It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you’re gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.
BILLY JOELTwyla Tharp put it together from the material I wrote and recorded over my whole career. I thought it was pretty good, but how objective could I be?
More Billy Joel Quotes
-
-
Don’t wait for answers, just take your chances. Don’t ask me why.
BILLY JOEL -
I always loved music, so I would probably either be in a band with another group of people, or an arranger, a producer, a musicologist, a music history guy, something to do with music. Either that, or I would probably be in jail. Or dead.
BILLY JOEL -
Most people you’d tell “I’m gonna be a musician,” they’d say, “you’re crazy, you’re gonna starve, you’re gonna be poor, a drug addict, go to jail, you’ll never make it, there’s too much competition.
BILLY JOEL -
I definitely prefer being a lover than a fighter.
BILLY JOEL -
We drown our doubts in dry champagne and soothe our souls with fine cocaine. I don’t know why I even care, we get so high and get nowhere.
BILLY JOEL -
Call me a joker, call me a fool, right at this moment I’m totally cool.
BILLY JOEL -
Some love is just a lie of the heart, the cold remains of what began with a passionate heart.
BILLY JOEL -
I’m single but interviewing.
BILLY JOEL -
The graduations hang on the wall, but they never really helped us at all.
BILLY JOEL -
I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own.
BILLY JOEL -
There was only really one accident that was kinda bad but it was nothing to do with booze, just bad luck…
BILLY JOEL -
Usually when I’m writing, I try to write fairly quickly. If a song sits around too long, it starts to take on a stink.
BILLY JOEL -
We never could have come this far I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times I’ll take you just the way you are Don’t go trying some new fashion Don’t change the color of your hair. […] I could not love you any better I love you just the way you are.
BILLY JOEL -
Most of my songs are written in one sitting, two sittings maybe. Those are the ones I like the best, anyway.
BILLY JOEL -
I had a melody and a rhythm and chords, but nothing to talk about.
BILLY JOEL -
I see the winos talking to themselves and I can understand.
BILLY JOEL -
I have to thank my mother for paying for the piano lessons for all those years.
BILLY JOEL -
Oh, she takes care of herself. She can wait if she wants. She’s ahead of her time. Oh, and she never gives out. And she never gives in. She just changes her mind.
BILLY JOEL -
I don’t know why people thought I was retiring.
BILLY JOEL -
Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm – walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers.
BILLY JOEL -
When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.
BILLY JOEL -
It should be easy for a man who’s strong to say he’s sorry or admit when he’s wrong.
BILLY JOEL -
Black and white is how it should be, but shades of grey are the colors I see.
BILLY JOEL -
I’m in a New York state of mind
BILLY JOEL -
You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. … My songs are like my kids.
BILLY JOEL -
Mozart wrote some 40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn’t mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it’s just some guys are capable of more productivity, some guys take more time.
BILLY JOEL