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I did write a letter to the archdiocese who'd banned the song, Only the Good Die Young, asking them to ban my next record.

Billy Joel

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Billy Joel
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: May 9
Composer
Musician
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
New York City
New York
William Martin Joel
William Martin Billy Joel
BJ
William M. Joel
Young
Letters
Writing
Record
Good
Asking
Records
Dies
Bans
Song
Banned
Write
Corny
Next
Letter

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If you tell kids they can't have something, that's what they want.
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I've always said about 50% of what happens at a concert has to do with the audience. If you play for a dead audience you're gonna stink. If we play for a great crowd we're much better. You want 'em to make noise. It's kinda like sex, if they don't make noise, you ain't doin' it right.
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They are sharing a drink called loneliness.
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You've got yoga, I've got beer. You got overpriced, I got weird.
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Black and white is how it should be, but shades of grey are the colors I see.
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Sergeant O'Leary is walking the beat, at night he becomes a bar tender.
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If you search for truthfulness, you might as well be blind.
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In every heart there is a room, a sanctuary safe and strong, to heal the wounds from lovers past, until a new one comes along... So I would choose to be with you. That's if the choice were mine to make. But you can make decisions too. And you can have this heart to break. And so it goes, and so it goes. And you're the only one who knows.
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There ain't much future for a man who works the sea, there ain't no island left for islanders like me.
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I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary.
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I'm in a New York state of mind
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I guess some people in classical music can keep going until they kick (die) and the (Rolling) Stones are definitely pushing the envelope but I wonder if here's a time when you have to face whether you are as good as you used to be.
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We might be laughing a bit too loud, but that never hurt no one
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I don't want clever conversation, I never want to work that hard, I just want someone I can talk to, I want you just the way you are.
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There's an old man sitting next to me, making love to his tonic and gin.
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I was thinking of the Four Seasons, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and when I was thinking Uptown Girl! I was trying to sing like Frankie Valli. They had a song called Ragdoll, which was about a poor girl and a rich guy. So I just flipped it around and made it about a rich girl and a poor guy.
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There's always a place for the angry young man with his fist in the air and his head in the sand. He's never been able to learn from mistakes, he can't understand why his heart always breaks.
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This is the time to remember cause it will not last forever. These are the days to hold onto cause we won't although we'll want to.
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I started taking piano lessons when I was about four years old. My parents were both musicians. So I took piano lessons. I didn't like the lessons very much, but I was enchanted by music. Music always transported me somewhere. Singing made feel good and being able to play the piano made me feel good.
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I definitely prefer being a lover than a fighter.
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