Dan's Papers - August 3, 2007 - Who's Here

I was having lunch with Billy Joel the other day at the Dockside in Sag Harbor and we started talking about his rock concerts. He's got one coming up this weekend for an exclusive audience at the Ross School, but I didn't want to talk about that just yet. I wanted to talk to him about a giant Homecoming Concert he had here on Long Island at the Nassau Coliseum some years ago that I had gone to. In terms of pure extravaganza, it was unmatched. It reminded me of some sort of political rally for a fascist dictator.

"I always think of you as this nice, down-to-earth easy guy," I said. "And then I got these tickets..."

"I got them for you," he reminded me. "The place was sold out."

"And two miles away from the Coliseum, along the Meadowbrook Parkway, I see some guy walking along and I think, is he lost? Was he in an accident? And then I see he is selling T-shirts. The traffic jam begins. It takes an hour to go the last two miles and everybody is screaming and yelling and playing Joel songs on their car radios and they are all out of their minds."

"It can be like that."

"And from there it builds. In my whole life, I have never experienced anything like what went on that day. The Coliseum was packed with tens of thousands of people, with standing room only. You got onstage and everybody went wild. Everything shook. I had no idea."

"You should feel what it's like on my end," he said. "For two and a half hours, I'm a king. And then its over. And the next thing that happens is I'm leaving my own concert in my bus and I'm stuck in the same stop and go traffic jam as all the other poor shlubs."

"You don't deserve it."

"You should have a helicopter that swoops in at the end of the concert and plucks you out."

"Rock stars have done that. I'm sure of it. They have."

"Right up the rope ladder."

We talked about one of the concert tours he went on a long time ago. This was at the Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines. He was entertaining the troops.

"This was in 1991. I'd given the concert and this was the next morning. They made me an honorary four-star general for the day. I had the hat on, the medals, the jacket, the stars and then all these sirens and bells went off. Everybody started running around. It was crazy. I asked, what's going on? We've gone to war. We've invaded Iraq. It was the Gulf War. I thought, why on the day I'm a four-star general? What am I supposed to do?"

"I got into civilian clothes."

Billy Joel, in case you didn't know, has returned to the Hamptons. In case you also didn't know, he has almost always lived on Long Island. He was born and raised in Levittown, owned an oceanfront mansion in Amagansett when he was married to Christie Brinkley, moved to a mansion on the North Shore of Long Island in the exclusive Centre Island area for about five years and now, because of a dock, he is back.

"My house was on a harbor," he said. "And I figured if my house was on a harbor, then I could build a dock. The house had had a dock. So I applied for one. But it had been abandoned too long. They would not let me dock my boats there. I had to dock them in Oyster Bay."

"But you could LOOK at your broken dock."

"And my idea when I bought this house was that it was just twenty minutes from New York City by boat. I often have to go to New York. But now it was forty minutes to get to my boat and another twenty to take it to New York. Didn't make any sense."

"So you moved back here."

"And I didn't want to have such a big place. I had a big place right on the ocean when I lived here before, with my ex-wife Christie Brinkley. Now I have two little places. I can be on the ocean at the house I bought from Roy Scheider in Sagaponack, or I can be here in Sag Harbor, where I have a boathouse with a dock out front on Bay Street. I don't even need a car in Sag Harbor. I can walk everywhere."

"What about your Harley Davidson?" I asked.

"I bought a British military motorbike from World War II. Works fine. Has one cylinder. Use it if I need it. I park next to five Harleys. Everybody looks at the half-century-old motorbike."

It does turn out, however, that Billy Joel is in the motorcycle business. With a friend, Ralph Schneider, he has started a motorcycle restoration business in Huntington.

"Ralph owns a Harley Dealership. At the dealership, we rebuild Harleys and other motorcycles. We make them look old. Tear them apart. Rebuild them to resemble motorcycles from the 1940s. We've been doing this for two years."

"How's your boat building business going?"

Ten years ago, Billy Joel brought boat building back to eastern Long Island. At that time, he designed something he called a Shelter Island Runabout. And he made an arrangement with Peter Needham of the Coecles Harbor Boat Yard on Shelter Island to reopen their boat building business and build a prototype for him.

He designed the boat on a napkin. About 38 feet long. Looks like a gentle picnic boat. Hit the accelerator and it takes off like a shot. Needham built this first picnic boat and Joel would take prospective customers around in it. That was eight years ago. Now, there are a dozen people building Billy Joel's Shelter Island Runabouts at Coecles Harbor. And you can buy one for $400,000 or $500,000, loaded.

"Everybody wants them loaded. I tell everyone, keep it simple. Keep it simple. But if you're going to spend four, I guess you'll spend five. So far, we've sold fifty runabouts," he said.

"As I recall, the idea was based on the Beach Boys' song, 'Little Old Lady from Pasedena'."

"Yup," he said. "She's the terror of Colorado Boulevard."

Billy Joel's wife, Katie Lee, came into the restaurant with a girl friend. I tried to invite them over, but she was on her own lunch.

"You boys eat over there," she said. "We girls will eat over here." And they sat down. But Joel and Katie Lee did talk to one another across the tables about the logistics of the way the rest of the day was developing. They were clearly very much in love.

"What a beautiful woman," I said to Billy. And she surely is.

I wondered if he had been over to the Ross School to scout out his upcoming concert. He had. He'd been to the Dave Matthews concert.

"How many people are coming?" he asked.

"Why do you ask? You were there. You see what it can hold."

"But you can't tell. Everything is all broken up. You can't see everybody all at once."

"I don't know. A few hundred people. They are each paying a lot of money."

There is a series of five concerts, each a week from the other, for five weeks. And the tickets cost $15,000 for the lot. They began on July 14 with Prince. Next was Dave Matthews. Now, on August 5, there is Billy Joel. Then there is James Taylor and then Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. It's all a fundraiser for Ross.

"At the Dave Matthews Concert," Joel said, "people were standing around talking to one another. There are lounge chairs, tents. Dave Matthews played. I'm not sure that everybody was listening."

"For $15,000 for the set of five, they can do what they want," I said. "So there is a lot of networking going on. They do that at the polo matches too. They pay. They network. They go home."

"It's a bit spooky," Joel said. "Like a cocktail party. Or aboard a cruise ship. It's all first class. But I'll do my show."

"They'll forget all about the lobster salad," I said.

This summer, Joel had hoped to take some time off, but unexpected invitations from all over the world have been coming in, asking if he will play. He doesn't have an agent. And he finds it hard to turn things down. So he will perform his new stuff, his number-one hits and his not-so-new stuff. And the fans will go wild.

"This summer, I'm playing Ireland, Spain and Monte Carlo. Then in November, I'm off on a tour. The Pacific Northwest -- Vancouver, Calgary and then down into Mexico."

What a life he has built for himself. And what a body of great music this six-time Grammy winner has composed and sung and continues to sing for us all. Thanks for "Downeaster Alexa," thanks for "Only the Good Die Young," thanks for "My Life," "Allentown," "Piano Man," "Good Night Saigon," "It's Still Rock n' Roll to Me," "Movin' Out" and maybe a hundred others, Billy.