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Katie Joel, 27, says her husband Billy Joel, 58, is immature

justingirl1989 — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 05:43:00 -0700

Billy Joel, 58, and his young wife Katie, 27, were on Oprah yesterday to promote Katie’s new cookbook, The Comfort Table. Katie was just 23 when they were married in 2004. When they were on stage together Katie definitely dominated the conversation and Billy only spoke occasionally like he was used to it.

On how they met
Katie said she didn’t really know much about Billy Joel before she met him and thought he just had two hit songs, “Uptown Girl” and “Piano Man.” She said she was at the bar at the Pennisula Hotel with a friend and she almost bumped into him and that’s how they met. He then took her out to dinner and to his “Moving Up” show on Broadway. Billy performed the last two songs on stage and Katie didn’t realize that he was doing it just to impress her and that he didn’t normally perform in that show.

Here are Billy and Katie’s comments on their unconventional relationship.

Oprah: “Did you ever think you would marry an older man?”
Katie: “I never really thought about it, but it works for us. He has this job that’s allowed him to be really immature for a long time - rock star, and I happen to be more mature for my age so we meet somewhere in the middle.”

“So it never comes up?”
Katie: “Well, sometimes I don’t know a song or I don’t know a movie that he does.”

“You should get Billy Joel’s greatest hits!”

“Billy was it an issue for you?”
Billy: “No, no it worked. I’ve said this before, I would have married her if she was 30 years older. When it works, when it clicks, you don’t fight it, you go with it.”

“So what’s your relationship like with their daughter?”
Katie: “Alexa [22] is really a special person to me. She was my maid of honor in my wedding actually, and I’m always impressed by her. She has so much talent and grace. She’s just really special.”

“So you guys bonded over food? You cook for him?”
Yes, he loves it when I’m in the kitchen. I always say he’s my guinea pig when I’m writing recipes and he tries everything and is really honest.

[Transcribed from The Oprah Winfrey show, March 24, 2008]

While Katie answered the question about Billy’s daughter gracefully you can tell she doesn’t get along with her. She talked more in general terms and didn’t say they hung out and went shopping together or anything.

Katie seems like she wears the pants in the relationship despite the large age difference. She comes off as annoying and a type A personality, but mildly endearing at the same time. She reminds me of Reese Witherspoon’s overachieving character in Election, like she’s determined and is trying too hard to please.

Oprah’s designer Nate Burke decorated Katie and Joel’s New York home, and Katie gave a tour. She said she saw Burke on the Oprah show and contacted him to do their place. When she said she was surprised he did “average peoples” homes the audience laughed.

Billy Joel got a chance to talk to Oprah before his chatty wife came on. He briefly mentioned his battle with alcoholism but glossed over it. He’s sober now and said his life is good. He said that rehab is like jail and that it’s like being in the drunk tank.

When Oprah brought up his record of car accidents he blew it off and said they were due to bad driving, not being drunk.

This woman’s cookbook is going to take off like Jessica Seinfeld’s did after her Oprah appearance and that hardly seems fair. In this case it seems like she at least worked hard on it and actually was interested in cooking before hooking up with Joel. Katie has a food column in Hamptons magazine and has worked as a commentator on The Food Network
She said her fondest memories from childhood are around the dining room table in West Virginia where she grew up.

source: celeb*tchy.com

Billy Joel on his suicide attempt, seeing ghosts, and why The Olive Garden sucks

justingirl1989 — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:32:44 -0700

59 year-old rocker Billy Joel has a pretty candid interview in the upcoming issue of Details, and I found myself laughing out loud at a few of his comments. He talks about a suicide attempt at 21, about his young bride, and about the many car accidents he’s had, all of which he claims had nothing to do with his drinking. He also likens the Betty Ford clinic to a “concentration camp” and says that he just needed to dry out.

On his suicide attempt at 21 with furniture polish

Q: Is it true that after the failure of [your heavy metal band] Attila you tried to kill yourself by drinking a bottle of furniture polish?
A: That’s true. Yeah, I was suicidal. I was 21. It’s a tough age. Things hit you really hard. A relationship with a girl had ended and I was devastated, and then it didn’t work out with the recording we did, and I just figured the world didn’t need another failed musician. You take yourself so seriously-you’ve got your head so far up your ass you can’t see straight.

Q: But why did you use furniture polish?
A: I was just lookin’ for poison. I looked in my mother’s closet and there was bleach, and it had the skull and crossbones, and then there was furniture polish. And at the time I thought, Well, the furniture polish will probably taste better than the bleach, so I’ll drink the furniture polish. And all I ended up doing was farting furniture polish for a couple of days and polishing my mother’s chairs.

[From Men.Style.com]

On his trips to rehab and car accidents

Q: What spurred your checking into the Betty Ford Center in 2005?
A: Well, I had tried to go to a rehab before that, but I was only able to be there for a few days-the press found out about it and they were swarming the place and I had to leave. That was in Connecticut, a place called Silver Hill. It was disrupting the program for everybody else, so I said, “Look, I’m going to split, because you guys can’t get anything done here.” You know, I grew up in a neighborhood where everybody ended up at the corner bar at the end of the day. I guess eventually, if that’s part of your lifestyle, it’s going to become problematic. And I realized I was just drinking too much. I said, “You know, I don’t want to do this.” And I went to Betty Ford-I hated it. I hated it. It was like a concentration camp-well, I can’t say that, I’ve never been in a concentration camp. But for me it was. There’s a lot of dogma that goes with it, and there’s the whole AA thing, and for a lot of people that works. I didn’t necessarily follow that. But it was good. I dried out. And it was probably one of the best things I ever did, because I realized I was just drinking too much, and I really don’t need to do that. Once in a blue moon, I’ll have a glass of wine. But I’m very afraid of going beyond that. I don’t want to be out of control. I mean, I had some car accidents. Everybody thinks that I was drunk driving. I was not drunk driving. There was only really one bad accident, and that was on an icy road. The other two accidents were really blown out of proportion by the tabloids. But that had nothing to do with the booze. It was just a weird time of life for me. I was preoccupied.

On why the Olive Garden sucks

Q: As the man who wrote “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant”, do you have any recommendations?
A: Oh, there’s a great place down on Houston Street called Ballato’s. It’s just a humble place on Houston Street, and the food is made with love. You can taste the love in the food.

Q: What are some warning signs that an Italian restaurant is no good?
A: Well, a bad sign is glop. Too much cheese. Too much garlic. Like the Olive Garden. I’m sorry. I know they’re trying to bring an Italian cuisine to America, but it sucks.

On seeing a ghost

I used to live in East Hampton, and it was an old house that had been renovated, and I was going to bed one night, and I walked into my bedroom and I saw what looked like a woman brushing her hair in front of a mirror. She was very old-fashioned-looking-it looked like a 19th-century woman in a dressing gown. It was quite realistic. It was quite three-dimensional. I wasn’t dreaming. I saw this. It lasted for about a minute, and I said, “Okay, I’m one of those people,” you know? I realized I don’t know everything.

Joel’s 26 year-old wife Katie is a cook so he presumably knows what he’s talking about when he says the Olive Garden sucks. Joel also said that Katie wants to establish herself first before they decide to have children, and that “I’m actually very proud of her for doing that. She doesn’t just sit around and spend my money.” He wouldn’t specify if they were planning on children and said “That’s something between me and her, though.”

Have any of you seen a ghost(s)? I thought I saw one once, but I was just 15 and was impressionable and tired at the time. It also was more of a whispy thing and wasn’t all detailed like the one Joel claims to have seen. You would assume that some kind of drugs or alcohol were involved, but I’ve known plenty of smart people who swear they’ve seen ghosts. To continue Joel’s theme of passing gas and near-death experiences, I think apparitions are just mind farts. Sometimes the brain gets too many chemicals sloshing around in there and plays tricks on us. Joel’s is not necessarily in tip top shape after all he’s gone through. He’s got a great sense of humor about it though
http://www.celeb*tchy.com/12985/billy_joel_on_his_suicide_attempt_seeing...

Piano Man - Billy Joel

suebree96 — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:35:12 -0700

Another of my favorites by Billy Joel.

Piano Man - Billy Joel

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sitting next to me
Makin' 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."

la la la, di da da
La la, di di da da dum

Chorus:
Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us all feelin' alright

Now John at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And he's quick with a joke and he'll light up your smoke
But there's some place that he'd rather be
He says, "Bill, I believe this is killing me."
As the smile ran away from his face
"Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place"

Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum

Now Paul is a real estate novelist
Who never had time for a wife
And he's talkin' with Davy, who's still in the Navy
And probably will be for life

And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessman slowly gets stoned
Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinkin' alone

Chorus
sing us a song you're the piano man
sing us a song tonight
well we're all in the mood for a melody
and you got us all feeling alright

It's a pretty good crowd for a Saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
'Cause he knows that it's me they've been comin' to see
To forget about life for a while
And the piano, it sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say, "Man, what are you doin' here?"

Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum

Chorus:
sing us a song you're the piano man
sing us a song tonight
well we're all in the mood for a melody
and you got us all feeling alright

Today's Hit/Billy Joel-Uptown Girl

smryna — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:14:22 -0700

Uptown Girl - Billy Joel

Always A Woman - Billy Joel

suebree96 — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:28:45 -0700

Love his music!!!

Always A Woman - Billi Joel

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

She can lead you to love
She can take you or leave you
She can ask for the truth
But she'll never believe
And she'll take what you give her, as long as it's free
Yeah, she steals like a thief
But she's always a woman to me

CHORUS:
Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

And she'll promise you more
Than the Garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you
And laugh while you're bleedin'
But she'll bring out the best
And the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself
Cause she's always a woman to me
--Mhmm--

Bridge

CHORUS:
Oh--she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh--and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind

She is frequently kind
And she's suddenly cruel
She can do as she pleases
She's nobody's fool
And she can't be convicted
She's earned her degree
And the most she will do
Is throw shadows at you
But she's always a woman to me
--Mhmm--

What's Your Favorite Billy Joel Song?

ALSW — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:44:39 -0800

I love Billy Joel - his Essentials collection seems to have so many songs that I've known forever and have become part of the soundtrack of my life. So many songs, so many choices...do you have a favorite?

Billy Joel - She's Always A Woman To Me

suebree96 — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:19:59 -0700

This isn't the video but this song is amazing!!! I totally love Billy Joel!!! Who doesn't?

Billy Joel - She's Always A Woman

Ice_Queen — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:29:51 -0800

So beautiful, here goes the waterfall again

Billy Joel - Just the Way you Are

Ice_Queen — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:21:48 -0800

I love this song!!!!!!!!!!! brings tears to my eyes ..lol, yeah i'm such a cry baby LOL
Go on, sing this to your loved one, bring them right here to here the song, it's so beautiful isn't it, we all need to hear this at some point or another from our tender one
I LOVE YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE!!!

Billy Joel - Piano Man

Ice_Queen — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:14:56 -0800

I love this song too! makes me feel so good!