March 1996, Penn State University, State College, Pa.
One of first albums I purchased with my own money was Billy Joel’s Glass Houses because I thought it had the song “My Life” on it. “My Life” was the theme song for a show called Bosom Buddies, a 1980 sit-com which saw Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari dress up as women in order to live in a cheap, female-only apartment building. Pretty heady stuff as an 11-year old.
“My Life” is on 52nd Street (which I would buy later), but Glass Houses remains a favorite because it was one of my first record purchases. “You May Be Right,” “Don’t Ask Me Why” and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” were hits, but “All for Leyna” and “Sometimes a Fantasy” were two of my favorites. Billy Joel’s music would be a constant through my junior and senior high school years as his popularity grew and grew.
But I never saw him live in the 1980s, though there were opportunities. It wasn’t until 1996, when I was working in State College, that I saw him during a college lecture tour which he called “An Evening of Questions, Answers…and a Little Music.” His life was at a bit of a rough patch at the time, he was recently divorced to Christie Brinkley
He came out with a grand piano on the right side of the stage, and he started to take questions from the crowd, which may have been about 1,500 or so. Someone asked him about the song “James,” if it was named after a friend of his, and what was the story behind it. “Well,” he said. “It sounds better to sing than ‘Steve’,” — which is true. I want to say there wasn’t a James per se, and that the name stands in for someone else, but I can’t remember.
He said he writes the music for all his songs before he writes the lyrics, with one exception — “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which makes sense. He explained, while playing the song (which would rise to No. 1 on the charts), how the movement of the words dictated a certain pace. He was as surprised as everyone when it was a hit song.
There’s a song in Glass Houses where Billy sings in French (“C’était Toi — You Were the One”), and when asked why he did that, he said he wanted to try it because the Beatles did it. Apparently, like just every musician alive, he’s a Beatles fan.
He might have talked about Christie Brinkley, though I can’t quite recall (I would think I’d remember someone asking him considering the timing of the divorce). Near the end, someone asked where he was now in his life, he walked up to the piano and played “Piano Man.” I always thought it was a planned ending, but I can’t be upset watching a talent like Billy Joel play his signature song.
There’s more to the show I’m forgetting, though I remember Billy was engaging throughout. It wasn’t quite a Billy Joel concert, but it was different. It’s not often you leave a show knowing more about an artist than when you came in.
