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"Billy Joel Has Reason To Be Happy"
By: Glenn Gamboa
(December 1st, 2011)

Right now, Billy Joel is all about the present.

He's happy to talk about his Oyster Bay motorcycle shop, 20th Century Cycles, or his upcoming master classes at colleges around the Northeast. He's happy about being named a "Steinway Artist" later this month, becoming the first pop artist ever to be counted among the masters who have their paintings hung in Steinway Hall. He's happy about his new boxed set, "The Complete Albums Collection" (Columbia/Legacy), and the new interpretations of his work that keep turning up successfully across pop culture, whether it's the "Glee" kids tackling "Uptown Girl" or a British advertising campaign using a version of "She's Always A Woman" that pushed his original into the British Top 10.

Joel is even happy to learn - at Sting's recent birthday party, no less - that Lady Gaga is a fan. ("She knows everything I've ever done," he says. "She was quoting lyrics to me." After learning that Lady Gaga had studied his career, Joel felt honored. "That's kinda cool - she's very talented," he says, before adding with a laugh, "It was very impressive that she was so knowledgeable. I impressed myself, I suppose.")

But the past? That's a different story.

Joel canceled the release of his autobiography, "The Book of Joel," this spring, only weeks before it was supposed to come out.

"I saw it being promoted as a salacious tell-all, which it wasn't in the first place," says Joel, in one of his first interviews about the decision. "I said, 'No, no, no, no, that's not how I want to be defined. Forget it.' I'm not Keith Richards."

Though the story of Joel's rise from Hicksville native to stadium-filling global superstar and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has been told many times - most recently in the documentary "The Last Play at Shea," which also chronicled his historic final concerts at Shea Stadium - it has usually been told by someone else. For "The Book of Joel," it was going to be told by him and that became quite a drag.

"The writing process was really not all that enjoyable," Joel says. "I felt like I was wading through the same mud that I spent my life trying to get out of.... You pull yourself out of the swamp and then to do an autobiography, you have to dive back in and wade through it all again.

"I was so sick of me," he adds, jokingly. "I'm just not a kiss-and-tell kinda guy."

The book is done, Joel says, but it won't likely see the light of day anytime soon. "After I kick off, somebody will probably get it out there," he says. "It's really not very salacious."

Joel says he would much rather have people remember him for his music, which is why he is so happy that his boxed set, "The Complete Albums," is out.

Because the set collects all of his studio albums, including his classical album, "Fantasies and Delusions," it's different from previous compilations. "I've been wanting this to come out for a long time," Joel says. "To me, the ultimate art form is the album format. And because of the situation with the music business over the last 10 to 15 years and the dearth of retail and inventory, the albums really haven't been available to the public. Even if I was out on tour, doing bang-up box-office business, either on my own or with Elton [John], and we were playing stadiums or multiple nights in arenas, I would go to a local outlet and there was no way to get the record. There's probably a lot of people who aren't aware of most of my material at this point."

His Music, His Vision

For Joel, his compilations - even "Greatest Hits: Volume I and Volume II," Joel's most successful album and the third-biggest-seller of all time behind The Eagles and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" - don't convey his music the way he envisioned it. "I've always considered myself an album artist," he says. "I came up during the late '60s and early '70s, when progressive FM radio was playing album tracks, and I like to define what I do that way. I think a lot of the success we had was because we had some depth, not just the Top 40 singles. When 'The Stranger' became a big album, there were album tracks. The people who didn't like 'Just The Way You Are,' the anti-ballad people, had other alternatives."

Joel likes "The Complete Albums" because it puts all his songs in context. "All the compilations have been done to death - 'The Essential,' 'The Ultimate,' 'The "We Really Mean It This Time," ' I hate those things," he says. "A lot of people assume that I'm the one doing this. I'm not. It's the record company. For me, my last legitimate release was 'Fantasies & Delusions' in 2001."

Will there be another? That's hard to say.

When Lady Gaga Met Billy Joel

When Joel met Lady Gaga, she told him that she would love to work with him. "I would definitely discuss it with her," he says. "I'm not sure exactly what she's got in mind.... I'm not all that interested in recording these days. I don't think I'm as good a singer or performer as I used to be and I love the game too much not to play it well, which is also why I've slowed down on doing shows these days.... Look, I'm 62 years-old and I ain't no spring chicken anymore and I feel it. I always respected those athletes that took themselves out of the line-up when they couldn't get to first base as quick as they used to or couldn't bring the bat around as fast."

Joel says he's going to make his touring decisions on a seasonal basis. "I want to see what I feel like doing," he says. "If I feel like doing some shows, I'll do a few shows. If I don't, then I won't."

It's part of Joel's outlook of striving for contentment instead of happiness. "We are brought up in our culture to look for happiness - that's a Western concept," he says. "The Eastern concept is to look for contentment and be able to recognize it. It takes people a long time to get to a point in their lives when they recognize, 'Hey, I'm not sick. My loved ones are all well. There's nothing majorly bad going on right now. This is pretty good.'

"Do I miss performing?" he continues. "I miss the interaction with other musicians sometimes. I miss making that joyful noise that we do onstage and having a whole bunch of people be really happy because of what we're doing. That's magic - that's a form of sorcery. I miss that. Do I miss the schlepping? Do I miss all the insanity that goes with it and the loud noise that gives you tinnitus? No, I don't miss that. I'm content."


"The 'Piano Man' Talks About His Music" 
By: Kenneth Best
(November 30th, 2011)

The "Piano Man" returned to Jorgensen Center For The Performing Arts Tuesday night, answered questions from students, played some tunes as part of his answers, served as music box to some Karaoke singers, and generally imparted some of his hard-earned wisdom from his four decades as a professional musician. The audience laughed, sighed, and stood to applaud Billy Joel.

A high school drop-out who has been awarded honorary degrees from six universities, including the Berklee College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, Joel for several years has visited college campuses to offer his common sense advice to aspiring musicians and to offer insight into his songwriting. He said that as a youngster he wanted to be a teacher but found early work as a musician, and after dropping out of school to become a working musician, he did not think it would be possible.

Joel's self-deprecating wit, easy rapport with his audience and, yes, the adulation of his fans, came together in Storrs at the event sponsored by the Student Union Board of Governors.

When two sisters told how they had tried to see how he played the rapid-fire introduction of "Prelude/Angry Young Man" - which Joel said was his effort to emulate the drum solo to the old surf song "Wipeout" - he invited them on stage to watch him do it.

A female student told how her "go-to" song when singing Karaoke is" Only The Good Die Young," he offered her the microphone while he played for her rendition of the tune.

A young man saying he wanted to sing "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" with Joel was handed the microphone and belted out a credible rendition of the song, as did a student who asked to accompany him singing “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” the songwriter’s biting political satire from the 1980s.

Joel's format was an evening of questions and answers, not a concert performance. He offered advice for those aspiring to a career in music (be committed to a love of music, not all the trappings of fame or trying to make a hit recording); related anecdotes about how songs were inspired (such as when his musical hero Ray Charles called and asked him to write a song, leading to "Baby Grand"); and revealed some of the highlights of his long career (performing in the Soviet Union).

Not every performer is able to leave the comfort of their usual stage environment and the security of their ensemble of musicians. Fewer still have the ability to improvise at a moment’s notice, as when a woman asked Joel to sing a song saying "hello" to a friend about to move away and he fulfilled the request with a humorous blues riff.

The lessons he learned from the six months he spent playing piano in a Los Angeles bar in the early 1970s, providing the inspiration to his signature song, have served Joel well over the years. They have allowed him to survive the ups and downs of the music business, cross over to different generations of fans, and earn the respect of his peers. Asked by a student how he felt about the fact that his music has attracted fans across three generations, Joel said simply: "Flabbergasted."

When this reporter interviewed Joel for a newspaper story in 1976 before he played a concert at a small community college gymnasium in New Jersey, we discussed his reasons for pursuing a career in music.

"I like to play, to perform," he said at the time. "Some people basically want to be rock and roll stars. You identify with that and get into elitist trips. I don't lump myself into that. Basically I got into it as a songwriter."

While he has continued to perform the hits that fans come to hear in sold-out stadiums and arenas, Joel has not released a recording of new songs since 1994. In the recent documentary about the final concert at Shea Stadium in New York City that he headlined, Joel says that he continues to write new music but focuses his attention on instrumental tracks, mainly classical in nature, because he chooses to improve his craft.

As evidenced by the long list of his career accomplishments - which include induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and being the only musician to perform at Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium, Giant Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in his native Long Island - Joel has demonstrated that like the classical music he so reveres, good music will stand the test of time.


"'Piano Man' Billy Joel Is True To Form With Stories, Song, and Even Some Skorton"
By: Susan Lang
(December 5th, 2011)

In his 2½-hour December 2nd, 2011 show, the quintessential "Piano Man," Billy Joel, playfully answered some 20 questions from the audience, scurrying between two Steinway pianos to play anything from snippets to full blown renditions of about two dozen songs, from Bach and The Beatles to his own.

The show, "Billy Joel: An Evening of Questions, Answers... & Perhaps A Little Music," in Bailey Hall was sold out earlier this fall via an electronic lottery.

Clad in a black Cornell sweatshirt, baseball hat and jeans, Joel played, sang, shared stories from his life - and hammed it up. Leaping across the stage as if in a ballet - despite a double hip replacement he later mentioned - he wriggled as if washing in the shower and impersonated such musical buddies as Elton John, Ray Charles, and Paul Simon (playing chunks of "Still Crazy After All These Years" and "Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard") and influences James Brown and The Beatles (singing multiple bars from "Abbey Road"). He even played a duet with Cornell President David Skorton.

Joel, 62, a Tony Award winner and six-time Grammy Award winner, invited the audience to ask anything about music, songwriting and his life and career path. He said he wanted to give advice, mentioning later he had always wanted to be a teacher, because, he said, when he got started, "there was no book. I needed the information. I made a lot of mistakes, and I'm here to tell the tale."

He implied that he didn't want the kinds of questions he typically got from the press, which "usually asks about Christie [Brinkley], the [three] divorces (including Brinkley)...depression, drinking." Though, after all, he did work in a piano bar, he said, while waiting for the questions to start. It was only for six months but there were free drinks (and then he played "Piano Man," including the harmonica).

Calling randomly on hands waving in the crowd, Joel answered questions ranging from how he supported himself at the beginning (by pumping gas, landscaping by "hauling trees around," working at an inking factory and on an oyster boat and writing rock criticism) and where he got his song ideas ("by writing for someone I know") to whether he'd go to a sorority formal after the show (no sorry, he said, he would have but he was flying home right after the performance).

He told of his start during high school on Long Island - roots obvious from his telltale accent - and how he'd dropped out senior year to commit to music, playing at private parties with mink couches in Queens. During that time, he said, it dawned on him that he was playing for "good fellas." But the money was good, he said.

And so it went. Until around question 14, in response to a query about whether he writes music or lyrics first (almost always music first), he said, "You know, I need the president of the university to help me," and Skorton promptly hopped on stage. Without any ado, Skorton played the flute to "She's Always A Woman" while Joel sang and played the piano.

What is Joel's favorite song to sing? That question prompted Joel to don sunglasses and play "Baby Grand," the tune he wrote for he and Ray Charles to sing together, based on something they had in common.

Joel said he's currently working on instrumentals, which he played a sampling of, and closed the evening with "New York State of Mind" that rendered a standing ovation.

The performance, which was Joel's third at Cornell was presented by the Cornell Concert Commission and the Cornell University Program Board. Joel previously played in Barton in 1974 and Bailey in 1996.


"Billy Joel Honored By Steinway"
By: Glenn Gamboa
(December 12th, 2011)

Billy Joel became the first nonclassical musician to be inducted into Steinway Hall today, as a painting of the "Piano Man" was unveiled at the Midtown Manhattan showroom.

Joel's portrait - painted by artist Paul Wyse, whose work is part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian - shows him in his Centre Island home next to his piano, wearing one of his favorite leather jackets.

"You know I found that jacket in a little shop in Miami Beach," Joel said. “It was the first time I had gone shopping, without a girlfriend or a wife, for clothes. Guys, you know what I mean... I thought it looked cool. I wore it to a lot of different places and recently I was going to wear that jacket out to dinner with my girlfriend and she said, 'Are you going to wear that Members Only jacket?' I said, 'What's a Members Only jacket?' And she said, 'They went out in the '80s.'”

"So I'm glad you have my arms folded over the Members Only logo," Joel told Wyse at the ceremony.

The permanent placement of Joel's portrait in the Steinway Hall gallery, which includes Franz Liszt, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Arthur Rubinstein, hasn't been chosen yet. But today it was hanging next to the great Vladimir Horowitz, one of Joel's idols, which thrilled him.

"I don't know how crazy he'd be about having me that close to him," Joel said. “I ran into him once on the street, on Madison Avenue, back in the '70s... I saw Vladimir Horowitz walking across the street. I had long hair and a black leather jacket and I said, 'Maestro!' and he thought I was gonna mug him. He kinda ran away so this is the closest I've been to him since then.”

Joel said he is honored to be called a Steinway Artist and the company's local roots make the connection even more special. "Their factory is in Astoria, Queens," Joel said. "They make pianos the old-fashioned way. They're not mass-produced. They're hand-crafted... When you find a great Steinway, it's a phenomenal piano. There's a quirkiness in individually produced pianos that I appreciate, sort of like handmade guitars."

He seeks out that unique bond with his pianos, testing out many in the Steinway showroom to find the one that works best with a piece of music. (One of his classical pieces "Waltz No. 2" was subtitled "Steinway Hall" because he composed part of it on a piano in the showroom.)

"Guitarists talk about their guitars like it's a woman...they talk about the wood and the shape," Joel said. "It's the same thing with these pianos."


"Billy Joel On The 'M' Word: Ready For Marriage Again?"
(December 13, 2011)

"Extra" correspondent AJ Calloway caught up with musician Billy Joel in the Big Apple, where Joel was being honored as the first non-classical pianist to have his portrait hung in Steinway Hall.

Calloway told Joel he was the coolest guy on the wall with the Members Only jacket, to which the "Piano Man" replied, "Ah, my girlfriend might not think so!"

Joel's new love is 29 year-old Alexis Roderick - and Calloway asked if there were plans to walk down the aisle. "We're not going there!" laughed the musician.

As for that Members Only jacket, Joel explained, "Recently I was going to wear that jacket out with my girlfriend and she goes, 'Are you going to wear that Members Only jacket again? They went out with the '80s.'"


"Billy Joel Wows 'em at UMass-Lowell"
'Piano Man' Goes Back To School

By: Jed Gottlieb

Billy Joel has played hundreds of 900-seat rooms, many back in the 1960s when the then-unknown was rocking the Long Island circuit.

But last night the "Piano Man" returned to a tiny room for a thrilled crowd at University of Massachusetts at Lowell's intimate Durgin Hall.

Billed as "An Evening of Questions, Answers...and Perhaps A Little Music," the event was one of just three college appearances for Joel this fall - the others were at Cornell University and the University of Connecticut. Maybe it was because Lowell had the country's first music education program, maybe the city reminded him of working-class Allentown, but the megastar seemed at home on the small stage.

He dueted with students - "Piano Man" turned into a piano lesson, but "Leningrad" was awesome. He did impersonations like a Borscht Belt regular - his Bob Dylan, Elton John, and Ronald Reagan were spot on. But mostly he took questions from students born after Joel's last #1 hit ("We Didn't Start the Fire," 1989). His answers where honest, funny and deeply self-deprecating.

"This is a hit record?" he asked of "Piano Man." "It's a drag. The lyrics are all limericks. And there's 30 minutes of them."

For a man who in March gave HarperCollins back its $3 million advance on his autobiography because he wasn't interested in reliving the past, he didn't shy away from painful subjects. When asked to reveal something about one of his songs, he admitted "And So It Goes" was about his doomed relationship with Elle Macpherson.

The night of extemporaneous anecdotes and songs wound down with a few Christmas carols. Saying, "I just have to do this because it's the season," Joel did a stirringly earnest "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." The standing ovation proved he'd just granted many a Christmas wish.


"Retro Riding With Billy Joel"
Music Icon & Avid Rider Opens His Personal Museum of Classic and Custom Bikes
By: Don Argento & Richard J. Atkins
(December 2011)

The "Piano Man," as he is better known, is an international music icon having sold over 150 million records worldwide. He is also a six-time Grammy Award winner and member of both the Songwriter's Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Not as well known is that he is an avid motorcyclist and has been accumulating and bikes since the 1970s.

In "a town known as Oyster Bay, Long Island" (as the lyrics go in Billy Joel's "The Ballad of Billy The Kid"), stands a storefront recently opened called "20th Century Cycles," owned by the music legend himself. His showroom houses more than 60 motorcycles, old and new, all plated and ready to ride. Reminiscent of post-war America, it embodies an aesthetic showcasing his passion and love for well-designed bikes.

Billy Joel says sharing his love for motorcycles is one way of giving back to the community and thanking them for his incredible success. His shop is open to the public, admission is free - and nothing is sold there. It exists for people "to have a look around" and for real motorcycle enthusiasts to enjoy a very eclectic display of unique, original, and custom machines. If he happens to be on hand when you visit and you want to strike up a conversation, don't talk about music or his personal life. Talk motorcycles: you may not get him to stop.

What first drew you to motorcycles?

Billy Joel: It started when I was a kid. There's a Stevan Dohanos painting ("Tex's Motorcycle" appeared on the cover of the "Saturday Evening Post" in 1951 - ed.) with a bunch of kids out on the street standing around a full-dress Harley-Davidson. I don't think you can see the motor but you see the fringe hanging from the saddle, a big chrome rail, and a big buddy seat. And these kids are looking at it like he's the cowboy with the white hat. You don't even see the guy who's riding the bike, just the kids standing around it.


Now I remember when I was a kid doing the same thing. When I first saw a big America motorcycle, it stayed with me, just like that painting. Levittown, where I grew up, was a real blue-collar area. It was the first housing development in America built for returning veterans, so it was a boon for our parents - but nobody had any money. So what kids used to do was make motorbikes. They'd take a Briggs & Stratton motor off a lawnmower and put it on a Schwinn and "rig it up." That started me thinking about riding.

When did motorcycling start for you?

There was a guy who lived down the road who had a BSA. It was an A50, which is the Royal Star - 500cc air-cooled twin. He taught me how to ride. I learned on the British set-up, with the brake on the left and the shifter on the right-hand side. Everything's the opposite, and that's how I learned. Those British bikes back in the sixties were fun, fast bikes. They were state-of-the-art back then.

He went off to Vietnam and let me take care of it for him. It was in his garage. My Mom never really knew about it. She would have flipped out if she knew I was riding a motorcycle! But I went to his house and cleaned the bike, oiled it, checked the tire pressure and chain tension...a little wrenching here and there...a carburetor adjustment now and then. Then he came back from 'Nam and took the bike back.

What was your first motorcycle?

The first bike I actually owned was an old Triumph Tiger, an early '60s model. I was 16 or 17 and didn't have a license or insurance. I was completely illegal. Oh yeah, it was a wreck, but it was mine. The oil system leaked; the Lucas electric lights never worked, and it vibrated you to pieces! I probably got my hip dysplasia from it (laughs). But it was fun. They were fast bikes for the time.

I only had it for a few months. I was in a band and I started to go on tour. That was it for motorcycles for me. I left bikes behind for a long time because I was busy working and traveling. Then I rediscovered bikes in the late '70s when I had a little money.

What bike did you buy then?

I got myself a little Yamaha 400 Special. It looked like a nice, simple, straight-ahead parallel twin - like a smaller British bike, but it had the American set-up. So I relearned the American universal set-up and I've never been able to go back to the British set-up again. You can't! When you get to an intersection, you just stop!

So you started collecting at that point?

I wouldn't say I was collecting, I started with the Yamaha 400 in about '77, then I went to a Virago 750. Then I got a Sportster. That's when it was a 1000cc and still made by AMF, before the Harley guys bought it back. It was a fun, but very crude bike. From there I graduated pretty quickly. I went to a 1340cc FLHS, basically a stripped-down Electra Glide, and started dressing that out. I wanted it to look like a late-'40s era Harley, like in the Stevan Dohanos painting. I didn't know what I was doing. That's not the right bag. That's not the right windshield... I really got into the detail of things. That's when I started customizing the bikes, and it grew into this.

By the '80s, I had about 20 motorcycles: Ducatis, Moto Guzzis, harleys, some Japanese bikes, and a couple of Triumphs. I had a Mike Hailwood Replica, a 750 SuperSport, and some BMWs - they were all airheads: R65, R80, R100RT, R100RS. Then, little by little, I decided which ones I wasn't using enough and started selling them off, but I regretted it as the years went on. You can't find them now, or their prices have gone up.

What impact did motorcycling have on you?

It wasn't rebellion for me. After "Easy Rider," marlon Brando and Steve McQueen...they wrote the book, you know? I wasn't riding a motorcycle to be bad, or look at how cool I am. Although it is fun having a girl put her arms around you when you're going on a motorcycle. It's nice. So girlfriends came and went depending on how ride-friendly they were (laughs). It's the feeling of hurtling through space with nothing, no cage around you. You see so much more. your perception is incredible when you're on a motorcycle. You smell things, feel temperature changes. You notice a lot more detail. Shade and light make a big difference. You're very focused when you're on a motorcycle - if you're serious, or if you've had an accident.

Do songs come to you when you're riding?

Not lyrics, music does. When I'm on a motorcycle I'm hearing the pattering of the engine. It's like when you're on a Harley and you hear potato, potato, potato, banana, banana. On Italian motorcycles I start hearing Rossini, classical music. I usually give myself a classical theme on a bike. There's a lot of Beethoven on the internal jukebox when I riding.

What is the aesthetic you're going for here at 20th Century Cycles?

This whole thing started back in the late '90s when I began gathering more bikes together. I don't like like to call it a collection because I actually ride most of them. But I have no place to store them at my house so I needed to rent a storage facility. This was an old Ford dealership and I thought, Why not share my good fortune with people who like bikes? Let them come in and take a look around.

There's something about each one of the motorcycles in here that I like aesthetically. You won't find any choppers in here. The newest super-fast Japanese bike in here is an '82 Suzuki Katana, which was the first one Hans Muth designed after he worked with BMW. That sleek, modern, bubble forward - I'm not a fan of that stuff. I like the older designs. That's the whole premise of this place, 20th Century Cycles. Even the new bikes, we make them look like old bikes. There are no new Beemers here; they're all vintage motorcycles.

I tend to like the retro kind of bikes: '60s-style café racers with the British set-up, '70s-era Japanese bikes. I like bobbers, which were the original choppers, but I hate choppers.

The new bikes don't identify themselves as much as they used to. Back then, you could tell by the tank and the configuration of the engine if it was a transverse twin, or a parallel twin, or even air-cooled or water-cooled. Now you can't see. Take the fiberglass off! I can't tell what's what anymore!

Yet you like mixing old and new? Why?

Yes, I like the convenience of new technology. See, I like the way old things look, but I like the way new things work. So I'm trying to combine that. It's "A Modern Ride, With Classic Pride," that's our 20th Century Cycles motto.

The new bikes now are so fast. They're high-performance bikes. They want to go! The older bikes, if you went like 100 miles per hour, it felt like you were going 500 miles per hour. It's not necessarily going fast; it's feeling like you're going fast.

We just built a bobber for Bruce Springsteen: a Kawasaki W650 that looks like an old Triumph. We may be building one for Peter Fonda, who's doing another bike movie. We may use some of them for advertising. People like Ralph Lauren like to use old props and vintage stuff for window-shopping displays.

Personally, I like bobbers. Basically, they were Harleys, Indians or big American bikes that they started knocking parts off to make them go faster or do hill climbing. When the British bikes came in, they started doing it with them. These pre-dated choppers, but it's a much better look. It's actually a hot rod. You'll notice we have a bunch of bobbers here.

We're doing one with a BMW, as a matter of fact: it's a 1976 R90. We're making it a café racer. I would like to get a new BMW and customize it, but it's almost impossible to retro style. The frames are very radical and there's so much fiberglass.

Do you feel you have to ride to have an appreciation for the art of motorcycle design?

It's almost a form of sculpture. People recognize the era just by looking at the machine. And people are really hungry for character. I have a Royal Enfield - actually it's not even that old - but it looks like a military bike from World War II. It's a little 500cc air-cooled, single-cylinder bike. It looks like an army bike from the Rommel "Afrika Korps" campaign. I'll pull up next to a line of shiny chromed-to-the-max Harley-Davidsons, and everyone comes over to this little Royal Enfield. It's got character.

Girls like that. A guy who goes out and buys a Lamborghini to try to impress women, man forget it! Get yourself a clunky old Volkswagen Beetle. It's like having a cute dog on a leash.

What's your experience with BMWs?

Your likes/dislikes?

In the scuttlebutt, BMWs were always the superior motorcycle. German engineering: Bayerische Motoren Werke! They were smoother, more reliable, fewer problems, but they were more expensive. The opposed-cylinder configuration in that airhead layout is a little bit off-putting to American riders. They're used to the inline v-twins, or Japanese motorcycles' vertical cylinders. Then they see these things sticking out: "What are those?" Then you ride one and you realize, "This is very efficient." I didn't realize until I was older how good they were. I went out and started getting them again.

I had an off-road BMW, an R100GS. It was a 1000cc. It's heavy! I drove a power line road in the woods. Nobody was around. I'm tearing it up and then I dropped the bike. You can't pick that bike up in the woods by yourself! BMWs are so well thought out, so well engineered. I just wish I were taller.

Unless they were in an accident, a BMW pretty much lasts a lot of miles. I'm not familiar with the K models. I started to lose interest in the newer bikes around the late '80s. Once in a while they'll come out with a retro model, but I'm waiting for BMW, please, to make a retro-style bike.

They have the greatest reputation. You talk to riders and they all talk respectively about BMW, but they don't buy them because they don't like the way they're styled. I think they're missing a huge market that wants a retro-looking motorcycle.

Tell us about the BMWs you ride.

1979 R65: This is my daily rider. It's pretty much a stock bike I bought used. It's got an an extra set of small illuminating lights on the down tubes on the front of the frame, and it's got hand warmers on it! Last winter, I was riding it and I hit the switch: "What does this do?" I'm riding along and my hands started getting hot! I said, "Oh, that's what this is," and it's great. I've grown to appreciate the lighter-displacement motorcycles. Maybe their demographic market was a little bit older than other motorcycles, because it was all about how they are well engineered, smooth, reliable, and how well they handled.

"Frankenbike": I wanted a bike that looked like what they call a "Wehrmachtsgespann." The motorcycle has a Russian sidecar, which looks exactly like the old-style sidecars they used in the Second World War. The bike is actually a combination of a '50s frame, a '60s tank and a '70s motor. It's a whole bunch of bikes put together to look like a World War II Luftwaffe military bike. It's a fun bike because I can take Sabrina, my little pug, out in the sidecar. She loves it.

1973R60/5: We did a little custom work and made it kind of a street rod. Not a complete café racer, but I wanted to modify a standard R60/5 and make it more of a sporty rod. I like the combination of a café racer and bobber.

1977 R100RS: I always like the R100RS. I had one, sold it in the early '80s, and kicked myself for selling it! I found this one on Craigslist. There's a high seat on the bike, though. I'm short, 5' 7", and I like to be able to put my feet flat, especially when I'm riding with a passenger. The BMWs are built with very high seats. Most of them are 30-plus inches and it can be difficult. A lot of Harley's success is because they're so low.

I understand why they have the height. They want the clearance to be able to lean the bike. That's a good idea for engineering, but for shorter people...(he adds in a German accent:) "You little people are just shit out of luck!"