It's A No Go For Billy Joel's Rock n Roll

Although he pummeled the Adult Contemporary and Top 40 Pop Music sides of radio from the late 70's to mid-90's... Billy Joel has had a fair share of Classic Rock late night at the bar sing-a-long songs.

Nearly every man in America freaked out when Joel landed a marriage gig with Christie Brinkley. Ugly guys teaming up with unstoppable chicks is a different blog and time. Ok, so Billy's had a few spin outs over the past ten years. Life isn't a scene from Behind The Music! You can slip a Rock star into reality but you can't rip the memories their music helped to generate from our fantasies. So what if Elton John publically released some dirt about Billy's drinking. Give the Piano Man back his stage! You may be right. I may be crazy! But it's still Rock n Roll to me! Billy Joel didn't start the fire. He loves us just the way we are. Joel isn't moving out. Nor is he gonna tour. According to Classic Rock Magazine...Despite a killer performance at the recent 12-12-12 concert at Madison Square Garden and an upcoming headlining slot at JazzFest, Billy Joel will not be mounting a tour any time soon. In a new interview, he disclosed that recent health issues have stopped him from a return to the stage. “I had to get hip replacements in both hips,” he says in the new issue of Rolling Stone. “And now slowly but surely I’m kinda getting back to normal. I’d say I’m 85 percent. I can walk OK. I can’t run like I used to.” The 63-year old Joel also acknowledges — quite refreshingly for a rocker of his generation — that the natural changes that come with middle age mean that he can no longer perform in the manner to which he and his many fans are accustomed. “Honestly, I’m not as good as I used to be,” he continues. “I’m not as athletic as I used to be. I don’t jump off the piano anymmore – that didn’t help my hips, either. My voice has changed. It’s lowered.” Although Joel hasn’t released a rock album since 1993′s ‘River of Dreams,’ the classically trained pianist still regularly composes instrumental music for his own enjoyment, without any desire to record it. And even with famous friends like Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend wanting him to get back to songwriting, Joel hasn’t felt the necessary motivation to go back to putting so much of his life into his work. “I like to say I broke up with me,” he adds. “The singer broke up with the songwriter and the performer didn’t want to work with the piano player anymore.”