Keep belting out the inspiration, Piano Man

By I. Di Toro

When it came to music in the 1980s, the lines were drawn at Archbishop Ryan High School for Girls.

There was the Heavy Metal camp, whose adherents decorated their lockers with pictures of Def Leppard, Ozzy Osbourne, Bon Jovi, and Van Halen.

Next was the U2 camp, whose devotees plastered their lockers with pictures of Bono, the Edge, or the band.

Then there was the "I like music I can dance to" camp, seen gyrating at school dances and under-21 nights at area clubs.

I belonged to none of these groups. One of my favorite musicians - then and now - was Billy Joel, who will be performing at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday.

Surprisingly, there will only be one Philadelphia appearance. (He has several shows planned at Madison Square Garden between now and Christmas.) The last time I saw Joel was in 2002, when he and Elton John did their second tour together. The demand for tickets was so great then that promoters increased the number of shows from three to six. Since I couldn't get tickets for Saturday's show, I was expecting the area to show a little more love for the guy who gave us "Captain Jack" and "Uptown Girl," and was awarded this year's Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress. The Phillies are down in Washington battling the Nationals this weekend, so we could've spared another night or two for the guy who played about 48 sold-out shows in Philadelphia.

By the time I was listening to Joel's music, he was already an established artist in the world of popular music. Unlike many acts at the time, he didn't have a gimmick. He just played music.

His songs were about things that affect us all. "Honesty," for example, spoke of that rarest of commodities - the truth. "But I don't want some pretty face to tell me pretty lies," he sang. "All I want is someone to believe." He knew what he had to say and said it so well.

When Joel took on issues, it was through a personal lens. The song "Allentown," written during the recession of the early 1980s, has this line, "Well, I'm living here in Allentown and it's hard to keep a good man down, but I won't be getting up today." That recession hit blue-collar workers who lived in factory towns like Allentown the hardest. These people lived the Bill Clinton line "Worked hard and played by the rules." All they got for years of dedication was a pink slip and six months of unemployment benefits. No wonder these guys didn't want to get out of bed.

He could address international issues too, as he did with the Cold War apologia "We Didn't Start the Fire" from the album Storm Front. Unlike his other songs, the lyrics consist mostly of people or news events from 1949 to 1989, with the chorus "We didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning."

That same album also contains the lesser-known "Leningrad," the story of two men - Joel and a Russian circus clown named Viktor - who lived their lives as events and ideologies swirled around them. They meet in Leningrad and the song ends with "He made my daughter laugh, then we embraced. We never knew what friends we had, until we came to Leningrad."

These songs express two views of the Cold War. One is a reminder that people's desire to advance their lives predates the United States' rise as a superpower. The other says forget about ideology, our shared humanity is more important.

Did Joel mean what he wrote about? The cynical side of me wonders. But what about the teenager from Northeast Philly who listened to these songs as she entertained thoughts of writing the Great American Novel? His words went straight to my heart. Joel's songs entertained, comforted, and inspired me with the simplicity of their language and solid musicianship.

When I listened to the lyrics, I heard words flow effortlessly and ideas expressed in the least complicated, yet the most profound, way. His lyrics challenged me to write without sounding hackneyed and showed me that unembellished language is the most thought-provoking.

I'm sure my cohorts at Ryan traded in the big hair for something more sensible, tossed out the posters, put the music in the "stuff I used to listen to" file, grew up, and got jobs. But I'm still listening to the Piano Man and I'm still writing.