Raise your hands. Who wasn’t surprised that Billy Joel would turn out to be such a jerk, someone who’d take a huge payday to open a casino showroom and then turn around and trash the place?
Me, me. Pick me. I wasn’t surprised.
A quarter of a century ago this year, you see, I had my own Billy-Joel-the-Jerk moment. It’s sort of our anniversary.
Back 25 years ago, I published the book Radio Eyes, which consisted of the lyrics of some of rock music’s greatest songs, interpreted visually by the best illustrators in the country. The songs ranged from the 50s’ “Heartbreak Hotel” by Hoyt Axton's mother to the 80s’ “Never Say Never,” — the writer of which, Deborah Ayall, now lives in Desert Hot Springs, they tell me.
This publishing thing wasn’t as simple as it sounds: The lyrics I chose were some of these writers’ most personal and interesting works. For instance, I could have picked “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” from the Steve Wonder songbook. Instead I chose “Cash In Your Face,” a searing indictment of discrimination in housing. You get the idea.
So we had to haggle with many of the writers and, in some cases, the writers wanted to see the illustrations first.
That part was easy: These illustrators’ names are probably not familiar to anyone outside of the commercial art world but they included all those men and women who do the illustrations on movie posters, greeting cards, book jacket covers and print advertisements. All of them did amazing work interpreting these lyrics.
Another snag: Because I didn’t have a lot of money to pay for the rights, my representative, Mary Williams of Mary Williams Music Clearance Company, God rest her soul, tried to get all of the songwriters and illustrators to work for a “most-favored-nation” fee, meaning no one got any more than anyone else. The whole process took two years and a good percentage of my hair.
But it worked out great for the most part. John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, James Taylor, David Byrne, Randy Newman, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, Brian Wilson and about 40 more writers all agreed to allow me to publish their works for the same fee.
And then my art director asked about getting the rights to Billy Joel’s “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant.”
Repressing a gag reflex (Billy Joel? In the same breath as Paul Simon?) I dutifully asked Mary to make the offer to Joel’s people.
Sorry, they said, Billy wants more money than all of the rest of them.
Radio Eyes: Great Rock Lyrics Set to Art came out; the book was featured prominently in the Swiss magazine Graphis (that’s a big deal, by the way), was featured on a "Radio Eyes Day" on a NYC radio station, and earned praise nearly universally (except from an LA Times’ reviewer, who tried to kill it in the crib).
And there were no scenes and no Italian restaurant in any of its 98 pages.
Billy Joel.
Jerk then. Jerk now.
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