So he doesn’t write anymore, not pop songs anyway. Instead he goes about his relatively ordinary life in plain sight in a cedar shake house in the middle of Sag Harbor village. He has a few of his vintage motorcycles in the garage, and his boat slip is within walking distance. He is seemingly never alone, spending his time in the company of his two pugs or his live-in girlfriend of three years, Alexis Roderick, a former Morgan Stanley risk officer (who he probably wishes had been alongside him in the 1970s to assess his first record deal). What he lacks in output, he more than makes up for in opinions — about his legacy, his mistakes, a rock-star life lived hard and the heroes and villains he met along the way. If the new music of many of his contemporaries is any measure, prolificness is an overrated quality. Once a pop genius, always a pop genius. We ought to know by now.
Andrew Goldman: You’re by no means a fogy, but you’re 64 now. When you look at other rockers your age, how do you think you’re faring? Are there other guys whom you look at and think, There but for the grace of God?
Billy Joel: It was funny, because backstage at the 12-12-12 concert, nobody is a spring chicken anymore. Here comes Keith, and Keith is from the time of King Tut. Then there’s Pete Townshend and Mick and McCartney. Rocking-chair rockers. Bon Jovi is next door to me, and then Bruce is down the hall, and we kind of felt like the youngsters. But everybody is still doing it much older than I thought we would ever be. I thought there was a mandatory retirement age at 40, but then the Stones broke that barrier. Now Bruce and I are in our 60s, and the older guys are in their 70s.
A.G.: You had a double-hip replacement two years ago. I was watching old clips of you doing these jetés across the stage in the ’80s. Do you think your hip problems were from years of stage work?
B.J.: I was probably born with dysplasia. In the old days, when they took a baby out, sometimes they used forceps. I was a breech baby, so the theory was that they displaced my hips. Over the years, jumping off the piano, landing on a hard stage certainly didn’t help. Way back in the early ’70s, I used to do somersaults, flips off the piano. I would climb up the cables and hang upside down, anything to get attention. When you’re an opening act, you gotta do whatever you can. But over the years it got excruciating. I couldn’t walk at one point; I had one of those little scooter chairs, banging into furniture. By the time I finished the tour with Elton in March 2010, I was in a lot of pain, and over that year it got worse and worse and worse. I’m glad I did the surgery, because my life changed. I’m able to be ambulatory again.
A.G.: Did you have any ambivalence about touring with Elton? You were kind of pigeonholed as a pop star who plays piano the same way that he was.
B.J.: No. That was when I first started out. Elton was already established, and I came a few years after him, so there were inevitable comparisons. There weren’t that many piano players around — Leon Russell, me, Lee Michaels, one or two other guys. I met Elton in the ’70s in Amsterdam, and it was a mutual-admiration society: he liked me, I liked him and said some day we should tour together. It was left on the back burner for a good 20 years, and then one day I just said: “Why don’t we do this thing with Elton? It should be fun.” And it was, and we did it for 16 years. There’s going to be comparisons — “Oh, who’s better, Elton or Billy?” Who cares?
A.G.: Are you cool with Elton now? Basically he said that you’re not writing new songs out of fear or laziness.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/billy-joel-on-not-working-and-not-giving-up-drinking.html?partner=rss&emc=rss