"Stingy!"

Turned out Joel and Sting are friendly acquaintances. So for the next few minutes, Joel suggested cryptic messages to pass on to Sting as a joke.

Maybe something about his Manhattan apartment? No, Joel decided, that would seem like stalking.

Finally, he settled on a premise. When Sting rented a nearby house on Long Island, NY, Joel bought an upright bass so, he said in an exaggerated hipster accent, they "could jam, man." But the jam sessions hadn't materialized.

"So," Joel concluded, "tell Sting that Billy wants to know what to do with the bass."

Alas, I was not summoned to Stingy's dressing room at the Saenger Theater that night, and so failed in my mission.

But Joel had cemented his reputation as the most unpretentious of superstars. Eight years later, he still is. Calling from his Long Island home last week, he was every bit as engaging and unguarded, even without a prank to plan.

Aside from a few high-profile setbacks - rehab, car crashes, a tough National Anthem experience at the Super Bowl - the past decade has been good for Joel, now 57. He has watched proudly as Alexa Ray Joel, his 21 year-old daughter with ex-wife Christie Brinkley, launched a music career of her own. In 2004, he married former "Top Chef" host Katie Lee Joel, who is 31 years his junior. In February, Columbia Records released "All My Life," Joel's first new pop song in 14 years which he wrote as an anniversary present for his wife.

And he continues to do big business on the road. Tonight he's at New Orleans Arena; tickets are still available.

He discussed a wide range of subjects during a rollicking 40-minute interview.

Question: Whatever happened to that upright bass?

Answer: It's sitting in my music room in my house in Long Island. It was used about twice, I think. But it's nice decor.

Question: So you and Sting never got to jam?

Answer: Oh, no, we played. I don't think you'd call it jamming. We both like classic songs. We played some Cole Porter and Richard Rogers and Johnny Mercer stuff one night, a la jazz treatment. That was it.

Question: Your daughter Alexa is performing at the upcoming New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Answer: She's very excited. It's very early in her career to do something like this. I recall a gig that I did at a festival back in '71 or '72 called the Mar y Sol Festival. There was a lot of jazz artists there. I met Dave Brubeck; I was really impressed. It ended up being a very good thing for us; it put a spike in the career at that early stage. Alexa is now in a situation where she might get noticed by a lot of people in a real music town.

Question: Given all you've been through, have you given Alexa career advice?

Answer: When she asks. She's 21, and to have a stage father at this point in her life isn't necessarily the best thing. I'm just amazed that she seeks my advice at all. She knows I've made just about every mistake you can make in the music business and survived to tell the tale. So if I can help her avoid making those same mistakes, I do my best.

Question: Conventional wisdom says you have a daughter with Christie Brinkley, you hope she favors the mother. But she recalls you, and she's grown into a lovely young woman.

Answer: Well, thank God she still got some of her mom's looks. For a guy, it was tough looking like me. For a girl, it would be a nightmare.

She's quite poised. She has a great sense of personal style. I don't worry about her career or her future because she's got the talent. Sometimes she'll go onstage and I'll be nervous, then I'll hear the first couple notes and start laughing. What was I worried about? She's a natural.

Question: In "The Entertainer," you sing "Today I am your champion, I may have won your hearts/But I knew the game, you'll forget my name/I won't be here in another year if I don't stay on the charts." Yet you've still managed to fill arenas without new material.

Answer: I think about that when I sing that song. It's ironic to me. I am still here, and it's been years since I've been on a chart.

That song wasn't necessarily autobiographical. I wrote that when I was living in LA in '74 or '75. They used to have these dopey TV shows like "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" or "The Midnight Special" with Wolfman Jack. I remember watching these shows and thinking I'll never see some of those bands again. That was why I wrote the song, as a sarcastic jibe at the entertainment industry.

TV has always treated popular music very shabbily. I've never trusted television, as witnessed by "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl. We rehearsed it, and they kept wanting me to pre-tape it. I said, "No, I'll step up to the bat and do it. Don't worry, that's my job. You just give me my monitors so I can hear myself and we'll do it."

Sure enough, game time starts, they yell "Go!" and there's no monitors. I couldn't hear myself. So you're trying to sing and you have to wait for the echo to reverberate from the stadium walls before you can even know what key you're in. Then you're watching the stopwatch and it's raining and your fingers are slipping off the piano, and you're waiting for the jet fly-over. . . . I'm not excusing a bad performance. It might have been crappy - I didn't really hear it.

That's a perfect example of how TV treats music.

Question: "All My Life" is your first new pop song since 1993's "River of Dreams." Were you writing pop songs and deciding they sucked, or were you not writing them at all?

Answer: Well, probably a combination. It's not that I shut myself off from writing (pop) songs. I just kind of got tired of doing that. I started writing instrumental music, piano music, orchestral music, because that's what was really intriguing me. That's where the muse took me.

Question: Once you are successful, and comfortable, it seems harder to maintain an edge for writing new material.

Answer: I've never had a problem composing music. There are certain aspects of being a recording artist that I could live without; the whole rock star machinery is sometimes a pain in the ass. But writing has never been a problem. I've never really felt the pressure to deliver hits. The fact that I've had that many is pure serendipity. I have to credit the record company. I wouldn't know a hit single if it bit me in the ass.

Question: You don't have a sense, when you write a melody, that it will do well?

Answer: No. I've sometimes had hit records that I considered novelty records. "Piano Man" is a waltz; I never would have thought that would be a hit single. "Uptown Girl" was an homage to the Four Seasons; I was trying to sing like Frankie Valli. We almost didn't put "Just the Way You Are" on the album; we thought it was a "chick song." Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow talked me into putting it on the album; they said, "Girls are going to love that song."

I've been accused of being a hit-making machine. But that was never my modus operandi.

Question: Yet you came up with enough to fill three greatest-hits collections.

Answer: Those greatest-hits albums are Columbia's ideas. At this point, there are so many compilations, it's embarrassing: "The Ultimate Billy Joel." "The Essential Billy Joel." "Really and Truly the Very Best of Billy Joel." "Greatest Hits Vol. I and II." "Greatest Hits, Vol. III." "Live Compilation." "This Time, We Really Mean Good Stuff By Billy Joel."

But they're the record company, they have the right to compile the stuff any way they want. I haven't given them anything (new) for 13 years. They've got to make meat out of something. They've got to make a sausage.

Question: You and Columbia followed a very contemporary model to release "All My Life" as a download only.

Answer: I'll be interested to see what happens. I don't even know what radio format that kind of song would get played on. I'm kind of a staple of "lite FM" or "soft rock." This is like "soft, soft, lite, lite, non-dairy, sugar-free lite, lite." It's about as lite as it gets.

Question: Have you ever thought about doing stripped-down shows like Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young? Just you and the piano, in old downtown theaters instead of sports arenas?

Answer: That's been suggested. Problem is...only certain songs would work. I don't think anybody would want to get up and rock out to "You May Be Right" with just a piano. You need to have some drums kicking. "And So It Goes" or "New York State of Mind" - sure, that would work in a cabaret setting. But that's not solely the essence of the catalog. I write all over the place, and I would hate to try to represent my music in one dimension.

Question: At the New Orleans Arena in 1999 and 2001, you sampled the same four songs associated with New Orleans: Fats Domino's "Walking to New Orleans," the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun," Hank Williams' "Jambalaya" and Mountain's "Mississippi Queen." Which is cool,...but maybe you can mix it up a little this time.

Answer: I just thought of two other ones that I didn't do. I've got to write this down. (Joel hums melodies to himself). I don't know what the name of the damn song is, but I know how it goes.

Question: What has Fats Domino meant to you?

Answer: To be a piano player in rock and roll...everybody owes a debt of gratitude to Fats Domino. He was the pioneer of piano rock. He predates Jerry Lee Lewis. I was honored to be asked to induct Fats into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and wrote a whole tribute. He's the real deal.

Question: Did you buy his singles as a kid?

Answer: I was too young. But my older sister did. I remember hearing it when I was really young, even before Elvis Presley. I was taking piano lessons. The only time I remember my old man hitting me was when I was jamming on the "Moonlight Sonata" in the style of Fats Domino, like a New Orleans cakewalk. My old man came downstairs and whacked me in the head. My first thought was, "Wow, I got him to listen." Then my second thought was, "Man, this stuff is powerful."

Question: And apparently a sacrilege in the Joel household.

Answer: Yeah, but sometimes sacrilege is good. It shakes things up.

Question: As in "Only The Good Die Young."

Answer: And I'm living proof of that. I'm old now.

Question: You had a bit of a rough patch, with car crashes and rehab. It was like a mid-life crisis, but that's redundant: Rock stars live a mid-life crisis.

Answer: Oh, it's de rigeur. It's mandatory. Everybody's got to go to rehab. It's like having your teeth cleaned, except they do it through your ears. We call it mental floss.

I think it's been a little over-exaggerated. Yeah, I had three car accidents in two years, but none of them were alcohol-related. It was just a run of bad luck.

It happened to tie in to a time when I was drinking to excess, but hell, I've been drinking all my life. I suppose I just over-indulged. Some people assumed that I was going onstage intoxicated. That may have happened once or twice in my entire life. I consider myself too much of a professional to do that.

A lot of people defined the last few years of my life in that way, and that's really not the story of my life. It's just part of it. Nobody's life is 100 percent roses and candy all the time.

Question: What's the attraction of the Napoleon House for you?

Answer: The first time I went there, I was instantly transported to another time. Whether you're drinking or not, you can feel the history. I related to New Orleans not just for the music, but the history. I'm a history nut. I appreciate all the architectural and atmospheric aspects of a city like New Orleans.

Question: Have you been here since Hurricane Katrina?

Answer: No, I have not.... I did what I could as a private citizen. And they had a tribute concert here in New York.

Question: From the "Big Apple" to the "Big Easy?"

Answer: That was my name - I came up with that idea. But I didn't have a band together at the time, so there was no way I could perform.

Question: That was the perfect opportunity for you to do a few songs alone with the piano.

Answer: At Madison Square Garden? I don't think so. That would be like following The Who with an acoustic guitar. That would be like singing the national anthem again. That's a recipe for disaster.

Question: I look forward to the new New Orleans references you'll surprise us with.

Answer: Oh, I'll think of something. Don't you worry.