While our nation's history is documented in various ways, one resource that I keep as my own personal history book is music. You can pick any artist and their music catalog and in it you will no doubt find songs that are inspired by history. Singer/songwriter and pianist Billy Joel has written some of the most powerful and inspiring songs in a career that began in the '60s. He has accumulated multiple honors, including Grammy, People's Choice and American Music awards, numerous honorary doctorates, inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Songwriters Hall of Fame and Long Island Music Hall of Fame - just to name a few. This native New Yorker has created some of the greatest music in rock and roll history, including some of my favorites about history:

"Allentown": "Well we're living here in Allentown/And they're closing all the factories down./Out in Bethlehem they're killing time./Filling out forms, standing in line./Well, our fathers fought the Second World War,/Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore,/Met our mothers at the USO,/Asked them to dance, danced with them slow./And we're living here in Allentown." This song appeared on "The Nylon Curtain" album and captures the frustration and sad demise of the manufacturing industry in America. It's a grim reminder of the manufacturing strength that America once held.

"Christmas In Fallujah": Songs about war are never easy and this one always brings sadness to me when I hear it. However, I feel it is an important one because I can't imagine spending Christmas away from loved ones so far away, and our military men and women have done it for many wars. It's a reminder to me of how fortunate we are to have our nation's military members, who volunteer to serve and sacrifice anytime, anywhere. "It's evening in the desert,/I'm tired and I'm cold./But I am just a soldier;/I do what I am told./We came with the crusaders to save the holy land./It's Christmas in Fallujah and no one gives a damn."

"Goodnight Saigon": This song holds a special place in my heart and makes me cry every time I hear it. The sound effects of the helicopter blades add a unique touch that conveys the message of the song, which is dedicated to Vietnam veterans. The Vietnam War was a divisive, complicated war that remains an open wound to those who lived it, those who fought in it, those who lost loved ones to it and those who lived in this country during that time. "We met as soul mates on Parris Island./We left as inmates from an asylum./And we were sharp, as sharp as knives,/And we were so gung ho to lay down our lives./We came in spastic like tameless horses./We left in plastic as numbered corpses./And we learned fast to travel light./Our arms were heavy but our bellies were tight."

"New York State of Mind": This song captures the feeling of New York and is symbolic of Billy Joel's love for his native city. It also is a remembrance to me of the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. I'll always remember Billy singing the song at the special concert held in New York after that fateful day. "Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood,/Hop a flight to Miami Beach, or to Hollywood./But I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River Line./I'm in a New York state of mind."

"We Didn't Start The Fire": This song's lyrics tell of historical events, people and places. It appeared on his album "Storm Front," and simply said, this song is a history lesson. I can't speak for Billy Joel's meaning, but I assume the song refers to all these events and the tragic problems that were inherited by generations that came after. My favorite part is the chorus, which says, "We didn't start the fire./It was always burning since the world's been turning./We didn't start the fire./No we didn't light it but we tried to fight it."

I would like to dedicate this to Billy Joel and all the history teachers and writers out there. They are the keepers of where we have been and where we are going and have tirelessly preserved it. Keep history alive in our schools. Our history, for better or worse, is a reflection of us and we must never forget it.

Nearly 20 years after the American star's last album, Terry Staunton investigates the unofficial retirement of one of the world's biggest selling musicians and asks whether he could ever be tempted back into the charts.

When your last album sold seven million copies worldwide you are clearly at the top of your game with an enormous fanbase eagerly waiting to hear what you will do next. For Billy Joel fans, it's been a long, long wait.

Since the release of "River of Dreams" in 1993 Joel has premiered just one original song. "Christmas In Fallujah" was a stand-alone 2007 single to raise money for the families of American troops in Iraq, an isolated blip on an otherwise inactive radar screen.

So where has he been for 19 years? Certainly nowhere near a recording studio for any length of time, although he has been intermittently sighted reminding us of his past glories on the concert stage, often on co-headlining tours with his friend Sir Elton John. There should have been more live shows, according to Sir Elton, whose remarks in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine last year offered a clue to the reasons behind Joel's creative drought. "He's coasting," Sir Elton suggested. "I always say, 'Billy, can't you write another song?' It's either fear or laziness and it upsets me. Billy's a conundrum. We've had so many cancelled tours because of illnesses and various other things."

Stories of Joel's addictions, battles with depression and sundry inner demons pepper his career and he has had a tendency to turn them into punchlines. When asked why, in his pre-fame days, he attempted suicide by drinking furniture polish his off-hand reply was: "It looked tastier than bleach."

However, rumors of his ongoing struggles continue to gain momentum. The most recent of his "Face 2 Face" Tours with Sir Elton, booked for the summer of 2010, was canceled without explanation and last year Joel had to return a $3 million advance after pulling out of a deal to write his autobiography (working title: "The Book of Joel: A Memoir"), telling the press he no longer had any interest in dwelling on the past.

Yet it's Joel's past and his Long Island upbringing that has informed so much celebrated music and established the singer's everyman credentials. He has rarely enjoyed the level of critical acclaim afforded his contemporary and East Coast neighbor Bruce Springsteen (both were born in 1949) but they share an articulate blue-collar sensibility.

While the fanciful and only partially inaccurate shorthand has "The Boss" surveying his people and surroundings from beneath the hood of a car, engine oil under his fingernails, Joel was fashioning his own vignettes to Ordinary Joes and Janes sat in front of a piano in a suit jacket and tie.

Springsteen has a new album out in March, his sixth since Joel had anything substantial to take to market, and early indications suggest he's still addressing the concerns of the man on the street. In the meantime, Billy only raises his head above the parapet to remind us of what he did back in the day.

The breakthrough 1973 hit "Piano Man" set the template, eavesdropping on characters in a neighborhood bar. However, Joel's most distinctive "voice of the people" statement was the 1977 album "The Stranger," featuring the likes of "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "Only The Good Die Young," and the epic "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" which resonated with New York baby boomers in particular, but struck resounding chords across the world.

The record was music giant Sony's biggest seller in history until it was dislodged by Michael Jackson's "Thriller" which was released in 1982.

Time and again Joel produced eloquent songs with which his audience could identify; pocket-sized portraits mirroring their own lives and experiences.

Arguably, his greatest triumph was 1983's unashamedly nostalgic "An Innocent Man," an irrefutably autobiographical album borrowing musical motifs from the sounds of his youth, spearheaded by "Uptown Girl," a note-perfect homage to The Four Seasons.

"Uptown Girl" is also remembered for its iconic promotional video, Billy casting himself in the role of the hard-working wrong-side-of-the-tracks grease monkey who actually does get the girl of his dreams in the last verse, the girl being supermodel Christie Brinkley.

Popular myth maintains that Brinkley was the sole inspiration for the song but Joel himself says he started writing it when he was dating another supermodel, Elle Macpherson.

Joel and Brinkley married in 1985, by which time the couple's largely unwanted immersion into celebrity culture was threatening to overshadow his music. A typical gag for talk show hosts of the time suggested Joel's naturally bug-eyed expression was the result of waking up each morning and not believing he had bagged one of the most beautiful women in the world.

Inevitably, Billy and Christie attracted media attention wherever they went, most dramatically when Brinkley survived a helicopter crash on a skiing holiday in 1994. The fact that Joel wasn't on board because the couple were holidaying separately fueled rumors about the state of their marriage and the couple divorced a few months later.

Joel married for a third time in 2004 to a 23 year-old TV journalist 32 years his junior, but they split five years later amid accusations that she was having an affair while the singer was undergoing another bout of rehab.

Away from the fallout of Joel's domestic woes, local papers near his Long Island home reported the occasional fender-bending car crash, much like George Michael's mishaps in North London, the subtext writing itself.

It's perhaps not surprising that Joel's private life provided fodder for the gossip pages when his musical inactivity meant there was little else to write about.

When I last spoke to him in 1998 there were already question marks over his career, a mere five years after "River of Dreams." He was promoting the first in a long line of memory-jogging greatest hits collections, but he shrugged his shoulders about what the future might hold. New music wasn't on his to-do list.

He had been on the lecture circuit, telling young hopefuls about not getting paid as a 15 year-old for playing piano on "The Shangri-Las'" death pop classic "Leader of The Pack," about the dubious business deals of the late '70s where he had lost millions, his battles with drink and depression and the perils of unwelcome celebrity.

"I went out to colleges as a kind of careers counselor," he told me, "trying to help people avoid the many pitfalls that are out there. I'm probably a good teacher because I've made every mistake you could possibly make in one career but I survived to tell the tale."

However, that was some time ago and his subsequent survival has been punctuated by more pitfalls and personal disappointments, Joel seemingly still fighting the demons that have kept him from adding to his body of work.

Speaking last year to American journalist and close friend Steve Morse for the promotional material of yet another back pages reissue campaign, Joel was again asked if he has any more music to make.

"I'm not going to say absolutely not," he replied. "Something may pop into my head and I'll get the bug and want to do it. Sitting here today, do I feel like doing that? No.

However, I guess I've learned to not close the door on anything. If I get a good idea, I'm certainly not going to stop myself from doing it."

If he's not stopping himself from doing it, something is. After 19 years out of the spotlight, Billy Joel's door remains firmly closed.