding young metal-head, and they are tickled about it, but he didn’t get it from them!
Good enough for me, later today we’ll be working on the slow harmony solo section of Master Of Puppets! Or maybe we’ll do a little more Ozzy for our own little tribute.
Rock on Bob!
Dan Millen
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Listen to what he did with Bryan Adams’ producer Jim Vallance:
This is the demo that blows the final version (done by Moby) out of the water. Even Mike Judge knew it and used this version in the first Beavis and Butthead movie.
Here are Ozzy’s comments from the box set liner notes:
“This is another great song where I actually preferred the demo. I hated the version that I recorded with Moby. So did the Beavis and Butthead people. Although the Moby-produced track is on the “Beavis and Butthead Do America” soundtrack album, this version (the demo) is the one heard in the movie”.
Listen to his vocals. Listen to the harmonies. All instrument played by Jim.
Just bad ass.
Track sheet from the session here:
http://www.jimvallance.com/01-music-folder/songs-folder-may-27/pg-song-osbourne-ozzy-walk.html
Not supposed to tell people, but the artist I worked with did an AA meeting with Ozzy at the old Key Club on Sunset. A the time everyone though Ozzy was helpless old fool on the Osbourne show. Naw man. Sharp and walked normal.
Just like Vallance states in this interview:
Should start at 11:19
where he talks about how intelligent he was.
More at 16:15
Ozzy was just a great guy to be around.
You really got to publish this.. people need to know this side of him.
wam
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I was on my way into work for my afternoon shift when I got a text from my 14-year-old son. I was shocked. At first it said “Izzy died” and I was stunned. I’ve always been a massive Izzy Stradlin fan and enjoy all his post Guns N’ Roses solo catalog even though it’s never gotten traction in the mainstream whatsoever beyond his first solo outing with the Juju Hounds(And don’t get me started calling the current Guns N’ Roses a reunion when Izzy’s not there!)
Well, it turns out with the I and the O next to each other on a keypad he realized he misspelled it and immediately followed up with “Ozzy died”. Now I wasn’t shocked, I was sad and wistful. At least he got to say goodbye in a massive way only three weeks earlier.
I’m like you, in that as a young kid and a teenager in the late 80s & entering the 90s, I was aware of Ozzy and some of his songs, but didn’t consider myself more than a passing casual fan. Never bought any of his albums, but if one of his songs came on the radio, I wouldn’t turn it off and actually crank it up.
Then I heard the song, No More Tears as an 16 year old just learning to play guitar and just as you described, between that ominous bass and those guitars(MY GOD THAT GUITAR TONE! As heavy as Metallica, but yet more tuneful!) along with Ozzy’s voice, I knew I needed to buy the record!
Right from the first song I was hooked. Mr. Tinkertrain was no hard rock or metal romp. It was as serious as a heart attack! And then one song after another, it just never seemed to stop! Each song was amazing in its own right. Not a bad or weak song on the entire album. Any other band or solo act would kill for two songs of that level of quality and flesh out some filler on an album, three or four maybe if they were really lucky. But here is Ozzy, some would argue mid to late stage of his career, seemingly on a downward slope, and he just blows the barn doors open and releases one of the greatest albums in hard rock and heavy metal!
And I’ll agree with you, all his subsequent releases were never as great as No More Tears, but they were fantastic and I’d argue far more consistent on the back half of his career(maybe not Scream. I still just can’t dig that album), than his solo catalog before No More Tears, save of course, for his debut Blizzard of Ozz.
Ozzy was one of a kind and I’m just lucky to have been alive when one of the greats, who will be discussed and dissected for decades to come because of his musical and cultural impact!
Rest in peace John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne.
Michael Moniz
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Bob!
Ozzy Osbourne, a Legend, and a Gentleman
It is a privilege to be one of the few record producers who have had the chance to write and produce with the one and only Ozzy Osbourne. Working on his 2001 album Down to Earth was an incredible opportunity, not just because of his iconic status, but also because of the man I discovered BEHIND his “Prince of Darkness” persona.
When you meet Ozzy, you quickly realize he’s far from the dark, menacing figure the media often portrayed him. Instead, you find a kind, fun loving, and genuine gentleman..a Dad and friend with a wicked sense of humor. As we worked together, I felt a responsibility to protect this side of him, as the public still saw him through the lens of a dark lord. That all changed when The Osbournesreality show hit TV screens shortly after we finished the album. Suddenly, the world saw what I had witnessed in the studio, which was a warm, relatable guy who happened to be one of rocks most iconic vocalists
Being fellow Brits, Ozzy and I bonded over a shared love for classic English TV humour, Monty Python, Benny Hill, and Tommy Cooper were frequent topics of discussion.
One story that still makes me laugh…A friend from England called me, amazed by a news report claiming Ozzy was passionate about gardening that he had floodlights installed to tend his garden at night. ‘Gardening ! I asked Ozz about it and he laughed and confessed it wasn’t about gardening at all. Sharon, his wife, was trying to get him to cut back on the booze, so Ozzy had buried bottles of vodka around his garden. Under the guise of “gardening” at night, he’d dig around hunting for his hidden stash.
In the studio, Ozzy’s ability as a vocalist was clear. His voice is one of the most instantly recognizable in rock history, and that really sets him apart to be honest. At his request, we triple-tracked his voice, and watching it come together was magical. After the second track, it sounded great, but it was the third layer that brought the magic. The subtle chorusing between the takes created that unmistakable Ozzy sound that fans know and love.
Getting Ozzy back into the studio for Down to Earth wasn’t easy as he was initially hesitant about making another album. After quite a bit of coaxing I got him back in the studio and tried to make it as fun as possible. On that album he sung for the first time in the control room (or so he told me) It really seemed to take the pressure from him and make the whole experience more easygoing.
One of my favs that we recorded was “Dreamer,” a song written by Mick Jones of Foreigner and Marty Frederiksen. Ozzy wanted it to be his personal tribute to John Lennon’s Imagine. As a lifelong Beatles fan, Ozzy poured his heart into it and it was a departure from his usual heavy rock sound. I’m incredibly proud of how it turned out, I even got to sing backing vocals on it..and it’s now Ozzy’s most-played solo song on YouTube at 126 million views.
Working with Ozzy was a joy and a laugh, he was talented and also generous. I know, hundreds of stories of songwriters that are ripped off by the main artist if their song gets covered. When I finished the songs that I had written with Ozz, he was adamant that it would be a 50-50 split. I think that’s rare and is also a reflection of his fairness ..
As I look back, I am grateful.
Good night, Ozzy. Thank you for the music, the memories, and the laughter. Godspeed Ozzy Osbourne.
You’ve got to remember, in 1970 Led Zeppelin was considered heavy metal. Sabbath had a new, younger audience. Despite getting terrible reviews, the band gained traction. Kind of like KISS. But KISS was flamboyant, the fantasy of middle class players (and listeners!), Sabbath was dark and dirty and the band came from Birmingham, not London. What other acts came from Birmingham? The Move, which never broke here. And the Moody Blues, but by time they hit with “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Nights in White Satin” they were aligned with London. But Birmingham? Industrial, anything but Carnaby Street/lovey-dovey.
But by time the second album came out, AOR had permeated the hinterlands, you were no longer a victim of AM Top 40. And this was before Lee Abrams shortened the playlist, such that people heard “Iron Man” and “Paranoid” and Black Sabbath gathered more and more fans.
But were still despised by the cognoscenti, who gave a pass for prog rock but abhorred meat and potatoes bands like Grand Funk. As for Sabbath? They were in their own world. Their own alienated world.
And there are a lot of alienated people in America. Then and even more now. And Black Sabbath spoke to them and has continued to speak to them. Sometime in the nineties the younger generations cottoned to Sabbath, Ozzy became a legend, but before that…
2
How in the hell do you kick the lead singer out of your band? This made no sense. And now Ozzy Osbourne was going to make SOLO ALBUMS? This rarely worked, and Ozzy was not seen as a musical genius. But somehow he got hooked up with Randy Rhoads, who’d left Quiet Riot, after two Japanese albums but long before they broke through in America, and now Ozzy was all over the airwaves, more than he ever was with Sabbath, Ozzy was a STAR!
But I still hated him.
As a matter of fact, Michael Jensen was working with him and gave me a copy of the live album, which I ultimately threw out, because I was afraid someone would come over and see it and judge me negatively.
But then came “No More Tears.”
Randy Rhoads was long gone. MTV was shifting into long-form content and hip-hop. And suddenly Ozzy Osbourne triumphs with a new guitarist, Zakk Wylde, and that’s when I got on board. “No More Tears” was hooky and HEAVY!
“Would you like some sweeties little girl?
Come a little closer
I’m gonna show you a brand new world tonight”
This was DANGEROUS! Despite being sued for “Suicide Solution,” Ozzy wasn’t pulling back, he was DOUBLING DOWN! While everybody else was shearing off the rough edges to be MTV compatible, Ozzy didn’t care. He was rejuvenated. This was the sound of the seventies, albeit with a lot more hooks. It was STUNNING!
Now eventually “Mama, I’m Coming Home” became an AOR and MTV standard. But that was long after the album came out. To discover it blind, upon first play, you were caught off guard, Ozzy could do sensitive no problem, without sacrificing, without becoming a wimp.
The album continued with “Desire,” which was in your face and heavy, another winner. But what put the album over the top, what showed Ozzy not only was still at it, but eclipsed all comers, was “No More Tears.” There was that heavy bass intro… This is headbanging music, this is what you put on when you want to squeeze out the rest of the world and be in your own space.
And I did. I put the disc in the CD player, cranked it up and shook my body and played something akin to air guitar, I LOVE this music. This is not today’s Active Rock… There was melody, changes, understandable lyrics and Ozzy could SING!
No more tears!
No more tears!
No more tears!
This was a tour-de-force, with that vibrating bass at the bottom and the crunchy guitars on top. Recorded pristinely with all the new techniques, this was beyond magic, this was everything you wanted, faders pushed all the way, the Millennium Falcon in hyperdrive.
And then deeper into the LP there was the driving beat of the Lemmy co-write HELLRAISER! Lemmy ultimately recorded his own version, and it’s great, but Ozzy’s is one step beyond.
“I’m living on an endless road
Around the world for rock and roll
Sometimes it feels so tough
But I still ain’t had enough”
Not enough, NEVER ENOUGH! This was the rock and roll ethos. This was the job. It came with drugs, alcohol and groupies, but that was all. You were not a brand, you sold t-shirts but you didn’t get involved with the Fortune 500, you were too dangerous, you were the OTHER! And that was just fine with you.
“Feeling all right in the noise and the light
But that’s what lights my fire”
A pre-chorus! Ozzy was a huge Beatles fan. He learned all the lessons, he learned all the tricks.
And the drums are pounding and the guitars are sawing and…
“Hellraiser, in the thunder and heat
Hellraiser, rock you back in your seat
Hellraiser, and I’ll make it come true
Hellraiser, I’ll put a spell on you”
The rest of the acts were wearing spandex, cleaned up for mainstream consumption, and Ozzy was still down and dirty. This is the music you listened to while you drank beer and went wild, not worrying about the consequences, this is the music that infected you and drove you, this was ROCK AND ROLL!
3
Now I had to see him.
I’d gotten the CD from Epic, I was just giving it a chance, and now I was hooked. So I got ahold of the label and got tickets for the show at the Universal Amphitheatre. I took Jeff Laufer, who kept telling me to be prepared.
Yeah, right.
But Ozzy was crazier than the audience. Throwing water not only on them, but himself. Imploring everybody to go F*CKING CRAZY! It was a cross between heavy metal and a cartoon. And it felt so good.
And this is when I realized all those songs from early in Ozzy’s solo career…I knew them and dug them.
I couldn’t get over “Flying High Again,” not that I ever knew that was the title of the song, it was indecipherable as it came out of my car speakers every weekend, it was an FM staple.
“Mama’s going to worry
I’ve been a bad, bad boy
No use saying sorry
It’s something that I enjoy”
This was 1981, before MTV embraced metal. All you had was the record and the rags. Listening you’d think the song title was something about mama worrying. As for “flying high again,” I couldn’t make it out over the airwaves.
And there was the energy of Randy Rhoads’s guitar. Anybody can play guitar, anybody can learn the licks, but extracting a sound that inspires and levitates, that’s a special skill.
I’d learned to love “Flying High Again,” even if I didn’t know its title. But at the concert I realized I knew all of Ozzy’s hits and this show made me LOVE THEM! “Crazy Train,” “Goodbye to Romance,” “Mr. Crowley,” “Over the Mountain,” “Shot in the Dark”… I was a fan and didn’t even know it! Seeing Ozzy live brought it all together, made me a BELIEVER!
4
So my nephew Blake told me I had to come upstairs to hear something, he had to play me a record. He was eight.
He was so excited. We got upstairs, he dropped the needle on this LP, and he played me PARANOID!
He’s looking me in the eye. And then he starts banging his head to the music. I was both amazed and amused. It was a great experience. BUT HOW DID HE KNOW THIS RECORD!
Whatever he said, I don’t remember.
But when Ozzy went back on the road in support of “Ozzmosis,” I took him to the Forum to see it, his very first concert. Those in our row were amazed, that not only was he at the show, but it was his FIRST!
When Ozzy hit the stage, Blake stood up and banged his head, danced just like Beavis and Butthead. Made me smile.
5
I wanted the subsequent albums to be as good as “No More Tears,” they weren’t, but I listened. Actually, Ozzy’s last work, with Andrew Watt, recaptured the magic, but by this time the scene had changed. Nobody dominated, a new album release didn’t impact the culture at large, no matter who the act was. Whereas when Ozzy ruled, we all knew the hits. Because they were all over the radio and MTV.
But Ozzy kept working.
There were the Ozzfests, innovative in their own way, ultimately featuring Black Sabbath reunions, something we thought we’d never see.
And then there was the TV show…
Ozzy was made to be a bumbling clown. A man out of time. An old rocker living in a mansion years later. The show made Sharon a star, a household name, the kids, other than Aimee, who chose not to be in it, milked it, but Ozzy either screamed for Sharon or was sitting on the couch…
Writing lyrics in his notebook. He was still a rock star. This was what he did, it was inspiring.
And then he had his ATV accident and Sharon was all over TV and Ozzy kind of faded into the background and now he’s dead.
How weird is this? Just after the tribute show/celebration? This never happens. The tribute usually comes after the death, or long before, this is eerie. I was stunned when I found out Ozzy passed, became numb. I was surprised I was so affected. But when you strip away all the dross, all the externalities, Ozzy Osbourne was just another nobody from nowhere who heard the Beatles and decided I CAN DO THAT! And he wanted to do that. And he stuck with it. And truly became crazy, to the point of being kicked out of his own band, I mean how much do you have to drink, and then he came back solo, stronger than ever! This is not the typical rock star arc. And it’s not the arc of the hoi polloi. Making it from nothing, destroying your career AND COMING BACK?
Ozzy was known by everybody, weird to use the past tense now. And there are multiple images. But if you were his contemporary, if you were alive and saw it all, you know that first and foremost Ozzy was a frontman, who wrote the lyrics, the guy who got on that crazy train and lived the rock and roll lifestyle and continued to do so for DECADES!
Until today.
6
Whatever I write Sharon won’t be happy. She learned her scorched earth style from her father, who ripped-off Sabbath and by time he was seen in “The Osbournes” was a dawdling old man with dementia.
The truth is that sans Sharon, Ozzy never would have made it as a solo act. She deserves all the credit. But god forbid you don’t agree with her vision, you’re EXCORIATED!
I know from personal experience.
And at this point, everybody’s got their own experience. Not only those rockers at the recent show, but individuals.
Upon hearing the news, Felice texted me:
“I remember when he was out on his patio at Malibu and looked over at us and said – ‘Isn’t this f*cking great?!'”
Yes, Ozzy lived next door…not from the Liverpool docks to the Hollywood Bowl, but from gritty Birmingham to the beach in sunny California. If that ain’t living the dream.
And when you listen to the music, you too are living the dream. You don’t see the TV show in your head, you don’t listen casually, because Ozzy demands total attention, whether solo or with Sabbath, that’s the kind of music he made. Always in your face. Never compromised.
And somehow by doing it his own way it resonated with everybody, Ozzy is more famous now than he’s ever been, everybody knows who he is, and his music. He did it HIS WAY! And TRIUMPHED!
Well, until he died.
It’s all over now. We used to love not only Ozzy, but rock and roll. But it’s in the rearview mirror. The formula seems to have been lost. Like I said, the jokes in Active Rock wearing their leather making noise…that appeals to few, whereas Ozzy Osbourne’s music appealed to MANY!
Sabbath was innovative, to the point where most people didn’t even get it in the early days. But when Ozzy found the formula, he didn’t really change it that much, he just dug deeper, found new ways to do it, sounding fresh all the while, which is an amazing achievement.
Ozzy was sui generis, one of a kind. We may never see his likes again. He burned brightly and his flame was snuffed out today, but his aura, it still shines.
CODA
“Standing at the crossroads, world spinning ’round and ’round
Know which way I’m going, you can’t bring me down
Don’t you try to teach me no original sin
I don’t need your pity for the shape I’m in”
This is not the groupthink of today. This is what we’ve lost. Ozzy was happy in who he was, he didn’t care what you thought, stop telling him to change. Furthermore, you’re expecting me to believe that religious story? My religion is ROCK AND ROLL!
And he’s not wavering:
“Tell me I’m a sinner, I’ve got news for you
I spoke to God this morning and he don’t like you”
You’re not the only one who can dish it out, as a matter of fact, I’ve got more fans than you do, here’s the middle finger to you!
“Don’t tell me stories ’cause yesterday’s glories
Have gone away, so far away
I’ve heard it said there’s a light up ahead
Lord I hope and pray I’m here to stay”
Sure, Ozzy sang the hits, but he kept making new albums, unlike many of his contemporaries. There was always something over the horizon that he was searching for.
But not anymore.
“I don’t want to change the world
I don’t want the world to change me”
Stop telling me who to be, to do it your way, just let me be. But no, you want to be in my face, putting me down.
And it’s not only Ozzy, it’s ME!
Maybe it’s you too. We don’t fit into this world, but when we hear Ozzy’s music not only does it make us feel all right, it inspires us to carry on, march forward, for new experiences, for a better life.
That’s the essence of rock and roll. You were bitten by the bug, you just had to listen, you just had to participate. You built your whole world around it. There were heroes, icons, and Ozzy Osbourne was one of them. He was a guiding light. I mean how much more simply can you say it?
“I don’t want to change the world
I don’t want the world to change me”
Everybody’s in your business. Just let us be.
This is a fight I’ve been enduring my entire life. I’m going to hear from zillions that they were Ozzy fans earlier, that I got it wrong, that they have the key and I missed the plot.
Why are you trying to make me feel bad, change me, make me beholden to you? I heard this music and it affected me.
About an hour into part one. Riveting, but what a rollercoaster ride…already.
I grew up in Hicksville, lived 3 blocks from Billy Joel’s childhood home, a stone’s throw from (“…remember those nights hanging out at”) the Village Green.
Back then, for kids from Long Island, he was our hometown hero. Over the years, he’d give props to our collective geography. In NY area shows when singing the line from “New York State of Mind”
“…the New York Times, the Daily News”, he’d add “…and Newsday too”, our local paper.
Billy’s Long Island roots ran deep, Cole Spring Harbor, Oyster Bay and of course Hicksville where as as delinquent student, Billy received the praise of one Mr. Charles “Chuck” Arnold, Hicksville High School’s long time music teacher.
Many years later, Mr. Arnold and the Hicksville High School chorus appeared on the recording of “Leningrad” on 1989’s Storm Front. When Mr. Arnold retired—Billy returned to the school’s auditorium to speak at a “Mr. Holland’s Opus “ style retirement event to return the praise for a man who changed his life.
I was fortunate to enter the music business predominately with MTV as the gateway, in 1981. I had two encounters with my Hicksville hero. The latter was a meeting that Jeff Schock (Billy’s dearly departed and longtime man of many talents) and I had before a Billy Joel concert in New Jersey. We were there to convince Billy to perform for his televised induction into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.
A man who was proud of his work, Billy didn’t want to put himself in the spotlight, but finally bought into a proposed idea of him singing “Only the Good Die Young” to follow Jann Wenner’s annual roll call of those lost the year before. That’s the best we could get from the Piano Man. We took it.
But the moment that sticks with me, that reinforced–for good, bad or indifferent that Billy is a man who never lost his Long Island roots, was about 10 years before that.
I happened to be north of the border and sessions for “Storm Front” were taking place at a friend’s home. Another friend was producing and when said friends learned I was in town, they insisted I come over the next day for a hang. Billy was there, and as I watched him record vocals, I felt like Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams….
”I am pitching to Shoeless Joe Jackson”
A “take five” in the action led to my heading upstairs to the kitchen in my friend’s home studio and as I was making some tea, in walked the man himself…just me and him.
Billy was kind of sizing me up and so I went for it.
“So, uh…I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I’m from Hicksville”. Somewhat delighted, but cautious, he looked at me and shot back “Oh yeah? What street?” I told him and he shot back his street.
I responded with “I know the street where your house was…right near Fork Lane Elementary” “Yeah, okay, so did you go to Fork Lane?”, Billy asked. “Yep”, I volleyed back.
He then went deeper. “Who’d you have for music?” Total recall kicked in and I responded “Miss Miladantre (sp)” For visual purposes, I remember her looking like a chain-smoking Olive Oyl from the Popeye cartoons.
I guess he had the same recall and without hesitation, Billy put two fingers to his lips like he was taking a drag off an imaginary cigarette and with a Brenda Vacarro-like growl said “Okay kids, do the chorus one more time” and he feigned Miss M. walking away like she was more interested in her cigarette than the kids.
We both cracked up. “Man”, he added, “that woman? She needed to get laid”.
And 36 years later (and in part one alone), he’s still the same lovable wise guy from Long Island.
Brian Diamond
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Bob, Billy Joel came into my office in Hollywood looking for work on November 8, 1972. I still have his hand written resume. He seemed pretty desperate. I personally thought he was unfriendly, all business, but later realized this was typical of New Yorkers. I gave his number to a top 40 lounge agent who auditioned him and later told me that he was terrific, but he couldn’t book him because “all he wanted to play was his own originals!”
When you say “Billy continued to have hits and figured out MTV,” it’s only fair to point out that it was director Russell Mulcahey who figured MTV out (among Russell’s many brilliant videos was the very first to open MTV – “Video Killed The Radio Star”). Russell directed “Allentown,” “Pressure” and “She’s Right on Time” – all from “The Nylon Currtain” album – which broke Billy on MTV. Russell later followed up with the video for “A Matter of Trust” (which I produced) that Billy has called his favorite of all his music videos.
Paul Flattery
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Re: McCartney’s comment about “Just The Way You Are” (a song he wished he had written).
I was once at a songwriters round table event/performance at NY’s Bottom Line…
Alan Toussant was a participant and was asked what song he wished he had written and his response was “Muskrat Love” – He was dead on serious and preceded to perform it ! You never know!
Doug Pomerantz
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I’m glad I didn’t take your advice. I was not a fan of Billy Joel, but I am now. I lived in a very small rural town and we had two radio stations to choose from. A classical music station or the adult station, so I got to hear Billy Joel. I had forgotten the impact he had on me in my childhood years. His songs told me stories about adults. But I only heard whatever the program director at that adult station wanted me to hear, so some of his music escaped me. Until last night. I watched part one and then I ran to Spotify to listen to some old favorites I had forgotten about an discovered some new ones. I was shocked to see he has 38 million monthly listeners! I am looking forward to part two.
Keith Michaels
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“Re: “However, what really happened with the Family Productions legal situation… Rumor was always that Billy signed with Columbia and they didn’t know he was already under contract. This could be untrue, but I would have liked to have heard more about the nitty-gritty of the ultimate settlement.””
Artie is still around and not who you and most people think he is. He lives in the LA area and I’d be happy to connect you. I haven’t seen the movie, but if they didn’t talk about how Billy was re-united with his biological father and equally talented sibling, they didn’t cover the significance of Artie’s involvement.
I worked for him at Family Productions and managed the associated Fidelity Studios during the time when the Billy Joel Columbia contract – I was told it was the biggest single artist contract ever at the time and was given a paper copy to peruse – provided the revenue for Artie’s operations. Billy Joel royalties paid part of our salaries, and the controversy over “Cold Spring Harbor” was active.
As the popular refrain now goes, “I don’t want to get ahead of my (former) boss”, but I assure you that there’s an entire movie’s worth of material around that period – but that’s Artie’s story to tell….
Victor Levine
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The term documentary suggests a candid, balanced representation of a given subject, but they’re often anything but these days. That’s especially true of documentaries featuring recording artists given their direct and indirect participation in their making. Glenn Frey (History of the Eagles), Taylor Swift (Miss Americana), Billie Eilish (The World’s a Little Blurry), Bruce Springsteen (Western Stars), Paul McCartney (McCartney 3,2,1) are among the artists who served as executive producers of documentaries in which they are featured.
Steve Cohen, Billy Joel’s longtime creative director and collaborator, is an executive producer of Billy Joel: And So It Goes.
For many recording artists, documentaries constitute an additional revenue stream, not to mention the opportunity to airbrush their legacy. That doesn’t make them any less entertaining, but let’s not delude ourselves into believing that these artists are showing us anything they don’t want us to see.
Bob Knott
Baltimore, MD
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Broadway rocker is a good description. I like him, but not enough to watch a documentary more than 30 minutes. He had a dozen top 10 hits in the 70s and 80s, and as you say, not all that interesting back story.
Thanks for watching so I don’t have to.
Edmund J. Kelly
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Perfect analysis, thank you. I felt the same – but when the artists themselves put these things together, what can we expect? Always gonna be at least somewhat absent of ‘awkward’ facts.
Adam Howell
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Completely disagree
i’ve never been a Billy Joel fan. After watcvhing the doc, I have respect for him and his craft.
Defne Tabori
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“Others have come down off our thrones and realized our roots are who we are, public school and single family dwellings on a plot of land.”
This! Thats us …
Billy is our Beatle, Bob!
Got to MSG twice in May and June of 23. Best. Live. Experience. Ever. Home court advantage. 3 hour sing along!
Glass Houses …owned it on vinyl and 8 Track …
The night we were there…he played 6 tracks off of it, never before, never since.
All for Leyna, Sleeping with the Television On,
C’etait Toi…plus the hits …like the Beatles, the whole album is Fab three more singles could’ve been released at least!
Keep Rockin!
Blaine Leeds
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Count me in the camp that recognizes Billy Joel’s great musical talent but is not a fan of it. I particularly detest the trite and egomaniacal lyrics of his megahit “Piano Man”, so I found this essay both hilarious and on target. Enjoy the humor if you haven’t read it yet.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-158845411
Regards,
Barry Ekstrand
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When I started reading your rundown of the new documentary about Billy Joel, I said to myself “obviously Bob’s not from New York.” To us New Yorkers, Billy Joel is the closest thing we have to a Poet Laureate.
We grew up with him, we grew up with his music. His narratives had real meaning to us – his references were our references – from the ode to NY loser kids on Long Island in Captain Jack to his references to a crumbling NYC in Miami 2017 to our unofficial anthem NY State of Mind to the tale of a drunken night of abandon at Elanie’s in Big Shot to Scenes from an Italian Restaurant to the desire to the stories of working class New Yorkers people trying to break out of their wasted lives in Movin’ Out and even schmaltzy hits about a working class guy falling in love with a rich Upper East Side girl like in Uptown Girl.
There’s so many more references I could provide, but these songs, many of which had international success, resonate with Every New Yorker in a way that’s incomprehensible for people to understand that didn’t grow up here. Not just the Bridge and Tunnel crowd – all of us.
More than that, he’s one of us. You’d see him at Nello’s on the Upper East Side having a drink, you’d go see him play The Garden, you’d turn the corner of a street and see him recording a music video – and if you were lucky like me, get to join in.
Growing up in NYC, I was into The Talking Heads, the Jam, The Clash, Blondie, all kinds of dance music, New Wave, Punk, but Billy Joel, even at his worst was never uncool or irrelevant to us New Yorkers. He’s part of the fabric of our state, our city and our lives. But more than that, he’s a great artist and his music resonates not only with New Yorkers but with people across the planet.
As to the documentary? It’s not too bad. Worth a watch and listen. But if you want to know his story, just dig into his catalogue.
Mark Frieser – Sync Summit
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I’m quite amazed how accurate you can be sometimes.
Billy Joel IS a national songwriting treasure.
I’m seen a few clips of him on Stern’s show and he comes off very much like one of us. I imagine though to work with him on stage might be a big challenge.
Thanks,
Will Eggleston
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Beautiful review touching all the dots that connect to make a superstar career..
My only add-on would be a tip of the hat to his amazing band.. they delivered every night!
Marty Simon.
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WRONG
Kathleen Stagg
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I was born in 74, so my consciousness of music begins right around the time Billy Joel was blowing up. His songs were all over WLS in Chicago. The late 70’s were a weird time for rock. KISS and Aerosmith were on their way down, even if they didn’t know it yet. Disco was huge. Punk was a movement, but was never going to be mainstream. Van Halen was just getting started. Soft rock/yacht rock was also huge. There weren’t a lot of true rock n’ roll bands carrying the torch, so by those standards Joel was considered rock n’ roll. And parents loved it because it wasn’t metal and it was music they liked listening to as well. Therein lies the true test, right? If it’s something both you and your parents can enjoy together, how rock n’ roll is it? Regardless, he certainly did well for himself even if he seemed hell bent on signing bad deals and getting ripped off.
Neil Johnson
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Bob, you always described growing up in the Northeast — specifically the Tri-State Area – so perfectly, within the context of the music you love. You’ve got 20 years on me, but the feeling absolutely still resonates with Billy Joel. “Summer Highland Falls” — when I listen to it — it smells and sounds like New York. Hence, getting out of the city and going to the respite places. Being with your people — the friends and family who punch you on your shoulder and put you down as a sign of endearment. I love Billy and can’t wait to watch this doc.
Josh Valentine
Longmont, Colorado (via Rockland and Bergen Counties)
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My wife was/is a big Billy Joel fan.
When I met her in 85 I had a pretty negative view of him. Growing up in London I really only knew “Just the way you are” and “Piano Man”, neither of which impressed me. Yeah, I thought he was a schmaltzy MOR piano man, like you would hear at a Holiday Inn.
So the wife convinced me to go with her to his next gig. She had seen him many times back in the pre-arena days.
It only took one live experience at MSG to put me straight as to his chops, his incredible catalog and his dynamic stage presence.
Like Bruce, if you don’t get him then you’ve likely never seen him live.
I thought the doc was solid, I liked how they covered every album.
But at 2 and a half hours it was a bit of a slog. With typical English snark I suggest they should have called it “And slow it goes.”
Looking forward to part 2 though.
Mrak Hudson
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Billy Joel attended the opening of the Billy Joel exhibition, Billy Joel – My Life, A Piano Man’s Journey at the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame and before addressing the guests looked around and said, quite humbly, “I guess I really did have a life”.
He was speechless, in awe of himself and his success as he took in his entire life and career showcased in one 5000 square foot room.
The tens of thousands of fans who have visited the exhibition come because they see themselves in his songs and love him because he’s still a regular guy from Long Island singing about their everyday lives.
No pretense. No frills. Just the piano man.
Ernie Canadeo
Chairman
Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame
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Thanks for letting me recoup some time in my life.
I f*cking hate Billy Joel, so your first sentence was very helpful in that regard.
Cheers.
Doug Collitz
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Looking forward to Billy’s doc. I’ve always been a big fan. First learned about Billy from a progressive AM station in Allentown, PA. I lived in Easton, PA nearby. The station, WSAN, now an oldies outlet, played tracks from Cold Spring Harbor, and then Piano Man. She’s Got a Way, from Cold Spring was probably the first tune of his I heard. Loved it. Then the station announced he would be playing at the Roxy Theatre in Northampton, PA.
My wife,then, and I pounced on those tix. They cost either $2.50 or $5.00. I forget.
Anyway, the show was amazing. The theatre sat 500. He played songs from both albums.
My faves were: Captain Jack, Stop in Nevada, and Billy the Kid. He told cool stories between tunes and sang like a dream. He told how he used the name Billy Martin when he played at the bar where he drew the inspiration for Piano Man. Cool.
His opening act was also a treat, Henry Gross, now mostly forgotten, but he also had a big voice and loads of energy.
His cover of Meet Me on the Corner was perfect.
But the Billy tune I’m dying to mention is from the album 52nd Street. Until the Night.
The blessed night when things really begin to pop. I was having an affair. It was this tunedthat carried me along so many nights, and made me cry.
Thanks for talking about the doc and including Billy as the real deal!
Until the Night.
Mighty Tim Young.
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that’s the trouble…
people re-writing reality for a perception they WANT, but isn’t true.
why not pull back, really consider the singularity and polish that?
Billy Joel spoke to the disenfranchised frustration of those suburban kids who wanted to go to Studio 54, but were too bridge and tunnel… who weren’t nihilistic enough to be Lou Reed, poetic and arty enough to be Patti Smith
there were so many more of them.
living in Cleveland, Ohio, Joel was the heart of Murray Hill, the Little Italy piece of the east side that STILL has brick streets.
their own culture, their own cool, Sinatra (and Dean-o, Tony Bennett) never went out of fashion, and yes, show tunes!
why can’t that be brilliant for holding up the light to that piece of the population?
they didn’t have to be Petty/Browne/Springsteen kids, they were something more, different, but just as impassioned — and as “Deer Hunter” demonstrated profoundly — as well as fed up with being marginalized
these kids went to dinner with red checkered table cloths, church, shoveling the stoop, but they burned just as much.
if what you say is true, making him over as something other than that is a tragedy
celebrate his specific slice of the American Pie — because it was robust and glorious with a bit of the Spector drama thrown in!
holly gleason
a kid who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio when Kid Leo ruled the air, Michael Stanley was our king + WMMS won all the Rolling Stone Readers’ polls
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If “Piano Man” is an inferior “Taxi”, then “Just the Way You Are” is an inferior “I’m Not In Love “
Best,
Tom Quinn
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This piece is a nice little companion to the doc:
“‘No matter what, I will always be a Jew.’ Billy Joel opens up about his family’s Holocaust history.”:
May not be Springsteen, but u can’t say sh*t about that song.
If that was all he ever did that’s special . Like what’s better than than now. F*ck all
Todd Clark
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Phil Ramone was a great guy, but he destroyed the real singer-songwriter Billy Joel and replaced him with a plastic guy who wanted to own a Cadillac-ack-ack-ack-ack. Out on Long Island, it was sad to watch the guy who wrote brilliant B-Sides like Captain Jack and Traveling Prayer to back classic standards like Piano Man and NYS of Mind churning out bubble gum junk like Only the Good Die Young and Uptown Girl for his wife to gawk around to. And for the “documentary” to ignore the firestorm created with Ritchie Cannata over bringing in Phil Woods to do the Just the Way You Are alto solo is more proof that this doc was designed, as you say, to legitimize an image fallacy.
Charlie Sanders
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well written. I have seen Billy twice, once earlier this year. he is a pro, his supporting musicians are great and the songs are sung like they were when i was young. hope i get to see him live one more time but i realize it is unlikely.
Roger Ellis
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Never have been a Billy Joel fan and along with Meatloaf & The Eagles, I almost always changed the station in the 70s when he came on except for ‘Moving Out’ & ‘She’s Always a Woman’.
I agree with most of what you said except the later years Elton comparisons. Joel didn’t ‘press on’ in the 80s or 90s. ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ is a terribly tedious song and that’s pretty much the only thing in the later years that he’s known for before completely drying up creatively. Elton continued to make hits in the 80s and has continued to put out a slew of new music consistently like it or not. He had a 3 album dry run with Blue Moves, Single Man & Victim but then came back fairly quickly.
Anyway, I won’t be watching the Joel doc…
Lovingly sent from Jemal Jalal Hines’s iPhone
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The Stranger i know every word to every song…my teen years and beyond..that says it all
Chris Rodinis
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You sound implicitly critical (or skeptical ) in defining Billy as a “rocker” in the same vain as..say Bruce (or Jackson Browne). Not sure if that’s a fair comparison.
As someone who saw Billy perform at MSG in 1978, I witnessed a complete “rock show” that had 20,000 fans screaming the entire time. I came away wanting more. But you are correct that his recent “residency” show at MSG were just as amazing.
Perhaps you need to take off the California hat and be in a “New York State of Mind “ to best appreciate both Billy’s story and the brilliance of his music.
I look forward to part 2 of the documentary.
Michael Borodinsky
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Shiite
Eric Brendo
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I never bought a Billy Joel album but I always liked the songs everyone liked and I loved some of his deep tracks like All For Leyna and Vienna.
When he passes, he’ll be worthy of being on the cover of Time magazine (if it still exists).
Jeff Sacks
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Bang on Bob. I knew Billy fairly well years ago and I can tell you the Artie Ripp story is true. Billy paid him a percentage of his recording profits for decades. I interviewed him also around the mid 80s when he’d written a song on the LP “The Bridge” about Artie and I said “Tell me you aren’t still paying Artie” and he confessed he was. I forget the amount but I think it was 5%. You know Billy is a natural mimic and comic and he is very entertaining. No interview question he won’t answer except maybe his persistent alleged alcoholism.
Larry LeBlanc
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“No one in the west cared about Oyster Bay, hadn’t even heard of it.”
100%
We in LA in 1975 didn’t care about “Thunder Road” or “Jungle Land” either. The East Coast seemed to love hearing about California girls and tequila sunrises, but this was not a symmetric sentiment – we couldn’t have cared less about the Jersey Shore, for the most part.
As a UCLA student, saw Bruce at the Roxy and was bored out of my mind, though the audience was into it. I had heard the first albums in the hallways at Dykstra – all critic’s darlings but I couldn’t relate to any of the lyrics until I moved back east. “Why’s he going on and on about these mundane places and people?”, we thought.
Then, something happened to me.
I was in the Air Force from ’78-’81. Every other week, I’d drive my MG, top down, from Syracuse to Staten Island to hang out with my girlfriend, which I did once a week. We’d spent every day together going into Manhattan, seeing musicals, hanging out at Sweet Basil to see Jim Hall, buy books at the Strand, and then head back to Tottenville at the end of the day. But that didn’t help me get it.
On one trip in late ‘79, I was coming down on a late Friday night drive as usual from the Delaware Water Gap and into Jersey, I got lost. I ended up on a busy street in Kearny going all the way to the make out area on the Passaic River in what looked to me like a smelly, garbage-strewn superfund site loaded with kids making out in and out of their cars. I took that interesting scene in, then got my Rand McNally map out, plotted my back to the highway. And then it hit me as I drove down what appeared to be a main boulevard crowded with Friday night life.
The streets were full of young people on the stroll – sitting on curbs, some carrying guitars with no case down the street (like switchblades!, I realized), everyone just hanging out, there were literally girls sitting on the hoods of cars drinking beers. Warm, I imagined.
It hit me – it was all true!
I got to Tottenville at about 9, and we went to an Italian place up the road. Sitting there, with the jukebox playing songs from “The Stranger”, I looked around the restaurant and again realized, it was all true!
I never got any of this until I moved back east. We were clueless, as you point out. But it was all true, and more accurate than any Eagles song was about Los Angeles, I thought then.
Gary Lang
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I haven’t seen the new Billy Joel documentary yet, but I am pleased to see how Billy has over the last 20 years finally gotten the respect he’s deserved. You’re right – he wasn’t cool for those in the rock crowd back then. He wasn’t from the streets; he was suburban, non-threatening. But he was a damned great songwriter. I was fortunate to grow up near Philly, which embraced Billy early on (as I recall, WMMR was one of the first stations to put “Captain Jack” into their rotation), and so I got to hear a lot of Billy’s music. The hits were great, but for me it’s all about the album tracks. I love “Summer, Highland Falls.” And “Vienna” – sure, it’s popular now, but this was a deep cut then. And “Zanzibar” from 52nd Street, “All for Leyna” from Glass Houses…great, great stuff.
Of course, by the time you get to Storm Front, it was obvious Billy was getting tired of being a star – that album is as moribund as his earlier work is full of vitality and life. And maybe quitting recording was the best move Billy made; it allowed us to step back and appreciate his body of work for what it was, and it’s a great body of work.
Take care,
Wes R. Benash
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I worked with Billy doing his publicity and he was one of my favorite clients-no pretense – no ego- anxious to please and very serious about his music – I dealt with Elizabeth with no issues even tho I was warned about her- but she put him down in front of me and that was disgusting- he did not deserve what happened to him but he learned a hard lesson – anyway/ he will always be up on my top 5 list of clients! Carol Ross
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I read your review of recent Billy Joel documentary .
I’m sitting here trying to figure which is worse
The Doc or your review.
Billy is a Pop icon, he’s had 50 years of hits on the radio.
You don’t like him, many other people do. Walk away,Bob.
