The Classical Piano Man

Though many titles could be attached to Billy Joel, he proudly calls himself a songwriter first.

“We know it all stems from the music first,” Joel said while taking a break from preparations for recording his first classical music CD.

“Without the song, the singer has nothing to sing. The recording artist has nothing to record. The song is the first idea. It all starts with us. We’re the troublemakers.”

Joel has stirred up a lot of trouble in his 33 years in the music business, with his tell-it-like-it-is style of in-your-face rockers. Joel also has eased many troubled souls as well with some of the most graceful and beautiful ballads of his generation.

Tonight, the Songwriters Hall of Fame will present Joel with the Johnny Mercer Award, the group’s highest honor (named after the hall’s founder, who wrote such classics as “Personality,” “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” and “Jeepers Creepers”). The group also will induct songwriters Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Diane Warren and Paul Williams at a Sheraton New York ceremony.

“Billy is one of the greatest songwriters ever,” said Hal David, the legendary songwriter and chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. “He is an original. He was contemporary, but his songs still sound as contemporary today. It’s great to write hits, but there’s one thing that’s better: to have them last.”

Few songwriters can match Joel’s string of classics--from “Piano Man” to “Just the Way You Are” to “River of Dreams”--or the way those songs have been embraced by the American public, which has purchased more than 100 million of his albums.

Fans will finally be able to hear some of his new work when his first CD of classical compositions is released this fall. He plans to head to Vienna this month to supervise the recording of his classical piano pieces, which Joel will not be playing himself.

“People always ask me, ‘How can you write it and not play it?”’ he said. “But the thing is, you don’t write these pieces all at once and some of them are more than 10 minutes long. To play them from beginning to end with all the nuances requires a bravura player. I play like a rock ‘n’ roll piano player. I’m really not suited for it.”

He is suited for writing the pieces, however, saying he has no desire at this point to return to writing pop music again.

“If a great song comes to me, I’m not not going to write it,” Joel said. “I may return to it someday. But what I’m doing now really isn’t that much of a departure for me. A lot of stuff I’ve done was actually being written as a piano piece. I just arranged them in the rock ‘n’ roll genre.”

However, Joel will continue to be a fan of pop music.

“When you hear a good song, you have to have a great deal of respect for that,” he said. “Someone like Johnny Mercer, you hear his songs and you wonder, ‘How did he come up with that?’ It’s something songwriters do. We appreciate that. It’s quite an honor to receive anything named after Johnny Mercer, and frankly I’m bamboozled as to why they’re giving it to me, but it’s very special to me.”