Billy Joel has been popping up the past few weeks all over Long Island. The “Piano Man” was last photographed on July 4th, smoking a cigar and posing next to a fan's Nissan that sported a “Billy Joel” vanity plate. The fan posed another shot of Billy, who sat down and chatted with the guy for another 20 minutes.
Buzzing around the Internet is fan-shot footage of Billy from late-June, complete in motorcycle gear, having stopped at a random street in Huntington, Long Island, tickling the ivories on a worse-for-wear upright piano left out for the garbage man. After playing a few bars of some ragtime music, Billy is seen explaining to someone off-screen that aesthetics aside, the piano is still in fine musical shape.
Billy Joel admits that his life has been pretty much formulated from being a Long Islander: “My perspective of things all come from a Long Island point of view. I've realized that. I've traveled all around the world. I've traveled a lot in the United States. But, the more I traveled, the more I felt like 'This is where I'm from. I'm from this island that sticks out to the east of New York City.' There's a little bit of an inferiority complex here, which I feel is charming. Y'know, you go to the city, '(Adapts New York accent) Oh, you're from the Oi – land.' We don't say 'Lawng Oi – land.' People from the Bronx say, 'Lawng Oi – land.' We say, 'Long Island.'”