Billy Joel | Club Random with Bill Maher

In an exclusive and unfiltered conversation, Bill Maher sits down with legendary musician Billy Joel for a rare long-form interview about life, legacy, and the making of his new HBO documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes. From the early days playing Long Island bars to selling out Madison Square Garden for decades, Billy reflects on the stories behind the songs, the fame he never chased, and staying true to your art. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1 Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: https://billmaher.substack.com Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom Support our Advertisers: Drink Zbiotics before drinking and wake up feeling great and ready to take on the next day and all that summer has to offer! Go to : ⁠https://zbiotics.com/RANDOM⁠ to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use code RANDOM at checkout. It’s summer, and it's time to heat up your strategy before your competitors beat you to it. Go to ⁠https://RadioActive Media.com⁠ or text RANDOM to 511-511. Message and Data Rates May Apply. Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at ⁠https://trueclassic.com/RANDOM⁠ today! #trueclassicpod Buy Club Random Merch: https://clubrandom.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We're not nonexistent. We do exist.

• 0:03Bill Maher?

  But we also were aware of our own lameness.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Yes, we were very much aware of that.

• 0:11Bill Maher?

  You don't think you've written a song as good as "Wichita Lineman"?

• 0:13Speaker 00

  No.

• 0:13Bill Maher?

  Oh, stop it. Why do you...

• 0:15Speaker 00

  I tried. There's a song called "Stop in the Bottom."

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Hey.

• 0:42Bill Maher?

  Billy. Beautiful piano. Do you play?

• 0:47Speaker 00

  A little bit.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  A touch.

• 0:50Bill Maher?

  Thank you for having me. You're beautiful. Oh, this is not your home, right?

• 0:53Speaker 00

  This isn't my house.

• 0:54Bill Maher?

  That's your... That's your manager?

• 0:56Speaker 00

  He's, uh, my lighting designer, my documentary producer.

• 1:02Bill Maher?

  I know you've never had a problem with a manager.

• 1:07Bill Maher?

  I saw the documentary. It's awesome. Uh, how fortuitous. On my network, HBO, I learned so much about you. First of all, your health. I mean, all your fans are wanting to know. You had something. Did we fix it?

• 1:23Speaker 00

  It's not fixed. It's... It's still, uh, being worked on.

• 1:28Bill Maher?

  But you look good. You sound good. You're looking, sound like you.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  I feel fine.

• 1:33Bill Maher?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  My balance sucks. Uh, it's like being on a boat.

• 1:39Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 1:39Speaker 00

  That's... That's a good question. It's... It's... It used to be called water on the brain. Now it's called hydrocephalus, normal pressure hydrocephalus.

• 1:48Bill Maher?

  What causes that?

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Nobody knows. They don't know.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  What is it idiomatic, idio? Idio something, they don't really know what goes. I thought it must be from drinking.

• 2:03Bill Maher?

  But you don't drink.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Not anymore.

• 2:05Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  I used to, like a fish.

• 2:07Bill Maher?

  But you're good. You look good.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  I feel good.

• 2:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  I think, they keep referring to what I have as a brain disorder. So it sounds a lot worse than what I'm feeling. You know.

• 2:19Bill Maher?

  Well, this really came about because, you know, I wrote you a little note. And said that everybody, you know, the music is so awesome that nobody can kind of not recognize that, but I never thought you really got your due as a lyricist. Because pop music, you know, the number of times you can find really great lyrics in pop music, not that often. Um, yours stand alone, I feel, as poetry even without the music, which I think is very rare in music. So can you enjoy a pop song if the lyrics are shit?

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Probably, because I'm tuned into the music. Before I even understand what the lyrics are, that's the first thing I hear. Is the rhythm, the melody, the chords, the production, the sound of it. And then I start to dig into what the lyrics are. Um, if they're really cornball and awful and tacky, probably not. But I let a lot of that go.

• 3:24Bill Maher?

  I let all of it go. If I made that the bar, I would throw out eighty percent of my music.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  You're probably right.

• 3:31Bill Maher?

  I mean, and that's okay, you know? I used to have this little argument with Clive Davis, who I know was instrumental in your career, right?

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:41Bill Maher?

  Okay. And, you know, I mean, it was of the opinion that lyrics were more important uh, than the music or as important. And I would say, well, there are certain people to whom lyrics are very important. They're called women.

• 3:57Bill Maher?

  I mean, we all like lyrics, but I don't, I honestly don't, it, it, it doesn't have to be the case. And lots of people who we really love wrote some pretty horrible lyrics, including The Beatles, who are, we love more than anybody, right? But some of their, some of their lyrics are just gobbledegook. I don't know what "I am the walrus" means. You know, I don't know what "yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye" means.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  A lot of it is how you listen to it. It's not necessarily what the meaning of the lyrics are, but what the sound of the lyrics are. And Lennon got that when he wrote "I am the walrus." It was all about what it sounded like. Remember when we were kids listening to The Beatles? "Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire." Wow, he's talking about Blackburn, Lancashire. Where the hell is that? It was so exotic sounding. Uh, like, remember the song "Norwegian Wood"?

• 4:53Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  She's a Norwegian. You know, what does that mean? It, it all was kind of very...

• 5:00Bill Maher?

  But that song, I feel like, has, I can kind of, uh, understand basically what it's about. It's sort of like a veiled telling of a groupie encounter.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:14Bill Maher?

  Okay, in an, in an era where you couldn't be too explicit about it, and probably where he didn't want his wife to know.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:19Bill Maher?

  "I fell asleep in the bath," and you know. I don't know what, I don't think Wood was, was he saying erection with Wood? Was that, is that...

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Now we can say that, but back then...

• 5:28Bill Maher?

  Was Wood a term back then for a...

• 5:30Speaker 00

  I don't think so.

• 5:30Bill Maher?

  I don't think so either. I mean, I just feel like some of these lyrics are daring you. They were so good at music. They were like, "I fucking dare you to like this song."

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, Lennon would do that, yeah.

• 5:43Bill Maher?

  And McCartney would write "Hello, Goodbye," or, you know, I mean, "Get Back." Did you watch the, uh, this? Okay, we saw him writing it, remember? Lennon was late one day and you saw him writing on a bass. And and we saw how the lyrics evolved. I mean, there's there's only like four lyrics to the song. You know, it's just it's just a sound collage and it's like.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:06Bill Maher?

  And it's okay.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  What's wrong with that?

• 6:07Bill Maher?

  Nothing.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  I don't know, and I don't care.

• 6:09Bill Maher?

  I don't care either, but I've been listening to that song for fifty something years.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:14Bill Maher?

  And it's just a, sounds great, right?

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Yes, it's about sound. That's what first hits us is the sound of the lyrics, not the meaning.

• 6:23Bill Maher?

  Okay. But I came here to say one thing, which is that you never do that. You either write a love song, which is awesome lyrically, poetic, stands alone without the music, even if I had never heard the music, or when you're not writing a love song, it's about something. There's some nutrition to it. There's some meaning to it.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  I hope so.

• 6:46Bill Maher?

  There is. And you say it eloquently, you don't you don't just put it down. It's just not like, oh, well, good enough. So, you know, I know in the documentary you said, I, um, something like, I write the way I speak. And you don't really believe that.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  I think so.

• 7:07Bill Maher?

  You you.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  I use plain language. I don't I don't get flowery.

• 7:12Bill Maher?

  Yes, you do.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  You think so? I try not to.

• 7:15Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 7:19Bill Maher?

  When I wore a younger man's clothes, it's a poet, you could have said. When I was younger, uh.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  But it wouldn't have rhymed.

• 7:27Bill Maher?

  But and also, when I wore a younger man's clothes, that's a difference between a poet and a schmuck, wouldn't say it that.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Well, as the smile ran away from his face, that's a poet.

• 7:37Bill Maher?

  I mean, you're, it's all through. I mean, uh, can you play a little of, um, Summer Highland Falls? Do you remember the lyrics to that?

• 7:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. I hope so.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  You want me to sing?

• 7:59Bill Maher?

  What?

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Should I, um, you want me to sing?

• 8:02Bill Maher?

  No, no.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  They say that these are not the best of times.

• 8:05Bill Maher?

  That these are the only times we know.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  They're the only times I've ever known.

• 8:08Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  It was the best of worlds, it was the worst of worlds, it was...

• 8:11Bill Maher?

  No.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  A tale of two cities.

• 8:13Bill Maher?

  Oh, is that where you're going?

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I stole it.

• 8:15Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  A little bit.

• 8:17Bill Maher?

  Okay, so you're stealing from Dickens, the best?

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm trying to.

• 8:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:21Bill Maher?

  But then, in Cathedrals of Our... What's the next line?

• 8:25Speaker 00

  Uh, we, but we... I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own.

• 8:30Bill Maher?

  Okay, you gotta admit, that's a little more sophisticated than Woolly Bullitt.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  It's a little artsy-fartsy, yes.

• 8:35Bill Maher?

  It's... Okay. Well, for us English and history majors, we appreciated it, in a very big way.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Well, do you know that, uh, there's a song I wrote called "You're My Home", it was on the Pianoman album.

• 8:47Bill Maher?

  I love it, it's on my top fifty of yours.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Well, I, I, I got beat up for a lyric in that song, uh, the lyric was, uh, let's see, "You're my home", "You're my castle, you're my cabin",

• 9:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  "And my instant pleasure dome", and it, and it was a lot of,

• 9:05Speaker 00

  "Instant pleasure dome, what a reach", and I said, "Excuse me, that's from Xanadu", by William Golden. You know, I, I stole it from a, a poet.

• 9:14Bill Maher?

  Kublai Khan, yes.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:16Bill Maher?

  The story of Xanadu.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  Kublai Khan, that's right.

• 9:18Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, not everyone's gonna appreciate all this, but I'm telling you, a lot of people do, and, and I think you are, are... I mean, I have heard you always say that you write the music first.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:33Bill Maher?

  Okay, so, and you still write music?

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:36Bill Maher?

  Okay, so it's really the fact that it's the lyrics, you, you, you set such a high standard, that I think you, that's probably what is holding you back and why you haven't released music in so long, is because, how do I... It seems like that's the part... You said at one point in the documentary even, you said you got tired of the tyranny of the rhyme.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:00Bill Maher?

  Okay. And you know what? I'll tell you a little story. I tried to write a song once. It's hard. It was during the pandemic and like we were all home and nothing to do. Right? It's like bored, I'm like, what am I gonna? It's like, you know what? I always thought I could write a song. Maybe not the music, but I'm a writer, excuse me. I've written six books. I write editorial every week at the end of the show. I pretty much write that, I mean with help, but that's my baby and like, you know, a thirteen stand-up special. I can write a song. No. No, I can't. I tried it sober. I tried it stoned. I tried it in a car. I tried it in a bar. I tried it on Mars. I tried it from afar. I couldn't do it.

• 10:42Bill Maher?

  And you know, it's just a special, different kind of skill than the one I have. And I even had a good premise. I had a title. It was called The World Makes Us Lie.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Okay, that's a good premise.

• 10:54Bill Maher?

  It is. Because it was about someone in a relationship with someone who the world deemed age inappropriate. I don't know where I got the idea. But, and that could be more universal than that. The world does make us lie about things.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 11:12Bill Maher?

  And it's sometimes appropriate. If you believe what they were saying in the tabloids, you deserve to be lied to.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Just to get along, you've got to lie.

• 11:19Bill Maher?

  Right. So, do you want to? If you're bored one day and you want to noodle with that one.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Please don't.

• 11:26Bill Maher?

  Because I couldn't, but I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  It's hard. It is hard.

• 11:32Bill Maher?

  It really is hard.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  It is.

• 11:34Bill Maher?

  So, how, when you listen to music, what, I was reading in the Times two days ago, they said the kids are back into buying DVDs because they got the memo that on digital, you don't ever really own anything that you think you own, but you really don't.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:51Bill Maher?

  So, like DVDs, yeah, that is not my format. But what do you, do you stream? Do you have an eight-track? Do you have a jukebox?

• 12:00Speaker 00

  I don't know how to even get to it anymore. I can't even turn my TV on without going through four or five different permutations.

• 12:07Bill Maher?

  Oh, I know. But like, what do you, but when you listen to music, what are you listening on? What's format?

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Well, first I got to find the right medium to hear it. I don't always, you know, I hardly play vinyl anymore. Uh, although I have a turntable, a really nice turntable, I got a nice stereo, Macintosh, you know, analog equipment, and I don't know how to use it. Uh, so I try to find a radio station. I like to listen to classical music.

• 12:36Bill Maher?

  Exclusively?

• 12:38Speaker 00

  Pretty much.

• 12:39Bill Maher?

  You never wanna hear Crimson and Clover?

• 12:41Speaker 00

  No, I do. My kids make me listen to pop music. They say, Daddy, put on the pop station.

• 12:47Bill Maher?

  Okay. Uh, okay. So, which on my radio now?

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:51Bill Maher?

  So, you're in the car?

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, it's easier for me to find a radio station in the car than it is at home. But I'm, I'm, what I do to listen to classical music when I wanna hear it? I put on the TV and I try to find this classical symphony station on TV so I can hear music. It's so ass-backwards. That's how I hear music nowadays. I put the TV on. Weird.

• 13:17Bill Maher?

  I mean, I, for me, the iPod, because I'm an anal-retentive person, was like the perfect medium, and I still use it. It's not easy. You have to buy them on eBay. They don't make them anymore. Apple does, Apple does, definitely doesn't want you to.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  It sounds like ancient technology.

• 13:38Bill Maher?

  It is, but it's superior technology. I'll tell you why. First of all, on the iPod, you know, first of all, you, you, it's all in your computer. And then you sync the iPod. You remember that, when you sync it to you? So, your playlists, your, all your music is there. So, for someone who just wants exactly what I want, streaming is all about, you like this, so you'll probably like this. And my answer is, no, I won't. But more than that, it just, it just, it clarifies to me how great an artist is or not. How many songs do I have up there? I can, do I have eight? Or, or a hundred, you know? That, to me, is, is very valuable. It's, it's one reason

• 14:20Bill Maher?

  why I never understood why, like, you perform with Elton John. Why would two guys who have, each have so many songs that you could fill more than the concert? Why would you be, why would you do it? Why would you join forces? You don't need to join forces. Like, I understand bands do that. Like, they're, you know, if you wanna have Soul Asylum, go out with Sixpence, None The Richer. Makes total sense. No, no offense to the bands. It's no, no offense to only have four or five hits. But why you and Elton John?

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Well, that goes back a long ways. I actually met Elton in Amsterdam. Uh, back in this, in the early seventies. The Sinesta Hotel in Amsterdam. So, I, Elton was at the hotel. Uh, Steve Cohen, who I was just talking about earlier, knew his manager, John Reed, and got us together. But we, we met and we were, we were saying, you know, you know, I, I hope you don't believe what they write about me and you with this rivalry, because I don't have any rivalry towards you.

• 15:26Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  I admire your, your work. Uh, and we said someday, maybe we should get together and play together and show people how we are different. Because there was a lot of comparisons going on. Neither of us were comfortable with that. So we talked about how do you overcome something like that? And it was an, an early idea, let's play together and let's see, let people, let their ships fall where they may, let people decide for themselves.

• 15:49Bill Maher?

  You really gave a shit that much, what they, that they said that? I mean, to, to the point where you would, didn't you go out, I think the doc said you were sixteen years on the road with him?

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yes, on and off sixteen years together.

• 16:03Bill Maher?

  Again, it's just crazy to me that somebody who could do more hits than we have time for of his own would then like, do a show with another guy. It seems like it's an embarrassment of riches, but...

• 16:16Speaker 00

  It was, but it was, the fun part about it was I got to play his shit and he got to play my shit.

• 16:22Bill Maher?

  What did you play of his?

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Oh, I played Yellow, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which I loved.

• 16:26Bill Maher?

  Loved that.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Uh, I played your song. You know, a lot of his big hits, I got to play. And I didn't have to play the Billy Joel stuff, which was kind of a nice relief.

• 16:36Bill Maher?

  That, I mean, double albums, remember?

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:41Bill Maher?

  Very few.

• 16:44Bill Maher?

  Good all the way through. I mean, it's hard enough to make a single album good all the way through. You always did.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:52Bill Maher?

  And we appreciate that. Name like your top five, like maybe the only five good double album. A Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is definitely one of them. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  That was a good one.

• 17:05Bill Maher?

  That's a amazing double album.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Yes. That was a good album.

• 17:09Bill Maher?

  The White Album?

• 17:10Speaker 00

  I'm not a big fan of The White Album.

• 17:12Bill Maher?

  Like I say, not The White Album.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  But some people love it. I I I hear it as a collection of half-assed songs that that didn't finish writing because they were either just too stoned or they didn't care anymore.

• 17:25Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:26Bill Maher?

  Like what?

• 17:28Speaker 00

  A lot of stuff on that album.

• 17:29Bill Maher?

  Well, certainly Revolution Number Nine, no one's gonna defend that. Okay, but you know, it's a double album.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  I think they had fragments and they put them on the album. I think John was kind of disassociated somewhat at that point. I think Paul was carrying, carrying the weight.

• 17:49Bill Maher?

  Oh, since before then.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 17:51Bill Maher?

  You know, my theory with The Beatles has always been that what really broke them up was what they cared about more than anything else was A-sides of singles, of singles themselves. I mean, they were after all the only band ever who did not put the singles on the album until the very end. That's how much they valued the single as it all.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  That was state of the art. There were no such thing as album artists. It was it was all about hit singles.

• 18:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and usually you would buy an album or often and for the hit single, which was on the album, and then the rest of the album didn't live up to the single. They didn't put the single on the album. And I think at a certain point Lennon was not getting the A-side. Imagine writing a song as great as Strawberry Fields.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  It's not the hit.

• 18:42Bill Maher?

  It's not the A-side. Penny Lane was the A-side. It it also was as like it charted out on its own, but of course it's a little moodier and not quite as mass appeal as Penny Lane, right?

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:56Bill Maher?

  So it wasn't as big. And then you write Revolution and you lose out to Hey Jude. You know, this was like a pattern.

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• 20:05Speaker 00

  Well, I think, I have a theory that we don't know about, which is, I think they almost broke up a couple of times. I think, just like a marriage.

• 20:14Bill Maher?

  What band doesn't?

• 20:15Speaker 00

  Right, right, but it was never talked about. It had to look smooth over for the 10 years that they were, you know, famous. I think they almost broke up a few times and they had their ups and downs. And sometimes they were more prolific and sometimes they weren't. And I hear that in some of those things.

• 20:35Bill Maher?

  Did your band ever want to be like named, like did they, was there ever a talk like, why isn't it Billy Joel and the Tune Masters?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, we talked about it.

• 20:44Bill Maher?

  Billy Joel and Fire Dog.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Exactly. We tried to come up with names and they always had these hot neat sounding names.

• 20:52Bill Maher?

  Really? Like what?

• 20:55Speaker 00

  B.J. and the Affordables was like a joke.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  And we did it on a video with Rodney Dangerfield. What video was that?

• 21:05Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Tell her about it, which is a song I don't like.

• 21:09Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was trying to do a Motown song. Listen, I was trying to be, what's the name? Diana Ross and the Supremes.

• 21:17Bill Maher?

  I opened for Frankie Valli as a comic in 1984, right after the 50s tribute album came out, which is an opus. It's an opus. It's not just a record. And if, I'm sure he somehow got the message to you, but if he didn't, I remember him saying how flattered and thrilled he was by what you did with that album.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Oh, with Uptown Girl?

• 21:45Bill Maher?

  Yes. They knew. I mean, you weren't hiding it. You were just...

• 21:49Speaker 00

  No, it was an homage.

• 21:51Bill Maher?

  An homage, but like, you know, a lot of your stuff is an homage to classical music. I feel like you were the one guy who like channeled classical music into pop music in such a way as an idiot like me who has no interest in classical music loves it.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  I take that as a compliment.

• 22:11Bill Maher?

  You should.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  I was trying, I'm maybe unconsciously trying to do that. Because I hear it when I listen back to the stuff.

• 22:19Bill Maher?

  So you don't think that White Album, okay, like...

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Nah.

• 22:22Bill Maher?

  What about Tommy?

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Nah.

• 22:25Bill Maher?

  Double album.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  It was a lot, to me, it was a lot of filler on Tommy. It was a lot of instrumental guitar playing that I didn't care about. A double album. Cream, Wheels of Fire.

• 22:38Bill Maher?

  No, not good.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  I loved that.

• 22:41Bill Maher?

  Really? You thought that was a great double album?

• 22:44Speaker 00

  I loved it. I loved everything on that album.

• 22:46Bill Maher?

  White Room is on that.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:48Bill Maher?

  I didn't...

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Crossroads, Toad.

• 22:52Bill Maher?

  I'm, well, I remember the titles. I obviously don't remember the music because I listened to them and then forgot them.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 22:59Bill Maher?

  So, but you know, you can't, you cannot, and people try to do it all the time, like, tell a person...

• 23:08Bill Maher?

  You should like this. They do a hair. Listen, you should. I, no, I shouldn't. There's no shouldn't. It either hits me or it doesn't.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  I hate it.

• 23:15Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  How about Axis Bold as Love, Jimi Hendrix?

• 23:20Bill Maher?

  Hendrix never tickled my ear the way you do. Um, I know he's awesome and great and the fire and the played Sergeant Pepper the day it came out and great stuff and um Twenty Seven Club. Looks like a cool dude who was always having threesomes with a joint in his mouth. But I just never got into the music.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  See, I loved almost everything he ever did. It was as if he squeezed his entire life into three years. He only had a three-year career and then he was dead. Hendrix, yeah.

• 23:56Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah, Twenty Seven.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Got it, Twenty Seven. And he was just getting started.

• 24:00Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  Uh, but you look at this, the amount of work he was able to do, it was so much crammed into a short amount of time. But I loved everything he did.

• 24:10Bill Maher?

  But I mean, I saw on the doc, you love Zeppelin, as I do.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  I loved Zeppelin.

• 24:15Bill Maher?

  But um that to me,

• 24:19Bill Maher?

  you know, you, you sound nothing like Zeppelin in most of your Billy Joel music.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  I'm not Zeppelin.

• 24:23Bill Maher?

  Maybe you tell it, yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  I tried to. It was a complete disaster.

• 24:27Bill Maher?

  No, no, you found, I think you found your niche. I think that's been decided. Why did you ever put out a double album?

• 24:36Speaker 00

  I, well, I did. I think a double Greatest Hits. There was Greatest Hits, Volume One and Volume Two.

• 24:42Bill Maher?

  But that's not like putting out a-

• 24:43Speaker 00

  That's not a real album, no. It's a collection.

• 24:45Bill Maher?

  But you were wise to. Because you're right, it's very hard. I mean, George Martin, um, he said exactly what you said. He, he's in the Beatles documentary and he says, um, I thought we should have just made one really good single album.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Out of the White Album.

• 25:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but you know what? I gotta tell you. You people in the business, you just have a different view. I'm just a, I'm just a young man in the twenty-second row. You know, I see you as something more than sexual, more than just our Marilyn Monroe. And to us, like a lot of the things you guys do and talk about and think are important, like George Martin, I saw on the documentary, wanted to produce you, which is a great compliment and makes perfect sense of all the people who he thinks he could follow the Beatles with. Okay, but then he wanted to fire your band. And I don't know what George Martin was hearing from your band, but I promise you, the regular guy did not notice that.

• 25:46Bill Maher?

  Did not think that band, oh boy, Billy Joel's records, if only he'd fire that band and hire a good one. It's ridiculous.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  That was one of the most traumatic things I went through, was deciding not to work with George Martin, who was one of my heroes. I thought he was an integral part of the Beatles, and I loved the Beatles more than anybody.

• 26:08Bill Maher?

  Completely.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  And he was the fifth Beatle.

• 26:11Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  And wait, you're not gonna have George Martin produce you? Your big problem is production. You need a good producer, I know. But he wants to not use my band, and that's part of my sound, I thought.

• 26:25Bill Maher?

  But also, what are you talking about, production? There's so much production, like on Billy the Kid.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:32Bill Maher?

  Dun dun dun.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Aaron Copland.

• 26:35Bill Maher?

  I mean, so many of your songs, I'm telling you, it's an opus. It's not just a record. That's production from early on. You know, I mean, one of the things that blew my mind in this documentary was how big you were, how not big you were at a time when I thought you were huge, like when I was in college. That we're talking about Turnstile's, you know, had enormous songs on it. Like, people, I'm sure, think today.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  You were East Coast, right?

• 27:04Bill Maher?

  Yes, but like, New York State of Mind, Say Goodbye to Hollywood. What else? James, nobody talks about that. Also, Angry Young Man.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  I was a regional artist for a long time.

• 27:16Bill Maher?

  That's, yeah, I mean, that really blew my mind, that you were staying in Holiday Inns and scrounging for money at a time when I thought, we all did in college. Because Piano Man, that album had come out, Turnstile's, Streetlight Serenade. It was, I was still in college when The Big One came out.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  It was a low slog.

• 27:35Bill Maher?

  And the critics were not. Kind? I mean, do you think that? Did that affect you? Like you said, the thing with Elton John moved you to do something? Cause they were mean and wrong.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  I thought they were wrong. And.

• 27:52Bill Maher?

  They were wrong.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 27:54Bill Maher?

  Definitely. Time has proved it, and it was easy to know at the time. It, it, they're just, sometimes people are just wrong. But, you know. Again, the stupidest, I think, thing in the world is a music review. Because you can't put in words, whether I like this song or not.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  It's.

• 28:12Bill Maher?

  I have to hear it.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  Well, talking about music, who said that? It's like dancing about architecture.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  You say, what's the point?

• 28:21Bill Maher?

  It's no point.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  No point. It, it, you can't get the sound from a story in a magazine, which I'm quoting myself.

• 28:27Bill Maher?

  It's like writing a review of mustard, you know? I either like it, or I don't. It's, it's.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  It's all subjective.

• 28:35Bill Maher?

  And they're so, and they're such, you know? Just looking for ways to be stupid and snobby. Another thing I learned in documentary that I had no knowledge of before was that you were at one point appreciated ironically. And I was like, you know what? I never felt, I, I was never aware of this. I never felt the need to distance myself from my appreciation of Billy Joel. Were you aware of that?

• 29:05Speaker 00

  I know that there was some speculation about what the songs were really about. But I was just being literal. Like Piano Man was about a gay bar.

• 29:14Bill Maher?

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? It was like, I didn't, I didn't know that until recently. No.

• 29:22Bill Maher?

  But I mean, they just, they just. I feel sometimes they, something is so popular that then it, they decide it's corny. You know, like, I saw it happen in "Stairway to Heaven." You know, one of the greatest songs ever. And it, the song didn't change. But it just got played so much.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Do you, what is the, is there a bustle in your hedgerow? Do you know what that means? Cause I don't get that one.

• 29:50Bill Maher?

  Exactly, and that's what I appreciate about you. You never do that to me. You never make me go, what the fuck, you know? Could you replace the placeholder lyric with a real one? Would you put in the time to do that?

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Do you buy Davy in the Navy?

• 30:06Bill Maher?

  Yes, totally.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Okay, a lot of people don't. They go, that was a stretch. Well, what a cornball lyric that is. The guy's name was Davy. And he was in the Navy.

• 30:17Bill Maher?

  Even if it wasn't, it rhymes with Navy.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  Exactly, thank you.

• 30:21Bill Maher?

  And it makes sense, again. It's couched in this song with, it has so much poetry in it. And also moves people in a, in a very big way. I mean, but again, that song is kinda like the "Stairway to Heaven" song. It, it's just so fucking good and played so much that at some point, some group of people have to come along and go, oh, boy. Yeah, "Stairway to Heaven." You know, I mean, I remember when Neil Diamond suddenly sucked. And I was like, you know, I didn't get the memo. I, I like Neil Diamond. And always will. Barry Manilow, same thing. Like him. Don't need to be ironically in love.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  You're entitled to like what you want.

• 31:00Bill Maher?

  Especially when it's good.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Well, I have to disagree with you, Piano Man. I don't think it's that good a song. Even though it's been-

• 31:07Bill Maher?

  I know, okay, I don't care.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Okay, no, I know, it's fine.

• 31:11Bill Maher?

  Literally as, as a fan, I can say, you know, I don't care if you don't like it. And I appreciate you bearing with us, who love it, to play it all the time. And I'm sure you're, I, look, I got bored telling the same jokes. When I'm, when I-

• 31:26Speaker 00

  I bet you did.

• 31:26Bill Maher?

  For forty-three years, I was in the road as a stand-up. I just stopped doing it. Just, that's part of, yeah, I've told this joke a hundred times. And I know when I go, buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh, they go mad with laughter.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  Watch this.

• 31:39Bill Maher?

  And if I go buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh, it won't get any laugh.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:43Bill Maher?

  So I like hit the pedal and make the hamster dance. And, you know, I feel like a hack sometimes.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  It's showbiz.

• 31:49Bill Maher?

  But, okay, I got a great question for you. So when you were the piano man, like, making them forget about their troubles for a while. You must have been playing certain songs.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  I was just kind of this sound coming out of the corner of the room. For the most part, until I I started to sing something on the mic and it looked like sometimes that annoyed people. They didn't want to hear a singer. They just wanted some background music.

• 32:15Bill Maher?

  I got something for you.

• 32:18Bill Maher?

  When I was 12, I sent away, I bet you we listened to the same W A B C Cousin Brucie radio when we were kids, because that was Long Island and New Jersey.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  W M C A Good Guys, yeah.

• 32:30Bill Maher?

  When I, Good Guys and then Cousin Brucie on A B C.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 32:34Bill Maher?

  I sent away for this when I was 12. The Top 100 Hits of 1968.

• 32:43Bill Maher?

  You're bowled over by it.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Well, am I supposed to know?

• 32:47Bill Maher?

  No, I'm just saying, I still have it.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Why?

• 32:52Bill Maher?

  Aren't you glad I, now I can tell you what the Top 100 Hits of 1968 are.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Go ahead, come here.

• 32:58Bill Maher?

  Right, see, now you're glad I saved it. Number one, Hey Jude.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Biggie.

• 33:04Bill Maher?

  Two, Young Girl by Gary Puckett. Very inappropriate today. Like you couldn't.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 33:11Bill Maher?

  Just the fact that she's in his mind.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:13Bill Maher?

  And his love for her is way out of line.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:16Bill Maher?

  Not good. Number three, I hope you love this song as much as I do. People gotta be free. The Rascals.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  I love The Rascals.

• 33:27Bill Maher?

  That song also was a giant, right? You remember how big a hit that was?

• 33:31Speaker 00

  I loved the, they were my favorite band at that time was The Young Rascals.

• 33:35Bill Maher?

  Four, Mrs. Robinson.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  Great song.

• 33:38Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Great song.

• 33:39Bill Maher?

  No drummer.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  There's no drumming on that song?

• 33:42Bill Maher?

  No drummer.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  What's driving the rhythm on that?

• 33:45Bill Maher?

  The guitar.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  Well, that's it.

• 33:46Bill Maher?

  Guitar is a percussive instrument.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Was that, that was a Roy Hallie engineered?

• 33:51Bill Maher?

  I think all Paul Simon stuff is, right?

• 33:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:54Bill Maher?

  I remember that name. Five, Love is Blue, Paul Moria. Didn't like it then, hasn't improved with age.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  No, not really.

• 34:01Bill Maher?

  I love it that you're like a human jukebox. I could say any song and you could just start playing it.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  I don't know why I want to, I'm just driven to do that.

• 34:09Bill Maher?

  The fact that you can do that, it can so quickly translate from your ears to your fingers.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  That's my life.

• 34:16Bill Maher?

  No, it's amazing. All right, I'm gonna give you one more. Uh, oh. MacArthur Park.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Jimmy Webb. He's a friend of mine.

• 34:26Bill Maher?

  Isn't but isn't that a great song?

• 34:29Speaker 00

  It's a great song. The lyrics get poked fun at a lot. Someone left the cake out in the.

• 34:34Bill Maher?

  Well, okay. I've been listening to it forever. You're right. Um, and never really. Comics made jokes about that, you know, it's just a cake pal, you know. Carol Effer used to say it just, yeah, because if people don't know, the lyric is somebody left the cake out in the rain. I don't think I can take it. It took so long to bake it. I'll never have this recipe again. I was playing it this for a much younger person. She immediately. Understood. She said, of course, I get that. It's the metaphor is the the cake is a relationship. And you fucked it up. You left it out in the rain. Somebody left it out in the rain. That's suspicious. Somebody. I don't know who fucked this relationship up. But somebody left the cake out in the rain. I'm not pointing any fingers.

• 35:18Bill Maher?

  Um, and I'll never have this recipe again. I'll never find a.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Songwriter, yeah.

• 35:23Bill Maher?

  That's what it is. But. What's wrong with it is in the middle section, which is it's almost like. I would wouldn't even say it's a B section because it's almost like a whole different song, you know.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  Went away. It went away to a whole other thing. Yeah.

• 35:37Bill Maher?

  And then it came back with an instrumental like bumping and then back to the, yes. But the middle was.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Goes to a lot of moods.

• 35:46Bill Maher?

  Okay. It contradicts what he's saying about the cake. He's saying there will be another one. I'll have another dream and someone will bring it. Well, you just said.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  I'll never have that recipe again.

• 36:00Bill Maher?

  And you again, you never do that. You never. Make me go, that doesn't make sense.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, but if I could write a song. As good as Wichita Lineman that Jimmy Webb also wrote. I'd be a very happy man.

• 36:16Bill Maher?

  It's that's in here somewhere. Wichita Lineman.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Wichita Lineman sixty eight?

• 36:21Bill Maher?

  Yes, I was looking at it here. Somewhere recent, uh, I saw it. I can't, I'm not gonna go. Yeah, I mean, you don't think you've written a song as good as Wichita Lineman?

• 36:32Speaker 00

  No.

• 36:32Bill Maher?

  Oh, stop it. Why?

• 36:33Speaker 00

  I tried. There's a song called Stop in Nevada that I was trying to write.

• 36:37Bill Maher?

  Love Stop in Nevada.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  I was trying to write Wichita Lineman. Well, I was thinking midwestern guy climbing a telephone pole with the barren fields of Kansas. And how do you evoke that? How do I, how do I write that?

• 36:53Bill Maher?

  Why do you want to? You know, your songs are about something like, you know, you could have written, uh, when you, when you start a song with somebody's name, like Anthony

• 37:05Bill Maher?

  works in the shop.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  Um, you got the guy.

• 37:09Bill Maher?

  Saving his money, saving his money for someday. See, that's poetic, not for, it's someday, using someday to, to evoke the thought of it someday as a specific holiday, savings money for someday, right? Yeah, so, okay, but that song gets at something. It's very McCartney in the sense of he did it often. He would just take a name and imagine a life.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  Working class stuff.

• 37:35Bill Maher?

  Eleanor Rigby, you know, Lady Madonna, just JoJo. Who are these people? We don't know.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  You know the story of that song, Moving Out? Why it is what it is now? It started out as something else.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  I had a different melody, a completely diff, first I wrote, I write the music first. The, the what I was writing was somebody else's song. It was a Neil Sedatka song. So I show it to the band, the band goes, that sucks. That's why, cause it's a Neil Sedatka song. Oh, you mean I have to write a whole other?

• 38:11Bill Maher?

  That's still sounds like the song to me.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  It's this rhythm is the same, the pattern is the same.

• 38:16Bill Maher?

  I mean, there's only so many notes. There's some, some songs are going to.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you want them to be as.

• 38:22Bill Maher?

  And they are. I, I, I never heard that from that song.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  I had to rework the whole thing. And, and then it became. Anthony works in the grocery store. Cause I don't wanna have to write a whole other bunch of lyrics.

• 38:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  I wrote all the lyrics, that was such a pain in the ass. I gotta change it now? No, keep the lyrics and rewrite the music. So it was one of those.

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• 39:59Bill Maher?

  But it's about something, you know? I mean, it's not just... I mean, Eleanor Rigby, that's about something. Loneliness, and that's a haunting... That's a great lyric.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:11Bill Maher?

  But Desmond, you know, these are just like, I can imagine I'm this other person. Whereas your thing is, you know, I mean, I would say that song fits into your, like, subgenre of your sly commentary on the disintegrating American dream, Allentown, you know? "Moving Out" is one of those songs. You have a number of them, I think.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  Well, you're picking up on something that I... That's what I like about reading your book. I'm tipping over sacred cows all my life. That's what I like to do. I like to do that.

• 40:46Bill Maher?

  Catholic girl song.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  You had to be done.

• 40:49Bill Maher?

  I... But it's a... It did have to be done. But I was surprised to... Realized watching the doc that it was that controversial in the seventies.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:03Bill Maher?

  I mean, I guess it, look, I've had many letters from William Donahue, the head of the Catholic League. He literally has challenged me to a fight. Really, like

• 41:12Speaker 00

  I got some of that.

• 41:13Bill Maher?

  Two sixty something year old men in the parking lot with our short sleeves rolled up, really? But that's how the Catholic Church feels about me. So, I, but that, that, they were really upset.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Yes, they were.

• 41:23Bill Maher?

  And it's such a clever, energetic, oh, it's just great, you know? And it's funny, and it's, it's one of yours that's like in triplets, right? The, the, like, which is to me a comedy rhythm. Like Captain Jack is in triplets. And it's like, see, comedy is always threes, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then the thing

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Right, I boom.

• 41:44Bill Maher?

  Doesn't fit, that is, takes you, and every triplet in Captain Jack, it's almost like a you know, you're in the, you're on the, you're, you're in street clothes from your head down to your toes. But so your finger's gonna pick your nose, you know, like every, and your father's in the swimming pool. Like every trip, it's almost, you know what I'm saying?

• 42:06Speaker 00

  When's the shoe gonna drop? Yeah.

• 42:07Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Well, that's interesting, you know, and the ironic thing about Only the Good Die Young is that in, in all honesty, the Catholic girls were the easiest ones. They were the, you know, the least, the least pure of all the, the young girls were the Catholic girls. Everybody knew that. They were the easy girls.

• 42:27Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:28Bill Maher?

  I, I would, I did not avail myself to, and I was raised Catholic, to either this knowledge or these women. That was the way it was on Long Island?

• 42:37Speaker 00

  I think so. That was the, that was the

• 42:39Bill Maher?

  And they were attracted to you because you were not, because you were forbidden fruit?

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so.

• 42:45Bill Maher?

  As a Jew?

• 42:46Speaker 00

  I didn't even have Jewish upbringing. I just, my family was Jews.

• 42:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, same thing with my mother's Jewish heritage, but I was never in a temple and neither was she.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  But that would make you a Jew.

• 42:56Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's what they say, but you know what? I don't like when people say something that is an opinion and a religion is just an opinion. Don't tell me what it is. Like, that's just, that, first of all, that comes from Roman law. We're not going by Roman law anymore. Yes, in, in Phyllis

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Some ways we are.

• 43:14Bill Maher?

  Yes, we are going backwards in some ways.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  You think it's settled, settled

• 43:18Bill Maher?

  But that's another thing I learned in the doc about you. You're German. This explains so much.

• 43:25Bill Maher?

  Because like, who are the great composers? All Germans, I guess, because the Russians and, but like, who dominated first Bach? Six, seventeenth century, then Mozart in the eighteenth century was the man. Then it was Beethoven, Schubert. It's a German thing. It makes, yes, it makes sense that you, that something in the Teutonic blood.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  But I'm not Teutonic.

• 43:52Bill Maher?

  Well, that means German, doesn't it?

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, yes, it does, geographically.

• 43:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  But my family were Jews.

• 44:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but you were still German Jews.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  And they were more German than they were Jews, in, in their minds.

• 44:06Bill Maher?

  I mean, the seat of antisemitism before Hitler was not Germany, it was France.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:12Bill Maher?

  The Dreyfus affair.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:14Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  And Spain.

• 44:16Bill Maher?

  Spain, everywhere. It's amazing the way, the one thing that two political sides can agree on is hating Jews. It's like, what can bring us together?

• 44:25Speaker 00

  Well, I, I just.

• 44:26Bill Maher?

  Jews.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  They quoted me, uh, I don't remember what it was about, oh, there's a, uh, an Israeli magazine called The Forward. You ever read The Forward? And I, I, they quoted me as saying, no matter what, I'm always a Jew. Because I wore the Jewish star.

• 44:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I saw.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  The yellow star. And my point was, it's not just I'm saying that. People who think you're Jewish say he's a Jew. No matter what you do, you're always gonna be a Jew. You can't not be a Jew if you were Jewish. That, I think that's what you're saying.

• 45:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah, see, again, back to the lyrics, like, all those dudes, they never had to write lyrics, right? Bach never wrote a lyric?

• 45:11Speaker 00

  No.

• 45:11Bill Maher?

  So he didn't have that burden? And, well Mozart wrote operas, right? Did he write lyrics?

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Mozart wrote operas, he had Du Pante, who was his lyricist.

• 45:22Bill Maher?

  Oh, so he didn't write lyrics?

• 45:23Speaker 00

  He didn't write libretto. He wrote music. Beethoven stole from, um, the famous Goethe, who wrote, uh, "You're going to joy." "Freude, schöne Gattin, funken, lapp, alt, elisium." Uh, he borrowed from the famous poet, Go, Goethe.

• 45:42Bill Maher?

  So, did you ever think about, like, BlackRock had Hal David?

• 45:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:47Bill Maher?

  And your boy Elton had Bernie.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Bernie Toppin.

• 45:51Bill Maher?

  Um, did you ever think, oh, why don't I get Mia?

• 45:55Speaker 00

  I thought about it.

• 45:56Bill Maher?

  You made the right decision, because you would have been disappointed. You would have.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 46:02Bill Maher?

  I mean, look, I love Elton John, but some of those lyrics, Rocketman? If somebody handed you Rocketman, come on, man, you would not do it. You would not.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  That shows me what a great music writer Elton was.

• 46:17Bill Maher?

  And stupid lyrics. I mean, come on, he's an astronaut, but his wife is packing his bags?

• 46:25Bill Maher?

  And all the science, I don't understand.

• 46:27Speaker 00

  But the music makes you get it.

• 46:29Bill Maher?

  But you know what? I'll tell you something about astronauts. They do know the science. They really do. They just don't send people up there like, it's not the Katy Perry Girls trip, you know, it's NASA. Anyway, but that is funny.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  What are the magic of music, though, I think? Because there is a, there is a code within the music itself that has nothing to do with the words that takes you to this place, if it's done right.

• 46:54Bill Maher?

  Of course. Exact, why do you think we like you?

• 47:00Bill Maher?

  That's why we like you. You do, you perform that, and it's, it's, there is something about music um, that just is, you know, premiss into parries among the arts, because it just gets to people like, on a very deep level. And it can be intellectual, too, but it just goes right to the solar plexus or whatever.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think it's a mistake to try to over-intellectualize it. Music, you know, to me, that, what I love about classical music is its purity. There's no lyrics in a lot of symphonic music and a lot of classical music. It's just music. And it can take me away somewhere else completely. I get stolen from it. I, I literally get carried away listening to beautiful music. Um, I don't know why that is.

• 47:52Bill Maher?

  No, I, I, so do I. There are, there are some songs that, very few, but I can think of one for sure that make me cry.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Samuel Mars' "Adagio."

• 48:04Bill Maher?

  I'm not a crier.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  You know the "Adagio"?

• 48:06Bill Maher?

  No.

• 48:13Bill Maher?

  No, no, no. That's your, your, your, your function is to take- Take that and make it pop music for me.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 48:20Bill Maher?

  Cause I'm just a guy.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  How about?

• 48:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 00

  It's almost like a medieval thing. Uh, but music does that.

• 48:36Bill Maher?

  It also makes me think of the Civil War.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  Good. That's good. Stephen Foster.

• 48:42Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you know what I mean? You could play that behind Ken Burns showing-

• 48:46Speaker 00

  Yes. He was an influence on me, Stephen Foster.

• 48:50Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  And all, all those, uh, those Civil War era songs, they're stirring. They are.

• 48:56Bill Maher?

  Well, a- again, this documentary made me realize that, like, so many songs that I, of yours that I had been listening to for so long and appreciate the lyrics on one level because they are universal. And then this put color to this black and white drawing of your life that I had had.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Really?

• 49:15Bill Maher?

  Like, yes, because so many of your songs are very literal as to what was going on in your life. Whoever put the documentary together had a very easy job matching the song to what was being said because, you know, um, "Say goodbye to Hollywood," that's when Billy was leaving Hollywood. You know, it's like, who can't put that, you know?

• 49:35Speaker 00

  They did a good job with that.

• 49:36Bill Maher?

  "New York State of Mind," I'm ba- I'm loving New York now.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  There's a story-

• 49:38Bill Maher?

  "Piano Man," I'm liv- I'm working in a piano, uh, but, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's pretty straightforward.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  Well, I, I got advice when I was starting out was write what you know. And that's how I wrote, when I wrote it.

• 49:54Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  I'm very literal. I get angry with myself.

• 49:57Bill Maher?

  No, and I was so interested in the documentary to learn about the whole relationship with you and your first wife and how many of the songs are about her. That's something I really didn't understand and the complex situation of having your wife then be your manager. Like, like, ah, now I understand she's always a woman. Because, you know, in the song, I'd have been listening to all these years and loving all these years. You know, she steals like a thief.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  What's up with this chick?

• 50:25Bill Maher?

  And she's casually cruel and she'll, you know, make you bleed and then laugh about it. I'm like, it's like a fun girl, but he loves her. And then I realized it's, that's her, how she is with, in business, on your behalf.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  She's always a woman.

• 50:42Bill Maher?

  To you.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  Me. Hello. Yeah.

• 50:45Bill Maher?

  Well, we don't know this. What am I, Kreskin? I don't know.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  No, I know, but people used to tear that apart. You go, well, how can he like this person because they're so horrible? No, it's duality.

• 50:56Bill Maher?

  But even if you don't know the backstory, it does make sense in a way because I've had that kind of relationship.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 51:03Bill Maher?

  Where, um, just put it this way. I thought this woman was horrible and yet if you ask me to explain to somebody why, I couldn't do it. So I would, you know, I think I would just, the essence of the song, so I just blame myself. If you don't get it, I'm kind of talking to myself. You don't get it, look, look in the mirror. You know that you wrote three she songs, of course. You must know this. Three that start with she.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  She's Got Away.

• 51:34Bill Maher?

  She's Got Away.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  She's Always a Woman. She's Right on Time.

• 51:37Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Do you like She's Right on Time?

• 51:39Bill Maher?

  Love it.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  I think that's one of my favorite songs I wrote.

• 51:42Bill Maher?

  Love it. That and Laura are very, Laura's to me the most Beatlesque.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 51:49Bill Maher?

  Isn't that a Beatle? It's like, and I say that as the ultimate compliment.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  I was channeling John Lennon.

• 51:54Bill Maher?

  To, but like, yeah, that part, what am I supposed to do? That sounds so Lennon-y. And then, but although the, ah.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:06Bill Maher?

  It's, it's awesome.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  It was Beatlesque. I couldn't deny it.

• 52:09Bill Maher?

  There could be no greater complimentary adjective than Beatlesque.

• 52:13Speaker 00

  I appreciate that. That's what I was going for.

• 52:18Bill Maher?

  And you got it.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  And I I had to say fucking.

• 52:22Bill Maher?

  I loved it.

• 52:23Speaker 00

  Feeling like it's time to drop the F-bomb. Fucking.

• 52:26Bill Maher?

  That wasn't done a lot in those days.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  No, it's the only time I think I've ever done anything like that.

• 52:32Bill Maher?

  Right. Well, no. I got a thumb and it's a son of a bitch.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  Oh, well, that's light. That's that's obscenity light.

• 52:41Bill Maher?

  Okay, but even back then, that was.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 52:44Bill Maher?

  That's on Piano Man.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:46Bill Maher?

  Right?

• 52:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was not done.

• 52:47Bill Maher?

  We're talking mid seventies. They didn't. People didn't say son of a bitch on records.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  No. Bitch. Bitch is back. That was shocking.

• 52:55Bill Maher?

  Billy, why did you feel this need to work blue?

• 52:59Speaker 00

  It worked.

• 53:02Bill Maher?

  No, but uh. Well, yeah, three she songs. Yeah, I mean, we have such a different um. View of like relationships, I think, and yet. I'm so on the same page with you when you sing about how. Don't anybody tell me what to do. I mean, this come, this is a theme that comes up a lot in your songs. And again, makes you very lovable to a lot of people. You know, just. Do what you want. This is my life. Who can't relate to that? Some people probably they don't. They don't have that gene like we do like I don't want. Even like uh. You know.

• 53:47Bill Maher?

  The one where you're driving the motorcycle in the rain. Like. I know it's stupid. You are probably right. But I still want to do it. Don't tell me what to do.

• 53:59Speaker 00

  That's what used to get my back up about in the early days when I would read these. Negative reviews. They basically they were saying, no, he shouldn't be doing that. He should be doing this. This is the right way that he should be doing it. And I was like, no, that's not the way I want to do it. That's not the story I want to tell. I don't want to tell your story. I want to tell my story.

• 54:20Bill Maher?

  But it's curious to me that someone who has that gene. Gets married a lot. See, like, I never got married. So for me, it makes sense this. I don't tell me what to do. I find it irreconcilable, but maybe.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  I understand, I do too.

• 54:38Bill Maher?

  But I know you said in the documentary, you don't want to die alone. But don't you always die alone? Isn't that the one thing we always just?

• 54:46Speaker 00

  Can't take him with you.

• 54:47Bill Maher?

  You can't. I mean, in India, sometimes the widow throws herself on the funeral pyre.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 54:53Bill Maher?

  I mean, I don't think a lot in.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  I think I just have this uncontrollable adoration of women.

• 55:03Bill Maher?

  They, all your exes like you. I mean, the fact that your first wife is a big part of the documentary says a lot.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  We're still friends.

• 55:11Bill Maher?

  Being friends with exes, I think, says a lot about a man. And they all seem to like you, and there's no animosity, and they have good things to say, that's.

• 55:20Speaker 00

  I appreciate that, too.

• 55:22Bill Maher?

  Yeah, oh, I'm sure you do, you should. It's, you know, and you know, I know the first one ended with that motorcycle crash.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  Well, it had been coming on for a while even before that.

• 55:35Bill Maher?

  But, you know, sometimes people do something, um, subconsciously.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  Maybe so.

• 55:42Bill Maher?

  I mean, my, I have a doctor friend, he's a, you know, not a M D, but a holistic doctor, also a shrink. And he said, he once said to me, I've seen people give themselves cancer to get out of a relationship.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  I wonder sometimes if I have a self-destructive tendency. Because, you know the song The Entertainer?

• 56:06Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  All right, well, that came out after Piano Man was kind of a semi-hit. Piano Man was like a well-known song.

• 56:13Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  And The Entertainer was kind of a commentary on how they chopped it up, and they edited it, the music business, and you got to be.

• 56:19Bill Maher?

  Another can of beans.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  Another can of beans. So, here I was, things are going well, and it was almost as if I was saying, let me see if I can screw this up somehow. And it wasn't a good idea to release that song based on the music business response to it, because they didn't like that. That was not a popular song with them. So, oh, he's, he had a hit, and now he's bitching about it? That's how it was received. So, I always wondered about something like that. Do I have that self-destructive tendency?

• 56:50Bill Maher?

  Well, you did try to, you almost died three times. There was the motorcycle crash. Then there was like, well, you know what? Those early ones, I had the same, you know, I'm, I'm gonna kill myself when I was nineteen years old. If I could have gotten laid once at Cornell.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  You probably would have been better off.

• 57:06Bill Maher?

  Are you kidding? I would, my depression would have lifted. I would not be suicidal.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:11Bill Maher?

  But you know, there's that era of your life where you do kind of have this, you have to get over the idea of, of feeling sorry for yourself.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 57:19Bill Maher?

  And that's what, you know, the one where you.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  That's a big one.

• 57:21Bill Maher?

  You drank lemon pledge. I, I saw that in a documentary. That's what they said.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was lemon pledge. That's right. You remember that?

• 57:30Bill Maher?

  It's hard to forget that. Lemon pledge? I mean, in your defense, lemon is a flavor.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  It would look tastier than the, than bleach. There were two things in the closet. I said, I'll take the lemon pledge because it's lemon flavored. It'll be tastier.

• 57:45Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 57:46Speaker 00

  All I did was fart furniture polish. I polished my mom's wooden chairs. I remember that.

• 57:54Bill Maher?

  I feel like our generation, so much more stoic. I mean, when you were playing, uh, Summer Highland Falls, the end of the chorus is always, it's either sadness or euphoria. Which, I don't know if I completely relate to that. I mean, I certainly remember sadness. Euphoria?

• 58:17Speaker 00

  They used to call it manic depression. And that's how I was feeling at the time. That's that age. Like you said, nineteen to early twenties, you got your head so far up your ass, you can't see straight. Uh, and you have to get out of yourself. You have to start empathizing with the rest of the world.

• 58:34Bill Maher?

  You also had family stuff. I mean, that's really a big part of the first one, your father.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:40Bill Maher?

  Or lack of, you know? I didn't know all that, but you, you know, you kind of like, he left and then even when you found him.

• 58:52Bill Maher?

  It was not. What is the lesson there that like uh even when you're related to somebody, they don't have to be kind. They don't have to be good to you. They don't have to care.

• 59:06Speaker 00

  What is it? Don't don't meet your heroes because they're gonna let you down somehow.

• 59:11Bill Maher?

  When it's your own kin. You know what? My mother told me a story. My mother did not have a father. He left as soon as she was born. This is in the twenties. And so she was raised by my grandmother and the meeting, you know, the larger family, the grandparents. But she I remember she told me she was in World War Two, as are both our fathers were.

• 59:34Bill Maher?

  A nurse. And I forget how it came about, but her father, she was gonna meet her father for the first time. And she was in her army uniform and she was super excited. She didn't tell me a lot of stories like this, but she met him and she just said, it wasn't like he was mean or he just was like cold.

• 59:53Bill Maher?

  You know, it was like he just had to be there. He didn't really wanna be there. And it just, you could tell it just was devastating. Almost worse than if he had hit her or something. So.

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  Is this, it's one of those things you, I don't know if you really ever get over.

• 1:00:09Bill Maher?

  It no, not family stuff.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I realize, you know, the song Vienna. I didn't realize until recently, it was me writing about me.

• 1:00:18Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  I I just thought it was about my friends. I was seeing my friends drive themselves crazy trying to live the American dream and I thought I was talking about them. And I I watched the doc and I went, wait a minute, this is me looking for my dad. That's what this is about and I'm still trying to work all that out.

• 1:00:34Bill Maher?

  All those songs you have about going home to your family. Like you cannot understand how interchangeable. Like kid, people of our age who grew up like in the suburbs of New York, our lives were. You know, I bet you you grew up in an all-white town.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  Yep, all white.

• 1:00:52Bill Maher?

  So did I. Rivervale, New Jersey. And, you know, this is supposedly the liberal.

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:00:59Bill Maher?

  East, northeast, right, New York City, but that's where people were in the 50s and 60s.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Bill Maher?

  But all those songs, like, it's like, wow, this guy's so in my head, you know? The, um, you know, "Well, our fathers fought the Second World War." "My father fought the Second." "Spent our weekends on the Jersey." "We spent our weekends on the Jersey Shore." Or the one about the suburban showdown. Again, what an opus, like.

• 1:01:27Bill Maher?

  I've had that feeling when I lived in L.A. And I was going home for Thanksgiving or something, and it was like, ah. Going east on a plane, drinking all that free champagne. I know it's supposed to be fun, but I wish I took my gun. And then, you know, sitting around with the neighbors there and the TV on, and the kitchen chairs. All those details were exactly my life.

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

  Well, it was, it was what I knew, but you remember when we were growing up, the, the prevailing literature at the time was trashing the suburban culture. So we were made, kind of made to feel nonexistent, almost. Useless, vanilla. What's the point of existence? It was, we're just existentialists.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  I remember feeling insignificant because of that, and I was, I was trying to present, "Hey, I'm here. We're here." You know, there is, we have something to, to, to discuss. We have something to talk about. We're not nonexistent. We do exist.

• 1:02:28Bill Maher?

  But we also were aware of our own lameness.

• 1:02:31Speaker 00

  Yes, we were very much aware of it, I think.

• 1:02:34Bill Maher?

  I mean, I, look.

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  We're beaten over the head with it.

• 1:02:38Bill Maher?

  I never liked living in New York City because I grew up in the suburbs. I like L.A. Because it's the suburbs.

• 1:02:48Bill Maher?

  There's no there there. I like a lawn. And a, and a, and a single family, even if it's a shitty one. Right. Our house is very small, probably like your, maybe like a Levittown. Levittown house, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Houses were so much smaller. Yep. But if you had a quarter acre, then it was your, your property. But it was yours. Yeah. It was enough. It's my whole universe. Oh. But, you know, you, you really write about the stultifyingness of the suburbs. I mean, that Captain Jack is really about that. Um, moving out.

• 1:03:22Bill Maher?

  Um, so many of these songs evoke that era, that post-World War II generation. Um, that was just very different. And it's like, I think of Angry Young Man, which is one of my faves of all. I figured that. I, it's an amazing record, so prescient, so fitting of this time. I don't know if it was, was ever a single, no? No. Okay. I figured you liked that song. Oh. I mean, I'm not gonna recite the lyrics. I'm, I'll just do the B section. I believe I passed the age. Of consciousness and righteous rage.

• 1:04:05Bill Maher?

  I found out that just surviving is a noble fight. I once had, um. Well, it's believing causes too. Two, I had my pointless point of view and life went on no matter who was wrong or right. I feel like that is the message of the age, even though some people will hear that and say, "Look at these two assholes." Boomers. You know, you know, who aren't just like, Trump's the worst. Okay, but even if we admit that, um, this is also true. And that's, I feel like that is a theme, you know, in your last album. Shades of Grey. Shades of Grey, that, that's sort of that theme. It's even in Saigon, you know, like in the middle of the fight. Didn't matter. Who was wrong or right.

• 1:04:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:04:52Bill Maher?

  You still feel that way?

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:04:55Bill Maher?

  Yeah?

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Bill Maher?

  And you don't care what they say about you, the woke or the...

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  At this point, no, I'm...

• 1:05:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  I'm inured to it. But, uh, I, uh, there was always this, I don't know if it's rabbinical or what, but it was, on the other hand, I'm always trying to find out the other point of view. What's, what's, you know, not my point of view, somebody else's point of view. Okay, I like to understand why they think that way.

• 1:05:21Bill Maher?

  It's so difficult in this day and age because everybody is in there...

• 1:05:24Speaker 00

  It's almost impossible.

• 1:05:25Bill Maher?

  It is almost impos-- I mean, it is what I am always trying to do on my show. Is, um, look, this is one safe space for everybody, and I will take the heat from either, both sides. I mean, I do feel like the left, who ironically I'm more, actually aligned with, is more snippy about it and has a worse attitude about it. And makes me viscerally not like them more sometimes. But that's what I'm trying to do and...

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  I get that from your books.

• 1:05:53Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  And you do this.

• 1:05:57Bill Maher?

  Course.

• 1:05:59Speaker 00

  You know, like, who the hell are you? Throw stones that in that direction, you know?

• 1:06:04Bill Maher?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  Look at me. That, that kind of thing.

• 1:06:06Bill Maher?

  Well, listen, I, I really wanted to say to you, among other things, you know, I appreciate you as much for the records you did not put out as for the ones you did. Because very few had it in them to go, you know what? Uh, if I can't be at the tippity-top as I always was, I'm not gonna put my fans through the downside of my career. Not that there hasn't been some fine stuff from lots of artists who were heroes of my youth, but in general, it's harder to do. And, uh, you did that and, you know, and then when you did finally put out a record,

• 1:06:46Bill Maher?

  it was absolutely as good as the stuff in the, it fits seamlessly. If I play Turn the Lights Back On, it fits seamlessly in between any two of the other ones that I love. That's as good as you can do.

• 1:07:02Speaker 00

  Good.

• 1:07:03Bill Maher?

  But, you know, there's only one work in thirty-two years, so, like, that's not a good...

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  I didn't write that one.

• 1:07:09Bill Maher?

  Oh shit.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  Well, I, I might have changed the lyric here and there. I liked the song.

• 1:07:15Bill Maher?

  It sounds like one of yours.

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  Yes, and I, maybe that's what I liked about it. It felt familiar to me. There's those, I'd had those thoughts for a long time. But I just, I enjoyed listening to that song. I said, yeah, I, I could have sung that.

• 1:07:29Bill Maher?

  Well, it definitely works on two levels. Obviously, it's about some romantic relationship. But it also, we can't help but think, a guy who hasn't put out a record in this long, when he's saying, can I turn the lights back on?

• 1:07:45Speaker 00

  The lights back on.

• 1:07:46Bill Maher?

  It has to be about that too.

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:48Bill Maher?

  Are we wrong?

• 1:07:49Speaker 00

  No, I think there's, there's a couple of different levels to it, and that's one of them.

• 1:07:53Bill Maher?

  I like songs like that, that like, um, you know, some of it is just, Eagles did it a lot, you know, like it's just a philosophy, then it goes into a story. You know, like new kid in town. First, it's like, you know, there's talk on the street. You know, there's a new kid in town. And then it goes into like this whole section about the music and we're, I mean, talking about a girl and, you know. And it, it does kind of comment on each other. I feel like that's what's kind of the thing that's going on.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  I think Don Henley does that very well. I think, I admire him as a songwriter.

• 1:08:28Bill Maher?

  Oh, such a great songwriter.

• 1:08:30Speaker 00

  And, and people have this

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  deep animosity towards the Eagles. They've been so successful.

• 1:08:40Bill Maher?

  That's my stairway to heaven theory. Exactly.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  What is that?

• 1:08:45Bill Maher?

  It's people wanting to be snobby. It's people wanting to feel like they're, it's, it's, why does clubs have a velvet rope? Because everything has to be about, I'm cooler than you, so you're over here. You're over here with Neil Diamond and the Eagles and Billy Joel or whoever. It's like, shut up, you asshole.

• 1:09:04Speaker 00

  I thought we were past that era.

• 1:09:07Bill Maher?

  Why did you get that impression? You thought humans like got evolved to a greater?

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  I thought we got smarter.

• 1:09:14Bill Maher?

  Social media, the phone, made all of that shit worse. All of that shit got worse because you could do it all.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  It dumbed it down.

• 1:09:23Bill Maher?

  What?

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  It might have even dumbed it down.

• 1:09:25Bill Maher?

  Well, it's dumbed down, but it's also, you can be a prick anonymously.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:09:32Bill Maher?

  Which allows people who wanna be a prick and people, right? I mean, people say things all the time that they would never say if they had to say it to your face.

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  It just always surprises me how people, they express this hatred. It's like, you hate a musician because he wrote something.

• 1:09:53Bill Maher?

  When I was first on Twitter, it's like 2011, and I haven't been on it in a very long time to say, well, once in a while I say something, but it was like the very beginning and I answered somebody once. You know, you can answer people. And she was like, just really tearing me a new asshole about religion. And I said something back like, very short then, like, enjoy your myth. And she wrote back and immediately was just like, can we be friends? You know, it's like, can I, I'm taking, like, okay. The second I responded, all this hatred of me went away. Because now I'm saying, oh, here, you're inside the velvet rope. So that's what that's all about. But, you know, you transcended it all.

• 1:10:38Bill Maher?

  You know, you gave us an incredible body of work that really, I mean, you're not just a great composer for my era, any era.

• 1:10:49Speaker 00

  Well, that's interesting because I've never really done any kind of discussion about lyrics with my music. It's always been about my piano playing, my singing.

• 1:10:58Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:10:59Speaker 00

  Performing music, but not lyrics. So that's interesting to me. I'm glad you dug out that part.

• 1:11:07Bill Maher?

  Yes, and I do think, just like I have my theory about the Beatles with the singles.

• 1:11:14Bill Maher?

  I have my theory about you and it's lyrics. It's like, that was, you said it. The tyranny of the rhyme. The, to come up with the music, you could, you know, that's probably more fun and easy and.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  But I also was influenced by people that, we're talking about over a hundred and fifty years ago. You've heard of Gilbert and Sullivan?

• 1:11:33Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  My mom and my dad used to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. These were operas. And they were very clever lyrics, I mean, you know.

• 1:11:42Bill Maher?

  Very.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  Sarcastic English.

• 1:11:44Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  You know, uh, nineteenth century, uh, topics. But they were so brilliantly written, I admired that kind of lyric. And that's what I was kind of going for when I was writing my lyrics.

• 1:11:56Bill Maher?

  You got there, but you know, it's almost like something that good. It's a, it's like a lot of things where

• 1:12:06Bill Maher?

  after a certain age, I mean, there are no old physicists, like Einstein did all his work when he was like in his young twenties.

• 1:12:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um. Even, even as a teenager.

• 1:12:16Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Uh, athletes, nobody expects them to work past forty. Maybe, you know, you put out albums from basically early seventies to early nineties. Twenty years.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  It's enough.

• 1:12:28Bill Maher?

  A score. They don't use that word anymore, but it's in the Gettysburg Address.

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  Twenty years.

• 1:12:34Bill Maher?

  Yeah, he said four score and seven years ago. He could have said eighty-seven years, just like you could have said a younger man.

• 1:12:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:12:41Bill Maher?

  Instead of, yeah, but that's in between a poet and not, not a poet. Um, but, you know, to all those people who are always, you know, Billy Joel, why doesn't he put something out? You know what? He gave you a lot and, you know, get off his case. You're like the Fran Lebowitz of music, you know, like, why don't you write another book? Maybe they know something you don't. You know what? He, he gave a lot, get, we wanted to like, get every last speck of wood. Just grind you into dust and drive him back to drinking to get one. You know what? He's, he's given a lot and his last one even was great. And I guess what I'm saying is, don't take any shit from anybody, Bill.

• 1:13:25Bill Maher?

  Thank you. I appreciate it. No one's ever told me that. They should, because you earned it. Thank you. Okay, I appreciate this so much. This special is awesome. It's on HBO, which makes me proud, my network of 22 years. And I hope everybody sees it because your life is worthy of all the accolades you're getting.

• 1:13:50Bill Maher?

  If anyone should get a victory lap, it's you. Thanks. All right, pal. Very good.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

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• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.