The Tartan

By Kyle Hynes

I didn’t grow up a massive Billy Joel aficionado. My parents were what you might call moderate fans. In the front half of my childhood, in the dying days of the cassette tape, his voice would only fill our living room once in a while; once Spotify made its way onto my dad’s rickety old Lenovo, his greatest hits began to adorn his cooking playlist. But I wasn’t raised on the idea that Billy Joel was anything but a generic 1970s pop star.

When I came to the opposite conclusion, it was on my own. The day I got my driver’s license was March 12, 2020. For many of us, it was the last day of our childhood. America was shutting down. On March 11, I’d gone for a hike with my then-girlfriend without a care in the world; by March 13, local officials were telling us to avoid contact with anyone outside our family and to batten down the hatches for the long haul.

In between, though, was March 12. After I passed my test, I drove my mom back home, thinking all the while about my inaugural drive, the one I’d waited months if not years for. I pulled out of the driveway, alone in the car for the first time, with a smile on my face. I didn’t plan on going far, but I didn’t need to. I got on the interstate, headed north for a little while, got off, turned around, and came back. The radio, naturally, was blasting the whole way.

Two songs played on the way back. One was “Does To Me,” by Luke Combs, another artist I’ve gone on to love. The other is a mystery I’ve never managed to figure out, but it was a song about the famous Western outlaw Billy the Kid. It was such a mystery that when I got home, I looked the song up: far and away, the most popular result was Billy Joel’s “Ballad of Billy the Kid.” I listened to it. It wasn’t the right song, so I kept looking.

The next day, bored and quarantined like the rest of America, I listened to it again. And again. And I realized I kind of liked it. So it was that my newfound infatuation with this funny song took me to a YouTube video of Billy Joel listing his five favorite songs on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. His favorite was “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” I listened, I was hooked, and it didn’t take many months of being boarded up inside my bedroom for his entire discography to be glued to my dormant brain.

Barely any of that time had run off the clock when I discovered his final album, “River of Dreams,” which came out in 1993. I’d call it the only album of his where every single song is a banger. It’s no longer the musings of a 22-year-old who released “Cold Spring Harbor” in 1971. With more philosophical lyrics and harder beats, it was the last salvo of the rare jaded free spirit. No longer cutting his songs down to three minutes, he was his own man now, writing what he wanted to write, singing how he wanted to sing, and saying what he wanted to say.

The album ends on “Famous Last Words.” If you haven’t listened to it, you’re not alone; Spotify only records it as having around 1.6 million plays. It deserves better. It’s the musical equivalent of Mariano Rivera’s tear-filled, ovation-capped last ninth inning at Yankee Stadium. The only difference between the two is that, for effect, Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte strolled to the mound with just two outs to relieve a sobbing Rivera, leaving little-known Matt Daley to get the final out. Joel finished the way he started and got all three outs. And unlike the Yankees, he won that game.

Like Rivera, masterfully painting the corners as he pieced together his final inning of no-hit work, “Famous Last Words” was a powerhouse that left no doubt that he was done. It was, in his own words, a swan song:

“Sitting here in Avalon, looking at the pouring rain

Summertime has come and gone, and everybody’s home again

Closing down for the season, I found the last of the souvenirs

I can still taste the wedding cake, and it’s sweet after all these years

“These are the last words I have to say, that’s why it took so long to write

There will be other words some other day, but that’s the story of my life…

These are the last words I have to say, before another age goes by

With all those other songs I’ll have to play, ain’t that the story of my life?”

With that, we were left to wonder what “another age” comprised. Five years? 10? By the time I came to love his music, it had been 27 years since he’d walked out of the studio and turned out the lights. Sure, they flickered on briefly. In 2007, he released “All My Life,” a mediocre single that never cracked the charts, and “Christmas in Fallujah,” a brilliant song on a poignant and topical matter — but he wrote it for a different singer and never sang it in the studio. Aside from that, the lights were out, and Billy Joel was back on Long Island living the retired life.

And then he turned the lights back on.

“Please, open the door, nothing is different, we’ve been here before

Pacing these halls, trying to talk, over the silence…

“Maybe you love me, maybe you don’t, maybe you’ll learn to, maybe you won’t

You’ve had enough, I won’t give up on you…

“I’m late, but I’m here right now, and I’m trying to find the magic

That we lost somehow, maybe I was blind

But I see you now, as we’re laying in the darkness

Did I wait too long to turn the lights back on?”

No, Mr. Joel, you didn’t. You took your time. You are, to me and millions of others, the perfect representation of the golden age of music that the world was lucky enough to be gifted in the latter half of the 20th century. There’s some damn good music today, and I’m not saying it’s worse, but it’s different. It doesn’t feel the same. Some people are trying to extend their primes the wrong way. Some of the great musicians of Joel’s your day are still trying to hold onto a magic they no longer have, running around stages wearing tights and far too much makeup for a man old enough to be Noah Kahan’s grandfather. But you gave up on that long ago. Instead, you’ve spent these 30 years sitting stately at your piano. Your rock and your roll are slower than they used to be, but you never miss a step — consistently giving as many generations as you can a taste of what you did back in your day.

If the lights are indeed back on, we’re being given the rarest of opportunities — an encore to a bygone era, the sort of nostalgia machine our culture and even our country has built itself on. There’s no need to buckle in. It won’t be a wild ride. Billy Joel, the performer, left us in the 1990s; what’s left is the musician. Just let his artwork, the unyielding talents and even, dare I say, wisdom of a man who has seen, heard, felt, and done two or three full lives’ worth, wash over you.

Because there will come a time when the lights are off again, and I imagine there won’t be another encore.

Author’s note: While writing this piece, I figured it was only fitting to listen to various songs called “Billy the Kid” while writing about this long-unsolvable mystery. But the universe works in mysterious ways. As I was writing it, the song I was listening to struck its chorus — “I miss Billy the Kid, the things that he did, the life that he lived.” My mouth fell open and into a smile at the same time. I had not heard that song for four years, and I hadn’t remembered any of the words. But when Billy Dean hit that chorus, the memories came flooding back. Billy Dean, you don’t know it, but I owe my love of Billy Joel, and my love of music, to you. Thank you.