Billy Joel Trivia
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This Billy Joel trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and follows the whole career: the Bronx birth and Hicksville childhood, the teenage boxing, the Hassles and Attila, the debut album mastered at the wrong speed, the six months playing a Los Angeles bar under a fake name that produced his signature song, and the run of albums with Phil Ramone that made him a household name. It covers the records and the stories behind them: which album beat Simon & Garfunkel as Columbia's best-seller, why 52nd Street was the first album ever sold on CD, what the Glass Houses cover was a riposte to, the motorcycle crash, the models who inspired Uptown Girl, the Soviet tour, the manager he sued for $90 million, the Face to Face tours with Elton John, the last shows at Shea and the monthly Madison Square Garden residency that ended at show 150. The opening questions are for anyone who knows the hits; the later ones are for people who own Songs in the Attic on vinyl. Every answer was checked against a reference source and each question shows its citation once you have answered. No lyrics are quoted.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which New York City borough was Billy Joel born in 1949?
The Bronx
The Bronx was home only briefly: the family soon moved out to Long Island, where his mother pushed him into piano lessons at the age of four.
Q 02Which combat sport did the teenage Billy Joel compete in as an amateur on Long Island?
Boxing
Boxing: he fought as a welterweight on the amateur Golden Gloves circuit, and gave the sport up only after his nose was broken in the ring.
Q 03With drummer Jon Small, Billy Joel formed which heavy-rock duo in 1969?
Attila
Attila: the future balladeer spent 1970 playing organ in a heavy-metal duo that vowed to destroy the world with amplification, and the one album they made never charted.
Q 04What went wrong with Billy Joel's debut album Cold Spring Harbor?
It was mastered at too high a speed
It was mastered at too high a speed, so his voice came out pitched up like the Chipmunks; he says he flung his copy like a Frisbee, and a speed-corrected version waited until 1983.
Q 05A 1972 live radio performance of which Philadelphia favourite helped win Billy Joel his major-label deal?
Captain Jack
Captain Jack, a seven-minute song about a suburban kid's drug dealer, was still unreleased, yet WMMR kept its concert tape in rotation for over a year as listeners phoned in to ask for it.
Q 06Under what stage name did Billy Joel play a Los Angeles piano bar for six months in 1972-73?
Bill Martin
Bill Martin was just his first and middle names: he says he took the gig to pay rent while trying to get out of a bad record contract, and the bar's regulars became the cast of 'Piano Man'.
Q 07Besides the piano, which instrument does Billy Joel play on 'Piano Man'?
Harmonica
Harmonica: he plays the intro himself between piano lines. The single stalled at No. 25 in 1974, yet it became his signature song.
Q 08Which song did Billy Joel write as a sarcastic response to 'Piano Man' being cut down for radio?
The Entertainer
The Entertainer complains in its lyric that a song gets cut down to 3:05 to fit radio, and the complaint itself became a Top 40 hit, reaching No. 34.
Q 09Which famous producer did Billy Joel's camp approach first to make his 1977 album The Stranger?
George Martin
George Martin wanted session players instead of Joel's road band, by Joel's account, so Joel said no; he says Martin wrote after the album's success to admit he had been wrong.
Q 10Which producer made The Stranger with Billy Joel in 1977, beginning a partnership that lasted until 1986?
Phil Ramone
Phil Ramone, unlike the producers Joel had struggled with, was happy to record him with his touring band, and the pair made six studio albums in a row together.
Q 11Billy Joel's The Stranger overtook which album as Columbia Records' best-seller of the time?
Bridge over Troubled Water
Bridge over Troubled Water was Simon & Garfunkel's 1970 blockbuster; The Stranger outsold it for Columbia, though Joel says the label would probably have dropped him had the album flopped.
Q 12For whom did Billy Joel write the Grammy-winning ballad 'Just the Way You Are'?
His first wife Elizabeth Weber
His first wife Elizabeth Weber got it as a birthday present; Joel says he thought little of the ballad and nearly left it off the album until Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow urged him to keep it.
Q 13Which Billy Joel single became a hit after Catholic groups tried to get it banned from radio?
Q 21Which album beat An Innocent Man to the Album of the Year Grammy?
Thriller
Joel's Greatest Hits compilation the following year went on to double-diamond status, over 23 million units.
Q 22Billy Joel's 'Modern Woman' was on the soundtrack of which 1986 Bette Midler comedy?
Ruthless People
Ruthless People got the song first: the single came out on the film's soundtrack as a teaser for Joel's album The Bridge, weeks before the album itself, and reached No. 10.
Q 23In which country did Billy Joel play six arena concerts in 1987, one of the first Western rock tours there?
The Soviet Union
Only the Good Die Young
Only the Good Die Young was languishing until a Catholic college station banned it; Joel says kids then bought it in droves, and that he wrote asking the archdiocese to ban his next record too.
Q 14Which milestone in recorded-music history is Billy Joel's 52nd Street usually credited with?
First album commercially released on CD
First album commercially released on CD: it went on sale in Japan on October 1, 1982 in a first batch of about 50 CBS/Sony discs, and gets the credit because it carried the batch's first catalogue number.
Q 15Which single gave Billy Joel his first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1980?
It's Still Rock and Roll to Me
It's Still Rock and Roll to Me was Joel's jab at a music press hyping new wave as something new, and it spent two weeks at No. 1 in July 1980.
Q 16Whose real-life home is Billy Joel about to stone on the cover of Glass Houses?
His own
His own: the glass-walled waterfront house was Joel's Long Island home, and he said the raised rock was a riposte to critics who had him down as a mellow balladeer.
Q 17What delayed the recording of Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain in 1982?
A serious motorcycle accident
A serious motorcycle accident: a car ran a red light and Joel was thrown over it, crushing his left thumb and dislocating his right wrist; he spent a month in hospital, playing piano as rehabilitation.
Q 18Which Pennsylvania city gives its name to Billy Joel's 1982 hit about shuttered factories?
Allentown
Allentown began life as 'Levittown', after the Long Island suburb Joel knew as a boy; he moved the story to Pennsylvania's struggling steel country and tried 'Bethlehem' before settling on the final title.
Q 19An Innocent Man (1983) was Billy Joel's tribute to which musical era?
1950s and 60s R&B and doo-wop
1950s and 60s R&B and doo-wop: newly divorced and dating again, Joel said he felt like a teenager, so he wrote in the styles he grew up on, including the nearly a cappella 'The Longest Time'.
Q 20Billy Joel's 'Uptown Girl' grew from a hotel-bar encounter with two supermodels and which singer?
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston was there as a model, not yet a recording star: the three women gathered round Joel's piano on a Caribbean holiday, and his first draft of the song was titled 'Uptown Girls'.
The Soviet Union shows nearly came unstuck in Moscow, where Joel, angry at a film crew lighting up the crowd, overturned his electric piano and smashed a microphone stand mid-song.
Q 24Billy Joel voiced Dodger, a streetwise Jack Russell terrier, in which 1988 Disney film?
Oliver & Company
Oliver & Company cast Joel after he auditioned by telephone; he said he took the cartoon role so that his little girl, then nearly three, could see something of his she could relate to.
Q 25Whom did Billy Joel fire and sue for $90 million in 1989 after an audit of his finances?
His manager
His manager, who was also his former brother-in-law, went after the audit found major gaps in the books; Joel won a $2 million partial judgment in 1990 and later skewered him in 'The Great Wall of China'.
Q 26Which Foreigner guitarist co-produced Billy Joel's Storm Front (1989)?
Mick Jones
Mick Jones was hired because Joel wanted a new sound after nearly a decade with the same producer; Joel also let go two long-serving band members, and the album went to No. 1.
Q 27Which single gave Billy Joel his third Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 in 1989?
We Didn't Start the Fire
We Didn't Start the Fire was Joel's reply to a 21-year-old who told him nothing happened in the 1950s; it starts in 1949, the year he was born, and runs through 40 years of headlines.
Q 28Billy Joel's 'The Downeaster Alexa' was written about the struggles of whom?
Long Island fishermen
Long Island fishermen: Joel sings as one of them, struggling to keep his boat and make ends meet, and he named the song's vessel after the boat he sailed himself, the Alexa.
Q 29Who painted the cover art for Billy Joel's River of Dreams (1993)?
Christie Brinkley
Christie Brinkley, then Joel's wife, painted a scene from each song and is seen at her easel in the title track's video; within a year the couple had announced their separation.
Q 30With which artist did Billy Joel play the long-running 'Face to Face' tours from 1994?
Elton John
Elton John and Joel shared the stage at two pianos, playing their own hits, singing each other's songs and duetting; the tours kept returning until a final show in Albany in 2010.