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"Still Rock and Roll To Billy Joel?"
By: Larry Flick
(September 10th, 2001)

Billy Joel hesitates to describe his first post-pop recording, "Fantasies & Delusions: Music for Solo Piano" (due October 2nd, 2001 from Columbia/Sony Classical), as a traditional classical music effort. While he claims that he's simply trying to dodge the slings and arrows of critics eager to slay another rocker striving to compose "serious" music, further probing reveals that Joel is actually a little apprehensive about being aligned and compared with those composers who have become his heroes.

"I'm still at a point where I feel like a student discovering a treasure trove of goodies that will make me better and smarter," Joel says with a grin. "Ain't that a kick in the ass? An old guy like me feeling like a kid again. But that's precisely the case. To allow my name to be mentioned in the same breath as the masters is not something I'm comfortable with."

To Joel, recipient in 1994 of the Billboard Century Award, "Fantasies & Delusions" can more accurately be viewed as "a toe in the water" of the classical genre. "More times than not, I refer to this project as instrumental piano music of the romantic era. It carries the influence of 19th-century music, but it's cross-pollinated with other elements, some of which are undeniably modern. It's melodic and singable. I don't think that I could write music that wasn't."

Defining the style of his current creation is less stressful for the artist - whose last studio recording was 1993's widely praised "River of Dreams" - than addressing the fact that he's not likely to record another collection of pop and rock tunes anytime in the foreseeable future.

"I'm just not in the mood for that right now," Joel asserts. "If I forced myself to write a rock record, it would flat-out suck. I have absolutely nothing to say in that medium at the moment - which is important for me as an artist to acknowledge. I'm sure that I'll revisit rock and roll somewhere down the line. But I honestly don't know when. I can't imagine that this is music to the ears of people at my label, but there's nothing I can do about that right now."

In truth, Columbia executives say they're pleased to be working "Fantasies & Delusions."

"Billy Joel has given us some of the most memorable and meaningful pop music of the past three decades," notes Don Ienner, president/chairman of Columbia Records Group. "Having mastered the worlds of pop and rock in the 20th century, Billy is following his artistic vision into the classical realm. It's inspiring to see a musician of his caliber opening up to the world of classical music for his fans in the 21st century."

Adds Greg Linn, VP of marketing for the label, "We're proud of him for making this record on his own terms, and we're committed to making it succeed for him on a commercial level."

Linn notes that part of the label's plan is to introduce "Fantasies & Delusions" to listeners who might not otherwise seek out a classical recording. Part of that plan includes issuing "The Essential Billy Joel," a compilation of his pop and rock hits, on the same day. Linn says, "We're encouraging retailers to rack the two albums next to each other in hopes that it will inspire people to give the new one a fair listen."

Joel is admittedly braced for the worst - particularly from critics. "They can be savage, but they're brilliant, too," he says with a laugh. "Rock critics hit you with a hammer, but classical critics use a scalpel. They're exquisite in their mauling of you and your work. I'm ready to be dismissed as irrelevant."

Part of that assumption is due to the fact that much of "Fantasies & Delusions" is cast in 19th century music, a style Joel contends has been out of favor with both critics and purists for a long time.

"That period of music is viewed as being too sweet, too melodic, and too romantic," Joel says. "It's been looked at with disdain for a long time. With that in mind, I'm trying to find the irony and humor in the fact that it's the first kind of music I gravitated toward as a writer."

Ultimately, Joel is hopeful that listeners will hear something fresh and appealing in his compositions. "Maybe I'm insane. But that's why I called the album 'Fantasies & Delusions.' I was crazy enough to do something that nobody thought I could or should do."

The seeds of this project were first sown eight years ago, when Joel found himself at home one evening, listening at the urging of a friend to the work of Beethoven. He says it was an experience akin to "getting stoned. The rush in hearing his work reminded me of how I felt when I first discovered rock and roll. It was like a door was unlocked to a world full of possibilities."

From there, Joel began to expand his palette to include the compositions of Brahms and Mozart. "The deeper I got as a listener, the more I wanted to try and create a similar kind of music. In retrospect, it was ballsy and somewhat intimidating. But it was also exhilarating."

Even though his first pieces were admittedly "pretty bad," Joel forged forward. "After all, my first rock pieces weren't good either. It was a matter of learning a new vernacular. The more errors I made, the better I became."

Joel's "light-bulb" moment came when he started to compare the composition of instrumental piano music with writing a pop song.

"I realized that writing pop music is like creating art inside a box," Joel says. "The parameters are specific, and they can be frustrating and confining. In writing the pieces that became this project, I allowed the music to take me further than I'd done previously. I kicked out the sides of the box. Instead of finding a theme or a point and repeating it over and over, I let the music unfold and follow a natural conclusion. In many ways, it was like being freed from prison. There were no boundaries."

The artist further liberated himself when he decided to employ Richard Joo, a classical concert pianist, to bring his compositions to life in recorded form.

"Let's face it, I'm a ham-fisted rock-piano player," Joel says. "I'm a man with performance limitations trying to compose music without borders. Richard gave the sounds and ideas in my mind beautiful, earthly physicality."

Joo was only one of a community of young classical musicians and composers Joel found himself connecting with when he left the comfort of his Long Island, NY, home studio to complete "Fantasies & Delusions" in Vienna: "They gave me emotional nourishment as I waded through the writing process. They're as crazy as young rock and rollers, and they encouraged me to not be dogged by anything. They encouraged me to be proud of my roots and embrace how they directly influence this new music I'm making."

They also encouraged Joel's method of writing, which the artist says is reminiscent of Beethoven's.

"I relate to him more than anyone," he says. "Like him, I write in fits and starts. If you see his original notations, you see nothing but gouges and scratches. He struggled with and labored over every note of his music. He was very much a human being. To me, that's what makes his music so wonderful. He explored all of the turmoil in his heart and soul as he made music. It didn't just flow out of him like water."

With "Fantasies & Delusions" complete, the self-managed Joel is dividing his time between promoting this project and mapping out his next one. He'll spend much of the fall doing a series of Master Classes at music colleges and performing arts centers throughout the US. Joo will join Joel for the tour, which will offer compositions from the new album, as well as a handful of pop classics.

"It will be scary, but thrilling to bring this music out in front of people," Joel says. "I get butterflies in my stomach thinking about it."

By the start of 2002, Joel hopes to return to Vienna and begin shaping new ideas into full compositions. His goal is to add another instrument, such as cello or violin, to his piano arrangements.

"It's all about taking baby steps for me," Joel says. "I look at what Paul [McCartney] did, and I marvel at his bravery and ambition. He did full orchestrations and symphonies. He dove into the deep end of the pool. Personally, I prefer to keep it small and be certain of what I'm doing every step of the way."

Joel's also planning to venture into the 20th century for influence: "At this point, it's pure experimentation. I have no master plan. I'm just educating myself and immersing myself in this music. I'm enjoying myself in ways that I never have before as an artist. At the end of the day, nothing else matters."

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"When There Are No Words…"
By: Mitchell Fink
(September 25th, 2001)

Billy Joel, who performed his classic "New York State of Mind" on Friday's telethon with a fireman's hat sitting on his piano, really does believe in the expressive power of music.

Last week, at Nick & Toni's in East Hampton, Joel told Hampton Sheet publisher Joan Jedell that the terrorist acts were "so sad, there are no words to describe it, only music...like Samuel Barber's 'Adagio for Strings' or Beethoven's 'Third Symphony (Second Movement)'."

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"From Rock to Bach"
With help from another pianist, Joel's classical side shows at Staller
By: Steve Parks
(September 28th, 2001)

While it once was his fantasy, Billy Joel was never delusional about someday becoming a classical artist.

His first love in music was a collective affair with Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Shubert and Schumann. Joel grew up in Hicksville studying classical piano. But like many a 16 year-old, he just had to have his fling - if you can call a 30-year romance with rock and roll a fling.

"I got tired of playing other people's music," said Joel. Besides, he could meet more girls playing "Roll Over Beethoven" than Beethoven's 5th. So he gave up classical training - at first to try his hand at boxing - but ultimately to write and play his own rock songs. While pugilism held no future for him ("My left was terrible, just like on the piano," Joel recalled), as a rock and roll singer-songwriter he sold more than 100 million records.

Tomorrow night at SUNY Stony Brook's Staller Center, Joel (who plans to attend the concert) can sit back and listen to someone else play his music - piano compositions evoking the 19th century Romanticism of his early heroes. Joel's music for solo piano, including two world premieres, will be performed by concert pianist Richard Joo at Staller's season-opening event, anticipating the release of the composer's first album of new material since the prophetic "River of Dreams" in 1993.

"Fantasies & Delusions," with Joo playing Joel's piano works Op. 1-10, is to appear in record stores and online Tuesday on Sony Classical/Columbia.

When Joel wrote the song "Famous Last Words," which punctuates "River of Dreams," it was meant to close a chapter of his life. "Not that I won't ever re-open it," Joel said last week in a phone interview from his home in Oyster Bay Cove. "It's just that those literally were the last words I had to say at the time."

Joel had been moving in a classical direction for years - perhaps throughout his superstar career. One of tomorrow's world premieres has been in the works since before the fall of the Soviet Union. Joel said he began "noodling" with "Nunley's Carousel," his Waltz No. 1, Op. 2, during a tour of what was then the USSR in the late '80s. "I remember going to a circus in Gorky Park and seeing this tightrope act. It seemed emblematic of an entire nation teetering on the verge of collapse," Joel said, "reminding me of the gentle sense of danger I felt as a kid in an amusement park."

The waltz, named for the carousel at the now-defunct Nunley's amusement park in Baldwin, was written with a calliope in mind. (Portions of it are to be re-recorded to play on the restored carousel to be installed along Museum Row near Nassau Community College in Garden City.)

As Joel worked and re-worked "Nunley's Carousel," he realized he needed an arranger, a more formally and intensely trained classical interpreter. During the "River of Dreams" tour in 1994, Joel's kid brother, Alexander, a conductor living in Vienna, introduced him to an English pianist of Korean descent who, at age 16, had won the Stravinsky International Piano Competition.

"I knew of Billy's music, of course," said Richard Joo, now 28, during an interview in a gilt-trimmed piano showroom at Steinway Hall, across 57th Street from Carnegie Hall. Though Joo's taste in pop music leans toward Pink Floyd and Queen, Joo said he was impressed with Joel's disdain of "rock-star cliches. I didn't think it was surprising that he wanted to write piano solos because Billy is essentially a classical composer."

"I talked to a number of other pianists," said Joel, "but we just connected. I needed someone who could see what I was getting at emotionally and look beyond the notations on a page. He reminded me of the bohemian rock and rollers when I started out. These classical guys are so dedicated to their art, they're like monks, practicing six hours a day. Then they turn up in nightclubs, playing jazz and Shubert quartets."

Joo and Joel began working together shortly after one such late-night jam at Vienna's Broadway Bar. "We'd meet at his house on Long Island," says Joo, "or, if he was in Manhattan, at Steinway Hall," which became the title of Joel's Waltz No. 2, Op. 5. "If one of us was on the road, I'd play for him over the phone."

Joel needed an arranger and transcriber, said Joo, "because all of the music was in his head."

"Richard would tell me, 'Billy, this is too close to Mozart,'" said Joel, "or 'This is too much like Ravel.'"

"Billy is awestruck by the greats," said Joo. "But I have no hesitation playing his music on the same program with Beethoven." The premieres of two other Joel compositions were performed at Carnegie Hall and Tanglewood next to works by 18th and 19th century masters. And it was Joo's idea to place Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on tomorrow night's program just before the world premiere of Joel's Suite for Piano, Op. 8 ("Star-Crossed"), which the composer describes as an ode to a love affair.

"The structure and temperament of the two pieces complement each other," said Joo. "I think that will be obvious even to the untrained ear. So now we have an all-B program - Beethoven, Bach, Borodin - and Billy."

As for how the critics will receive the work, Joel said he has "no delusions." "Before last week I had some trepidations," he admitted. "But after the terrorist attacks, all those things seem so insignificant now."

For Joo, being the chief interpreter of the classical Billy Joel is a no-lose situation. "I'll get noticed in a way I probably wouldn't, because Billy is who he is." Joo added that he has been "inspired" by Joel's courage to record his classical compositions, "even though critics are lined up to savage him the way they did Paul McCartney. That's made me braver about playing my own compositions," Joo said.

Meanwhile, Joel says he'll stick to writing his music instead of playing it. "I could get by as a rock and roll pianist," Joel said. "But I'm too ham-fisted to play classical piano. Suppose I wrote for an orchestra or for a woman's voice. Nobody would expect me to perform those myself. That's why I started writing these pieces. I got frustrated writing just music I could perform myself. I didn't want to be limited by my own lack of virtuosity as a musician.

"Of course," he added with a self-deprecating laugh, "I wasn't thinking about any of that stuff when I was 16. I gave up Beethoven and took up boxing."

[Where & When] Richard Joo plays four solo piano compositions by Billy Joel, two of them world premieres, plus a program of Bach, Beethoven and Borodin, Saturday night at 8:00pm at Staller Center in Stony Brook, $26; call (631) 632-2787 or www.StallerCenter.com. Joel's CD, "Fantasies & Delusions" will be released Tuesday on Sony Classical/Columbia.

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