Billy Joel
Our loss and our anthem
I had lost touch with my oldest friend, whom I met in first grade, but reached out to her a couple of years ago when I heard her parents had died two months apart. She and I lived in different states but on occasion, work took me to a city close to her house, so we were able to see each other every couple of months. We had the kind of friendship that allowed us to pick up where we left off even though we’d left off when our children were still in elementary school.
When you’ve known somebody since you were six you know each other so thoroughly that the details of your life are unimportant because you know so deeply who the other person is. The rest can fall into place in its own time.
A few months after we first saw each other again, she invited me the Billy Joel concert at Madison Square Garden. I think the last time we’d been to a concert together was when we saw Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen play together at a huge outdoor arena. It was a nice bit of symmetry.
If The Who was the background to my childhood, Billy Joel was the soundtrack of my adolescence. My friends and I knew every song from every album by heart, starting with Cold Spring Harbor. If we were in study hall (or detention) together we played a game in which one of us wrote three words on a piece of paper and the rest of us had to figure out if they were lyrics from a Billy Joel song or lyrics from Evita or Jesus Christ Superstar.
A couple of months after the concert, my friend was diagnosed with cancer. Three months later we went into COVID lockdown. She and I last spoke in May 2021 and she seemed to be responding well to treatment. Very soon after that, though, she took a sharp turn for the much worse. She died in July.
A huge, permanent hole is ripped in your life when your oldest friend dies but I’m grateful we got to see that concert together.
My first pick is “Summer Highland Falls,” the best song on Turnstiles which, at the time, we thought was the best album ever. It wasn’t just a song we never tired of listening to: it was our anthem.
The second track, “Close to the Borderline,” is from Glass Houses, Joel’s last great album.
I always say my voice is permanently tuned to Billy Joel from singing along to his songs during my own adolescence. The songs "Movin' Out" and "Vienna Waits for You" literally informed my decision to leave home and go as far away as possible. I still don't need a house out in Hackensack, I like to say.
We are at that age now, where we lose our friends, and I try to say I'm getting used to it, but even so, what I really mean is I'm getting used to feeling that pain of loss. It's part of life now, and I guess that is alright. It can't be any other way.
Thanks for sharing. It's comforting to know of others on the journey of life who are having similar experiences. For some reason knowing we are not alone in our hopes and dreams, and our losses, is a comfort. We can endure hard things and keep up the good fight, together! The people united will never be defeated!