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“I used to bang on the piano. My mom got sick of hearing me bang, and she dragged me down the street and I started taking lessons. And I took to it.”

Some people have branded this song as “anti-Catholic.” Billy Joel, on the other hand, describes it as “pro-lust.”

“I actually think about that when I’m onstage.  What would I like to see me do.  I tend to like the album tracks, not the hit singles.”

“Way back in the early ’70s, I used to do somersaults, flips off the piano,…anything to get attention.” 

Billy Joel certainly took someone down a peg with the song “Big Shot” from his 1978 album 52nd Street.  As a newly minted star he had ample access to the rich and famous.

Billy Joel was only 22 when he made his first solo record, the 1971 album Cold Spring Harbor.  And the experience turned out to be a nightmare.