Billy and the Joels--The American rock star and his German family story

by Steffen Radlmaier

  Still, this artist-idyll under the motto of Love & Peace didn’t last too long. Although they had tried hard to resist it, Billy Joel and Elizabeth Weber had fallen in love with one another. An awkward situation that Jon Small – himself considered to be a ladies’ man – took very calmly, whilst Billy found himself in an insolvable dilemma and problem of conscience. He was in love with the wife of his best friend and was in the process of ruining their marriage.

  Elizabeth Weber, two years older than Billy, loved music, was ambitious, energetic and, besides running the house, was getting a college education. She believed in Billy and supported him in whatever way she could.

  Things started to pick up for the musician, and although he seemed to have left his personal crisis behind him, he had money problems and was enmeshed in a passionate love affair. For a while, Billy saw his future in songwriting, penning songs for famous colleagues. However, his manager Irwin Mazur talked him into trying his luck as a singer-songwriter, something that seemed to be increasing in popularity. Bob Dylan had set the precedent and started an avalanche: singer-songwriters were the new poets, they spoke and sang the language of the young. The Beatles, who had influenced a whole generation with their original sound, finally split in 1970, each going his own way as a solo artist. An era had come to an end. New bands emerged, as did solo artists such as Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, Leonhard Cohen and Neil Young – the poets of the rock generation. And a small, eccentric Englishman named Elton John was enjoying his first taste of success. He too played piano and, as coincidence would have it, is usually to be found listed next to Billy Joel in rock music lexicons.

  Irwin Mazur managed to land a record deal with Paramount Records. Billy was happy to get this new chance and didn’t think twice about signing what would turn out to be a fateful contract with Artie Ripp. Completely naïve and inexperienced when it came to business matters, he fell into a trap from which it would take him years to free himself. According to the contract, Billy had to transfer most of his intellectual property rights to Artie Ripp, who then earned hefty royalties on every record Billy sold.

  Looking back, Billy said: “I was only 20, and it’s so easy to take advantage of musicians. I didn’t know what was going on…I didn’t know anything about publishing or monies that were owed to me.”63

  A huge number of rock musicians signed adhesion contracts at that time, simultaneously sealing their own misfortune.

  Billy was just happy to have a deal at all and the accompanying change of status that went with it “When you sign a record contract, you go through this change, because as soon as you put your name on the paper, you’re an ‘artist’. The record contract says ‘Billy Joel, herein referred to as The Artist’, and automatically you become an artist just by signing.”64

  But it brought about a lot of other changes in the life of the 22-year-old. In the early summer of 1971 he, Elizabeth and her son Sean went west to Los Angeles to record his first solo album, in which he was putting all his hopes. He had written all the songs himself, and recorded them live at the piano. He even wrote the ironic press release for “Cold Spring Harbor” – named after a small hamlet on Long Island57:

  “Dear Whomever:

  After reading the biography the record company has written about me, I have decided that unless I write this myself, you’re going to get a lot of jive superlatives and dull ‘hep-cat’ talk…I recorded an album with some incredible people: Larry Knechtel, Rhys Clark, Denny Siewell, (sic) Sneaky Pete. I call it Cold Spring Harbor because – well you figure it out…

  Right now I’m living in a beautiful little hamlet called Oyster Bay on the North Shore of Long Island. We do a lot of fishing there. And an unhealthy amount of drinking. But then, that’s my idea of the good life.

  The record company gave me a piano so I’m writing a lot of new things. As you know, they’d like to present me as a dynamic electric personality. Well, on-stage I get it on pretty well, but otherwise I’m about as sparkling as warm beer.

  I hope you like the album, but if you’re not crazy about it, it makes a great Frisbee.

  Love

  Billy Joel”

  The album encapsulated his experiences as an adolescent in the no-man’s-land between the city and the countryside; it told of a small world and big feelings. This was a young poet singing about love and the frustrations of life in the anonymous exurbs of American cities. And he transformed his personal problems, aspirations and doubts into songs that were universal. Even at that time, his diverse musical influences and role models are evident in the album’s eclectic style. A style he continuously perfected and that was eventually to become his trademark.

  As if in self-admonishment, the song “Everybody Loves You Now” deals with the transient fame of a rock star and the fickleness of the public. However, instead of the big breakthrough, Billy Joel once more experienced a severe disappointment: through a technical error, the album was mastered at the wrong speed, causing Billy’s voice to sound unnaturally high and giving it an unwanted Mickey Mouse effect.

  Upon hearing the record for the first time, Billy is said to have ripped it off the turntable and thrown it down the street. No wonder: he’d put all his hopes and talent into the album. And now this! He sensed that the reaction to his début album was going to be appropriately negative. And “Cold Spring Harbor” did indeed prove to be another flop. The album was rarely played on the radio, could seldom be found in record stores and sold correspondingly badly.

  Despite this disaster, Irwin Mazur and Artie Ripp remained convinced of the musical potential of their protégé. The record company put Billy Joel and his band on tour so that he could prove his ability live on stage. The U.S. tour lasted six months, with gigs in small clubs and colleges, sometimes opening for bands like Badfinger and the Doobie Brothers. Now fronting the band and standing in the spotlight, Billy made the most of his chance, playing only his very best songs and often upstaging the headliners.

  Musically, things developed well, but the tour was a financial fiasco. Billy and the band worked their hearts out but received only pocket money, even though tickets sold well. If they complained they were told it was a promotion tour from which they couldn’t expect to make money.

  But even this tour held at least a few surprises: in early 1972, Billy Joel played what was up until then his biggest ever concert in front of a crowd of 30,000 at the “Mar Y Sol Festival” in Puerto Rico. This three-day open-air festival was intended to be a kind of Caribbean Woodstock, with a colorful mix of artists on the bill. The line-up included such diverse artists as Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Alice Cooper, and jazz-greats like Herbie Hancock and Dave Brubeck, whom Billy had admired for a long time. The two pianists met up in Puerto Rico. But the young admirer was too excited to hold a normal conversation. Nevertheless, the festival turned out to be a lucky break for Joel: he won over the crowd with a captivating imitation of Joe Cocker and the band impressed with their energized set. The music critic of the New York Times was also sold on Billy’s performance and found words of praise for the newcomer from Long Island in his report of the festival.

  Not long after, on April 15, 1972, Billy was invited to a live radio show in Philadelphia. He performed a couple of songs from “Cold Spring Harbor” before presenting a new number entitled “Captain Jack”, which told of the causes and consequences of drug abuse. This was a very hot topic at the time, something that touched the singer personally as some of his friends and acquaintances had been victims of drug abuse. This live performance of “Captain Jack” hit the nerve of young listeners, many of whom recognized themselves in the song. In any case, the small WMMR radio station received so many requests for the song that it started to get noticed in New York.

  Reunion

  Throughout all these years, Billy never had any contact with his father, who had returned to Europe after his marriage had failed. Helmut Joel w
as uprooted in a number of ways. He still worked in various capacities for the American giant General Electric and led an unsettled life, having to travel extensively for the company. At the beginning his work involved setting up television networks in different countries; after that he was involved in the sales of washing machines and the construction of power stations in communist Eastern Europe, often dealing with government representatives. Between 1964 and 1966, he enjoyed a brief settled spell in Geneva. He also spent work-related periods in Paris, Amsterdam, Bad Homburg, Vienna, London and Divonne-les-Bains, near Geneva.

  While on a business trip to New York in 1966, he met and fell in love with a young English woman who was working on Wall Street as a secretary. Audrey Garrick was born in Blackheath in Surrey near London in 1938. She can trace her ancestors back to the famous actor and playwright David Garrick (1717–1779). Like Helmut, she too didn’t really feel at home in the USA and returned with him to Europe.

  They married in England in 1968 and went to live in France. They experienced the fateful year 1968 (the year in which the ‘Joel file’ was finally closed in Nuremberg) in Paris, as student protests, demonstrations and street riots were at boiling point and the city was in a state of emergency. A general strike had brought the whole country to a standstill. The new buzz-phrase was: ‘power to the imagination.’ The reason for this unrest was increasing discontent among the young people with the political situation in France. And this was also very much influenced by what was going on in the USA: The hippie movement was revolutionizing music, fashion and sexual behavior, and worldwide protests against the war in Vietnam were leading to political radicalization.

  Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom witnessed the charged atmosphere in Paris in May 1968, reporting: “It’s happening here, it’s happening in New York, in Berlin, in Belgrade. It’s not something that one can simply brush aside or conveniently wipe away. It’s also not something that will somehow ‘go wrong.’ On the other hand, it’s nothing to be afraid of. Some French people think de Gaulle is being clever by letting the students in the Sorbonne, the Odéon and throughout the whole country stew in their own juices, as they call it. But there’s nothing stewing here, it’s boiling. It’s impossible to say how it’s going to end, but it’s never going to be the same as it once was.”58

  An era really did come to an end in France: General de Gaulle resigned from the presidency in 1969; he died one year later at the age of 80. It was the time when Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin caused a scandal with their steamy love song “Je t’aime … moi non plus”. The May of 1969 brought the spark for extensive reforms, and not only in the universities. The Marx and Coca-Cola generation hadn’t exactly started a revolution, but they had given the bourgeoisie something to think about. And many thought at the time that they could change the world through pop music.

  Helmut Joel, whose rebel-aged son was way off in the USA, wasn’t really affected by all this generational conflict, which was causing such a rift among many families at the time. He was a busy man and often away on business – and he was to be a father again.

  Helmut and Audrey’s son Charles Alexander was born on August 5, 1971 in London (due to the better health care there). The parents also wanted their child to be a British citizen. The English first name Charles was in honor of Grandfather Karl. Grandmother Meta Joel died of cancer in Nuremberg not long after the birth of her new grandson.

  One year later – Helmut and Audrey had just moved from Paris to Amsterdam – Helmut Joel returned home all worked up: “Do you know who called me today? You’ll never guess!” “I think I know: Billy”, answered his wife without really thinking. “My boy Billy!” How often had she heard her husband say those words!

  Billy was on his first tour of Europe, organized by the Phonogram record label, and he used the chance to look for his family roots and to track down his father. Europe meant something very special for the young American musician: this was the home of his grandparents; this was where classical music had its origins.

  Helped by a Phonogram employee, they’d phoned round various branches of General Electric and were eventually successful, as Billy explained: “In 1972, I did a European tour and I was trying to track him down. All I knew was there was a Howard Joel who worked for General Electric. Just as I was leaving to go back to the States from Milan, I got a telegram: ‘Urgent, we’ve reached your father!’ My heart’s pounding. I flew back to the United States and it was like a movie, really dramatic. The strings would have come in then.”59

  Billy had longed for his father for years, and he’d idealized him in his mind. Helmut knew very little about his son and was taken completely by surprise by the phone call. To Billy’s amazement, he discovered he now had a half-brother. There was no time for long explanations on the phone, but at the end of the conversation, Billy invited his father to visit him in the USA: “We had moved to California and he was coming in to LAX. He got off the plane. I knew immediately it was him. For all he knew, I had been killed in Vietnam or I was a drug addict. We had the same eyes. But he didn’t have any hair. Liberty, the comedian in our group, called me ‘Herr Joel’ and him ‘No-Hair Joel’. My father just looked at him and said, ‘Fuck you.’ Anyway, it was awkward for a while. We just kind of sat. We didn’t know what to talk about. So he came to my house. This was around the time of “Piano Man”. I wasn’t making a lot of money, but I was doing all right. So, basically, it turned out that this guy who I was fantasizing about all my life was a nice man. It’s been fine since then.”60

  Helmut also stressed that his relationship with his oldest son was quite normal. However, that wasn’t quite the truth. Father and son not only looked very similar, they also shared the same black humor and a love of music, but the relationship between the two remained tense. They called regularly, and met up every few years when Billy was touring Europe, but never really got close to one another again.

  Billy found it impossible to get over losing his father; the trauma of his parents’ separation had left deep scars. Feelings of abandonment and loneliness tormented him for a long while – at the same time feeding his musical expressiveness.

  A child of divorce, Billy always had a problem with male figures of authority and, despite his jovial nature, he kept people at a distance. At the same time an insatiable longing for love and affection burned inside of him. He is considered a real family man who likes to be among his small circle of long-time friends. Both family and friends keep him grounded in the fast-paced, superficial world of show business – he has difficulty transferring the self-confidence he displays as a musician into his private persona. Even as a superstar, Billy always longed for the recognition of his father, who also would have liked to become a musician, and who wasn’t particularly impressed by the fame and riches of his rock star son.

  One particular anecdote reveals a lot about the relationship between father and son. It revolves around Billy Joel’s beautiful hit song “Just the Way You Are”, which for years has been played at weddings, in hotel bars – even in elevators and supermarkets. When Billy rhapsodized about his success and all that came with it, Helmut Joel brought him back down to earth in a rather abrupt manner: “You’ve written better songs.” Even if Helmut was right about that, Billy was understandably hurt and belittled by the remark.

  “Affability has never been one of my best characteristics”, explained Helmut, who very much liked to play the part of the old Viennese curmudgeon. Like his father before him, he remained an uncommunicative person, who would rather suppress problems than talk about them. And Billy is also someone who prefers to avoid conflict instead of looking for a solution through dialogue. And that’s the reason why the thing they most needed to talk about remained – like so much between them – unvoiced. “Billy never asked me why I left”, Helmut once said in a moment of regret. “I would have tried to explain it all to him.”

  The Piano Man in Los Angeles

  Billy Joel spent six months on
tour to promote his début album “Cold Spring Harbor”. Feedback from both public and press was mostly positive. The up-and-coming singer-songwriter slotted perfectly into the music scene of the 70s, and all those concerts helped him perfect his stage performance. However, the big breakthrough still didn’t happen. In 1972, after months of very hard work, Billy Joel was frustrated to discover that he had earned hardly any money. His record label had financial problems, meaning payments from Artie Ripp to Irwin Mazur and Billy had stopped. It couldn’t go on this way.

  While Ripp attempted to terminate the once sought-after record contract, Mazur and Billy put their hopes in a new beginning in Los Angeles. Not only was the weather better and life more easy-going in California, they would also be in the heartland of the entertainment industry and nearer to the people who had got them into the mess in the first place.

  Ripp found cheap apartments on Santa Monica Boulevard for Mazur and his family, as well as for Billy, Elizabeth and Sean. It was better than nothing.

  But the money problems were still there. Billy had to think of something to stop it all going down the pan. He decided he wasn’t going to rely on cheap promises, but go out and get a job. And it had to be something to do with music – anything else was out of the question. So now it was less a case of artistic fulfillment and more about providing a service – and Billy Joel became ‘William Martin’. This was the alias he used in 1972 when he began working as a nightclub pianist in the ‘Executive Room’, Wilshine Boulevard. The ‘Piano Man’ was born.

  He was responsible for the background music in the bar, and played requests for the guests: standards, pop songs, classical pieces, traditionals, rock and roll, jazz – whatever people wanted to hear. His captivating imitations of famous singers were particularly popular. It was a hard time, but a good schooling. William Martin, alias Billy Joel, was more or less forced to learn how to play an audience, because that was what kept the money coming in. He was earning 225 dollars a week plus tips. It also gave him the chance to study the bar’s characters, whom he later worked into his first hit song “Piano Man”. Elizabeth, who was also working in the Executive Lounge as a waitress, features as one of the characters in the song.