Years before releasing his 1971 debut Cold Spring Harbor and eventually becoming the Piano Man, crooning songs like “Just the Way You Are” and “She’s Always a Woman,” Billy Joel was playing distorted organs, writing songs about Godzilla and Wonder Woman, and making people “flee” clubs with his metal band.
Joel’s heavier rock phase began in 1966 when he joined the Long Island, NY-based band, the Hassles. The band released two albums, their eponymous debut in 1967, featuring two songs written by Joel—”Warming Up” and “I Can Tell”—followed by their second Hour of the Wolf, in 1969, which was predominantly written and co-written by Joel.
“A lot of people think I just came out of the piano bar,” Joel said in a 1985 interview with Dan Leer. “I did a lot of heavy metal for a while.”
By 1969, Joel left the Hassles behind in search of something heavier and formed the hard rock duo Attila, and went on to have more metal moments spanning the 1980s through the 2020s. Here’s a look behind three of Joel’s most metal moments over the past five-plus decades.
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Forming the Metal Duo Atilla and Their Self-Titled Debut (1970)
After leaving the Hassles in 1969, Joel formed Attila with his former bandmate Jon Small. With Joel playing bass and keyboards and Small on drums, the duo had more Black Sabbath, Iron Butterfly, and Ronnie James Dio-era Rainbow vibes.
“We were heavy metal, we were going to destroy the world with amplification,” said Joel. “We had titles like ‘Godzilla,’ ‘March of the Huns,’ ‘Brain Invasion.’”
Joel said that people “went fleeing from the place” whenever Atilla played live. “We had about a dozen gigs, and nobody could stay in the room when we were playing,” he added. “It was too loud. We drove people literally out of clubs.”
Masked by an Attila the Hun theme, Joel also played a heavily distorted Hammond B-3 organ, plugged into a Marshall stack. “If you’re going to assault the rock world and crush it under ten Marshall amps, wouldn’t Attila the Hun, who plundered Italy and Gaul and slaughtered quite a few innocents along the way, work as a role model?” joked Joel. “I was 19, and at that age, if you’re loving your heavy metal. It’s all about thrash, kill, metal, slash, burn, pillage, repeat.”
In 1970, the band, which Joel later called “psychedelic bulls–t,” released their self-titled debut with the two dressed as Huns surrounded by slabs of meat on the cover. Co-written by Small and Joel, the album also features the tracks “California Flash,” “Wonder Woman,” “Holy Moses,” Amplifier Fire,” “Tear This Castle Down,” “Rollin’ Home,” and “Revenge Is Sweet.”
Shortly after the release of Attila, the band split, and their end was sealed after Joel ran off with Small’s wife, Elizabeth, whom he later married.
“We were so loud, you could see blood coming out of people’s ears,” Joel told NPR in 2012, “It was just horrible. Thank God it didn’t happen because I would’ve screamed myself right out of the business.”
He added, “I decided I no longer want[ed] to be a rock and roll star. I got that out of my system. I was about 19 or 20. I want to write songs now.”
Despite their earlier rift, Small and Joel ended up working together again. Small, who later became a music video director for Run DMC, Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks, and other artists, produced Joel’s video for “Концерт” in 1987 and his 2011 Live at Shea Stadium performance. Decades after its release, Joel also featured the Atilla track “Amplifier Fire, Part 1 (Godzilla)” on his 2005 box set My Lives.
Playing Piano on Twisted Sister’s “Be Chrool to Your Scuel” (1985)
A year after releasing their hit Stay Hungry, Twisted Sister’s 1985 album Come Out and Play took a different turn with a few nods to ’50s pop, including the band’s cover of the Shangri-Las’ 1964 classic”Leader of the Pack.” As a session musician in the early ’60s, Joel played piano on the girl group’s demo of “Leader of the Pack,” though the final version featured Italian pianist and composer Roger Rossi.
Though Joel wasn’t featured on Twisted Sister’s rendition, he did play piano on another Come Out and Play track, “Be Chrool to Your Scuel.” A bit edgier, the song also features Alice Cooper on guest vocals, Brian Setzer on guitar, and late E Street Band Saxophonist Clarence Clemons.
The video, which starred comedian and actor Bobcat Goldthwait as a twisted teacher and Luke Perry, was set around a high school full of kids that turn into zombies, while Twisted Sister and Cooper make their way around the halls. Deemed too gory for MTV and was banned at the time. Though Joel never made a cameo in the video, he can still be heard tinkling those ivories for Twisted Sister.
Performing AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” with Axl Rose (2024)
During the final show of Joel’s record-breaking residency at Madison Square Garden in New York City, he invited Axl Rose out to perform on July 25th. Midway into he show, Rose came out to play Wings’ 1973 James Bond theme song “Live and Let Die,” also covered by Guns N’ Roses on Use Your Illusion I in 1991. Then, Joel stepped out from the piano and played guitar as the two went into AC/DC’s 1979 classic “Highway to Hell.”
Rose returned to the stage later to join in on the final song of the night, Joel’s 1980 Glass Houses hit “You May Be Right.”
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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