Billy Joel Is Born in the Bronx

William Martin Joel was born in the Bronx on May 9, 1949, and at age one moved with his family to Hicksville, in the town of Oyster Bay, into the Levittown section of Long Island's mass-produced postwar tract houses. His father, Howard, born Helmut Joel in Nuremberg, Germany, had fled the Nazi regime as a boy, reaching the United States by way of Switzerland and Cuba. Billy started piano lessons at four, reluctantly, after banging away on the family's instrument at home. He left Hicksville High School in 1967 a few credits short of graduating, having missed an exam after a late-night piano bar gig, and chose the stage over summer school. He spent the rest of his career turning that same Long Island grid, and the city it orbited, into hit after hit.