Nov 16 2010
♫ Well We’re Living Here in Levittown ♫
… that might have been what we’d be singing if Billy Joel never changed it to “Allentown.”
Billy Joel was on the Howard Stern Show on Sirius this morning, where he gave a lot of insight into his creative process and talked about his very first days in front of the keys.
After a young "piano boy" exhausted his mother's ears with his never-ending "Rain Song" (in which he'd dabble with the high trebles then follow it with "thunder" by slamming on the bass notes), she took him to the neighborhood piano teacher around age 6. But a musically precocious Billy had more fun creating new movements for Mozart sonatas than he did memorizing the proper sheet music. He kept these classical improvs from his teacher, which discouraged her when he would return to the lesson room unable to play the songs she had provided. (!)
Howard made a point to delve into Billy's inspirations. The Piano Man explained that the music comes to him before any lyrics (sometimes even in his sleep), and that writing words over a tune is a struggle for him because the wrong lyrics could potentially destroy a solid composition. (A well known exception to this creative order was "We Didn't Start the Fire," which Billy claims to not like as much because the lyrical focus left the song with no central melody.)
Joel also admitted to a "love/hate" relationship with the piano, describing his instrument as a "a big beast with 88 teeth that wants to bite my fingers off" when songwriting sessions don't go his way.
