(Credits: Myrna Suarez)
Sat 24 January 2026 13:00, UK
From the minute he released his first record, Billy Joel didn’t get into the business to be cool.
There were certainly rock stars that he looked up to that are still considered some of the most badass rock and rollers to walk the Earth, but even from behind his piano, Joel only wanted to be remembered for the fantastic songs that he wrote rather than his outlandish personality. He treated every one of his albums in the same way that most blue-collar workers look at their nine-to-five jobs, but Joel couldn’t deny that some of his favourite acts were the ones that created magic whenever they sang.
Then again, it’s not like Joel didn’t have a few magical tricks up his sleeve on his own records. There are plenty of times where his songs might be a little bit cheesy, but the kind of music theory behind all of them was always a welcome change of pace from other rock stars. No one would have thought to make a jazz section on a song like ‘Zanzibar’, nor would they think of making the strange chords on ‘Vienna’, but that came from Joel studying every single classical composer that he could find.
Mozart and Beethoven were practically gods to him, but that wasn’t what was going to pay the bills. Anyone can spend their time trying to become the best classical composer of all time, but rock and roll was a lot more realistic for someone wanting to get on the charts. And like all other kids growing up in the 1960s, Joel was forever changed the first time he saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.
There had been other bands in rock and roll, but none of them seemed to have the same kind of charm that the Fab Four did. They were all fantastic personalities off the stage, and when you saw them tossing their hair onstage, you could tell that they were having the time of their lives performing for anyone who was willing to listen. But before The Beatles set foot on American shores, it’s not like America didn’t have a great balance of rock and roll.
This was the country where the genre was born, and growing up as a piano player, Joel knew that everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis to Little Richard to Fats Domino was an example of rock stars who made their trade by beating the life out of the ivories. But while a band like The Beach Boys were seen as an American counterpart to The Beatles a lot of the time, Joel felt that The Four Seasons deserved to be in that same company.
While the story of Franki Valli and his band of singers feels too pop-flavoured to be considered truly rock and roll, Joel said that they were as important as The Beatles after inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “I couldn’t believe they actually picked me to induct this great band, who to me in a way were the Beatles before there was a Beatles. They wrote their own stuff. They sang their own stuff, and they played their own instruments. This was an incredibly huge band of my youth.”
And it’s not hard to see why, either. Every single region of the US had their own respective pop acts, and while the countless artists from Motown crossed over to the mainstream, the Four Seasons were the counterpart to The Beach Boys, bringing a certain East Coast flair to every song they played, even if some people only remember them for being the soundtrack to wedding receptions when ‘December 1963’ comes on.
Joel always knew that they were more than a traditional pop act, so when he made his own tribute to them on ‘Uptown Girl’, it was never supposed to be cheesy in any way. He had already been a fan of those soaring harmonies, so when he went on to incorporate songs like ‘Sherry’ into his sets every now and again, it almost made too much sense. This was the music he cut his teeth playing, and even if they didn’t have the same tunes as The Beatles, there was a swagger he could recognise in an instant.
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