ÿþ<HTML><HEAD> <TITLE>Billy Joel Biography, Photos and Posters</TITLE> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Billy Joel biography, photos, posters, CDs, books and concert tickets"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Billy Joel biography, Billy Joel photos, Billy Joel Piano Man, Uptown Girl, pop music, music"> <link rel=stylesheet href="scrollbar.css" type="text/css"> </HEAD> <body bgcolor="#000011" text="#000000" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#CC00CC" link="#0000FF"> <table border="0" width="775" style="position: absolute; left: 2; top: 2; font-family: New Times Roman; color: #000000;" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="775" background="images/star_pages_title.jpg" width="766" height="59"><font size="7" font color="#FFFFFF">Billy Joel</font></td> </tr> <tr><td width="775"> <p><map name="FPMap0"> <area href="index.html" shape="rect" coords="2, 3, 73, 18"> <area href="music.html" shape="rect" coords="81, 2, 149, 17"> <area href="bios.html" shape="rect" coords="157, 3, 224, 20"> <area href="books.html" shape="rect" coords="231, 2, 300, 20"> <area href="tickets.html" shape="rect" coords="310, 3, 377, 20"> <area href="videos.html" shape="rect" coords="386, 1, 453, 19"> <area href="posters.html" shape="rect" coords="462, 3, 532, 18"> <area href="fans.html" shape="rect" coords="538, 2, 609, 19"> <area href="votes.html" shape="rect" coords="616, 2, 685, 20"> <area href="directory.html" shape="rect" coords="693, 3, 765, 18"></map><img border="0" src="images/button.jpg" usemap="#FPMap0" width="766" height="30"></p> </a><br></td></tr> </table> <table border="0" width="624" style="position: absolute; left: 152; top: 80; font-family:New Times Roman; font size="3" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4"> <tr> <td colspan=3 bgcolor="#444448" align="left" valign="top"><font face="Palatino Linotype, Arial, Futura Lt BT" font size="3" font color="#FFFFFF"> <p><b>Biography</b></font></td></tr><br> <tr> <td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" align="left" valign="top"> <font face="Palatino Linotype, Arial, Futura Lt BT" font size="2" font color="#000000"> <b>Born:</b> May 9, 1949<br> <b>City and Country of Origin:</b> Bronx, NY<br> <b>Music Background:</b> piano lessons; </i><br> <b>Awards:</b> 1980 Grammy Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, "Glass Houses;" 1979 Album Of The Year, 52nd Street; Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, 52nd Street; 1978 Record Of The Year, "Just The Way You Are;" Song Of The Year, "Just The Way You Are;" <br> <b>Top Recordings:</b> "She's Got a Way," "Piano Man," "Say Goodbye To Hollywood," "New York State of Mind," "Just the Way You Are," "Big Shot," "It's Still Rock And Roll To Me," "Uptown Girl," "Tell Her About It," "We Didn't Start the Fire," <br> <b>Billy Joel Biography:</b> The peiano playing, songwriting singer William Martin Joel first lived in the South Bronx, but moved with his family first to Levittown and then Hicksville on Long Island. His father, Howard Joel, was a Jewish refugee from Germany and his mother Rosalind was from an English agnostic Jewish family. After his parents divorced his father moved back to Europe. As a boy he was very interested in music especially classical music. His attraction to music and other geeky pursuits instead of sports became the source for much peer teasing and bullying. This eventually led him to the boxing ring to learn to defend himself. He boxed successfully on the Golden Gloves circuit, but gave it up to become more involved in his music career. He left Hicksville high school after his senior year just a gym class short of a degree . 25 years later the school waived the rquirement and he received his degree. During the 60s he belonged to local groups like The Echoes and The Hassles. He then teamed with The Hassles drummer to form Attila which recorded an album which bombed. This failure landed him at Meadowbrook Hospital after a half-hearted suicide attempt. In 1971 he signed with Artie Ripp of Family Productions and released his first solos album Cold Spring Harbor after the town on Long Island. A technical snafu led to the album being released at the wrong speed. Anyway Joel's contract did not offer him much in compensation so he fled to L. A. with Elizabeth Weber where he played at the Executive Lounge under the name Billy Martin. He married Elizabeth in May. His Los Angeles trip paid off when Columbia Records bought out his contract. In 1973 he released Piano Man including the single of the same name. The record went gold, but due to the buy out Joel realized very little money from the success. Streetlife Serenade was his second offering for Columbia and it included the cynical "Entertainer." <br><br> Joel marked his 1976 move back to his East Coast roots with the album Turnstiles which included "New York State of Mind." 1977 marked Joel teaming up with producer Phil Ramone, a relationship which would last until 1989, on the album The Stranger. It proved to be Joel's first top 10 album rising to number 2 on the charts and included the single "Just the Way You Are." The following year 52nd Street became Joel's first number 1 album and included "My Life" and "Big Shot." Joel followed up in 1980 with Glass Houses, '81 with Songs in the Attic and in 1982 his most ambitious work Nylon Curtain. It was while working on this album that Joel experienced several personal problems. He broke his left wrist and badly damaged his hand in a motorcycle accident and shortly afterwards he was separated from his wife. The 1983 divorce settlement granted Elizabeth half of the singer's assets. After he finished the tour associated with the Nylon Curtain album he retreated to St. Bart's for a little R & R. IT was there that he first met supermodel Christie Brinkley who he married in 1985. It was after the vacation that he wrote "Uptown Girl." He followed it up with the Doo-Wop influenced album An Innocent Man which became Joel's second number 1 album. After that he released his Greatest HIts 1 & 2 albums.<br><br> The Bridge marked a change in the performer's life. For the first time he was working as a father and found writing much more difficult. The album was not as big a success as some of his earlier efforts, but did include the hit single "A Matter Of Trust." In 1987 Billy Joel became the first American rock act to play in the Soviet Union since the Berlin Wall went up. There were 6 performances, 3 in Moscow and 3 in Leningrad. The whole trip was filmed for television and video. The album & ", Russian for 'In Concert' was released in 1987. The whole affair wound up costing the singer over 1 million dollars of his own money and further the recordings revealed a loss of timbre in his voice when compared to his more youthful efforts. The first release from Storm Front was the single "We Didn't Start the Fire," which made the statement that unrest in the world was nothing new. The song became his third number 1 single. 1993's River of Dreams which featured a painting by Christie Brinkley on the album cover featured the title song which quickly climbed the charts. In August of '94 Christie Brinkley separated from Joel. In 1995 his long time bassist Doug Stegmeyer committed suicide. In 2001 he released Fantasies and Delusions. In recent years Joel has toured with Elton John and is currently on a tour of the United States which began in January of 2006.</p> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Joel">Source Wikipedia</td> <td bgcolor="#CCCCCD" align="center" valign="top"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="200" border="0"> <tr><td align="center"><font face="verdana, helvetica, arial" size="1"><b>Search Site by Artist:</b></font><br> <!-- Search Box HTML Code Begin: --> <noscript> * To display this page correctly, you need a web browser with JavaScript support.<br> * For more details, please view Search Engine Composer Homepage <a href="http://www.mtopsoft.com/sitesearch/">Create search engine for website.</a></noscript> <script language="javascript">function killerrors(){return true;}window.onerror = killerrors;</script> <script language="javascript">function checkData(){for(var i=0;i<document.form_search.sw.value.length;i++){if (document.form_search.sw.value.charAt(i)!=" "){return true;}}return false;}</script> <form name=form_search action="searchresult.php" onSubmit="return checkData()"> <table width="100%"> <tr> <td width="100%"> <input type="text" name="sw" size="20"><input type="submit" value="Search"> </td> </tr> </table> </form> <!-- Search Box HTML Code End. --> <font face="verdana, helvetica, arial" size="1"><b>Search Site Alphabetically:</b><br></font> <font face="verdana, helvetica, arial" size="2"><a href="a.html">A</a> <a href="b.html">B</a> <a href="c.html">C</a> <a href="d.html">D</a> <a href="e.html">E</a> <a href="f.html">F</a> <a href="g.html">G</a> <a href="h.html">H</a> <a href="i.html">I</a> <a href="j.html">J</a><br> <a href="k.html">K</a> <a href="l.html">L</a> <a href="m.html">M</a> <a href="n.html">N</a> <a href="o.html">O</a> <a href="p.html">P</a> <a href="q.html">Q</a> <a href="r.html">R</a> <a href="s.html">S</a> <a href="t.html">T</a><br> <a href="u.html">U</a> <a href="v.html">V</a> <a href="w.html">W</a> <a href="x.html">X</a> <a href="y.html">Y</a> <a href="z.html">Z</a><br><br></font> <IFRAME SRC="http://affiliates.allposters.com/PosterStore/PromotionalBanners/PromotionalBanners.asp?AID=1415669000&PSTID=1&LTID=15&LID=116&Size=180x150" WIDTH="180" HEIGHT="150" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"> <a href="http://affiliates.allposters.com/link/redirect.asp?AID=1415669000&PSTID=1&LTID=15&LID=116" target="_top"> <img src="http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/banners/affil_banner_red_2.gif" border="0" ALT=""> </a><br><font face="verdana, helvetica, arial" size="1"> <a href="http://affiliates.allposters.com/link/redirect.asp?AID=1415669000&PSTID=1&LTID=15&LID=116" target="_top"></a></font></IFRAME><img src="http://tracking.allposters.com/allposters.gif?AID=1415669000&PSTID=1&LTID=15&LID=116" border="0" height="1" width="1"><br> <br> <font face="Arial, Futura Lt BT, Palatino Linotype, " font size="2" font color="#000000"> <a href="http://www.stubhub.com/?affiliate_id=26923&genre_id=1" title="Buy tickets or sell tickets on StubHub.com" target="_top">The Hottest Concerts. 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