Today, the 74-year-old New York City-born Billy Joel is known for timeless tracks like “Piano Man” and “Only the Good Die Young.”
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Joel, who broke out with fame and fortune thanks to his 1973 LP, Piano Man, had a bit of a bumpy ride leading up to that, including several short-lived bands and a stint as a lounge performer in Los Angeles in the early 1970s.
But while Joel isn’t known for writing songs for others, he did write several songs for those early bands that you likely have never heard of—until today.
And while we wanted to share those bands’ work with Joel fans, we also wanted to shed light on another song he wrote, which many forget he did. A song a certain country star made famous.
Below are three songs you didn’t know Joel wrote.
1. “4 O’Clock in the Morning,” The Hassles
Written by Billy Joel
After dropping out of high school to pursue music, Joel was part of a couple of short-lived bands, one of which was The Hassles. This band put out two albums, their 1967 self-titled debut and the follow-up, Hour of the Wolf, released in 1969. On that second album, “4 O’Clock in the Morning” featured as the fourth track. It was also, like many of the group’s songs, written by a Mr. William Joel, keys player.
2. “Wonder Woman,” Attila
Written by Billy Joel, Jon Small
The other short-lived band Joel took part in was known as Attila. This group, which was only around for about a year from 1969 to 1970, was formed by Joel and The Hassles’ drummer Jon Small. Why did the group end? Well, Joel and Small’s wife, Elizabeth, fell in love and got married. The group’s only album was its self-titled debut, which Joel has since poked fun at. But the opening song on the one album is pretty fiery stuff.
3. “Shameless,” Garth Brooks
Written by Billy Joel
Written by Joel for his 1989 album, Storm Front, his rendition hit No. 40 on the Hot Adult Contemporary tracks. Two years later, however, Garth Brooks took a stab at it and recorded the song for his third album, Ropin’ the Wind, which dropped in 1991. His offering hit No. 1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart.
Joel, who said he was inspired by Jimi Hendrix to write “Shameless,” is often forgotten when the song comes to music fans’ minds. Like Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston and “I Will Always Love You,” or even Hendrix, Bob Dylan and “Watchtower,” sometimes the original writer of a song gets lost. Brooks talked about this and more in the liner notes for his The Hits record. Said the country star:
“‘Shameless’ was the longest shot we took with a song. I was talked into becoming a member of a CD club…you know, the 40,000 CD’s for a penny deal. With those clubs, they write you with the selection of the month. If you don’t write back and cancel, then they send it to you and charge you for it. I was on the road for six months with no one to check the mail and came home to find six compact discs in my mailbox. Storm Front by Billy Joel was one of them. I hadn’t listened to Billy Joel since the late seventies, probably since Glass Houses.
“I fell in love with the album and fell back in love with Billy Joel’s music. One of his songs really captured me, a song called ‘Shameless.’ I kept watching it, and when he did not release it as a single, we contacted his people in the hopes that we could cut it. His people sent us a letter acknowledging that he knew who I was and was very honored that I was cutting it. That was quite a compliment for me then, as it is now. My hope is that Billy, as writer, hears this cut and says, ‘Yeah, man, the guy’s got balls.”
Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns
