From the Archives: Billy Joel

Recorded July 29th, 2012. Billy Joel has sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna—though the “rock star thing” is something he can “take off.” Joel started playing piano when he was about four or five years old. He admits that he doesn’t remember how to read sheet music anymore saying it’d be like reading Chinese. That doesn’t stop the third best-selling solo artist of all time in the U. S. from plunking out a few tunes with Alec. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:36Speaker 02

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• 1:01Speaker 03

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• 1:31Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio.

• 1:39Alec Baldwin?

  Billy Joel's fans have gotten to know him quite well over the past four decades.

• 1:56Alec Baldwin?

  From the open-hearted declarations of old-fashioned love in "She's Got Away" and "Just the Way You Are" to the hard-rocking social commentaries "We Didn't Start the Fire" and "Allentown".

• 2:28Alec Baldwin?

  If, like me, you grew up listening to Billy Joel's music, you can chart phases of your life by each of his albums. Maybe that's because Billy Joel's songs are so passionately connected to who he was at the time he wrote them.

• 2:47Alec Baldwin?

  And when you're actually sitting in the same room as him with a piano nearby, well, you can't help yourself. I just always remember you said that to me years ago, how predictable it was, wherever you were, that there was a piano, people were always like, "Billy, could you, uh, do you mind?"

• 3:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:03Alec Baldwin?

  "Just a couple of songs." That's your life.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  Yes. But it's, you know, it's fun. You can't have act-alongs, you're an actor. You can't act-along.

• 3:11Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  But you can have sing-alongs. I can always sit down at a party, play the piano, and everybody starts singing. I can go to a pub in England, "Hi, come on, Billy, give us a couple of songs. Come on, there you go. Yes, Uptown Girl, Uptown..." And they all sit around, they sing, and everybody has a blast. It's fun. It creates a community instantly.

• 3:26Alec Baldwin?

  Billy Joel is the third best-selling solo artist of all time in the United States. He's sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna. But he admits there's still room for improvement.

• 3:39Speaker 05

  I know what good piano playing is, and I'm not good. My left hand is lame. I'm a two finger left hand piano player.

• 3:46Alec Baldwin?

  As opposed to?

• 3:47Speaker 05

  Opposed to somebody who knows what they're doing with their left hand.

• 3:49Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  I never practiced enough to use all my fingers on my left hand, so I just play octaves, bass notes. My right hand tries to compensate for my left hand being so gimpy. So I overplay on my right hand. My technique is horrible. I can't read music. I never really got-

• 4:05Alec Baldwin?

  You don't read music?

• 4:06Speaker 05

  I used to, but I don't anymore. I forgot how.

• 4:10Alec Baldwin?

  So if I took a piece of music that you didn't know, if I got a score-

• 4:14Speaker 05

  I wouldn't.

• 4:14Alec Baldwin?

  And I put it in front of you and said, "Play this," you would not-

• 4:16Speaker 05

  It would be Chinese.

• 4:17Alec Baldwin?

  It would be Chinese to you.

• 4:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 4:18Alec Baldwin?

  How did that happen?

• 4:20Speaker 05

  It's like a language. If you stop speaking it often enough, you can't forget.

• 4:23Alec Baldwin?

  When did you stop and why?

• 4:24Speaker 05

  When we dances with wolves, she forgot how to speak English. I started taking lessons when I was about four or five, and I went up till I was about sixteen. So it was almost twelve years of classical piano lessons. I loved it, but I just, when you become a teenager, everything changes. I didn't want to read other people's dots anymore. And I also realized early on, I'm not going to be a concert pianist. I don't have the Rachmaninoff hands, the Horowitz hands. I had strong hands, but the short fingers.

• 4:55Alec Baldwin?

  You were Johnny Friendly's hands.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  Who's Johnny Friendly?

• 4:57Alec Baldwin?

  From On the Waterfront.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 4:59Alec Baldwin?

  You were Union Boss doing the shape up down of the dock in Hope Okin.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:03Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, you're not, you're not.

• 5:03Speaker 06

  He was my brother.

• 5:04Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 5:05Speaker 05

  You should have taken better care of me, Charlie.

• 5:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, he shouldn't look down for me, Charlie, just a little bit.

• 5:10Speaker 05

  A little bit.

• 5:10Speaker 06

  I know. So what did I get, a one-way ticket to Palookaville?

• 5:15Speaker 06

  I'm a bum, Charlie, let's face it. That's what I am.

• 5:17Alec Baldwin?

  That's what I am. So you're a kid and you-

• 5:19Speaker 05

  I, I, I-

• 5:20Alec Baldwin?

  But, but was there an intimation in your household?

• 5:23Speaker 05

  There was a piano.

• 5:24Alec Baldwin?

  Classical music, right.

• 5:24Speaker 05

  My father was-

• 5:25Alec Baldwin?

  Classical music.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was a classically trained pianist. He grew up in Nuremberg, Germany. And he also went to school in Switzerland. His father was quite well off. They had a mail order textile business, Joel Machth Fabrik. So he had to learn to play the piano. It was a very musical family. He could play Chopin, he could play all the great stuff. He should have become a musician. He became an engineer, he worked for GE, and then he was in promotion. He was never really happy because he didn't become a musician. We had an old upright piano in the house, a Lester piano, real piece of junk. And I happened to inherit that thing. And it ended up being a planter in the garden. My mom used it to grow a honeysuckle. She sang, her family were all singing, Gilbert and Sullivan, English music hall people. Her family was English.

• 6:10Speaker 05

  So I grew up in a, in a very musical home. I heard music all the time. My father was playing, my mother would sing. Radio was always on, listening to Milton Cross and the opera on Sunday. Leonora enters wearing a white gown. So I, I used to bang on the piano. My mom got sick of hearing me bang and she dragged me down the street and I started taking lessons. And I took to it.

• 6:32Alec Baldwin?

  You and the Lester and your mother and your father, where is this? The Bronx?

• 6:34Speaker 05

  This is in Hicksville.

• 6:36Alec Baldwin?

  Everybody was in Hicksville.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  We were in Hicksville. I, um, when my family moved with me out of the Bronx when I was a, a baby, I think I was maybe a year old.

• 6:43Alec Baldwin?

  So you basically grew up on the, on the island?

• 6:44Speaker 05

  I grew up on the island in the Levittown section of Hicksville.

• 6:47Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  We had a, um, a Levittown house, you know, the Cape Cod, on a quarter acre. Everybody's house looked the same, started out looking the same.

• 6:55Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  Now it doesn't look anything like Levittown.

• 6:57Alec Baldwin?

  Right. Like my town, yeah. Sixteen years old, Hicksville, Long Island.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:01Alec Baldwin?

  Vietnam war going on.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:03Alec Baldwin?

  You know, very, very tumultuous times. And all of a sudden, what do you decide you want to do?

• 7:07Speaker 05

  Well, I joined a band when I was fourteen. I was asked to be in a band.

• 7:12Alec Baldwin?

  The Echos?

• 7:13Speaker 05

  This was the Echos, garage band. All guitars, because there really were no keyboards that you could amplify. I played the piano. I never played the organ. Finally figured out how to, um, amplify keyboards. I think the Dave Clark Five was the first band that had a, an organ you could hear, a Vox organ it was called. I'm in pieces, bits and pieces. And I'm feeling.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  The most unglad sounding song in world.

• 7:40Alec Baldwin?

  He was constipated. You see about that?

• 7:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:44Alec Baldwin?

  So you amplify the keyboard?

• 7:45Speaker 05

  We got an organ and I, and I, uh, I was the, they decided I had the best voice in the band, which isn't really saying much because nobody could sing all that well in the band. We couldn't even harmonize. We're very bad singers, but I, they decided you either got the best voice, you'll sing the songs.

• 7:59Alec Baldwin?

  Okay. How did you feel about that?

• 8:01Speaker 05

  I felt a little funny about it because I'm not a front man. Uh, where you stand with the Michael Mick Jack. I didn't have to make Jagger moves.

• 8:07Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  I had a keyboard. You're kind of locked in. You can't move around. You can't carry a keyboard around unless you're an accordion player, and that looks like Lawrence Welk. Avan, then, that too. So, I stood at the piano, or I sat at the piano, and, but then, I realized, you know, that girl I always had a crush on is actually looking at me. She never looked at me twice. All those years in school, and we're playing at the Holy Family Church, the church dance. I was about fifteen, sixteen. Virginia is looking at me. You know, come out, Virginia, that Virginia.

• 8:38Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  She's looking up. I said, my God, she's looking at me. And the band sounded great. I love what I was doing. The crowd went yay when we finished every song. And at the end of the night, the priest gave us each fifteen dollars, which in nineteen sixty-five was fifteen hundred dollars.

• 8:53Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 8:54Speaker 05

  That was it. The door locked behind me.

• 8:56Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 8:56Speaker 05

  This is what I'm gonna do. I don't wanna go to Carnegie Hall anymore. And I ended up going to Carnegie Hall anyway.

• 9:01Alec Baldwin?

  And what, what music were you performing? Covers of other people?

• 9:04Speaker 05

  Jukebox bands. We were playing early Beatles, Stones, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.

• 9:09Alec Baldwin?

  During that time, when you're seeing Tommy James and the Shandells and all that music, who were you saying to yourself, if at all, were you saying, that's who I wanna be? That's who I really admire or look up to, or I think I wanna have his career?

• 9:22Speaker 05

  Well, I liked a lot of different kind of music. I already came out of a classical background, and I really dug jazz when I was in my early teens. Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Art Tainum, Jimmy Smith, Bill Evans. I loved jazz.

• 9:35Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Uh, but I realized, I ain't gonna be one of those guys either.

• 9:39Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 9:40Speaker 05

  Because I wasn't a good enough pianist. I mean, these guys are as virtuistic, virtuistic, whatever.

• 9:46Alec Baldwin?

  Virtuistic.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  Virtuistic.

• 9:48Alec Baldwin?

  They're good. They're just good.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  They're just really good. I mean, the top of the line guys are the top of the line in classical and jazz. They, they could've gone either way. The, the, the top of the line classical guys, had they decided to be jazz guys, could've been just as good as the top jazz guys and vice versa. I wasn't good enough. I was good enough to play rock and roll and pop. But what I really fell in love with as a teenager with girls and stuff was first I liked soul music. James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, The Temptations.

• 10:18Alec Baldwin?

  Marvin Gaye.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight. I mean, I just loved soul.

• 10:24Alec Baldwin?

  Did you cover that music as well?

• 10:25Speaker 05

  I tried to.

• 10:26Alec Baldwin?

  They didn't want that in Hicksville?

• 10:28Speaker 05

  Well, it was all, you know, they were all, they were all white people.

• 10:32Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  And there wasn't.

• 10:33Alec Baldwin?

  Long Island white people.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  There wasn't anybody but white people in my school. I think there were a couple of Jews, some Latinos. It was sprinklings, but everybody was white. But everybody liked soul music with Twistin' Shout, what everybody would do, "Come on now, shout, come on now." And Louis Louis, I think that was the Kingsman, What I Say, Ray Charles. "See the girl all dressed in green," and you'd make up really dirty words to that.

• 10:56Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  We came up with some really good stuff. So, I loved that stuff. And then the Beatles came around and there it was, boom. Four working-class guys from Liverpool, which is as close to Levittown in England, I think, sounding anyway. That, okay, four guys from Liverpool.

• 11:13Alec Baldwin?

  I never thought of that. Levittown is our Liverpool.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, Liverpool. And it's possible, it's possible. They don't look like Frankie Avalon, they don't look like Bobby Rydell. They look like four working-class guys from anywhere. They could be from Hicksville, they could be from Levittown. So, I said, "That's, that's possible. That's what I want to do. I want to write my own songs, I want to play in my own band, do our own arrangements and make our own way."

• 11:36Alec Baldwin?

  When did that start?

• 11:38Speaker 05

  This is before The Echoes.

• 11:40Alec Baldwin?

  Before?

• 11:40Speaker 05

  Before I joined the band. The Beatles came out.

• 11:43Alec Baldwin?

  You were a kid.

• 11:43Speaker 05

  I was a kid. I was thirteen.

• 11:45Alec Baldwin?

  And you started writing music?

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Yes, I started writing Erzau's Beatles songs.

• 11:49Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, did you?

• 11:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. "Well, I climbed the highest mountain."

• 11:53Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Speaker 05

  Trying to sound Liverpolian.

• 11:55Alec Baldwin?

  Liverpoodlian.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Liverpoodlian.

• 11:57Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 05

  You know, "She don't love me like before," my own song. "She don't love me anymore." "I believed all the lies she told me." Ah, ah, you know, that kind of thing. Trying to sound like the early Beatles. And it was fun, it was a lot. A lot of fun, but I was asked to join a band after the Beatles came out. Now, you've got to remember, November of sixty-three, John F. Kennedy is assassinated. The country goes into the dumps. Even though we didn't know that much about politics or government, he was our guy. He was the young, vigorous, progressive. He represented youth and vigor. And he was, boom, he was shot, taken away. Everybody just turned off, like a switch turned off.

• 12:41Speaker 05

  We became very cynical, depressed, the whole nation had the blues. February of sixty-four, who comes out? The Beatles come to America. We took them in, we just embraced that. They walked into that space.

• 12:55Alec Baldwin?

  Hopeful, funny.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  It was, they were.

• 12:57Alec Baldwin?

  Warm, sexy.

• 12:58Speaker 05

  Everything, everything that was taken away from us, great, let's go have a party.

• 13:03Alec Baldwin?

  Let's party. So you start writing songs and you're saying ersatz Beatles songs. What's the first song you write that you can remember?

• 13:11Speaker 05

  Uh, it was called My Journey's End. I could play it if you want me to.

• 13:14Alec Baldwin?

  Let's hear it.

• 13:23Speaker 05

  Well, I'd climb the highest mountain and I'd swim the deepest sea. If I knew you were there at my journey's end, waiting for me. Well, I could tell how much of you love me by the letters that you send. I'd go anywhere if I knew you were waiting there at my journey's end.

• 13:57Alec Baldwin?

  What's the first song you wrote that was on a record that you sold? Can you remember?

• 14:01Speaker 05

  Well, it was probably in The Hassles.

• 14:03Alec Baldwin?

  The Hassles sold records?

• 14:05Speaker 05

  A few, on Long Island, probably, maybe Jersey.

• 14:08Alec Baldwin?

  Right, exactly.

• 14:09Speaker 05

  We went overseas.

• 14:11Alec Baldwin?

  At the Woodrow Wilson Rest Stop.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Yes, I think it was the coffee, uh, chock full of nuts in Paramus. Cause we opened it, we, Hassles played at the opening. The, uh, the first time I, we sold anything. See, I was signed originally with the Echoes to Mercury Records. And, uh, we changed the name to The Lost Souls. We're The Lost Souls for a while. We made a couple of records, nothing ever happened. What was the other one? She don't love me like before, she don't love me anymore. I believed all the lies she told me. Don't you know it's true that she stole me away from my true love? And now my new love doesn't love me anymore. Almost like Mr. Moonlight.

• 14:55Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, it's like the Beatles.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  And then we became The Lost Souls. And it turns out there was an English band called The Lost Souls. So we had to change our name. So the president of Mercury Records, brilliant guy at the time, said, "Okay, we're gonna give you a new name. The Commandos."

• 15:12Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  Vietnam was heating up at the time. "You're gonna be The Commandos." "Ugh, we hate that name." "Nobody likes..."

• 15:19Alec Baldwin?

  War.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, nobody likes that stuff. "No, you're gonna be The Commandos, it's gonna be great, and we're gonna get you outfits." So that lasted about fifteen minutes, and we got dumped off the label.

• 15:30Alec Baldwin?

  So it's Echos?

• 15:31Speaker 05

  Lost Souls.

• 15:31Alec Baldwin?

  Lost Souls.

• 15:32Speaker 05

  And then?

• 15:33Alec Baldwin?

  Commandos. For a weekend.

• 15:35Speaker 05

  For a weekend.

• 15:35Alec Baldwin?

  They opened up one quick chock full of nuts.

• 15:37Speaker 05

  And then there was a band on Long Island which was making a lot of local noise called The Hassles. They asked me to join. The guys in my band, the Echos, the Lost Souls, Commandos, they were all going on to either the military or college. None of them were really seriously gonna be musicians, except the bass player. And I said, "I'll join, alright, I'll join The Hassles." They wanted me to play organ. "I'll join, if I can bring my bass player with me." Because they didn't have a bass player. They said, "Okay." So that became The Hassles. And then there was another guy, he got a lot of Mick Jagger moves, Little John, his name was. Great hair, good-looking guy, couldn't sing to save his ass.

• 16:14Alec Baldwin?

  Didn't matter. He could wiggle it, man.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  He was gorgeous, and women just went nuts, and I'm in the back doing all the singing. Well, but they had eyes, you know?

• 16:23Alec Baldwin?

  They could see.

• 16:25Speaker 05

  They could see the music.

• 16:27Alec Baldwin?

  Video killed the radio story.

• 16:29Speaker 05

  Absolutely. Glad I came up in an era where it wasn't that prevalent. So then I was in The Hassles. Now, The Hassles were a band, a blue-white-soul band. There were a bunch of them, The Vagrants was another one. They used to play at the Action House all the time in Long Island. We made two albums with United Artists, and they both bombed out. But that's the first time we started selling anything. Every Step I Take was the first song that I wrote that actually sold something.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  That was the vamp.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  Everything I do.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  I don't know, the chorus went. Every step I take, every move I make. I know I'm trying to a knife without you. I turn, I run, I hide, really bitters. But I know deep inside, a part of me has died.

• 17:30Alec Baldwin?

  You sounded like Popeye.

• 17:40Alec Baldwin?

  I didn't know you wrote that, that's great.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  That's how my father used to talk. Sounded like Popeye. Yeah, so that was probably the first thing that sold, it was on the first Hassles album. I think we sold, I don't know, a dozen copies. And I actually heard it on the radio once. But our big single was actually a cover of a Sam and Dave record. You Got Me Humming.

• 18:12Speaker 05

  I don't know what you got.

• 18:16Speaker 05

  But it's getting to me. You got me humming, you got me humming. It was a big song by Sam and Dave. Everybody was covering soul records and doing them psychedelic or doing their own arrangements of them. That was the Hassles hit. First album was horrible, the second album was really horrible. And then I, me and the drummer split off from the Hassles to form a power duo.

• 18:40Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 05

  Like, uh, I played-

• 18:42Alec Baldwin?

  Simon and Garfunkel.

• 18:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure.

• 18:45Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 05

  We were gonna destroy the world with Amplification. This was like the heavy metal thing. We heard Zeppelin, it blew our minds.

• 18:51Alec Baldwin?

  Iron Butterfly.

• 19:08Speaker 05

  Yep, it went on and on and on. We tried to be-

• 19:10Alec Baldwin?

  Why were we listening to that?

• 19:12Speaker 05

  Because that's what there was.

• 19:13Alec Baldwin?

  In the Garden of Eden, isn't that what someone said it was, that was like a nonsense lyric? A friend of mine knows the guy that wrote that song. I think he was trying to say, "In the Garden of Eden."

• 19:21Speaker 05

  You actually know the lyrics to it?

• 19:24Alec Baldwin?

  In the Garden of Edina?

• 19:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's all I know. In the Garden of Edina.

• 19:27Alec Baldwin?

  I don't remember the rest of it. I remember he explained it. He once had a party in LA years ago that really meant "In the Garden of-

• 19:31Speaker 05

  In the Garden of Edina.

• 19:32Alec Baldwin?

  In the Garden of Edina.

• 19:34Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 19:34Alec Baldwin?

  It became In the Garden of Edina. He made a gibberish version of it.

• 19:37Speaker 05

  So they're bailout lyrics, okay.

• 19:38Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 05

  I didn't know that.

• 19:40Alec Baldwin?

  So when you get to the, this point where you say, "Couple albums, the hassles," and then, when is it you?

• 19:48Speaker 05

  Well, the bands got smaller and smaller. The, uh, Attila became a two-man band.

• 19:54Alec Baldwin?

  So when you and he went off-

• 19:56Speaker 05

  We went off-

• 19:56Alec Baldwin?

  Attila was the two of you?

• 19:58Speaker 05

  Attila was just the two of us.

• 19:59Alec Baldwin?

  And what did he play?

• 19:59Speaker 05

  He played drums.

• 20:00Alec Baldwin?

  Drums.

• 20:01Speaker 05

  I played ham and organ wired directly through amplifiers.

• 20:04Alec Baldwin?

  So we're getting closer to Lawrence Welk now, the more we go. It's getting closer. You almost got that accordion.

• 20:08Speaker 05

  But it was louder. It was much louder. And we got signed to Epic. And we were on Epic for one album and it was a colossal failure. We played one gig, I think it was on Ungano's on the west side in Manhattan, and people went fleeing from the place. We were so loud, you could see blood coming out of people's ears. It was horrible. Thank God it didn't happen because I would have screamed myself out of the, right out of the business.

• 20:32Alec Baldwin?

  So after you nearly kill a roomful of people at Ungano's, then what happens?

• 20:36Speaker 05

  Then we broke up and I decided I no longer want to be a rock and roll star. Uh, got that out of my, got that out of my system. I was about nineteen or twenty. I want to write songs now. I'd like to explore a little bit of folk music.

• 20:49Alec Baldwin?

  And what did you start to write?

• 20:50Speaker 05

  I started to write the songs that are on an album called Cold Spring Harbor.

• 20:53Alec Baldwin?

  So give me an example. One of the earliest ones you remember writing?

• 21:03Speaker 05

  Baby, all the lights are turned on you. Now you're in the center of the stage. Everything revolves on what you do. Ah, you are in your prime, you've come of age. And you can always have your way somehow. Cause everybody loves you now. It was kinda Dylan-esque, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to go down and play in the Village. Actually, I didn't even wanna play anymore.

• 21:29Alec Baldwin?

  Just you?

• 21:30Speaker 05

  Just me.

• 21:31Alec Baldwin?

  With you and the piano?

• 21:32Speaker 05

  Well, I got a band to play this stuff with me. But I, I'm picturing it on guitar. Genelitina. Baby, all the lights are turned on you. Ah, you're in the center of the stage. Everything revolves on what you do. Ah, you're in your prime, you've come of age.

• 21:51Alec Baldwin?

  Did you send him that song to record?

• 21:53Speaker 05

  I wanted him to, but Bob writes his own stuff. He's not gonna do covers.

• 21:57Alec Baldwin?

  He doesn't buy songs from other people?

• 21:58Speaker 05

  No, he does not. And he does very well with his own.

• 22:01Alec Baldwin?

  Right, of course.

• 22:02Speaker 05

  But, um, I no longer wanted to be the guy onstage. I wanted to be the guy behind the scenes. Kind of a Jimmy Webb kinda thing. This just happened to coincide with the era of the singer-songwriter. Um, Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, James Taylor was huge at the time.

• 22:20Alec Baldwin?

  Jackson Brown.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  Jackson Brown. All these singer-songwriters. Even Carole King, who was a great songwriter, became a singer-songwriter.

• 22:28Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  So the advice I got was, well, you want people to hear these songs, why don't you make your own album? Okay, I got a record deal. And then I got traded to a record company on the west coast called Family Records. A guy named Artie Rip. Perfect name. I was like Pinocchio. You know? I fell in with the, you know, hygdon, the actor's life for me, for those people. And I, I recorded an album in, in LA. I lived in LA for a little while. Uh, they said, okay, now you made the album, now, now you got an album, you need to promote it, you need to go on the road and play and promote the album. I said, oh, okay. It's a kind of a strange way to be a songwriter, but that's what other people were doing. You know, other people would be interested in my material if I promoted it, promote the album, they'll hear it.

• 23:12Speaker 05

  Well, the album was mastered at the wrong speed. So, a song like this.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  She's got a way about her.

• 23:27Speaker 05

  I don't know what it is, but I know that I can't live without her. Cut. Matt played like this. She's got a way about her. I don't know what it is, but I know that I can't live without her. So if you hear that recording, I sound like the Chipmunks.

• 23:45Alec Baldwin?

  Well...

• 23:45Speaker 05

  We speed it up.

• 23:46Alec Baldwin?

  Kind of, yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  Oh, it's terrible. The album never went anywhere. Nothing happened. And I went on the road and I promoted it and never saw it in the stores. But that was when I was me. That was just Billy Joel.

• 23:58Alec Baldwin?

  So when you, when people buy that album, that album's been re-released where it's not at that speed?

• 24:03Speaker 05

  It's been remastered, but it's still, there's something wrong with it. It just doesn't sound right. I would advise people, don't buy it. If you can steal it, steal it.

• 24:11Alec Baldwin?

  We're taking a break. Stay with us.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. Que tal mi gente? Honey German checking in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. How's your corazón feeling today? If it's a little tired, a little oof, you're not alone. Have you eaten algo rico? Taken a deep breath? Maybe even turned off your phone for cinco minutitos? I promise, the memes will still be there. Sometimes self-care isn't candles and meditation. It's just saying no. It's drinking a little bit of agua. It's letting yourself rest sin pena. You don't have to prove anything today. Just be, breathe. Estas haciendo lo mejor que puedes. And yes, that's enough.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Migos.

• 25:20Speaker 07

  Man, I'm a black and Mexican kid from San Pedro. And I grew up in Inglewood as well. I never liked to be boxed in. Both of my parents colored outside of the line. I mean, even them being together at the time in L.A. was just not typical. And so I think that has always been a part of my DNA. There's a defiant something in me that feels like what we get to do with what we're given is greater than what we think. Vanessa is to maybe connect people to ideas that they wouldn't naturally, you know, connect to. That's really me. I'm just kind of like defiant with love, though.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Experience before the moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 26:36Alec Baldwin?

  So then, so Cold Spring Harbor is the first album. It's you. How many, you, you, and it's, how many band members?

• 26:41Speaker 05

  Guitar, bass, drums. And there was some violins that were put in by Artie Ripa, you know. He was trying to be Phil Spector. It got all glopped up. It was supposed to be more of a folky album.

• 26:51Alec Baldwin?

  You recorded that in LA?

• 26:52Speaker 05

  Recorded it in LA.

• 26:53Alec Baldwin?

  How long were you in LA?

• 26:54Speaker 05

  Three years.

• 26:55Alec Baldwin?

  What was that like for you?

• 26:57Speaker 05

  Weird.

• 26:57Alec Baldwin?

  How?

• 26:58Speaker 05

  I went there and I stayed on Santa Monica Boulevard. It's this dumpy little place called the Tropicana Motel, right there on Santa Monica.

• 27:07Alec Baldwin?

  Where Duke's, where the Duke's Coffee Shop was.

• 27:09Speaker 05

  Duke's Coffee Shop. And they made the huge sandwiches for the poor musicians.

• 27:12Alec Baldwin?

  You used to have breakfast at Duke's.

• 27:13Speaker 05

  It was great.

• 27:13Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 05

  You know, a buck, you could eat like a king.

• 27:16Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  The place was a dump, but the postcards said, "The Tropicana," and it had like a palm tree on it. So I sent postcards to all my friends. I've made it.

• 27:24Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, I'm here.

• 27:25Speaker 05

  I'm in Hollywood at the Tropicana.

• 27:27Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. I'm having omelets on Santa Monica Boulevard for a dollar.

• 27:32Alec Baldwin?

  And they're playing my song at the Chipmunk Speed.

• 27:34Speaker 05

  Well, if you're

• 27:35Alec Baldwin?

  But it's all going great.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. If you're from Long Island, you get a postcard with a palm tree on it. It says, "The Tropicana." It's, oh my God.

• 27:41Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 05

  He's made it.

• 27:42Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, because you and I are from the same background.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 27:45Alec Baldwin?

  I mean, I'm from South Shore, Long Island. When I, when people would, and I can see your, probably your friends who grew up with a probably like mine, where they probably get that postcard, they're like, they're like, Joey, come here. I got a postcard from Billy. He's at the Tropicana here.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  It's right.

• 27:57Alec Baldwin?

  Unfucking believable.

• 27:58Speaker 05

  Right. Wow, he's on the beach with Girls like the Beach Boys.

• 28:02Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  He's driving cars.

• 28:03Alec Baldwin?

  I would make movies like my friends be like they say, let me ask you a question. When you do a love scene with a broad in a movie, like do you ever get excited like yourself, you know what I mean? There's a weird, you know, to make love to a woman in front of all them people.

• 28:14Speaker 05

  Can you pick who you make out with?

• 28:16Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, they're like, do you enjoy that? Was it fun?

• 28:19Speaker 05

  You meet any groupies out there?

• 28:20Alec Baldwin?

  I'm like, no, it's not fun because it's a hundred and twenty five people staring at you while you're doing it. Like, oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, forgot.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  We got those questions. What's it like in the studio? I mean, you like a lot of drugs and girls and stuff?

• 28:29Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 05

  No, you're actually in a factory.

• 28:31Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 05

  You're surrounded by equipment and you don't have time for that stuff.

• 28:34Alec Baldwin?

  Big fish tanks full of cocaine and everything?

• 28:36Speaker 05

  Chicks coming in with bikinis and stuff from the beach.

• 28:39Alec Baldwin?

  Rubbing your neck and shoulders while you're playing?

• 28:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's what it looks like in the movies.

• 28:42Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  Did you meet any movie stars? I'm a musician. I'm not gonna move.

• 28:46Alec Baldwin?

  Every night you have dinner with who? All the big stars, right? And a fish tank full of blow and chicks in bikinis rubbing your shoulders, right? Every day and night.

• 28:52Speaker 05

  That's what people think.

• 28:54Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you did the, you did Cold Spring Harbor there.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  I did make.

• 28:57Alec Baldwin?

  And did you do the next album out there?

• 28:59Speaker 05

  I did two, uh, more albums out there.

• 29:02Alec Baldwin?

  So what'd you do out there?

• 29:03Speaker 05

  Actually, I got a job after I did the Cold Spring Harbor album. I dropped that aside. I had to get out of this horrible deal that I'd signed. I signed away everything, copyrights, publishing, record royalties, everything. My first child, I gave away it all. And I said that I gotta get out of this deal. And I hid in L.A. and I worked in a piano bar under the name Bill Martin. This was down in the Wilshire District. And it was, uh, it's not, it's not a real bar town, L.A. Uh, you know, Long Island is a pub on every corner. It's a pub culture.

• 29:32Alec Baldwin?

  So when people close their eyes and they think of piano man, I think of a guy bending over, you know, leaning over a piano. And I think of a guy in a, in a place on Long Island or in New York. But you recorded that out of Los Angeles.

• 29:44Speaker 05

  I recorded it in L.A. and that's where I worked. Some people think I did it for years. I worked in this piano bar for six months. I needed to make some money.

• 29:51Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  I made union scale. I get tips, mostly played the, you know, major seventh chords.

• 30:04Speaker 05

  Good evening, how you doing?

• 30:06Alec Baldwin?

  But, but, but, but, how does "Piano Man" start?

• 30:18Speaker 05

  That kinda thing, you know, a guy in the hotel lobby. They would request songs, I didn't even know the song, can you play, uh, what's that, uh, Hoagy Carmichael's song? Stardust.

• 30:27Alec Baldwin?

  Stardust.

• 30:28Speaker 05

  And I would go, "Sure."

• 30:36Speaker 05

  Can you play "Misty"? "Sure."

• 30:43Speaker 05

  And everybody was drinking pretty heavy.

• 30:45Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 05

  Because in a, in an LA bar, these were all people who lost at the track. Losers, I just like drinking like fish. And I got free drinks, oh my god.

• 30:54Alec Baldwin?

  But, I mean, so then you do "Piano Man," then what's the next album after that you do in LA?

• 30:58Speaker 05

  We did "Piano Man" in LA and there was an album, that wasn't a hit album, people perceived that to be a hit, it was not a hit.

• 31:04Alec Baldwin?

  "Piano Man."

• 31:05Speaker 05

  "Piano Man" was not a hit record, it was a turntable hit. In other words, it didn't sell through, but this is back in the early 70s. In those days, they still had FM progressive radio, disc jockeys could spin whatever they wanted.

• 31:17Alec Baldwin?

  WLIR, Dennis McNamara.

• 31:18Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 31:19Alec Baldwin?

  Remember him?

• 31:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:20Alec Baldwin?

  "I was a kid home, I was smoking you-know-what leaning out the window so my mom didn't know and on the radio we'd hear, WLIR, this is Dennis McNamara, Jackson Browne."

• 31:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 31:30Alec Baldwin?

  I listened to this guy, he, he was my childhood, Dennis McNamara.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  We grew up with these disc jockeys at night, Allison Steele.

• 31:35Alec Baldwin?

  Allison Steele.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  The Nightbird.

• 31:36Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 05

  Roscoe. Zachary was a disc jockey?

• 31:38Alec Baldwin?

  Vince Skelsa.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  Vince Skelsa, and my favorite guy was, "Scott Muni coming at you."

• 31:43Alec Baldwin?

  Scott Muni.

• 31:43Speaker 05

  With a little spooky tooth.

• 31:49Speaker 05

  And now, from, uh, from England, "Spooky Tooth, Scott Muni coming at you right now." And it was great voices just coming out of the air, and they played whatever they wanted, they didn't have program directors, they didn't have consultants. And people would call in, if they got enough requests, they would play a track, so "Piano Man" got requested all the time. It was a five, five and a half minute record, I mean, it's not an AM hit.

• 32:11Alec Baldwin?

  Right, no.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  The amount of time, it's too long, and it was in three-quarter time.

• 32:18Speaker 05

  Um papa, it's a waltz. Papa, um papa, papa, um papa. And it's, and it's not really lyrics, they're limericks. John at the bar is a friend of mine, he gets me my drinks for free. He's quick with the joke, "Gotta light up your smoke with this," "I'm probably sitting here with a bee," "Could be one of the girls from Nantucket." The papa, the papa, the papa. Yeah, so, it's the limericks. And, and if anybody said this was gonna be a hit record, I'd tell them right out of their minds. But it became a turntable hit, so people perceive it to be a sell-through, it wasn't. The next album comes out, "Street Life Serenaded." It's the sophomore jinx. I did not have enough time to write new material after the "Piano Man" album came out. "Piano Man" got, made a lot of noise, got a lot of attention paid to it. Record company wanted another follow-up, right away. Okay, new album, now. But I, I, I've been on the road, I haven't had a chance to write. Nope, neither now.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  I didn't have any material, and you can hear it.

• 33:04Alec Baldwin?

  So what do you do? What do you do when you got nothing? What do you play?

• 33:07Speaker 05

  I had nothing, I was empty, I was running on empty.

• 33:09Alec Baldwin?

  But there's not nothing on the album, where'd that come from?

• 33:11Speaker 05

  Well, I had one song that I thought was-

• 33:13Alec Baldwin?

  Which was?

• 33:13Speaker 05

  The entertainer. Which is that, uh-

• 33:22Speaker 05

  Another folk song. I am the entertainer. I know just where I stand. Another serenader, and another long-haired band. Today I am your champion. I may have won your hearts, but I know in the game you're forgetting my name. I won't be here in another year if I don't stay on the chart. I wrote it on a guitar, actually. But that was it, that was probably the one song that I had finished, and then boom, in the studio, the clock is ticking. So, there's two instrumentals on that album. The root beer rag, which is just a piano ragtime thing, and this, uh, Ersatz's western movie theme called "The Mexican Connection." Cause I was living in LA, I was fascinated with westerns. Bum, bum, bum.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 34:11Speaker 05

  There's a song actually on the piano right now called "The Ballad of Billy the Kid."

• 34:14Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 34:14Speaker 05

  Historically, completely inaccurate. I just use western sounding things from "From a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia." He wasn't from Wheeling, West Virginia. He was actually from Brooklyn. "From a boy with a six-gun in his hand." And then he robbed his way from Utah to Oklahoma. He never got out of New Mexico.

• 34:31Alec Baldwin?

  You're ruining the song for me now. I don't want to know how the sausage is made.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  It's okay. East and west.

• 34:35Alec Baldwin?

  "Ballad of Billy the Kid" is fine by me. The way it is, don't screw it up for me.

• 34:38Speaker 05

  No, but I think it's funny that it was just western sounding things. "East and west of the Rio Grande." Well, it can't be east and west because the Rio Grande runs east and west. "Of the Rio Grande."

• 34:47Alec Baldwin?

  God damn it, I know which way the Rio Grande runs.

• 34:50Speaker 05

  "And the crowd poured in to watch the hanging of Billy the Kid." Well, Billy the Kid wasn't hung. He was shot. Of course, we don't know if he was hung.

• 34:56Alec Baldwin?

  Okay, now you win. Now I hate the song.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 34:58Alec Baldwin?

  I hate it. It's a fraud. What are the songs came off of "Street Life" that were memorable?

• 35:03Speaker 05

  Nothing. The Entertainer is the only one. Uh, there was a song about a hooker that I was in love with. I wanted her to leave her profession and be with me, but she made too much money and I couldn't afford her. It was called "Roberta." What else was on that album? "Souvenir," a nice song.

• 35:31Speaker 05

  A picture postcard, a folded stub. A program of the play. File away the photographs of your holiday. And your momentous, and only like another 15 seconds of it. That was a nice song, but it was like this short. And other than that, there's "The Mexican Connection," "Root Beer Rag." It was okay.

• 36:06Alec Baldwin?

  And you finished "Street Life" and you're in L.A. and then what do you do?

• 36:09Speaker 05

  I finished "Street Life" and it comes out and it goes, "Nya, boom," dives right off the charts. The album after that was "Turnstiles." I moved back to New York. I said, "I'm going back to New York." This is when, this nineteen, mid seventies, New York was in the dumps. They were gonna default. Forward to New York, drop dead. Forward to New York, drop dead. I saw that headline, and people in LA were like, "Ha, ha, ha, screw New York. We can't wait till New York goes down the dumps." Yeah. And I said, "The hell with that. If New York's going down the tubes, I'm going back. I wanna be there for this." And I'm picturing this apocalypse. I actually wrote a song called Miami 2017. Sure. Thinking about the year 2017. I'm an old man, I'm telling my grandchildren. I was there, I saw the lights go out on Broadway. That's the, it's a science fiction song. Seeing the lights go out on Broadway.

• 36:56Speaker 05

  I saw the Empire State Lady low.

• 37:01Speaker 05

  And life went on beyond the Palisades.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  We all bought Cadillacs and left there long ago. And I, I'm picturing, I'm an, I'm an old man in the year 2017, I'm living in Miami, which, I'm closing in on that now. You and me both. I'm kinda fulfilling my own prophecy here. Yeah, yeah. So, and the other song, uh, which is... Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood. Have a flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood.

• 37:38Speaker 05

  I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River line.

• 37:46Speaker 05

  I'm in a New York state of mind. Or we could do it like this. Some folks like to get away. Tony, come on, check it. Take a holiday from the neighborhood.

• 38:00Speaker 05

  Have a flight to... Have a flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood. Yeah. I'm taking a Greyhound. That's right. Hudson River line. Yeah, yeah. I'm in a New York state of mind.

• 38:24Speaker 05

  That's it. And he recorded it. And that was, I was hoping other people would do that song, but I was back in New York, I was home again.

• 38:31Alec Baldwin?

  Are you glad you were?

• 38:32Speaker 05

  I was thrilled.

• 38:32Alec Baldwin?

  So, leaving LA, it just was meant to be?

• 38:34Speaker 05

  I even wrote a song, "Say Goodbye to Hollywood."

• 38:36Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, right, exactly.

• 38:37Speaker 05

  You know, "Say goodbye to Hollywood, thanks it's been great, but goodbye." After three years, it went sour on me. You know, when I first moved out, "Oh, the weather's great, and all the chicks, and the palm trees." Well, after three years, everybody's full of crap here. I'm a producer, what? You know, we all produce gas, we produce something.

• 38:56Alec Baldwin?

  But I found that for me, it was healthier for me to be in an environment where show business was one mountain peak in a range of mountains. Meaning, when you're in New York, and I'd be at a party, and some kind of, uh, real tweety-looking, Daniel Moynihan-looking type of guy would be at a party and say to me, "And what do you do for a living, young man?" They'd say to me years ago. I'd go, "Well, I work in the movie business." "Have you made any films I might have seen?" He'd say. "Olivia and I don't go to the films very often." And I thought, "This is great." A guy who doesn't, I can talk to, who's not gonna have his hand down my pants, you know what I mean?

• 39:32Speaker 05

  Rub my neck, rub my shoulders. "Learn to dance with a hand in my pants." That's from "The Entertainer."

• 39:37Alec Baldwin?

  When you go back to New York, though, where do you go, the city?

• 39:40Speaker 05

  I moved to Highland Falls, which is right up to Hudson.

• 39:43Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 39:44Speaker 05

  Because we, uh, we weren't ready to move Lock, Stock and Barrel back into the city. I was married at the time, my first ex-wife.

• 39:52Alec Baldwin?

  Sure. Where's she from?

• 39:53Speaker 05

  From Syosset.

• 39:54Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  And, uh...

• 39:56Alec Baldwin?

  So, she went out there with you and came back with you?

• 39:58Speaker 05

  She went out there with me and came back with me. And this was, uh, "Turnstiles" was recorded in New York. I produced it myself, which, you know, in hindsight, was probably not a good idea, but I I didn't want people telling me what band to work with, how to do the songs. I wanted to do it my way.

• 40:13Alec Baldwin?

  Are you glad you did?

• 40:14Speaker 05

  I'm, I was glad I did at the time, because I needed to use my own musicians. I didn't want to use session men, I didn't want to use studio players. I wanted my road band. It was a Long Island band, and we were doing great on the road, we weren't selling any records. But, the crowds were going crazy, we were blowing headliners off the stage, the Doobie Brothers, everywhere we played, the Beach Boys, we would get better applause than the...

• 40:34Alec Baldwin?

  This is when "Turnstiles" came out?

• 40:35Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 40:36Alec Baldwin?

  But "Turnstiles" sold records, didn't it?

• 40:37Speaker 05

  No, "Turnstiles" didn't sell anything.

• 40:39Alec Baldwin?

  You gotta be kidding me.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  No, no, no hits. New York State of Mind is now perceived to be a hit, but it wasn't a hit. Say goodbye to Hollywood wasn't a hit. None of the records.

• 40:48Alec Baldwin?

  I love, I love all those songs.

• 40:50Speaker 05

  But you know them from FM radio. They were still playing those things on FM. Not until The Stranger, which was the next album in seventy-seven.

• 40:57Alec Baldwin?

  And off that comes how many hits?

• 40:58Speaker 05

  Four.

• 40:59Alec Baldwin?

  Which were?

• 41:00Speaker 05

  Just the way you are, Moving Out, Only the Good Die Young, and She's Always a Woman.

• 41:04Alec Baldwin?

  So She's Always a Woman and Just the Way You Are are love songs?

• 41:09Speaker 05

  Well, She's Always a Woman is a, is a love song, not perceived as a love song.

• 41:12Alec Baldwin?

  Well, I was saying, but they're very romantic songs.

• 41:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I'd had romantic ballads before that. From Cold Spring Harbor, She's Got Away. Piano Man, If I Only Had the Words to Tell You, You're My Home. And then turnstiles, Summer Highland Falls. No thematic depression, but about a, a relationship. But I was writing ballads. I've Loved These Days.

• 41:33Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 41:33Speaker 05

  About a man and a woman. And then The Stranger, Just the Way You Are, which is just a pure out and out love song. She's Always a Woman, which is kind of a double edged sword there. I'd had ballads before that.

• 41:45Alec Baldwin?

  But you, but did you find that people started to, to buy the ballads? That they, they.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  All of a sudden.

• 41:50Alec Baldwin?

  Those became the most popular songs.

• 41:51Speaker 05

  I, you could have not.

• 41:52Alec Baldwin?

  They often do.

• 41:53Speaker 05

  I had no idea it was such a big record. Just the way you are became this monster.

• 41:57Alec Baldwin?

  Like the Beatles.

• 41:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:59Alec Baldwin?

  So what's after The Stranger?

• 42:01Speaker 05

  After The Stranger, we started playing Colosseums in arenas, the big, big rooms. And I went right back on the road again and I started writing again. Um, Fifty Second.

• 42:10Alec Baldwin?

  You started writing for bigger rooms?

• 42:12Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 42:13Alec Baldwin?

  You did?

• 42:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I had to be, I was aware. Now we're playing the big places. And we gotta write bigger songs. I gotta have bigger music. Energy.

• 42:21Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Because you can't play to a Coliseum with a, a handful of ballads. You gotta knock 'em out. Big Shot was on that album. Zanzibar, Stiletto. It got bigger. It got rounder, fatter.

• 42:35Alec Baldwin?

  Fuller.

• 42:36Speaker 05

  Fuller, faster. You know, more high energy stuff and.

• 42:40Alec Baldwin?

  Harder, faster, deeper, as they say in the adult film industry.

• 42:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was it, pretty much. Went into the triple X.

• 42:46Alec Baldwin?

  You started going triple X?

• 42:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:48Alec Baldwin?

  Acoustically.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  And that, that one album of the year, they, Stranger actually should have. But I was up against Saturday Night Fever, which nobody was gonna touch at the ten foot tall. Everybody even said that. The only reason you got Fifty Second is because we should have given The Stranger.

• 43:01Alec Baldwin?

  This was your color of money?

• 43:03Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 43:05Alec Baldwin?

  This is Paul Newman getting an Oscar.

• 43:06Speaker 05

  It's all political. It's fine. Well, you know how this works.

• 43:08Alec Baldwin?

  Sure. What was after that?

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Glass Houses was nineteen eighty. And that was pure power pop.

• 43:16Alec Baldwin?

  Is there ever one you sit there and you really have to strained? I mean, you get it and you like it and you love it and it does well. Is there a song that didn't come easily to you? That you really had to work to crack it, so to speak?

• 43:26Speaker 05

  The whole Nylon Curtain album, which was nineteen eighty-two. The album before it, which was Glass Houses, was just pure fun. Playing with the band, got a good guitar player, had a... Just had a blast making a record. The next album, I wanted to write my masterpiece. My Sergeant Pepper, as it were. Instead of writing from the, um... From the inside out, like having, starting with a seed of a song. We started with sound. Sounds and ideas and thoughts and studio techniques and... We went from the outside in, so it was a whole different technique of creating recordings. And we didn't really know what we had until almost the final mix. What is this thing? We're experimenting with stuff and it was, it took a year.

• 44:08Alec Baldwin?

  Were you still producing?

• 44:09Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 44:10Alec Baldwin?

  Who was producing?

• 44:11Speaker 05

  Phil Ramone, who started with Stranger, nineteen seventy-seven.

• 44:13Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when, when you have someone like Ramone, because we, I mean, again, I don't, I know nothing about your business except what I see and observe, like... What is someone like Ramone? What did he do for you? How did he help you?

• 44:23Speaker 05

  Well, Phil Ramone has a background. When he was a kid, he was a, a child prodigy on the violin. He was violinist. He was from South Africa, actually. He knew music. And now, he had years and years in the trenches as an engineer. He, he recorded JFK speeches. I think when you see the Marilyn Monroe thing at Madison Square Garden...

• 44:43Alec Baldwin?

  Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

• 44:44Speaker 05

  That's Phil Ramone.

• 44:45Alec Baldwin?

  Wow.

• 44:45Speaker 05

  He was the engineer on those things. I mean, he's been with some amazing recordings. But never got credited as a producer, so I've seen, who's this guy, Phil Ramone? I keep seeing Phil Ramone, Phil Ramone, Phil Ramone. Paul Simon used him as an engineer. And I said, I want to use, I want to work with this guy because he looks like he knows what he's doing. He knows how to get good sound. He knows how to deal with sonic, things sonic. And when he came in, boom. We knew we had a professional guy. It was like working with another great musician. He knows how to play the studio like we know how to play our instruments. Everything changed. The band just rose to the occasion. Uh, we were having a blast.

• 45:18Alec Baldwin?

  So like a great producer, very often in films, like anywhere, anything, any creative enterprise, I find, the people that are the most successful and talented producers are the ones who, although they may not be able to do it themselves, they know what you need to do.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:31Alec Baldwin?

  They know how to help you get to your highest level.

• 45:32Speaker 05

  They cut to what the synergy should be. They know what the dynamic should be in the studio.

• 45:37Alec Baldwin?

  Does he come to you and go, "Don't do that."

• 45:39Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 45:39Alec Baldwin?

  "That doesn't work." And you listen to him?

• 45:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would listen to him.

• 45:41Alec Baldwin?

  You tried his way?

• 45:42Speaker 05

  We tried it his way, it was mutual respect.

• 45:44Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 45:44Speaker 05

  When we did "Just the Way You Are," originally, the drummer was playing it like a chacho.

• 45:50Speaker 05

  Cha cha cha, cha cha cha, cha cha cha.

• 45:59Speaker 05

  Don't go change one to cha cha cha. And we hated it. We hated the thing.

• 46:03Alec Baldwin?

  Please, man.

• 46:04Speaker 05

  I hate this song. I hate it. Drummer couldn't figure out what to play. Phil actually told him, "Play a backwards samba." Boom, da boom, bop boom, cha boom, da go.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  And it worked. It was like a backwards samba. What are we doing? We didn't know what we were doing. But Phil was right. Uh, I came in with the idea of playing, uh, only the good die young as a reggae. Come out, Virginia, don't let me wait. Can't let go star much too late. Liberty throws his sticks at me. He goes, "Why are you doing it?" Because you, the closest you've been to Jamaica is Queens. You know, "What are you doing?"

• 46:41Alec Baldwin?

  It's changing trains to go down to Seaford.

• 46:44Speaker 05

  Change at Jamaica.

• 46:45Alec Baldwin?

  Change at Jamaica.

• 46:46Speaker 05

  So.

• 46:46Alec Baldwin?

  For the train to Spian.

• 46:47Speaker 05

  That's it. He said, uh, "I'm not playing this. I'm not playing it. What are we gonna do?" So Phil came up with this shuffle against straight fours.

• 47:00Speaker 05

  And the guitars are going, "Banana, banana, bop bop banana." And we were playing it.

• 47:07Speaker 05

  And it worked. It was like two things jammed into each other. Phil knows how to do that. And when we would get tired or we'd get discouraged, he'd say, "Just stay. Stay a little longer. Try one more." "All right, take a break. Let's have some Chinese, okay? Go back in." The post-Chinese food takes were always good. I don't know why that was.

• 47:24Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, that MSG, man, it gets right into the fingertips.

• 47:27Speaker 05

  It worked.

• 47:29Alec Baldwin?

  And then you do Nylon Curtain. That's 82?

• 47:31Speaker 05

  82 was the Nylon Curtain.

• 47:32Alec Baldwin?

  And you said you wanted to be your Sergeant Pepper, and what was it?

• 47:35Speaker 05

  It was, it's my favorite album, really.

• 47:37Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 47:38Speaker 05

  Because I could hear all the work that went into it. All the textures, all the layers.

• 47:42Alec Baldwin?

  What's a song that you're particularly fond of from that?

• 47:45Speaker 05

  Oh, jeez. Every song on that album.

• 47:48Alec Baldwin?

  Really?

• 47:48Speaker 05

  Surprises that...

• 47:53Speaker 05

  It's very obscure. (singing) Don't get excited, don't say a word. Nobody noticed, nothing was hurt. It was committed discreetly, it was handled so neatly. And it shouldn't surprise you at all, you know. Break all the records, burn my cassettes. I'd be lying if I told you that I had no regrets. There were so many mistakes, but what a difference it makes. And now it shouldn't surprise you at all. No hits.

• 48:37Speaker 05

  Allentown was kind of a hit off that album.

• 48:39Alec Baldwin?

  I remember that, yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 05

  Didn't really sell a lot of records. Pressure was the big hit, I think.

• 48:47Speaker 05

  Me as Tchaikovsky.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  What was that? Was it the one from Swan Lake?

• 49:03Alec Baldwin?

  Well, at least you're ripping off the greats.

• 49:05Speaker 05

  Steal, man.

• 49:07Alec Baldwin?

  Go with those Russians, Ben. Go with Tchaikovsky.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  Watch out for the Germans, though.

• 49:11Alec Baldwin?

  What did you do after the Nylon Curtain?

• 49:13Speaker 05

  Um, after the Nylon Curtain, because it was such an intensive labor, the Nylon Curtain, something very dense and very complex, I wanted to do something simple and dumb and happy. And I did "An Innocent Man",

• 49:27Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 49:27Speaker 05

  Which is really an homage to all the music of my teenage years. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons was "Uptown Girl",

• 49:33Alec Baldwin?

  Right. And that was a hit.

• 49:35Speaker 05

  It was a big hit.

• 49:36Alec Baldwin?

  Big hit.

• 49:37Speaker 05

  It was a joke.

• 49:37Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 49:38Speaker 05

  It was a "Uptown Girl", trying to sing like Frankie. "She been living in her uptown world. I bet she never had a backstreet guy". And he had this impossibly high voice. "Never told her why I'm gonna try you". And I realized something. Remember the song "Rag Doll"?

• 50:09Speaker 05

  Yep, and then the verse was, "I love you just the way you are". Ooh, I said, "Uh-oh. Is that where I heard that before? Just the way you are."

• 50:18Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  And then there was a song, um, I was trying to do Little Anthony in Imperials. "Didn't I say shoo-ah, but I wasn't ready for romance, shoo-ah. Didn't we promise we would only be friends? Ah, and so we danced, though it was only a slow dance. I started breaking my promises right there and..." Now, you'll recognize the chorus, because it goes like this. "This night is mine. It's only you and I.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  Tomorrow is a long time away. This night can last forever." Which is "The Pathétique" by Beethoven.

• 51:20Speaker 05

  And I gave him credit on the back of it, LV Beethoven. So Billy's co-writing with somebody, LV Beethoven, Beethoven for crying out loud. But that was a fun album. I had met Christie, I had just gotten divorced from ex-wife, and here I am, meeting Whitney Houston, when she was a model, Elle McPherson, I'm dating her, I'm dating Christie Brinkley. This is fantastic. I feel like I'm 16 years old again, going out with girls. It's all going great. And I'm a rock star. I got a pad, the old San Maritz on Central Park South, which is now, I think, the Ritz-Carlton.

• 51:54Alec Baldwin?

  Which is now the Ritz-Carlton.

• 51:55Speaker 05

  But the elevator would open, and there was my apartment. I was the only apartment on that floor. It was very impressive. So this music was me being a teenager all over again, falling in love, having romance and all that great stuff.

• 52:05Alec Baldwin?

  We're taking a break. Stay with us.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  This stress check, aka friendly reminder that your hobbies matter, is brought to you by State Farm, because you deserve to lose yourself in the stuff that brings you joy. Here's mine. Painting my tabletop battle miniatures. Yeah, seriously. After a long day, I grab a brush, pop in some music, and just get into it. And there's no wrong way to do it. It helps me clear my head, slow down, and just breathe. But it works. Big stress, mini warriors, total reset. No pressure, just paint, creativity, and a little reminder of what makes me happy. Some people bake, some people garden. Me, I paint warriors with interesting tech. And guess what? It works. You don't have to be good

• 52:51Speaker 01

  at your hobby, you just have to enjoy it. So carve out that time, tune out the noise, and do something that's just for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by rising star Sienna Spiral. What is so fascinating to you about impermanence? Everything about us, everything we do, is temporary. And I just got terrified of that. You know, what we do with our time, and how I feel like the way the world is

• 53:33Speaker 01

  today, and how fast-paced it is, and how much we don't even acknowledge anything around us. How I felt temporary to the people around me, and how that made me scared, and how How much I wanted to last and make an impact on people and I guess to change the way I looked at things and to change myself and to change how I guess I approached everything in my life. It's important that things are impermanent because nothing would feel special and enjoying, you know, learning to love with knowing it's not gonna last. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cash Flow Crunch, OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it.

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• 54:37Speaker 05

  So why'd you get married?

• 54:39Alec Baldwin?

  I don't know. Yeah. Why'd you get married?

• 54:43Speaker 05

  I was in love. You're asking me?

• 54:45Alec Baldwin?

  Exactly. But I was gonna say, well, I mean, it's funny because you think to yourself, why get married?

• 54:50Speaker 05

  It was all going so good.

• 54:51Alec Baldwin?

  But not that getting married means bad, but I've been saying, but is that a part of your makeup, which is married, family? Was marriage the right thing to do?

• 55:00Speaker 05

  I was madly in love.

• 55:02Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, when you're really in love, you marry him.

• 55:03Speaker 05

  That's it.

• 55:04Alec Baldwin?

  That's how I feel.

• 55:05Speaker 05

  But I still feel like I can be madly in love and not be married.

• 55:09Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 55:10Speaker 05

  I was married three times.

• 55:11Alec Baldwin?

  When did you go to Russia?

• 55:12Speaker 05

  Eighty-seven.

• 55:13Alec Baldwin?

  And how did that happen?

• 55:14Speaker 05

  Well, we went to, we played in Cuba in 1979. They did this thing called a Havana Jam. Cubans came up here and we went to Havana. We played at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana. It looks like Bloomingdale's, it's crypt, the Karl Marx Theater. Looks like a department store. And everybody gets up on stage, these other American artists, Stephen Stills, viva la revolución, viva fidel. Kris Kristofferson, viva la revolución, viva fidel. And he's talking in Spanish. I get up on stage, I'm in the last act.

• 55:42Alec Baldwin?

  Don't take any shit from him.

• 55:44Speaker 05

  Yo no hablo español. And I went to big shot.

• 55:49Speaker 05

  Then the kids went, "Ah!" Storm the stage.

• 55:52Alec Baldwin?

  There you go.

• 55:52Speaker 05

  They don't wanna hear Viva, we hear this crap all the time. We wanna hear Big Shot. "Wah!" I said, "We got something going here, we're being subversive with rock and roll." This is what I like.

• 56:01Alec Baldwin?

  And they loved you there.

• 56:02Speaker 05

  They loved it.

• 56:02Alec Baldwin?

  How did that feel to you? What was the first place you played a big concert at? When you were a star, you're a big music star, you're one of the biggest music stars ever, and you go to a foreign country and you realize music just transcends all of it.

• 56:17Speaker 05

  Germany, I think it was in Frankfurt.

• 56:19Alec Baldwin?

  What year?

• 56:19Speaker 05

  Seventy-seven, seventy-eight. We'd had a hit with a stranger and... I played in England, and the English, they're kind of fickle, they like you for about a month, and then you're yesterday's papers. "Oh, we like that Billy Joel, Billy Joel." And, um, they, actually I wasn't big there until Uptown Girl, but Germany, we had a couple of it. And the Germans went berserk. "Yah!" They don't have seats. You're getting a standing ovation when you walk on the stage, because they can't sit down. This is great, and it actually changes the energy in their room, they're all standing, "Yah, Billy, Billy." I'm thinking, "Huh, I guess they don't know what they did to my family." "Yay, Billy!" But I'm thinking, "So this is how Adolf must have felt."

• 56:59Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, they love you, they let you know it.

• 57:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're like, "Okay, let's go invade Poland, come on, let's go." But it was a great, great audience, you know, they're tearing at your hair, like a Detroit heavy metal crowd. Ripping at my hands and tearing my clothes, this is great. That was the first time in a foreign country where I knew something was going on.

• 57:15Alec Baldwin?

  How did they, the trip to Russia in eighty-seven, was that your first time there?

• 57:19Speaker 05

  It was the first time they'd ever had a major act from the West, America. Uh, people that had gone there before but played with small P A. systems and little private rooms. We played at the Lenin Stadium, the Olympic Stadium. And we brought a, a, a Western P A. system, same P A. system we'd use at Madison Square Garden. They'd never heard a P A. system like that. They were scared shitless. You know, the helicopters come in at the beginning of Good Night, and they're looking around for the helicopters. And then the, the hard rock is hitting and the drums, they started going berserk. There were security guards going around, giving people uh, sedatives, because they thought they were having a fit. The Cold War ended for me right then, this is still when it was, Reagan was calling it the evil empire. And, "We're not gonna have a war with these people, they can't even get toilet paper right."

• 58:03Speaker 05

  You know, "We're not gonna have, we're not gonna fight with them." "Well, I don't wanna fight them, they don't, they love us everywhere I went, viva America, long live America." This is great, Cold War ended. So I was thrilled that, that went the way it did.

• 58:14Alec Baldwin?

  Let, let me ask you a question, you're funny... You could have done that with your eyes. Everything it takes to be an actor, you could have done. You never wanted to do that, never.

• 58:22Speaker 05

  I never was comfortable in front of a camera.

• 58:24Alec Baldwin?

  Really?

• 58:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, as a matter of fact.

• 58:26Alec Baldwin?

  Even though you had to perform in front of a camera for the last thirty years, basically.

• 58:30Speaker 05

  Yes, uh, make videos, which was torture for me.

• 58:33Alec Baldwin?

  But you were comfortable in front of a, but you were, but you, I guess, to a degree, you were comfortable in front of a camera so long as you were playing.

• 58:38Speaker 05

  Not even then.

• 58:38Alec Baldwin?

  Stand there and be, not even then.

• 58:39Speaker 05

  I was aware of the camera was, it was like, it was an invader. It was invasive to me. I became a musician because I never felt I was photogenic. I was never happy with how I looked. It's about a microphone, not about a camera. I was very comfortable in the studio. I'm very comfortable far away on a stage or an album cover. You could make it look however you want. And people would say, oh, you're shorter than I thought. I said, well, the album cover is only this big. How do you know? Whenever there was a camera, it kind of destroyed what I was trying to create. It took away the imagination. Uh, you could, I could look however I want. I could look like Cary Grant. But I saw it reduced to an image. I went, no, no, no, no, no, that's not who I am. Don't look at that guy. I realized I could have done that, but I loved music so much. I, that's the way I went.

• 59:24Speaker 05

  Some people can do both.

• 59:26Alec Baldwin?

  Most don't. Well. Bowie didn't do it really, really. He tried. Sting didn't do it.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  No.

• 59:32Alec Baldwin?

  Uh, Jagger didn't do it.

• 59:34Speaker 05

  Well, then there's actors.

• 59:34Alec Baldwin?

  Beatles never did it, except as they played the Beatles.

• 59:36Speaker 05

  But then there's some actors who were originally musicians and they, they now just basically act.

• 59:41Alec Baldwin?

  Well, I always say, I've said this, acting is what you do when you have no musical ability. If I could do what you do, I would never do what I do.

• 59:48Speaker 05

  That's what actors say. They all wanna be musicians.

• 59:50Alec Baldwin?

  I would never, ever, ever, ever waste five minutes of doing what I do if I could do what you do.

• 59:55Speaker 05

  That's a lot of actors say.

• 59:56Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 05

  But you're so good at what you do. No, if I could do what you do.

• 59:59Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, mu- music is, music is.

• 1:00:01Speaker 05

  If I could sing, if I could play, if I could write.

• 1:00:03Alec Baldwin?

  A film or a television program, you have to make an appointment with that and watch that. When you be listening to music while you're jogging, while you're at the gym, while you're making love, while you're having dinner, while you're in the car. It, it can be the soundtrack to your life all day long if you want.

• 1:00:17Speaker 05

  In church.

• 1:00:17Alec Baldwin?

  In, anywhere. Music is everywhere. Music is everything.

• 1:00:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:21Alec Baldwin?

  And acting is, like I said, what you do when you have no musical talents. So you got divorced the second time.

• 1:00:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:00:27Alec Baldwin?

  And got remarried and divorced a third time.

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:30Alec Baldwin?

  And when you have these things happen, cause I know that these, this situations in my life have a big effect on my, does it affect, do you write songs about that?

• 1:00:38Speaker 05

  No, I stopped writing songs about it when I got divorced the second time. That was in ninety-three. Actually ninety-four, the divorce happened. The album River Dreams came out. And I realized, you know what? I'm spinning out the story of my life to all these strangers. I'm kinda sick and tired of everybody knowing my personal life and how I feel about this one and that one.

• 1:00:58Alec Baldwin?

  You are. Did you resent that?

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  I didn't resent it. I just decided to clam up.

• 1:01:02Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  I feel like I've given away pieces of myself.

• 1:01:04Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 1:01:04Speaker 05

  Maybe something I should have given to the relationship. I gave to the work. And the work was so important. And it's all-consuming. If you're gonna do it right, you have to jump in with both feet and do it a hundred percent. Music will do that. It was a very harsh mistress music. You have to do it all the way. And maybe I didn't do things I should have done. Or maybe I didn't take care of business the way I should have taken care. Because of the music. And so I stopped writing songs about my personal relationships. But I kept writing music. And after the third marriage didn't work, I tried marriage. It's, you know, three times. I tried it three times. I never gave up on it. I just realized this just doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't work.

• 1:01:42Alec Baldwin?

  Right. People don't appreciate how it's like, to have a relationship in this business that works, you gotta be really lucky, man. It's gotta be so, it's so much luck, you know? Because like you said, the career is the mistress and you're out there working. Like I would look at my ex-wife or ex-girlfriend and I think, what would the alternative be? You want me to have no options and no work and I'm staying home all the time?

• 1:02:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, but on the other hand, how much of you are they getting? If you're in a part, you take on the role. It doesn't come off at five o'clock in the afternoon when work, most people leave their jobs. You have to be that character through the whole project. Now, when I'm writing, I mean, I've gotta stay and harness. I've gotta be that songwriter guy. I'm preoccupied. Maybe I should change that to a B-flat. You know, that chord back to, I don't know. I'm obsessed with it. I wonder how much of me they're not getting because of that. I don't know if you were like that when you were doing a part.

• 1:02:36Alec Baldwin?

  I find that in film, it's different because you don't really have a chance unless you work with a tremendously intense group of people. I've never gotten close to that. In film, film is always in pieces.

• 1:02:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:02:51Alec Baldwin?

  You're in your room.

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  It's not linear.

• 1:02:53Alec Baldwin?

  It's not, it's not like a play. When I've done, now when I've done plays, it's different. When you do it well, you can sit back and you light up a cigarette and you're like, well, well, well, well.

• 1:03:00Speaker 05

  And we nailed that one.

• 1:03:01Alec Baldwin?

  Where I just, just write it down in the books. There it is, we've done it again. You really feel some satisfaction.

• 1:03:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Alec Baldwin?

  You feel that way when you perform?

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  When we perform, we got there.

• 1:03:11Alec Baldwin?

  When you do a show?

• 1:03:12Speaker 05

  We do a show.

• 1:03:13Alec Baldwin?

  Do you come offstage after a show and you sit there and go, well, there it is?

• 1:03:16Speaker 05

  That was a good one.

• 1:03:17Alec Baldwin?

  Ladies and gentlemen, Billy Joel and his ensemble.

• 1:03:21Speaker 05

  They'll be talking about this for a while, for a few days.

• 1:03:24Alec Baldwin?

  One for the annals.

• 1:03:26Speaker 05

  But we also know when we stuck, we come over and go, that sucked.

• 1:03:29Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:03:29Speaker 05

  Oh, we were terrible.

• 1:03:30Alec Baldwin?

  Please don't remember that one.

• 1:03:31Speaker 05

  Right, right. Why did they applaud? You know, we.

• 1:03:34Alec Baldwin?

  Last play at Shea.

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:36Alec Baldwin?

  Do you think you did well?

• 1:03:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was good. They were both good shows. The last double play at Shea, we did two nights.

• 1:03:42Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 05

  Yes, that was exhilarating. It was a hometown crowd and it just, it was exhilarating. We were on stage for three and a half hours and I didn't realize how hot it was. It was sweating, I'm watching the movie of me on stage. Somebody give that guy a towel.

• 1:03:59Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, it was hot.

• 1:04:00Speaker 05

  I was, he's like soaking, ugh, he's so wet and slimy. Wipe him off. And we were having such a good time. We walked off and for weeks after we were kind of amping from it.

• 1:04:11Alec Baldwin?

  New York loves you.

• 1:04:13Speaker 05

  I know, I know, and I love New York, that's why I live here.

• 1:04:16Alec Baldwin?

  I love you.

• 1:04:16Speaker 05

  But I put away the recording part of my career and I put away, for the time being, performing.

• 1:04:23Alec Baldwin?

  What's that music?

• 1:04:24Speaker 05

  That's my telephone.

• 1:04:25Alec Baldwin?

  Is it phone? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:27Speaker 05

  You hear it?

• 1:04:27Alec Baldwin?

  It's the Godfather. It's the theme from The Godfather. It's interesting, that's perfect. The theme from The Godfather is your ringtone on your phone?

• 1:04:34Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:04:34Alec Baldwin?

  That's amazing. I gotta think about what my ringtone should be.

• 1:04:37Speaker 05

  That's the guy on the road, call me a god, god phone. Why do you come to me? Bonner Sarah. Bonner Sarah. Bonner Sarah.

• 1:04:46Alec Baldwin?

  What have I ever done?

• 1:04:47Speaker 05

  Why do you hurt me?

• 1:04:48Alec Baldwin?

  You're gonna disrespect me this night. You never invite me to your house for a cup of coffee. Do you appreciate who you are? People love you, they adore you, and they love your talent. You are so talented. You are so, like, it makes me wanna choke up how talented you are. Do you know who you are?

• 1:05:10Speaker 05

  I know I have a talent for music. I don't think I'm all that good. I, I think I have a good perspective on it. I can separate the star stuff from the musician stuff.

• 1:05:22Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 1:05:22Speaker 05

  Uh, the music is really important to me.

• 1:05:24Alec Baldwin?

  They have to stay separate, don't they?

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  Well, one is a job and, and one is a life.

• 1:05:28Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 05

  The job thing, I can take off at five o'clock in the afternoon, the rock star thing. I go, I go shopping, I cook my own food, I wash the dishes, I take out the garbage. I, I know who that guy is. And that, that's, and the music is, has nothing to do with money or career or, it just, it's just part of me. It's like love, music, love, food, friendship, uh, my daughter, you know, all these great things.

• 1:05:54Alec Baldwin?

  How's your daughter doing?

• 1:05:55Speaker 05

  She's great. Um, but I, uh, you know, I, I know how to take the, the, the job hat off and, and just kinda be the normal. I've learned how to do it. It took a long time to separate them out, okay? I can be a musician and not be a, a, a rock star. Uh, you know, I'm still trying to convince people, I'm not a rock star. And then, no, yes, you are, you are a rock star, you're a star. So, okay, fine. But a lot of that is, has a job aspect to it. I work very hard at what, uh, at writing because that's my deepest love, I think. That's really where I belong. The rock star thing, I've never really been comfortable with because I don't think I look like a rock star. I didn't really set out to be a rock star. I became a rock star serendipitously.

• 1:06:36Alec Baldwin?

  You became a rock star in spite of yourself.

• 1:06:38Speaker 05

  In spite of myself.

• 1:06:39Alec Baldwin?

  In spite of yourself.

• 1:06:40Speaker 05

  Which is hysterical to me.

• 1:06:41Alec Baldwin?

  As much as you tried to kill it.

• 1:06:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I did.

• 1:06:43Alec Baldwin?

  Don't put that camera too close to me.

• 1:06:45Speaker 05

  E- exactly. Uh, I don't wanna make a good video, I'm gonna make a bad video. Cause I mean, I just wanna get outta here.

• 1:06:50Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  I don't wanna be in a photo session, I hate taking pictures. I don't wanna go to this opening, I don't wanna go to that schmooze fest. I just didn't do any of that stuff, but, um, uh, I'm comfortable with it now.

• 1:07:01Alec Baldwin?

  Billy Joel says he doesn't look back on his life that much. Last year, he decided not to publish his long-awaited memoir entitled "The Book of Joel." He said instead, quote, "The best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music," unquote. What's a song that you think to yourself, "You know, I really still enjoy hearing that song"? It doesn't have to be a hit. What's one you dislike, that you haven't played, that you really, really like?

• 1:07:26Speaker 05

  The ones I've been doing master classes at colleges, and I get to play all these obscure songs that I never played over the thirty, forty years I've been playing. Played one the other night, and I said, "Wow, that's a really good song." It has no rhyme. Not until the very end is when rhyme can sit, but the lyrics work. It's from "The Nylon Curtain," and it's called "Where's the Orchestra?"

• 1:07:59Speaker 05

  Where's the orchestra? Wasn't this supposed to be a musical? There I am in the balcony. How the hell could I have missed the overture? I like the scenery. Even though I have absolutely no idea at all

• 1:08:40Speaker 05

  what is being said despite the dialogue. There's the leading man, movie star who never faced an audience. Where's the orchestra?

• 1:09:00Speaker 05

  Orchestra. After all, this is my big night on the town. My introduction to the theater crowd. I assumed that a show would have a song. So I was wrong. At least I understand. All the innuendo and the irony. And I appreciate.

• 1:09:41Speaker 05

  The roles the actors played, the point the author made. And after the closing lines. And after the curtain calls. The curtain falls. On empty chairs. Where's the orchestra?

• 1:10:39Alec Baldwin?

  You're the king.

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:10:42Alec Baldwin?

  No, really, you're the king, man.

• 1:10:43Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:10:44Alec Baldwin?

  Thank you for coming.

• 1:10:45Speaker 05

  Thanks, man.

• 1:10:45Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

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• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Hello?

• 1:12:27Speaker 07

  Hey, it's me, your wallet.

• 1:12:29Speaker 03

  Oh, hey.

• 1:12:30Speaker 07

  I was just wondering if we could maybe take it easy this week?

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:12:35Speaker 07

  Really?

• 1:12:35Speaker 03

  Yep, I'm shopping at Food Lion.

• 1:12:37Speaker 07

  Wait, you mean low prices?

• 1:12:39Speaker 03

  And MVP savings.

• 1:12:41Speaker 07

  Oh, you do care.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  Obviously.

• 1:12:43Speaker 07

  Okay, I feel better.

• 1:12:45Speaker 03

  Good, now let's go get some snacks.

• 1:12:49Speaker 06

  At Food Lion, low prices and MVP savings make it easier to shop for what you need without spending more than you have to. When your wallet needs a little TLC, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.