He released his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973. According to the RIAA, Billy Joel is the sixth best-selling recording artist in the United States.
Joel had Top 10 hits in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and has 33 Top 40 hits in the United States overall. He is also a five-time Grammy Award winner, a 23-time Grammy nominee and has sold in excess of 150 million albums worldwide. He was inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame (1992), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1999), and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame (2006). Joel "retired" from recording pop music in 1993 but continued to tour (sometimes with Elton John). In 2001, he released Fantasies & Delusions, a CD of classical compositions for piano. In 2007, he briefly returned to pop songwriting and recording with a single entitled "All My Life" -- written for his third wife Katie Lee Joel. Joel returned to touring in 2006 after a three-year hiatus from the road and has toured extensively ever since, covering many of the major world cities. In March 2009, Joel resumed his popular Face to Face tour with fellow piano man Elton John. The tour is expected to go on and off for two years and travel around the world. The two artists first paired up in 1994 but hadn't toured together since May 2003.
Billy Joel was born in the Bronx and raised in Hicksville, New York. His father, Howard (born Helmut), was born in Germany as the son of Jewish merchant and manufacturer Karl Amson Joel who emigrated to Switzerland and later to the United States, because of Nazi antisemitism. Billy Joel's mother, Rosalind Nyman, was born in England to a Jewish family (Philip and Rebecca Nyman). His parents divorced in 1960, and his father moved to Vienna, Austria. Billy has a sister, Judith Joel, and a half-brother, Alexander Joel, who is an acclaimed classical conductor in Europe, currently chief musical director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig.
Joel's father was an accomplished classical pianist. Billy reluctantly began piano lessons at an early age, at his mother's insistence; his teachers included the noted American pianist Morton Estrin and musician/songwriter Timothy Ford. His interest in music, rather than sports, was a source of teasing and bullying in his early years. (He has said in interviews that his piano instructor also taught ballet. Her name was Frances Neiman and she was a Juilliard trained musician. She gave both classic piano and ballet lessons in the studio attached to the rear of her house, leading neighborhood bullies to mistakenly think he was learning to dance.) As a teenager, Joel took up boxing so that he would be able to defend himself. He boxed successfully on the amateur Golden Gloves circuit for a short time, winning twenty-two bouts, but abandoned the sport shortly after having his nose broken in his twenty-fourth boxing match.
Joel attended Hicksville High School, and was expected to graduate in 1967. However, due to playing at a piano bar, he was one English credit short of the graduation requirement; he overslept on the day of an important exam, owing to his late-night musician's lifestyle. Faced with a summer at school to complete this requirement, he decided not to continue. He left high school without a diploma to begin a career in music, later telling an interviewer he'd told the Hicksville Board of Education, "I'm not going to Columbia University, I'm going to Columbia Records." Columbia did, in fact, become the label that eventually signed him.
Despite the Vietnam War and the draft, Joel performed no military service — because he was the sole provider for his mother and sister, the selective service gave him a draft exemption. In 1992, the English credit requirement was waived by the Hicksville School Board, and he received his diploma at Hicksville High's graduation ceremony 25 years after he had left.
Upon seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, Joel decided to pursue a full-time musical career, and set about finding a local Long Island band to join. Eventually he found the Echoes, a group that specialized in British Invasion covers. The Echoes became a popular New York attraction, convincing him to leave high school to become a professional musician. He began playing for the Echoes when he was 14 years old.
Joel began playing recording sessions with the Echoes in 1965, when he was 16 years old. Joel played piano on several recordings produced by Shadow Morton, including (as claimed by Joel, but denied by songwriter Ellie Greenwich) the Shangri-Las' Leader of the Pack, as well as several records released through Kama Sutra Productions. During this time, the Echoes started to play numerous late-night shows.
Later, in 1965, the Echoes changed their name to the Emeralds and then to the Lost Souls. For two years, he played sessions and performed with the Lost Souls. In 1967, he left that band to join the Hassles, a Long Island band that had signed a contract with United Artists Records. Over the next year and a half, they released The Hassles in 1967, Hour of the Wolf in 1968, and four singles, all of which failed commercially. Following The Hassles' demise in 1969, he formed the duo Attila with Hassles drummer Jon Small. Attila released their eponymous debut album in July 1970, and disbanded the following October.
In late 1975, he played piano and organ on several tracks on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album.
Whereas most records are owned by the recording company, Billy Joel is one of a number of performers — including Paul Simon, Johnny Rivers, Pink Floyd, Queen, Genesis, and Neil Diamond — who have their own name as the copyright owner on their recordings.
On August 25, 1994, Joel and second wife Christie Brinkley divorced. On December 31, 1999, Joel performed at New York's Madison Square Garden, which at the time was considered to be Joel's last solo concert. The concert (dubbed The Night of the 2000 Years) ran for close to four hours and was later released as 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert.
1997's "To Make You Feel My Love" and "Hey Girl" both charted from Joel's Greatest Hits Volume III album.
In 2001, Joel released Fantasies & Delusions, a collection of classical piano pieces. All were composed by Joel and performed by Richard Joo. Joel often uses bits of these songs as interludes in live performances, and some of them are part of the score for the hit show Movin' Out. The album topped the classical charts at #1. Joel performed "New York State of Mind" live on September 21, 2001, as part of the America: A Tribute to Heroes benefit concert, and on October 20, 2001, along with "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)", at the Concert for New York City in Madison Square Garden. That night, he also performed "Your Song" with Elton John.
In 2005, Columbia released a box set, My Lives, which is largely a compilation of demos, b-sides, live/alternate versions and even a few Top 40 hits. The compilation also includes the Umixit software, in which people can remix "Zanzibar", "Only the Good Die Young", "Keepin' The Faith", and live versions of "I Go to Extremes" and "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" with their PC. Also, a DVD of a show from the River of Dreams tour is included.
On January 7, 2006, Joel began a tour across the United States. Having not written, or at least released, any new songs in 13 years, he featured a sampling of songs from throughout his career, including major hits as well as obscure tunes like "Zanzibar" and "All for Leyna." His tour included an unprecedented 12 sold-out concerts over several months at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The singer's stint of 12 shows at Madison Square Garden broke a previous record set by New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen, who played 10 sold-out shows at the same arena. The record earned Joel the first retired number in the arena owned by a non-athlete. This honor has also been given to Joel at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia where a banner in the colors of the Philadelphia Flyers is hung honoring Joel's 46 Philadelphia sold-out shows. He also had a banner raised in his honor for being the highest grossing act in the history of the Times Union Center (formerly the Knickerbocker Arena and Pepsi Arena) in Albany, New York. This honor was given to him as part of the April 17, 2007 show he did there. On June 13, 2006, Columbia released 12 Gardens Live, a double album containing 32 live recordings from a collection of the 12 different shows at Madison Square Garden during Joel's 2006 tour.
2006 also saw Billy Joel visit the United Kingdom and Ireland (as part of the European leg of his 2006 tour) for the first time in many years. On July 31, 2006, Joel performed a free concert in Rome, Italy with the Colosseum as the backdrop. Organizers estimated 500,000 people turned out for the concert, which was opened by Bryan Adams.
Joel toured South Africa, Australia, Japan, and Hawaii in late 2006, and subsequently toured the Southeastern United States in February and March 2007 before hitting the Midwest in the spring of 2007. On January 3 of that year, news was leaked to the New York Post that Billy had recorded a new song with lyrics—this being the first new song with lyrics he'd written in almost 14 years. The song, entitled "All My Life", was Joel's newest single (with second track "You're My Home", live from Madison Square Garden 2006 tour) and was released into stores on February 27, 2007.
On February 4, Joel sang the national anthem for Super Bowl XLI, and was the first to sing the national anthem twice at a Super Bowl, and on April 17, 2007, Joel was honored in Albany, New York, for his 9th concert at Times Union Center]. He is now holding the highest box office attendance of any artist to play at the arena. A banner was raised in his honor marking this achievement.
On December 1, 2007, Joel premiered his new song "Christmas in Fallujah". It is performed by Cass Dillon, a new Long Island based musician, as Joel felt it should be sung by someone in a soldier's age range. This song is dedicated to the troops in Iraq, and Joel wrote it in September 2007 after reading numerous letters sent to him from American soldiers in Iraq. It's just the second pop/rock song he's released since 1993's River of Dreams. "Christmas in Fallujah" became available to purchase on iTunes December 4, 2007 with the proceeds benefiting the Homes For Our Troops foundation.
On January 26, 2008, Joel performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra celebrating the 151st anniversary of the Academy of Music. Joel premiered his new classical piece entitled, "Waltz No. 2 (Steinway Hall)", whilst playing many of his more obscure pieces with full orchestral backing. Highlights of this were the rarely-performed Nylon Curtain songs "Scandinavian Skies" and "Where's the Orchestra?". On February 7, Joel released the news at a Mets press conference that he would be playing the last concert at Shea Stadium, which will be demolished at the end of the 2008 baseball season. Originally there was only one show planned at Shea, but when 50,000 tickets for Joel's July 16 concert sold out in just 48 minutes, a second concert was added for July 18, and it sold out in just 46 minutes.
Joel sold out 10 concerts at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut from May to July. Mohegan Sun honored him with a banner displaying his name and the number ten to hang in the arena. On June 19, 2008, he played a concert at the grand re-opening of Caesars Windsor (formerly Casino Windsor) in Windsor, Ontario, Canada to an invite-only crowd for Casino VIPs. His mood was light, and joke-filled, even introducing himself as "Billy Joel's dad" and stating "you guys overpaid to see a fat bald guy." At the concert, he also admitted that Canadian folk-pop musician Gordon Lightfoot was the inspiration for his song She's Always A Woman.
On July 16 and July 18, Joel played the final concerts at Shea Stadium before its demolition. His guests included Tony Bennett, Don Henley, John Mayer, John Mellencamp, Steven Tyler, Roger Daltrey, Garth Brooks, and Paul McCartney. McCartney ended the show with a reference to his own performance there with the Beatles in 1965, the first major stadium concert of the rock and roll industry. These shows were performed to nearly 125,000 people each night.
On December 11, 2008, Joel recorded his own rendition of "Christmas in Fallujah" during a concert at Acer Arena in Sydney, Australia and released it as a live single in Australia only. It is the only official release of Joel performing "Christmas in Fallujah", as Cass Dillon sang on the 2007 studio recording and the handful of times the song was played live in 2007. Joel sang the song throughout his December 2008 tour of Australia.
Beginning in 1994, Joel toured extensively with Elton John on a series of "Face to Face" tours, making them the longest running and most successful concert tandem in pop music history. During these shows, the two have played each other's songs and performed duets. They grossed over US $46 million in just 24 dates in their sold out 2003 tour. Joel and John resumed the Face to Face tour in March 2009 and it will continue on-and-off for at least two years. The concerts begin with the artists on twin pianos, performing duets; followed by each headliner performing a set with their respective bands; ending with an encore of both headliners and their bands.