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What does that say about your relationship to making music compared to theirs? “That’s what I do.” But I made a lifetime out of it when I thought maybe I’d have a couple years, so I’m not complaining. I talked to Sting and Henley: “Why are you still doing it?” They all had the same answer. But the performing, what else am I going to do? I talked to Bruce about this.
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I couldn’t be as good as I wanted and that was driving me crazy. When I stopped writing songs - it was time. Is it surprising that the opposite happened? There was a time when you thought your future might involve writing songs but not performing. It’s funny: Sometimes I don’t think we did a good show and I’ll read a great review and go, “Was this guy at the same show?” Then we’ll do a great show and I’ll read a bad review and it’s what are you talking about? But I know when I’m good or not. It would be abhorrent to me to be up there faking it.
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If I’ve got to throw too much junk, I’m going to consider stopping. Instead of having a fastball you throw off-speed. If I’m having a tough time hitting notes - I call it throwing junk pitches. We’ve dropped the keys of some songs already. I wrote most of the songs that I’m doing when I was in my 20s and 30s and it ain’t easy to hit those notes in my 60s. You’ve said you’ll do the Garden residency until demand slows down or you start playing at a level you’re not happy with. So if Billy Joel ever walks out on stage and picks up a remote control … I’ll have created a bond between me and the audience where I know they will never pay another nickel to see me again. The crowd after a couple minutes goes, “Fuck this,” and starts throwing shit at the glass. Then I come out and lay down on the couch. And there’s bulletproof glass between me and the audience. The stage is a living-room set: couch, TV, coffee table, food. Are you fucking kidding me? Now, I do have an idea for a farewell tour. You get up there, you make a lot of noise, girls scream, and you get shitloads of money. There have been times when I’ve felt these are my last shows it’s time for me to get off the bleeding stage. Do you understand the impulse to say, “These are the last shows I’ll ever do”? But your Madison Square Garden residency is booked indefinitely. Your old pal Elton John is retiring from the road. “Getting ripped off, going to rehab, getting divorced, making albums and stopping - everything happened for a reason, even the bad shit.” He sips coffee from a takeout cup. It didn’t always used to, but now, pushing 70 years old, it does,” he says. “Life is funny, isn’t it?” It’s a week before the singer and erstwhile songwriter’s record-setting 100th concert at Madison Square Garden and Joel, dressed in a baseball cap, black T-shirt, plaid shorts, and sneakers, plops down on a leather couch. “My wife had to go into the city today,” he says as the Joel family chopper ascends. On a July morning, Billy Joel watches through the window of the study at his Long Island estate as a helicopter takes flight.