Speaker 1: Hello, this is Christian Bush and welcome to episode five
Speaker 1: of Geeking Out, my new podcast. Every episode is a
Speaker 1: new person talking about what they're obsessed with that has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with their job. The only requirement is
Speaker 1: that they're totally geeking out on it and they want
Speaker 1: to talk about it. From homemade bamboo furniture to secret
Speaker 1: paminaciese recipes from Disney Prince's Collections to Doctor Who, lego
Speaker 1: sets from your favorite Netflix Ben snacked the Internet tracking
Speaker 1: great White Sharks. Tell me what you love, why you
Speaker 1: love it, how you got into it, and what makes
Speaker 1: it awesome. Every episode is presented in three chapters. Chapter one,
Speaker 1: my guest and I talk about what they're obsessed with.
Speaker 1: Chapter two is a game I call Tradja, where my
Speaker 1: guests and I turn each other onto one thing that
Speaker 1: we've discovered. And chapter three closes the show with me
Speaker 1: talking about music that I'm currently geeking out on and
Speaker 1: why I believe that curiosity is contagious and the life
Speaker 1: is better with a soundtrack. So let's go Chapter one.
Speaker 1: Today's guest is Will Stegman. Will is a professional businessman
Speaker 1: with a normal person job who I met because he's
Speaker 1: good friends with my manager, Whitney. Will lives with his wife,
Speaker 1: Nina and their pitbull Olive in Los Angeles, California. Whitney
Speaker 1: and I met up with him on a rooftop in
Speaker 1: Westwood last fall. So you're going to hear the occasional
Speaker 1: traffic helicopter overhead as we talk. So introduce yourself, Hi,
Speaker 1: and Will Stegman. We'll tell us what you do for
Speaker 1: a little I work for a very big corporation that
Speaker 1: you probably do business with in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: And um, what I officially do, they're probably does doesn't
Speaker 1: matter to anyone who's gonna do this right now. Not
Speaker 1: to be mysterious, no, but I work a regular office job.
Speaker 1: I do a regular nine to five. I work in
Speaker 1: customer experience. I guess is the the umbrella that it
Speaker 1: fits under it? And um, I am, I should say,
Speaker 1: reluctantly geeked out and obsessed with a musician from my hometown.
Speaker 1: I grew up on Long Island. I grew up about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes from where Billy Joel grew up, and I,
Speaker 1: for a very long time wanted nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the guy like I grew up. It was so like
Speaker 1: he was our he was our Springsteen. He was our
Speaker 1: he was our local hero. In my memory, the local
Speaker 1: radio station would play Piano Man at nine o'clock every
Speaker 1: Saturday night, like it was just the thing that we did.
Speaker 1: And everybody lumped him. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody
Speaker 1: who knew him. Um, and he lived there. He lived
Speaker 1: there even you know, you know, he had a place
Speaker 1: in New York City, he had a place in Miami,
Speaker 1: and he still had a place on Long Island. You know,
Speaker 1: you could see him in restaurants all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: He was just part of the local fabric and I
Speaker 1: wanted zero to do with it now, So I grew
Speaker 1: up there. I lived there for the first almost twenty
Speaker 1: five years of my life and just partly turned five,
Speaker 1: picked up my stuff, and I moved away to where
Speaker 1: we are now. Where are we now? We are now
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. Specifically, we are on our roof right, yes,
Speaker 1: And I don't live on this roof, like your listeners
Speaker 1: should know, Like I'm not, I'm not homeless. Um, I
Speaker 1: have a roof. But when I would tell people where
Speaker 1: I was from, everyone would always ask like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: from Long and likely Joel you must love him like, nope,
Speaker 1: in fact, I don't. And then I would tell people
Speaker 1: that every year I would make a New Year's resolution,
Speaker 1: and it was January one, We're gonna go through this
Speaker 1: whole year without ever hearing a single village. Also, it's
Speaker 1: like I started this when I was still living on
Speaker 1: Long Island, which meant I failed every year, But from
Speaker 1: like nine six on, it's like, this year, no, Billy Joel,
Speaker 1: We're not gonna go places where we think we're gonna
Speaker 1: hear him um, which was nowhere, Like and maybe I
Speaker 1: go to a hospital, but there was a good chance,
Speaker 1: like if you're at a hospital, you're still gonna hear
Speaker 1: like uptown girls while you're you know right, it's it's inescapable.
Speaker 1: So I would every year do it, and then like
Speaker 1: I would be on the fourth of January sitting in
Speaker 1: a diner and all of a sudden you hear you know,
Speaker 1: Downeaster Alexa playing over the over the diner jukebox at
Speaker 1: two o'clock in the morning, and you're like, what is
Speaker 1: going wrong with my life? That, like I can't avoid this,
Speaker 1: this this guy, I just it wasn't personal. I didn't
Speaker 1: know him. I just thought everything that he stood for
Speaker 1: and believed in and everyone who enjoyed him and his
Speaker 1: work was done. That's a dumb straight down just didn't know,
Speaker 1: didn't know a thing. M hm. So I spend fifteen
Speaker 1: years vowing every year to not hear Billy Joel. I
Speaker 1: moved to Los Angeles, where I feel like, oh, probably
Speaker 1: gonna hear less of them. They're not the case. Every
Speaker 1: year he would pop up, usually within the first sixty
Speaker 1: days of the year. I would call and be put
Speaker 1: on hold, and there would be like a music version
Speaker 1: of you know, always a woman like bastard got me again?
Speaker 1: Like every year that sneaky Long Island Bastard would would
Speaker 1: nail me. So two twelve rolls around two twelve. I
Speaker 1: am how old am I? Then? I am thirty seven,
Speaker 1: and I got a job, I'm married, I'm doing well.
Speaker 1: I'm a different person than the kid who used to
Speaker 1: sit being angry and diners and cursing Billy Joel on
Speaker 1: Long Island. But I still won't listen to the guy.
Speaker 1: So two twelve, it's the It's New Year's Day and
Speaker 1: my wife is watching TV and she says to me, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's this movie on and I think you want to
Speaker 1: watch Um. The movie is called Last Play at Shay.
Speaker 1: Shea was Chase Stadium with the New York Mets play
Speaker 1: and the other thing that I'm obsessed with is the
Speaker 1: New York Mets. So my wife sees this and says, oh,
Speaker 1: Last Play at Shay, that's gotta be about the Mets.
Speaker 1: Let me get my husband in here, who loves the
Speaker 1: Mets and hates Billy Joel, in this room to watch this.
Speaker 1: So she flips the channel and I come walking in
Speaker 1: and I realized, oh, Last Play at Shay is not
Speaker 1: a movie about the Mets. Last Play at Cha is
Speaker 1: a Billy Joeld concert film. So it's the first day
Speaker 1: of the year. I'm not even twelve hours into two
Speaker 1: and I'm blown it up. So I decide in that
Speaker 1: moment after I storm out, and I'm like, how could
Speaker 1: you do this to me? Because it was really like
Speaker 1: that Twilight Zone moment, like it's a cookbook, it's not
Speaker 1: a mess thing. It's a Billy Joel movie. No. So
Speaker 1: it's over and my wife is like, I'm so sorry
Speaker 1: that I ruined it for you, and I'm like, We're
Speaker 1: gonna regroup, you know, We're gonna do this year. We're
Speaker 1: gonna flip this script. I've been putting this off for
Speaker 1: too long. I'm gonna listen to every goddamn song this
Speaker 1: guy ever wrote, recorded and released, and I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: going in. I'm going in deep. I'm gonna find out
Speaker 1: what is it that I don't like about this guy?
Speaker 1: Why does he set off all of these things in me?
Speaker 1: And over the course of two thousand and twelve, I
Speaker 1: did this thing called a Year of Billy Joel, where
Speaker 1: I basically dedicated the whole year to just studying Billy
Speaker 1: Joel's music, and over the course of that year became
Speaker 1: just kind of obsessed with it. Um the music, his story,
Speaker 1: UM his upbringing, the source, his of his material, his
Speaker 1: his writing process. I became so deep into it that
Speaker 1: now will be five years later, Um, there isn't a
Speaker 1: day that goes by that somebody doesn't send me a
Speaker 1: link to something Billy Joel related, or um, bring something
Speaker 1: to my attention, like, hey, do you know about this?
Speaker 1: You should write about this. It's this thing that like
Speaker 1: five years ago, just as a joke, I decided to
Speaker 1: do this, and it's just it's take. It's the thing
Speaker 1: that people know me for now as the guy who
Speaker 1: hated Billy Joel and then decided to give him a try.
Speaker 1: And would you say that you love Billy Joel? Now,
Speaker 1: I love I really enjoy Billy Joel the person. But
Speaker 1: it's like I enjoy it when I hear it, but
Speaker 1: it's not the thing that I seek out, but it
Speaker 1: seeks me out. It's it's like your obsession, now, is it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a way way to put it. I'm like in
Speaker 1: Billy Joel's gravitational orbit. And as much as I try to, like,
Speaker 1: I can't get away from it. It's like every day
Speaker 1: somebody sends me something, Um, I hear something. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there, you know, reissues and stuff coming up. Or
Speaker 1: I get into a dispute about something, or someone else
Speaker 1: is arguing about Billy joelian on the Internet, and if
Speaker 1: I'm within five thousand miles of that argument, someone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: talk to Will, He'll settle this for us. So I'm
Speaker 1: I'm also now the Billy Joel argument settler. It's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will. I will tag Will on Facebook if anyone
Speaker 1: says anything bad about Billy Joel and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I that Will have something to say about this. Judge
Speaker 1: will right. So then the other thing is like learning
Speaker 1: like who all of the other secret Billy Joel fans
Speaker 1: are like people who who are like, oh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like my guilty pleasure. And it's like, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even say that it's my guilty pleasure. It's just
Speaker 1: the thing that I identify with. Like the thing that
Speaker 1: really got me obsessive about it was more his individuals
Speaker 1: story um as like just just kind of hard luck
Speaker 1: kid living in the middle of nowhere on Long Islands. Like,
Speaker 1: if you live on Long Island, you are acutely aware
Speaker 1: that the biggest city in the world is less than
Speaker 1: an hour to the east. You're a train ride or
Speaker 1: a car ride from New York City, and you know
Speaker 1: that that magnetism, that power that is in New York
Speaker 1: is right there. Sometimes you can see it. And you
Speaker 1: also know that they don't want you. You also know
Speaker 1: that you are an outsider, and you'll always be an outsider.
Speaker 1: There'll always be somebody from Long Island. Um and sort
Speaker 1: of the chip on your shoulder that you carry if
Speaker 1: you grow up in the shadow of a place like
Speaker 1: New York City or Los Angeles, you feel like there's
Speaker 1: something there that you want to be a part of,
Speaker 1: and yet you don't feel welcome. And I felt that
Speaker 1: way growing up. It wasn't until I started reading into
Speaker 1: views where he talked about his upbringing and that sense
Speaker 1: of disconnect from the place he wanted to be um
Speaker 1: and I really began to say, oh, Like it's cliche,
Speaker 1: but like, dude, I've been hating all these years, were
Speaker 1: not so different to you and I like I realized, Oh,
Speaker 1: Billy Joel and I are essentially the same person, but
Speaker 1: with a different skill set. He has a marketable skill set.
Speaker 1: I have a skill set that brings me to rooftops
Speaker 1: in the middle of Los Angeles to talk about projects
Speaker 1: used to do. So It's amazing though, Like the more
Speaker 1: I read about him, the more I um. It was
Speaker 1: like watching a movie that you hadn't seen before, Like
Speaker 1: I had never really studied the movie of Billy Joel's career,
Speaker 1: but through learning about him, I began to root for him,
Speaker 1: like as if I ignored the fact that I knew
Speaker 1: what the ending was or the ending up to that point. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he's still with us, he's still performing, so his story
Speaker 1: is still being told old, but the story of like
Speaker 1: him struggling, him getting ripped off by a record label,
Speaker 1: him getting a signing possibly one of the worst contracts
Speaker 1: in the history of music. UM, and having you know,
Speaker 1: having to basically have the mob get him out of that,
Speaker 1: UM get him out of that deal. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: going through like having to really struggle just to sort
Speaker 1: of get to the starting points and then have some success,
Speaker 1: have a record of the year, make some money, then
Speaker 1: get completely ripped off to the point where, oh, he's
Speaker 1: broke again. He stopped recording new music in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: but continued to tour for a decade because he was broke,
Speaker 1: because he had to because someone he trusted UM robbed him. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I had the same thing happened to me,
Speaker 1: obviously for less money, but like people I trusted like
Speaker 1: took money from me. And it was like every time
Speaker 1: I would read something about him, I could find some parallel.
Speaker 1: And the thing that it did for me was it
Speaker 1: helped me to sort of understand maybe where I handled
Speaker 1: adversity the wrong way, maybe where I um turned my
Speaker 1: back on people out of anger. As I was doing
Speaker 1: this and reading about Long Island and reading about Long
Speaker 1: Island's favorite son, I missed Long Island a great deal.
Speaker 1: I really missed it. I had been living here for
Speaker 1: about twelve years at that point, so I was suddenly homesick.
Speaker 1: In the twelve years that I had lived in l
Speaker 1: A M, I had grown up. I went from being
Speaker 1: a kid to an adult, you know, being married and
Speaker 1: you know, not living like in an apartment with four roommates. UM,
Speaker 1: just living something with my wife and my dog. My
Speaker 1: dad had passed away, and between my dad's passing and
Speaker 1: just time, I felt disconnected from my own upbringing. So
Speaker 1: I the thing that I got out of this, in
Speaker 1: addition to becoming just really into the life of a musician,
Speaker 1: UM was one finally giving his music a chance. And
Speaker 1: like I said, it's good. It's way better than I
Speaker 1: give him credit. I gave him credit for it's way
Speaker 1: better than I ever understood. And I think he is
Speaker 1: grossly underestimated as a musician. So that was a gift.
Speaker 1: That was something I didn't expect. But also it made
Speaker 1: me go back home and connect and talk to family
Speaker 1: members I hadn't spoken to, maybe go to my high
Speaker 1: school reunion. Really, you've never been, never been, never been.
Speaker 1: Just coincided with my twentieth high school reunion, and I
Speaker 1: went they did, Yes, they did, because it's of course.
Speaker 1: And then I went to the diner afterwards, the same
Speaker 1: diner that I was once asked to leave for yelling
Speaker 1: at somebody from playing piano. Man. Um. I went back
Speaker 1: to that diner and I put on some Billy Joel
Speaker 1: songs on the jukebox, and I sat with my wife
Speaker 1: and we listened to Billy Joel on a Long Island jukebox,
Speaker 1: and I felt like, oh, I've made it all the
Speaker 1: way back home, like this is good. This is a
Speaker 1: really good thing, Um. And you know, now when I
Speaker 1: go home, I have a different relationship with my hometown.
Speaker 1: I feel a lot more warmth towards it. I can
Speaker 1: go home and not really be angry about things, leave
Speaker 1: the past in the past, and move forward. And where
Speaker 1: did you start? Did you like started like, did you
Speaker 1: do it chronologically? Yes, as I started the writing portion
Speaker 1: of the project with his first record, this thing called
Speaker 1: Cold Spring Harbor, which of all of the Billy Joel records,
Speaker 1: it's it's I would say it's the worst of them,
Speaker 1: but it's not all. It's not entirely his fault. When
Speaker 1: the record was was UM recorded the producer who also
Speaker 1: owned the label who signed him to this terrible contract. Basically,
Speaker 1: a twenty year old Billy Joel signed a contract saying
Speaker 1: that UM he owed this rinky dink Long Islands, UM
Speaker 1: UM outlet ten records, and UM the record company basically
Speaker 1: could control everything and got a big cut of everything.
Speaker 1: So Billy Joel basically signed his life away at twenty
Speaker 1: because nobody else was offering him anything. You know, Columbia
Speaker 1: wasn't showing up at his house, Electra wasn't looking for him.
Speaker 1: This local guy wanted to help make records. All I
Speaker 1: gotta do is signed a ten record deal and give
Speaker 1: him a large percentage of my publishing. Great, where do
Speaker 1: I sign? So so he signed this horrible deal. Then
Speaker 1: so his producer guy, but I already ripped who owned
Speaker 1: the record label already? RiPP goes to after the record
Speaker 1: and he does it at the wrong speed. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever mastered a record, UM, but
Speaker 1: you probably understand how it works. Yeah, so not funny
Speaker 1: if you are the guy who's put his life into this.
Speaker 1: So when I talk about, like Billy Joel at this point,
Speaker 1: does everything right, you know works hard? Signs the deal
Speaker 1: that was given to him, says, I'm gonna make the
Speaker 1: best of his rights, a good collection of songs for
Speaker 1: a year old. You know, it's not a great record,
Speaker 1: but there's promise there. Um it comes out and because
Speaker 1: it's mastered at the wrong speed, his voice sounds really
Speaker 1: high and the piano sounds like basically, take take a piano,
Speaker 1: stick it in like an aluminum backyard shed, and then
Speaker 1: put a mic outside of that shed. That's what the
Speaker 1: record sounds like. So the label is this little rinky
Speaker 1: dink operation. It's like, well, I ain't gonna pay the
Speaker 1: remastered this. Nobody's ever heard of this guy just put
Speaker 1: it out like this. Oh my gosh. So young Billy
Speaker 1: Joel gets the pressing of his first record and it
Speaker 1: sounds like garbage, like it's it is. They later re
Speaker 1: released it. They remastered and rereleased it about ten years later.
Speaker 1: So the version of it you would buy now is
Speaker 1: the better version where it sounds correct. But it's on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Go to YouTube, look up Cold Spring Harbor original mastering,
Speaker 1: and you don't recognize the voice. So Billy Joel here's
Speaker 1: this record and feels like, oh my life is my
Speaker 1: career is over? So he just takes his band on
Speaker 1: the road and it's like, well, I gotta earn a living.
Speaker 1: I can earn a living playing live shows. He builds
Speaker 1: a good reputation as a solid live act um and
Speaker 1: he's still working on new material. Columbia UM, somebody from
Speaker 1: Columbia sees him and they approach him, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I would love to sound you guys, Dylan's on your label, Like,
Speaker 1: of course, this is where I want to be, but
Speaker 1: I'm under contract to these guys for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life to the point where you know. Of course,
Speaker 1: the reaction of Columbia was bright, you have a ten
Speaker 1: year deal with who will take care of this? And
Speaker 1: allegedly Columbia sent some muscle over to Basically, they worked
Speaker 1: out a deal where UM Family Productions, which was the
Speaker 1: name of this guy's company, UM got some sort of
Speaker 1: buy out and they got a piece of each record
Speaker 1: and for the first ten records of Billy Joel's career
Speaker 1: there's a Columbia logo and a Family Productions logo on
Speaker 1: it because that was the deal. So, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get somebody into Billy Joel, even though you started
Speaker 1: at the top, where would you start them regardless of
Speaker 1: the album. I would start with deep cuts, start pick
Speaker 1: up Piano Man, which was his first hit, and end um,
Speaker 1: don't play piano Man. Okay, listen to everything else on
Speaker 1: the Listen to everything but Piano Man. Listen to Um
Speaker 1: Traveling Prayer, which is this great bluegrass song like Dolly
Speaker 1: Parton recorded in one of Grammy four and if you
Speaker 1: listen to it like Dolly singing, you'd never know it
Speaker 1: wasn't her song. Um, Listen to Traveling Prayer. Listen to
Speaker 1: Stop in Nevada, which is about him and this woman
Speaker 1: that he's now going to get married to them, sort
Speaker 1: of heading west. Um. And then if you do want
Speaker 1: to listen to Piano Man, the important thing to know
Speaker 1: about Piano Man is that everything he's telling you in
Speaker 1: the song Piano Man is based on true life events.
Speaker 1: And he swears, and I'm gonna reveal here he and
Speaker 1: I have spoken about this, both on the phone and
Speaker 1: face to face. He swears to me that someone actually
Speaker 1: ordered a Tonic and Gin and also made love to
Speaker 1: his Tonic and Gin. Want a real estate novelist. We've
Speaker 1: never got into that. Look, I didn't How much time
Speaker 1: do you think I had let's back up for a second. Yes,
Speaker 1: the part where you just said you got on the
Speaker 1: phone with him. Yes, yes, So what happens is, I'm
Speaker 1: doing this Year of Billy Joel through two twelve. In
Speaker 1: September of two thousand twelve. It ends up like not
Speaker 1: on the Today's Show, but on the Today Show blog,
Speaker 1: which they promote on the show, because that the year
Speaker 1: you tracked it online. That's what you're saying, you did
Speaker 1: you like, right, every day I wrote, I wrote four
Speaker 1: days a week, four or five days a week. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I should have talked about that. As it's in a second.
Speaker 1: As it's going, I'm listening to every song and I'm
Speaker 1: writing a little essay about every song. Some days it's
Speaker 1: four sentences, some days it's two thousand words whatever comes
Speaker 1: to mind from the song. And as I'm writing about
Speaker 1: the songs, um, I'm also writing about myself. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about my family, and I'm talking about like being at
Speaker 1: my dad's house when I'm seven years old, and like
Speaker 1: he and my mom have just separated and it's really
Speaker 1: weird and it's uncomfortable, and my dad puts on like
Speaker 1: this this like sand Billy Joel Songs Mixtape that he made.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting in this basement department with my dad,
Speaker 1: and my dad's listening to Captain Jack, which is the
Speaker 1: saddest song imaginable. And as my dad's listening to Captain Jack,
Speaker 1: he's painting over the windows so that the sunlight can't
Speaker 1: get in. Oh my god, And like I realized, like
Speaker 1: I'm my parents had me really young. So when I'm seven,
Speaker 1: my dad is years old. So like my dad is
Speaker 1: about the same age Billy Joeld is at that point,
Speaker 1: and like my dad feels like his life is over.
Speaker 1: So we're just sitting there listening to sad music while
Speaker 1: my dad is like blocking the life out of our
Speaker 1: of our home and like just putting us in darkness.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't thought about that since I was a child,
Speaker 1: Like I remember that that night so vividly because all
Speaker 1: I wanted to do was watch the Mets because the
Speaker 1: Mets were gonna be on. It's like, when can we
Speaker 1: watch the game? It's like when when I'm done with this,
Speaker 1: Like as soon as I'm done shutting out everything good
Speaker 1: in our life, we can watch the Mets and maybe
Speaker 1: we'll get pizza too. So it ends up on the
Speaker 1: Today show thing. So it suddenly gets some like some
Speaker 1: other outlets pick it up. It was like a Huffington's
Speaker 1: Post thing. Um, so it got some press. So Billy
Speaker 1: has a publicist who gets clippings every day and this
Speaker 1: was when he got so it was billed as the headline,
Speaker 1: which is summed me up very well. Billy and Jill
Speaker 1: Hayter changes his tune with year long dedication, so appropriate headline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the publicist contacted me. I was like, hey, I
Speaker 1: would love to talk to you about this, Like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: no problem, Like give me a call. So I don't
Speaker 1: think anything of it. So a week later, I'm driving
Speaker 1: home from work and my phone rings unknown number, which
Speaker 1: I normally would just let it go to voicemail, but
Speaker 1: for some reason, I'm sitting in traffic. I got nowhere
Speaker 1: else to be. I pick up the phone and voice
Speaker 1: that sounds weirdly familiar. It's like, hey, can I talk
Speaker 1: to Will? Like this is Will. He's like, hey, it's
Speaker 1: Billy Joel and I'm like, come on, I won't say
Speaker 1: what I said because we're on a family type podcast here,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, get out of here. This is not
Speaker 1: Billy Joel. This is a friend of my dad's. This
Speaker 1: is somebody putting me on. So he's like, no, I
Speaker 1: talked to and he gave me the publicist name. He's like,
Speaker 1: I talked to so and so she told me that, like, um,
Speaker 1: you're doing something about me, and that we should go
Speaker 1: to lunch. Because throughout the course of the project, every
Speaker 1: time I finished an album, I would post an open
Speaker 1: letter inviting Billy Joel to lunch. I was like, hey, look,
Speaker 1: I'm making the effort here. I'm trying to trying to
Speaker 1: make things good between us. And he's like, so, what's
Speaker 1: this thing? And I it was in the weird position
Speaker 1: where I needed to tell a famous musician that I
Speaker 1: do not like his work. So I was like, I
Speaker 1: was like, how much did your publicists tell you about
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. It's like said, you had some my
Speaker 1: website you were writing about me. I was like, but
Speaker 1: did she tell you like how it came about? And
Speaker 1: so I'm like, hang on one second. I'm like, Billy,
Speaker 1: I've got to pull over to tell you this. So
Speaker 1: I pulled my car over to the side of the
Speaker 1: road and like, here's the thing. I am not a fan,
Speaker 1: never been a fan of your work. I'm like, and
Speaker 1: he's just sort of silent. He's like, hey, a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, after a moment of silence, a
Speaker 1: lot of people aren't fans of my work. It's like
Speaker 1: I can live with that. And I was like, but
Speaker 1: I'm giving it a try, and like he was happy.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh great. He was like, what are
Speaker 1: you up to? So I told him sort of where
Speaker 1: I was, and we started talking about the records, huh.
Speaker 1: And we just talked and talked and like to the
Speaker 1: point where you're like, hey, Billy, Joel has been great,
Speaker 1: but like, hey, I'm sure you gotta go. And he's like,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. Like he couldn't have been nicer,
Speaker 1: and like he seemed to be more into talking to
Speaker 1: me about what I was doing. And if we end
Speaker 1: up talking about like our families and I'm talking about
Speaker 1: my dad who had passed away, and it was like
Speaker 1: we had this great conversation. So finally I'm like, Billy,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. This has been wonderful. I'm like,
Speaker 1: before we talk any further, you should read everything that
Speaker 1: I've written and then decide if you want to continue
Speaker 1: to talk to me. Because he was like, hey, we
Speaker 1: should talk again, Like, if you have questions, you can
Speaker 1: ask me. Like, I was so amazed at how receptive
Speaker 1: he was to me taking a critical analysis his work.
Speaker 1: After the project ended, he was like, Hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: do that lunch. So he came to l A. He
Speaker 1: was here for something. Um, he was gonna be out here.
Speaker 1: Was like, Hey, I'm gonna be on here if you
Speaker 1: want to meet up. We met up, We had lunch.
Speaker 1: Um had a great conversation about you know, not just
Speaker 1: his music but music in general. Um, and like his
Speaker 1: he talked to me about how he thought people perceived
Speaker 1: his music. But it was a really interesting conversation. That's
Speaker 1: because you're right in the middle of that, right, I
Speaker 1: mean I would say it as an artist. I mean,
Speaker 1: and this is none of this is it really about me?
Speaker 1: But I do know that the one muscle that you
Speaker 1: have to use is to convince a stranger to like you. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there were two things that like the fact
Speaker 1: that wait, how come this guy doesn't like me, He's
Speaker 1: got to win me over, Like he got a little
Speaker 1: obsessed with this random dude liking him. Um, And so
Speaker 1: the other thing was like I wasn't asking him for
Speaker 1: anything right, Like I didn't have a demo on him
Speaker 1: to listen too. I wasn't in a band. I wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to get anything from him, and I think because
Speaker 1: of that, he was willing to go further then he
Speaker 1: maybe would have been with other people, because I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to read this, I'd love to have
Speaker 1: you read this. But like he read it all and
Speaker 1: they called me and he's like, hey, I just want
Speaker 1: to let you know I read everything, and he's like
Speaker 1: it's great. He's like, I don't agree with everything you say,
Speaker 1: but I really like I appreciate the thought, like the
Speaker 1: work you put into it. And he's like, you also
Speaker 1: make a lot of great points about stuff that I
Speaker 1: don't think people understand, Like I had said something that
Speaker 1: resonated with him. Um. And we had lunch and then
Speaker 1: he invited my wife and I to go to Hollywood Bowl,
Speaker 1: where we got to Um, you know you've been to
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Bowl. Hollywood Bowl is a beautiful place. It's
Speaker 1: a lot more beautiful when you're sitting right up front.
Speaker 1: I've been to the Hollywood Bowl a number of times,
Speaker 1: and usually when I'm paying for the tickets, I'm sitting
Speaker 1: practically up in the hills like I usually like I'm
Speaker 1: closer to a coyote than I am the stage. But
Speaker 1: I I we go to see the show, and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting right in that little sort of pit area with
Speaker 1: the tables and the and the millionaires. So we're sitting
Speaker 1: basically in the one percent section, and it's nice, like
Speaker 1: we're one percent caused playing like Hey, we're gonna pretend
Speaker 1: we're fancy people for a day now. But no, but
Speaker 1: none of the fancy people around No, is that I
Speaker 1: took the bus to the show. I took the bus,
Speaker 1: and it's like I'm looking at this guy up on
Speaker 1: stage like he was a bus taker, Like you know,
Speaker 1: there's no reason, like he got lucky. He hit the lottery,
Speaker 1: you know, and he didn't, he didn't get a gift,
Speaker 1: like he earned his seat, but like he got lucky,
Speaker 1: like things could have very easily gone the other way.
Speaker 1: I watched him, and I realized, like he could just
Speaker 1: as easily be sitting on the bus with me and
Speaker 1: we're here seeing somebody else. So it was very much
Speaker 1: like again, it's it's an identity. So I got ended
Speaker 1: up wanting to listen to somebody's music to see what
Speaker 1: it was that sort of brought people into it, and
Speaker 1: I realized it's a combination of one. As I said,
Speaker 1: songs are better than I gave him credit for, especially
Speaker 1: the deep cuts. Deep cuts are way better than people understand.
Speaker 1: And the person and the fact that oh more than
Speaker 1: any other, more than almost any other sort of hugely
Speaker 1: popular musician, like he could really be any one of us.
Speaker 1: Like the appeal of Springsteen, who I love, is that
Speaker 1: everybody feels like Springsteen is a guy you can go
Speaker 1: have a beer with. Billy Joel was also a guy
Speaker 1: you can go have a beer with. Just he'll tell
Speaker 1: you this, don't let him drive you home. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Chapter two. In every episode of Geeking Out, I see
Speaker 1: if I can trade one thing I've discus with one
Speaker 1: thing that my guest has discovered, a friendly exchange. I
Speaker 1: call it trade you. This segment, as I'm eating some
Speaker 1: banana chips here um is called trade you, okay, And
Speaker 1: the idea is much like you have, uh you know,
Speaker 1: told me what your passion is or your obsession is
Speaker 1: what you're geeking out on. This is just something very
Speaker 1: kind of within your week, within your month, um, something
Speaker 1: that you're into and one thing that I'm into, and
Speaker 1: I'll trade you one thing for another. So for me, um,
Speaker 1: I'll start. So you're gonna have a show to think about.
Speaker 1: Give me a moment um during our conversation. I just
Speaker 1: heard you say that you have a podcast, Mets podcast
Speaker 1: called Flushing Transit Authority, UM, which I do with my
Speaker 1: friend j Bushman, and it's a ton of fun we
Speaker 1: like talking about Basically, he and I love talking about
Speaker 1: the Mets. Are like, Hey, we're gonna talk about the Mets.
Speaker 1: Let's record it and make other people listen to it.
Speaker 1: So this is my first experience in podcasting, and I, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, own a recording studio and stuff, so I
Speaker 1: know all of the things I should be doing to
Speaker 1: make it awesome from an audio standpoint. But um, what
Speaker 1: I've discovered is one of the things that's actually sitting
Speaker 1: in front of us as this microphone right here. It's
Speaker 1: an apog microphone, and it this is the same converter
Speaker 1: in the bottom of this tiny little microphone that I
Speaker 1: used to record albums that when awards and it's somehow
Speaker 1: instead of having it in a giant rack, they put
Speaker 1: it in this tiny little microphone. And it will plug
Speaker 1: into your phone or it'll plug into your computer anything.
Speaker 1: And secondly to to up it, there is a kickstarter
Speaker 1: thing when these guys in Canada that is um they
Speaker 1: call it the eyeball, and it goes on top of
Speaker 1: this and suddenly you have an entire recording studio that
Speaker 1: really will squish down like a nerf ball into your bag.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. You know what I'm obsessed with lately? I
Speaker 1: love Nil Young. You're a big Neil Young. I love
Speaker 1: Nil Young. Um does that mean that you bought like
Speaker 1: a poo player? I did not buy a poono player
Speaker 1: because I also realized that your average listener, which I am,
Speaker 1: can't tell the difference, got it, And unless you have,
Speaker 1: like I'm listening to dope, you can't tell the difference.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to music in my car, or I'm listening
Speaker 1: with earbuds on my my iPhone or my home. You know,
Speaker 1: record player with a USB speaker is gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: So the thing that I'm obsessed with right now, Neil
Speaker 1: Young put on a record this week called Hitchhiker. Hitchhiker
Speaker 1: was recorded in nineteen seventy six, and I learned about
Speaker 1: Hitchhiker through my friend Daniel Ralston, who just published a
Speaker 1: great story in Vulture uh this week, just you know,
Speaker 1: pop culture side about the making of this record. So
Speaker 1: the record was Neil Young, his producer David Briggs, who
Speaker 1: produced all of his best stuff. UM, and Dean Stockwell.
Speaker 1: Remember Dean Stockwell? Do you Stockwell from Okay? Now? Dean
Speaker 1: Stockwell was also a musician. Dean Stockwell was a renaissance
Speaker 1: man of the twentieth century. Um, Dean Stockwell does not
Speaker 1: play on the record, He's just there in the room.
Speaker 1: And but the record is just Neil Young and an
Speaker 1: acoustic guitar doing the first version of Pocahontas, the first
Speaker 1: version of powder Finger, UM, and a bunch of like
Speaker 1: other stuff that Captain Kennedy, like a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: that you've heard him do on other records or he
Speaker 1: pulls out live every now and then, But just to
Speaker 1: hear like powder Finger, just on an acoustic guitar, because
Speaker 1: like the beauty of I love powder Fingers, one of
Speaker 1: my five favorite songs ever recorded. And just that sort
Speaker 1: of that harmonic guitar sound. Um, and that's sort of
Speaker 1: really just slow she riff that he does on the
Speaker 1: electric and to not hear that um, as my friend
Speaker 1: Daniel points out, like makes the narrator of the song
Speaker 1: feel even frailer and more afraid than he is in
Speaker 1: the electric version two years three years before it came
Speaker 1: out on on Rust Never Sleeps. Wow, Okay, I will
Speaker 1: totally go listen to That's fantastic. I I put Neil
Speaker 1: Young's guitar playing as one of the things that really
Speaker 1: inspires me because it's it's more right hand than left hand.
Speaker 1: It's so sort of like it's just so primal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. That's awesome. Well, thanks for being here
Speaker 1: or thanks for joining us on the route always happen
Speaker 1: to be on a roof, Go to be had. Chapter
Speaker 1: three me geeking out on music piano man, I would
Speaker 1: like to discuss piano playing front men and women. We're
Speaker 1: all used to seeing our singers stand and perform at
Speaker 1: a microphone and some mics with diamonds on them, some
Speaker 1: with scarves or tambourines hanging down, and some even toiling
Speaker 1: or swinging the stands around like their weapons. We also
Speaker 1: have stars that commonly wheeled guitars as they sing, whether
Speaker 1: they're rock and roll battle axes, or hipster ukuleles or
Speaker 1: wooden steel string country artists. We're all accustomed to our
Speaker 1: rock stars performing certain duties a certain way. As a culture,
Speaker 1: we really don't stray too much from this model. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are a few that play violin and a rare
Speaker 1: saxophone here. They're even a drummer like Phil Collins or
Speaker 1: Sheila E or even Cowboy Mouth. But I've noticed something
Speaker 1: odd about our rock stars. There are very few that
Speaker 1: play piano. In nineteen nineteen, stein Way and Sons launched
Speaker 1: an ad campaign for their pianos and the tagline was
Speaker 1: the instrument of the Immortals. So let's think about that.
Speaker 1: Let's see what's on the top of my mind. Uh,
Speaker 1: Fats Domino, Cherry Lee Lewis, Little Richard all built rock
Speaker 1: and roll on pianos. And then my mind I think
Speaker 1: of Elton John and Billy Joel and Jules Holland from
Speaker 1: The Squeeze. Then I think I skip ahead. Maybe in
Speaker 1: my mind have been Folds, and then Lady Gaga and
Speaker 1: Sarah Burrellus, And then it feels like they're more like
Speaker 1: that old TV show The Highlander, that there can be
Speaker 1: only one piano. Rock Stars are things that we love,
Speaker 1: but it seems that we don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: room for them on our pop charts. Great for rhythm
Speaker 1: and blues, great for songwriter, but what about the piano
Speaker 1: makes it a hard sell for a rock and roll
Speaker 1: Why is this just harder to carry your piano to
Speaker 1: a campfire at a remote beach to serenade the girl
Speaker 1: that you like, Harder to carry up a flight of
Speaker 1: stairs for an open mic. It doesn't go well with
Speaker 1: tight pants. Maybe it's baked into our learning by default.
Speaker 1: When we take a piano lesson, we learned chopsticks versus on,
Speaker 1: it gets harror, we learn deep purple smoke on the water.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's our history in the fifties and sixties, as
Speaker 1: teenagers became purchasers, Fats Domino was playing two Dy Fruity
Speaker 1: versus Chuck Berry playing Johnny be Good? Is that when
Speaker 1: we turned Maybe in our subconscious it's that we feel
Speaker 1: that a piano just can't get loud enough to drown
Speaker 1: out the cheers of an arena and may in the masses.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is. As a guitar player, I'm always fascinated
Speaker 1: watching my brother playthings with keys on it. Fascinated hearing
Speaker 1: Elton John effortlessly's land a song on its feet every
Speaker 1: time it tumbles out of a speaker. Fascinated at how
Speaker 1: Billy Joel sounds like a drummer and a bass player
Speaker 1: and a guitar player all at the same time on
Speaker 1: the same instrument. I hope someone new out there feels
Speaker 1: like taking us for a ride soon on their imagination
Speaker 1: using their piano, and I hope it feels like freedom
Speaker 1: and rock and power and awesome long live rock stars
Speaker 1: who play piano. I hope you enjoyed this episode of
Speaker 1: Geeking Out and we are already hard at work on
Speaker 1: the next one. Are you obsessed with something amazing? I
Speaker 1: want to tell us about it? Right to us at
Speaker 1: geeking Out with KB at gmail dot com and you
Speaker 1: might be a guest on an upcoming episode. Come find
Speaker 1: out more about me and this podcast at Christian Bush
Speaker 1: dot com, Christian with a K people follow me at
Speaker 1: Christian Bush on Twitter, Christian Bush Instagram, Christian Bush on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Christian M. Bush on Snapchat. Thanks to Bobby Bones
Speaker 1: for the opportunity to make this podcast, Brian and Bush
Speaker 1: for making the soundtrack and assembling the pieces, Tom Tapley
Speaker 1: for audio wizardry and Whitney Pastrick for being a great
Speaker 1: producer and making this whole thing possible. This is Christian
Speaker 1: Bush geeking out. Thank you for listening.