William Martin Joel (; born May 9, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Nicknamed the "Piano Man", after his 1973 signature song of the same name, Joel has had a successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s. From 1971 to 1993, he released 12 entirely self-written studio albums spanning the genres of pop and rock, and in 2001 released a one-off studio album of classical compositions. With over 160 million records sold worldwide, Joel is one of the world's best-selling music artists and is the fourth-best-selling solo artist in the United States. His 1985 compilation album, Greatest Hits – Volume I & Volume II, is one of the best-selling albums in the U.S.
Joel was born in the Bronx in New York City and grew up in the Levittown portion of Hicksville on Long Island, where he began taking piano lessons at his mother's insistence. After dropping out of high school to pursue a music career, Joel took part in two short-lived bands, the Hassles and Attila, before signing a record deal with Family Productions and embarking on a solo career with his debut album, Cold Spring Harbor (1971). In 1972, Joel caught the attention of Columbia Records after a live radio performance of "Captain Jack" became popular in Philadelphia, prompting him to sign a new record deal with the company, through which he released his second album, Piano Man (1973). After Streetlife Serenade (1974) and Turnstiles (1976), Joel achieved his critical and commercial breakthrough with The Stranger (1977). It became Columbia's best-selling release, selling over 10 million copies and spawning the hit singles "Just the Way You Are", "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)", "Only the Good Die Young", and "She's Always a Woman", as well as the concert staples "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" and "Vienna".
Joel's 52nd Street (1978) was his first album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Glass Houses (1980) was an attempt to further establish him as a rock artist; it featured "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" (Joel's first single to top the Billboard Hot 100), "You May Be Right", "Don't Ask Me Why", and "Sometimes a Fantasy". The Nylon Curtain (1982) stemmed from a desire to create more lyrically and melodically ambitious music. An Innocent Man (1983) served as an homage to genres of music that Joel had grown up with in the 1950s, such as rhythm and blues and doo-wop; it featured "Tell Her About It", "Uptown Girl", and "The Longest Time", three of his best-known songs. He also released studio albums 'The Bridge' (1986) and 'Storm Front' (1989). After River of Dreams (1993), Joel largely retired from producing studio material, although he went on to release Fantasies & Delusions (2001), featuring classical compositions composed by him and performed by British-Korean pianist Richard Hyung-ki Joo. Joel provided voiceover work in 1988 for the Disney animated film Oliver & Company, performing the song "Why Should I Worry?", and contributed to the soundtracks to several films, including Easy Money (1983), Ruthless People (1986), A League of Their Own, and Honeymoon in Vegas (both 1992). Joel returned to composing new music with the 2024 single "Turn the Lights Back On".
Joel has had a successful touring career, holding live performances across the globe. In 1987, he became one of the first Western artists to hold a rock tour in the Soviet Union. Joel has had thirty-three Top 40 hits in the U.S., three of which ("It's Still Rock and Roll to Me", "Tell Her About It", and "We Didn't Start the Fire") topped the Billboard Hot 100. He has been nominated for twenty-three Grammy Awards, winning five, including Album of the Year for 52nd Street. Joel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006. He received the 2001 Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and was recognized at the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors.
Early life, family and education
Joel was born on May 9, 1949, in the Bronx, New York. At age one, he moved with his family to Hicksville in the town of Oyster Bay on Long Island. Joel's cousin, Judy, whom his parents adopted, also lived with them.
His mother, Rosalind (1922–2014), was born in Brooklyn to English parents, Philip and Rebecca, who were Jewish. Billy's father, Howard (born Helmut) Joel (1923–2011), an accomplished amateur classical pianist and businessman, was born in Nuremberg, Germany to a Jewish family, the only child of merchant and manufacturer Karl Amson Joel, and educated in Switzerland. In 1928, Karl Joel set up a prosperous mail-order textile company, Joel Macht Fabrik, which within 10 years had become the second largest of its type in Germany. Escaping the Nazi regime, Karl, his wife and young son emigrated to Switzerland. Following the passing of laws which prevented Jews from owning property and businesses, in 1938 he was forced to sell his company to Josef Neckermann for a fraction of its true value. As direct entry to the United States was difficult for German Jews due to strict quotas imposed by the Immigration Act of 1924, the family reached the country via Cuba, where they arrived in early 1939 and stayed for nearly two years. In the United States, Howard became an engineer but always loved music.
Joel's parents met in 1942, whilst taking part in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance at the City College of New York. He has said that neither of his parents talked much about World War II. It was not until later that Joel learned more about his father's family. After Rosalind and Howard Joel divorced in 1957, Howard returned to Europe, as he had never liked the United States: he considered the people uneducated and materialistic. Howard settled in Vienna, Austria, and later remarried. Joel has a half-brother, Alexander Joel, born to his father in England, who became a classical conductor in Europe and was the chief musical director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig from 2001 to 2014.
At age four, Joel began taking piano lessons reluctantly at his mother's insistence, after he started banging on the piano in the family home. He continued with formal tuition until about the age of 16, his teachers including the noted American pianist Morton Estrin and musician Timothy Ford. When learning a new piece, he would sometimes improvise in the style of its composer to avoid reading the music. Joel has said that he is a better organist than a pianist. As a teenager, Joel took up boxing and competed on the amateur Golden Gloves circuit as a welterweight. He abandoned the sport after his nose was broken, having won 22 of his 26 fights.
Although Joel's parents were Jewish, he did not grow up in the religion. Joel stated: "I was not brought up Jewish in any religious way. My circumcision was as Jewish as they got." He attended a Roman Catholic church with friends. At age 11, Joel was baptized in a Church of Christ in Hicksville. He now identifies as a Jewish atheist.
Joel attended Hicksville High School until 1967 but did not graduate with his class. He was playing at a piano bar to help support himself, his mother and sister, and missed a crucial English exam after playing a late-night gig the evening before. Although Joel was a comparatively strong student, at the end of his senior year, he did not have enough credits to graduate. Rather than attend summer school to earn his diploma, Joel decided to begin a music career: "I told them, 'To hell with it. If I'm not going to Columbia University, I'm going to Columbia Records, and you don't need a high school diploma over there'." In 1992, he submitted essays to the school board in lieu of the missed exam. They were accepted, and he was awarded his diploma at Hicksville High's annual graduation ceremony 25 years after leaving.
Music career
1964–1970: Early career
Although Joel's compositions are infused with references to classical music, his music mostly encompasses pop and rock, fitting into the subgenres of pop rock and soft rock. Furthermore, Joel's tightly structured melodies and down-to-earth songwriting betray the influence of early rock & roll and rhythm & blues artists, including Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. However, it was only after seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show that he decided to pursue a career in music. As he later commented:
That one performance changed my life ... Up to that moment I'd never considered playing rock as a career ... (W)hen I saw four guys who didn't look like they'd come out of the Hollywood star mill, who played their own songs and instruments, and especially because you could see this look in John Lennon's face—and he looked like he was always saying: '---- you!'—I said: 'I know these guys, I can relate to these guys, I am these guys. This is what I'm going to do—play in a rock band'.
At age 16, Joel joined the Echoes, a group which specialized in British Invasion covers. The Echoes began recording in 1965. Joel played piano on several records released through Kama Sutra Productions and on recordings produced by Shadow Morton. He played on a demo version of "Leader of the Pack", which in 1964 became a major hit for the Shangri-Las, and has said that he was also on the demo or master recording of their song "Remember (Walking in the Sand)". The released single included a co-producer credit for Artie Ripp, who later was the first to sign and produce Joel as a solo artist after Michael Lang, who had given Joel a monetary advance, passed Joel along to Ripp to focus his attentions elsewhere.
The Echoes changed their name briefly to the Emeralds, and then to the Lost Souls. Joel left the band in 1967 to join the Hassles, a Long Island group that had signed with United Artists Records. Over the next year and a half, they released four singles and two albums (The Hassles and Hour of the Wolf). However, all were commercial failures. Joel and drummer Jon Small, who would eventually direct his music videos starting in the late 1970s, left the Hassles in 1969 to form the duo Attila, releasing an eponymous debut album in July 1970. The duo disbanded the following October when Joel began an affair with Small's wife, Elizabeth. The pair later married.
1970–1974: Cold Spring Harbor and Piano Man
Joel signed a contract with the record company Family Productions, with which he recorded his first solo album, Cold Spring Harbor, named for Cold Spring Harbor, a hamlet on his native Long Island. Artie Ripp, owner of Family Productions, states that he spent US$450,000 developing Joel; nevertheless, the album was mastered at too high a speed and was a technical and commercial disappointment.
The popular songs "She's Got a Way" and "Everybody Loves You Now" were first released on this album, but went largely unnoticed until live versions were included on Songs in the Attic (1981). Columbia released a remastered version of Cold Spring Harbor in 1983, with certain songs shortened or re-orchestrated.
Joel began his Cold Spring Harbor tour in the fall of 1971, touring with his band, consisting of Rhys Clark on drums, Al Hertzberg on guitar, and Larry Russell on bass guitar, throughout the mainland United States and Puerto Rico, opening for such artists as the J. Geils Band, the Beach Boys, Badfinger and Taj Mahal. Joel's performance at the Puerto Rican Mar y Sol Pop Festival was especially well-received; and although recorded, Joel refused to have it published on the Mar Y Sol compilation album Mar Y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival. Nevertheless, interest in his music grew.
On April 15, 1972, WMMR-FM radio in Philadelphia featured a live broadcast of Joel performing 12 songs, and a recording of the set was played several times by station DJ Jonathan Takiff on his late-night weekend show. As a result, "Captain Jack" became the most requested track in the station's history, and after receiving regular airplay, was soon an underground hit on the East Coast. Herb Gordon, a Columbia Records executive, heard Joel's music and brought him to the attention of company president Clive Davis. Joel signed a recording contract with the label in 1972 and moved to Los Angeles, where he lived for the next three years. For six months, Joel worked at The Executive Room piano bar on Wilshire Boulevard as "Bill Martin". While not playing his own material, it was during this period that he composed his signature song "Piano Man", about the bar's patrons. Though there was a bar called The Executive Room on Wilshire and Gramercy, numerous witnesses who saw Billy Joel perform in 1973 described the bar as being in the lobby of a large office building on the corner of Wilshire and Western, indicating that the bar likely had a secondary location during that period.
Although now signed to Columbia, Joel was still obliged to pay Artie Ripp and Michael Lang a share of his royalties from album sales. In 1981, when his contract was renegotiated, the company agreed to cover these payments itself. President of CBS/Columbia Records Walter Yetnikoff also bought the publishing rights to Joel's songs owned by Ripp, which he then gave to the artist as a birthday gift. Yetnikoff noted in the 2010 documentary The Last Play at Shea that he had to threaten Ripp to close the deal.
Joel's first album with Columbia was Piano Man (1973). Despite modest sales, the album's title track became his signature song, ending nearly every concert. That same year, Joel's touring band changed. Guitarist Al Hertzberg was replaced by Don Evans, and bassist Larry Russell by Patrick McDonald, himself replaced in late 1974 by Doug Stegmeyer who stayed with Joel until 1989. Rhys Clark returned as drummer and Tom Whitehorse as banjoist and pedal steel player; Johnny Almond joined as saxophonist and keyboardist. The band toured the U.S. and Canada extensively, appearing on popular music shows. Joel's songwriting began attracting more attention; in 1974, Helen Reddy recorded the Piano Man track "You're My Home".
1974–1977: Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles
In 1974, Joel recorded his second Columbia album in Los Angeles, Streetlife Serenade. His manager at the time was Jon Troy, an old friend from New York's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood; Troy was soon replaced by Joel's wife Elizabeth. Streetlife Serenade contains references to suburbia and the inner city. It is perhaps best known for "The Entertainer", a No. 34 hit in the U.S. Upset that "Piano Man" had been significantly cut for radio play, Joel wrote "The Entertainer" as a sarcastic response: "If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05." Although Streetlife Serenade was viewed unfavorably by critics, it contains the notable songs "Los Angelenos" and "Root Beer Rag", an instrumental that was a staple of his live set in the 1970s.
In late 1975, Joel played piano and organ on several tracks on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album.
Not long after the release of Streetlife Serenade, Joel began working on his next album, Turnstiles, at Caribou Ranch studio in Colorado. The difficult project began with Michael Stewart as producer, then James William Guercio took over before Stewart was brought in again. Using members of Elton John's backing band Dee Murray and Nigel Olsson, as well as session musicians, half the songs had been recorded when Joel decided the results were less than satisfactory. Also disenchanted with Los Angeles, where he encountered anti-New York sentiment, he returned to the East Coast metropolis in 1975, seeking inspiration in the city's troubles. Now with himself as producer, he rerecorded and completed the album, which when released in 1976, was the first to feature his regular touring band.
"Say Goodbye to Hollywood" was a minor hit, covered by Ronnie Spector and Nigel Olsson. During a 2008 radio interview, Joel said that he no longer performs the song because singing it in its high original key "shreds" his vocal cords; however, Joel did finally play it live for the first time since 1982 when he sang it at the Hollywood Bowl in May 2014. Although never released as a single, "New York State of Mind" became one of Joel's best-known songs; Barbra Streisand recorded a cover and Tony Bennett performed it as a duet with Joel on Playing with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues. Other notable songs from the album include "Summer, Highland Falls"; "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)" and "Prelude/Angry Young Man", a concert mainstay.
1977–1979: The Stranger and 52nd Street
During the Turnstiles tour, Joel's wife Elizabeth phoned George Martin in an attempt to recruit him as the producer for Joel's next album, but having seen the artist play live at Glassboro State College in New Jersey, Martin declined the invitation. Prior to the tour, Joel had expressed to his wife a desire to work with Phil Ramone at some point. She now contacted the legendary producer, who attended Joel's concert at New York's Carnegie Hall on June 2, 1977 (as did Don DeVito from Columbia Records, who brought with him a recording truck to tape the show). Impressed by what he saw, Ramone went on to produce all seven studio albums Joel recorded from 1977 to 1986.
Their first collaboration, The Stranger (1977), was an enormous commercial success and "established Joel as a household name". The album yielded four Top-25 hits on the Billboard charts: "Just the Way You Are" (No. 3), "Movin' Out" (No. 17), "Only the Good Die Young" (No. 24) and "She's Always a Woman" (No. 17). Joel's first Top Ten album, The Stranger reached number 2 on the charts and was certified multi-Platinum, besting Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water as Columbia's previous bestselling album. "Just the Way You Are" — written for Joel's first wife, Elizabeth Weber — was inspired by a dream and won Grammy awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. On tour in Paris, Joel learned the news late one night in a hotel room. It also featured "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant", an album-oriented rock classic, which has become one of his best-known songs. It is one of Joel's favorite of his own songs, which has become a firm staple of his live shows, and "Vienna", also one of Joel's personal favorites, and one of his most streamed songs on the internet as of 2022. Rolling Stone later ranked The Stranger the 70th greatest album of all time.
Joel released 52nd Street in 1978, naming it after Manhattan's 52nd Street, which, at the time of its release, served as the world headquarters of CBS/ Columbia. The album sold over seven million copies, propelled to number one on the charts by the hits "My Life" (No. 3), "Big Shot" (No. 14) and "Honesty" (No. 24). A cover of "My Life" by Gary Bennett became the theme for the television sitcom Bosom Buddies. 52nd Street also won Grammy awards for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male and Album of the Year.
In 1978, Joel gave his first of what would go on to be at least 150 shows at New York City's Madison Square Garden. In 2025, Joel described playing at the arena as being a "dream come true". He currently dominates the record for most concerts performed at Madison Square Garden.
In 1979, Joel traveled to Havana, Cuba, to participate in the historic Havana Jam festival from March 2–4, alongside Rita Coolidge, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Stills, the CBS Jazz All-Stars, the Trio of Doom, Fania All-Stars, Billy Swan, Bonnie Bramlett, Mike Finnegan, Weather Report, and an array of Cuban artists including Irakere, Pacho Alonso, Tata Güines and Orquesta Aragón. Although Joel's performance was for many the highlight of the weekend, CBS were unable to record or film it as planned because his wife objected to the fact that a specific deal had not been agreed with them in advance. He was interviewed about his experience of playing at the event for Ernesto Juan Castellanos's documentary Havana Jam '79.
52nd Street was the first commercially released album on the then-new compact disc format, in 1982.
1979–1983: Glass Houses and The Nylon Curtain
The success of his piano-driven ballads like "Just the Way You Are", "She's Always a Woman" and "Honesty" led some critics to label Joel a "balladeer" and "soft rocker". He thought these labels were unfair and insulting, and with Glass Houses, Joel tried to record an album that proved that he could rock harder than his critics gave him credit for. Joel stated that the album cover, which pictured him wearing a leather jacket and about to throw a rock at a window of his Long Island home, was intended as a riposte to his image as a "mellow balladeer".
Glass Houses spent six weeks at the top of the Billboard album chart, yielding the hits "You May Be Right" (No. 7, May 1980), "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me", (No. 1, July 1980), "Don't Ask Me Why" (No. 19, September 1980) and "Sometimes a Fantasy" (No. 36, November 1980). The latter song gave its name to a 15-minute promotional film featuring both music and dialog, which as Joel's first venture of this kind, he wrote and directed himself. "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" was his first number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it spent eleven weeks in the Top 10 and became the ninth biggest-selling single of the year. His five sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in 1980 earned him the venue's Gold Ticket Award for selling more than 100,000 tickets.
Glass Houses won the 1981 Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male. It also won the American Music Award for Favorite Album, Pop/Rock category. In a recorded master class at the University of Pennsylvania, Joel recalled that he had written to the Beatles asking them how to get started in the music industry. In response, he received a pamphlet about Beatles merchandise. This later led to the idea of Joel conducting Q&A sessions around the world answering questions that people had about the music industry.
Joel's next release, Songs in the Attic, was composed of live performances of lesser-known songs from the beginning of his career. It was recorded at larger US arenas and in intimate nightclub shows in June and July 1980. This release introduced many fans, who discovered Joel when The Stranger became a smash in 1977, to many of his earlier compositions. The album reached No. 8 on the Billboard chart and produced two hit singles: "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (No. 17), and "She's Got a Way" (No. 23). It sold over three million copies. Although not as successful as some of his previous albums, it was still considered a success by Joel.
The next wave of Joel's career commenced with the recording of The Nylon Curtain. With it, Joel became more ambitious with his songwriting, which included highly topical songs like "Allentown" and "Goodnight Saigon". Joel has stated that he wanted the album to communicate his feelings about the American Dream and how changes in American politics during the Reagan administration meant that "all of a sudden you weren't going to be able to inherit [the kind of life] your old man had." He also tried to be more ambitious in his use of the recording studio. Joel said that he wanted to "create a sonic masterpiece" on The Nylon Curtain. So he spent more time in the studio, crafting the sound of the album, than he had on any previous album. Production of The Nylon Curtain began in the fall of 1981, but was delayed for several months after Joel was involved in a serious motorcycle accident on April 15, 1982. The bone in his left thumb was crushed and his other wrist dislocated in the incident, when he hit and was flipped over a car which had run a red light at an intersection on Long Island.
In October 1982, Joel embarked on a brief tour to support the album, and recorded his first video special, Live from Long Island, at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on December 29. This was first broadcast on HBO on July 24, 1983, before being released on VHS. At the following year's Grammy Awards, it was nominated for the Best Video Album.
The Nylon Curtain went to No. 7 on the charts, partially due to heavy airplay on MTV for the videos to the singles "Allentown" and "Pressure", both directed by Russell Mulcahy.
1983–1988: An Innocent Man and The Bridge
Joel's next album moved away from the serious themes of The Nylon Curtain and struck a much lighter tone. An Innocent Man was Joel's tribute to R&B and doo wop music of the 1950s and 1960s and resulted in Joel's second Billboard number-one hit, "Tell Her About It", which was the first single off the album in the summer of 1983. The album itself reached No. 4 on the charts and No. 2 in UK. It also boasted six top-30 singles, the most of any album in Joel's catalog. The album was well received by critics, with Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior editor for AllMusic, describing Joel as being "in top form as a craftsman throughout the record, effortlessly spinning out infectious, memorable melodies in a variety of styles."
At the time that the album was released, WCBS-FM began playing "Uptown Girl" both in regular rotation and on the Doo Wop Live. The song became a worldwide hit when released as a single. Originally entitled "Uptown Girls", it was inspired by a chance encounter with Christie Brinkley, Whitney Houston, and Elle Macpherson, who were on a modelling assignment in the Caribbean when they approached Joel whilst he was playing the piano in the bar of their hotel (where he was a holiday guest). The accompanying music video featured Brinkley as a high-society girl who pulls her Rolls-Royce into the gas station where Joel's character is working. At the end of the video, Joel's "grease monkey" character drives off with his "uptown girl" on the back of a motorcycle. When Brinkley went to visit Joel after being asked to star in the video, the first thing Joel said to her upon opening his door was "I don't dance". Brinkley had to walk him through the basic steps he does in the video. Their work together on this video shoot sparked a relationship between the two which led to their marriage in 1985.
In December, the title song was released as a single and it peaked at No. 10 in the U.S. and No. 8 in the UK, early in 1984. That March, "The Longest Time" was released as a single, peaking at No. 14 on the Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. That summer, "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" was released and it hit No. 27 while "Keeping the Faith" peaked at No. 18 in January 1985. In the video for "Keeping the Faith", Brinkley appears as a passenger in a convertible Chevrolet. An Innocent Man was also nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy, but lost to Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Joel participated in the USA for Africa "We Are the World" project in 1985. Following An Innocent Man, Joel was asked about releasing an album of his most successful singles. This was not the first time this topic had come up, but Joel had initially considered greatest hits albums as marking the end of one's career. This time he agreed, and Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and 2 was released as a four-sided album and two-CD set, with the songs in the order in which they were released. The new songs "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" and "The Night Is Still Young" were recorded and released as singles to support the album; both reached the Top 40, peaking at No. 9 and No. 34, respectively. Greatest Hits was highly successful and it has since been certified double diamond by the RIAA, with over 11.5 million copies (23 million units) sold. It is one of the best-selling albums in American music history, according to the RIAA.
Coinciding with the Greatest Hits album release, Joel released a two-volume Video Album that was a compilation of the promotional videos he had recorded from 1977 to that time. Along with videos for the new singles off the Greatest Hits album, Joel also recorded a video for his first hit, "Piano Man", for this project.
Joel's next album, The Bridge (1986), did not achieve the level of success of his previous studio albums, but it yielded the hits "A Matter of Trust" and "Modern Woman" (both No. 10) from the film Ruthless People, a dark comedy from the directors of Airplane!. The ballad "This is the Time" also charted, peaking at No. 18. On November 18, 1986, an extended version of "Big Man on Mulberry Street" was used on a Season 3 episode of Moonlighting.The Bridge was Joel's last album to carry the Family Productions logo, after which he severed his ties with Artie Ripp. Joel was unsatisfied with most of the songs on The Bridge, but his record company denied a request for time to produce better material. In a 2008 interview, he described it as "not a good album'.
In October 1986, Joel and his team started planning a trip to the Soviet Union. This was realized the following July, when he arrived in the country with his wife, daughter Alexa, and full touring band. Following an improvised performance in Tbilisi, Joel gave six concerts at indoor arenas in Moscow and Leningrad, to a combined audience possibly in excess of 100,000 people. The entourage was filmed for television and video to offset the cost of the trip, and the concerts were simulcast on radio around the world. Joel's Russian tour was the first live rock radio broadcast in Soviet history. The tour was later cited frequently as one of the first fully staged pop rock shows to come to the Soviet Union, although in reality other artists had previously toured in the country, including Elton John, James Taylor, and Bonnie Raitt.
Most of that audience took a long while to warm up to Joel's energetic show, something that had never happened in other countries he had performed in. According to Joel, each time the fans were hit with the bright lights, anybody who seemed to be enjoying themselves froze. In addition, people who were "overreacting" were removed by security. During this concert, Joel, enraged by the bright lights, flipped his electric piano and snapped a microphone stand while continuing to sing. Joel later apologized for the incident.
The concerts in Russia came after an intensive series of European shows and after doing interviews during the day, Joel found himself playing at venues where the PA system was "second rate at best". Released against his wishes in October 1987, Концерт (Russian for "Concert"), a live double album recorded during the tour, included cover versions of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin" and the Beatles's "Back in the U.S.S.R.". The latter was released as a single but failed to make the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, and the album was Joel's first since Cold Spring Harbor not to achieve Gold disc status.
1988–1993: Storm Front and River of Dreams
The animated film Oliver & Company (1988) features Joel in a rare voice acting role as Dodger, a sarcastic Jack Russell based on Dickens's Artful Dodger. The character's design is based on Joel's image at the time, including his trademark Wayfarer sunglasses. Joel also sang his character's song "Why Should I Worry?".
The recording of Storm Front, which commenced in 1988, coincided with major changes in Joel's career and inaugurated a period of serious upheaval in his business affairs. In August 1989, just before the album was released, Joel dismissed his manager (and former brother-in-law) Frank Weber after an audit revealed major discrepancies in Weber's accounting. Joel subsequently sued Weber for US$90 million, claiming fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, and in January 1990, Joel was awarded US$2 million in a partial judgment against Weber; in April, the court dismissed a US$30 million countersuit filed by Weber.
The first single for the album, "We Didn't Start the Fire", was released in September 1989 and it became Joel's third—and most recent—US number-one hit, spending two weeks at the top. Storm Front was released in October, and it eventually became Joel's first number-one album since Glass Houses, nine years earlier. Storm Front was Joel's first album since Turnstiles to be recorded without Phil Ramone as producer. For this album, he wanted a new sound, and worked with Mick Jones of Foreigner. Joel is also credited as one of the keyboard players on Jones's 1988 self-titled solo album, and is featured in the official video for Jones's single "Just Wanna Hold"; Joel can be seen playing the piano while his then-wife Christie Brinkley joins him and kisses him. Joel also revamped his backing band, dismissing everyone but drummer Liberty DeVitto, guitarist David Brown, and saxophone player Mark Rivera, and bringing in new faces, including multi-instrumentalist Crystal Taliefero.
Storm Front's second single, "I Go to Extremes" reached No. 6 in early 1990. The album was also notable for its song "Leningrad", written after Joel met a clown in the Soviet city of that name during his tour in 1987, and "The Downeaster Alexa", written to underscore the plight of fishermen on Long Island who are barely able to make ends meet. Another well-known single from the album is the ballad "And So It Goes" (No. 37 in late 1990). The song was originally written in 1983, around the time Joel was writing songs for An Innocent Man; but "And So It Goes" did not fit that album's retro theme, so it was held back until Storm Front. Joel said in a 1996 master class session in Pittsburgh that Storm Front was a turbulent album and that "And So It Goes", as the last song on the album, portrayed the calm and tranquility that often follows a violent thunderstorm.
In September 1992, Joel filed a US$90 million lawsuit against his former lawyer Allen Grubman, alleging a wide range of offenses including fraud, breach of fiduciary responsibility, malpractice and breach of contract. The case was settled out of court in the fall of 1993 for US$3 million paid to Joel by third party Sony America, to protect its subsidiary Sony Music's interests, as it had several other artists also using Grubman's law firm.