For Billy Joel, New York is more than just a place. It’s an inextricable part of what makes the singer who he is. “My speech patterns are New York. The music that I like, it was all New York–based. That’s what I think of when I think of home,” he said in his 2025 HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes. “It’s my roots.”
The Bronx native grew up in Hicksville, a middle-class suburb of Nassau County on Long Island. His family struggled to make ends meet. “There was poor, and then there was Billy Joel poor. He was lucky if he had enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes,” his childhood friend and fellow musician Jon Small said in And So It Goes. According to Joel’s sister Judy, no matter how hard times were, their mother Rosalind insisted he take piano lessons. His talent “had to be nurtured,” Judy said in the HBO doc. “She knew that he was going to be something someday.”
Before he indeed became something, Joel worked on an oyster boat. “I used to look up at this mansion on the hill and wonder what it would be like to live in a house like that,” he said in the documentary, referencing the waterfront property on Centre Island he nicknamed MiddleSea. “I used to think, ‘They’re rich bastards. They never had to work a day in their life.’ Well, I own that house now. It’s not finished yet. And neither am I.”
Read on for a glimpse into the Grammy winner’s life, from his early days in New York to his brief stint in Los Angeles and return home.
