Billy Joel

William Martin "Billy" Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American pianist, singer-songwriter, and composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man," in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best selling recording artist and the third-best-selling solo artist in the United States. His compilation album Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2 is the third-best-selling album in the United States by discs shipped. Joel had Top 40 hits in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, achieving 33 Top 40 hits in the United States, all of which he wrote himself. He is also a six-time Grammy Award winner who has been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards throughout his career. He has sold over 150 million records worldwide. Joel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1992), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1999), and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame (2006). In 2001, Joel received the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2013, Joel received the Kennedy Center Honors, the nation's highest honor, for influencing American culture through the arts. With the exception of the 2007 songs "All My Life" and "Christmas in Fallujah," Joel stopped writing and releasing pop/rock material after 1993's River of Dreams. However, he continues to tour, and he plays songs from all eras of his solo career in his concerts. --- Joel was born in the Bronx on May 9, 1949 and raised in the suburb of Hicksville, New York. His father, Howard (born Helmuth), was born in Germany, the son of German merchant and manufacturer Karl Amson Joel. Howard emigrated to Switzerland and later to the United States (via Cuba, as immigration quotas for German Jews prevented direct immigration at the time) in order to escape the Nazi regime. Billy Joel's mother, Rosalind Nyman, was born in England to Philip and Rebecca Nyman. Both of Joel's parents were Jewish. They divorced in 1960, and his father moved to Vienna, Austria. Billy has a sister, Judith Joel, and a half-brother, Alexander Joel, an acclaimed classical conductor in Europe who is currently chief musical director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig. Joel's father was a classical pianist. Billy reluctantly began piano lessons at an early age, at his mother's insistence, his teachers including the noted American pianist Morton Estrin and musician Timothy Ford; he was bullied because of his interest in music rather than sports. 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 his nose was broken in his twenty-fourth boxing match. Joel attended Hicksville High School in 1967, but he did not graduate with his class. He had been playing at a piano bar to help his mother make ends meet, which interfered with his attendance: at the end of his senior year, Joel did not have enough credits to graduate. Rather than attend summer school to earn his diploma, Joel decided to begin a career in music: "I told them, 'To hell with it. If I'm not going to Columbia University, I'm going to Columbia Records, and you don't need a high school diploma over there'." Joel did, in fact, eventually sign with Columbia. In 1992, he submitted essays to the school board and was awarded his diploma at Hicksville High's annual graduation ceremony, 25 years after leaving. --- After seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, Joel decided to pursue a career in music. In an interview he said of the group's impact, "That one performance changed my life ... Up to that moment I'd never considered playing rock as a career. And when I saw four guys who didn't look like they'd come out of the Hollywood star mill, who played their own songs and instruments, and especially because you could see this look in John Lennon's face -- and he looked like he was always saying: 'F--- you!' -- I said: 'I know these guys, I can relate to these guys, I am these guys.' This is what I'm going to do -- play in a rock band'." --- Joel married his business manager, Elizabeth Weber Small, on September 5, 1973. She was the former wife of his music partner, Jon Small, in the short-lived duo Attila. Joel and Elizabeth divorced on July 20, 1982. Joel mentioned in a television interview on the UK's Five that he had dated Elle Macpherson in the 1980s prior to his marriage to Christie Brinkley. Joel has also said that the songs "This Night" and "And So It Goes" were written about his relationship with Macpherson. Joel married Christie Brinkley on March 23, 1985. Their daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, was born December 29, 1985. Alexa was given the middle name of Ray after Ray Charles, one of Joel's musical idols. Joel and Brinkley divorced on August 25, 1994; the couple remain friendly. On October 2, 2004, Joel married 23-year-old Katie Lee. At the time of the wedding, Joel was 55. Joel's daughter, Alexa Ray, then 18, served as maid-of-honor. Joel's second wife, Christie Brinkley, attended the union and gave the couple her blessing. Lee works as a restaurant correspondent for the PBS show, George Hirsch: Living it Up!. In 2006, Katie Lee hosted Bravo's Top Chef. She did not return for a second season, instead going on tour with her husband. She then began writing a weekly column in Hamptons magazine, and became a field correspondent for the entertainment television show Extra. On June 17, 2009, both confirmed that they had split after five years of marriage.