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Those who have expressed doubts and misgivings about their ability to live this kind of life shouldn't try, because being a musician is not something you chose to be, it is something you are.

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
Kind
Expressed
Something
Chose
Life
Shouldn
Musician
Doubt
Ability
Live
Misgivings
Trying
Doubts

More quotes by Billy Joel

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Twyla 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?
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Hot funk, cold punk, even if it's old junk, it's still rock and roll to me.
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Some people stay away from the door for the chance of it opening up.
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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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I'm carrying the weight of all the useless junk and modern man accumulates.
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My daughter sent me on a mission to get as many autographs as possible.
Billy Joel
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You've got your passion. You've got your pride. But don't you know that only fools are satisfied? Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true.
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When I first started I didn't know a lot about the job, so I kinda had to figure it out by wire, ya know? It was hit and miss, I made mistakes, and fortunately I was able to recover from most of 'em. But I promised myself if I ever get to a point where I can help somebody that's trying to learn how to do this, that I would try to do that.
Billy Joel
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We passed the hash pipe and played our Doors tapes.
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Sergeant O'Leary is walking the beat, at night he becomes a bar tender.
Billy Joel
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It's really hard to make a living as a musician. It's almost impossible.
Billy Joel
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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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I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own.
Billy Joel
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She can kill with a smile. She can wound with her eyes. She can ruin your faith with her casual lies. And she only reveals what she wants you to see. She hides like a child, but she's always a woman to me.
Billy Joel
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I don't want some pretty face to tell me pretty lies, all I want is someone to believe.
Billy Joel
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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.
Billy Joel
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We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
Billy Joel
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Artist - musicians, painters, writers, poets, always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life.
Billy Joel
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It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in / There's an old man sitting next to me making love to his tonic and gin / He says, 'Son, can you play me a memory?/ I'm not really sure how it goes / But it's sad and it's sweet, and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.'
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Videos destroyed the vitality of rock and roll. Before that, music said, Listen to me. Now it says, Look at me.
Billy Joel