Pop Star Billy Joel Gives Music Students Pep Talk

PHILADELPHIA —  Billy Joel once regretted becoming a singer and songwriter, he said, but his doubt “lasted about five seconds.”

“It’s a weird gig, there are no two ways about it,” the pop star told about 800 students in a master’s class at Philadelphia’s The University of the Arts on Tuesday. “If you ask yourself a lot of times if you should be doing something else, maybe you should.”

The 40-year-old singer, in town for a concert series, made a guest appearance at the university to talk about songwriting.

Joel told the students they should ignore those who ask, “When are you going to get a real job?” “Most artists have had to overlook a lot of that kind of pressure,” he said. “You do what you want to do.”

Of his precedent-setting 1987 tour of the Soviet Union, Joel said he noticed that Russian kids have an affinity for heavy metal. “All of our (pop) music comes from the black experience. . . . their music is from suffering. Heavy metal is the music of frustration. That’s a frustrating life over there.”

Joel said the Soviet tour was “my greatest thrill as a performer” but he probably won’t be going back because foreign performers are paid in rubles, which can not be taken out of the country and “you can’t buy anything with them in the country.”