In this episode, we take a deep dive into the early musical career of Billy Joel, exploring his time with bands like The Hassles and his evolution into a solo artist. We review the riveting HBO documentary ‘And So It Goes,’ which chronicles Joel’s journey and offers insight into his personal and professional life.
There we go. Dead air much? Oh, jeez. Technology, not my friend. But there’s a reason I’m doing this. This has kind of a late 60s feel, right? Because it’s a late 60s band. It has kind of a Gary Puckett and the Union Gap kind of thing going on there. Mamas and the Papas? Exactly. If I tell you that it’s a group called The Hassle, does that mean anything to you? Not a thing. Doesn’t ring any bells. That means that there’s something you have not watched yet. Okay. Okay. Know who this is on the vocal? No, I don’t. Maybe. That is roughly 20-year-old Billy Joel in the band that he put together. Yep, he was in a couple of bands. The Hassles was first. Then he and his drummer buddy performed a heavy metal hard rock duo called Attila, like The Hun. And they were dressed in fur and hanging around in a… freezer with meat. And they were a horrible band by his own admission. And then he found his own voice, found his own career. This Billy Joel documentary, this two-part thing, or it’s two parts, two hours, each on HBO called And So It Goes. Yep, I’ve seen that. Well, then you would have known that. What? Then you would have known.
SPEAKER 04 :
You said you’ve seen it? Well, I’ve seen the documentary. I don’t know some obscure song that I barely recognize.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s the first 30 minutes of the documentary. Are you paying attention?
SPEAKER 04 :
What is that song?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
It is not 30 minutes of the documentary.
SPEAKER 03 :
He talked about forming the hassles, being in the band. Do you remember the picture? Okay, all right. Yeah, I remember that. I just remember the song. I mean, excuse me. Holy cow. I haven’t finished it. His first marriage to Elizabeth, who was his wife and manager for like the 10 years of his rocket ride to ascendancy. And then he just kind of got too big and there’s lots of drinking and she had to go. And I guess he’s about to meet Christie Brinkley at the beginning of part two. So that’s where things get interesting. But I can’t say enough good things about the Billy Joel and So It Goes documentary. Really, other than Lennon and McCartney… I don’t know a songwriter. I mean, I know James Taylor, Carole King, blah, blah, blah. But I don’t know a songwriter that’s meant more to me or been more prolific. It’s an amazing story. Me too.
SPEAKER 04 :
And that’s why it’s such a great documentary. And incidentally, you skip past the part that Billy Joel slept with his best friend’s wife.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that’s Elizabeth. That’s who Elizabeth is. Stole her absolutely. Right off. Poor guy. But who then forgave.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
So you’ve got that. And George Martin, who produced the Beatles, came to him and said, I think I’d like to produce you. Do you know how huge that is? And he said, nope. No, thank you. Because George Martin wanted to ditch his band and use studio musicians.
SPEAKER 04 :
But back to sleeping with the best friend’s wife and stealing the wife from his best friend of many years. But Billy Joel really owns that. I was really impressed by his humility and just how, you know, I was a louse, you know.
SPEAKER 01 :
Contrition.
SPEAKER 04 :
It was a terrible thing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Genuine guilt. Yeah. Getting boss over it.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s quite a story and quite a journey, so I’m glad you finally saw it because I loved every bit of it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Speaking of journeys, give me 60 seconds on Seattle. I’ve never been. I know, does the sun ever shine? I know it’s great to be there in the summer because it’s not a million degrees, so tell me about it.
SPEAKER 04 :
The sun shone the whole time I was there. It was beautiful. The weather was astounding. The… Topography is gorgeous. Evergreens everywhere. I love the green, lush area of the country. Seattle is really one of our most treasured cities, overrun by zombies. Here we go. Of fentanyl, poor people on fentanyl, and homeless people on every corner, and needles, and the whole thing. It’s San Francisco in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And the whole community just accepts it. People who I know who live there live in fear. They say the crime is lurking around every corner. Man. And even – I had dinner the other night with a family friend, and she’s pretty left. I mean, she’s from Seattle, native Seattle, and she said, look, whatever these Democrat leaders are doing, it isn’t working. I went, oh, really?
SPEAKER 01 :
Really?
SPEAKER 04 :
Tell me more. To do tell. But they acknowledge it, and that’s what’s going on. Look, that’s the existential crisis they face in New York City. I mean, if this Mamdani guy gets in, and did you see the latest poll? He beats everybody combined. Mark, it’s not close.
SPEAKER 03 :
Beats Andrew Cuomo, beats… Combined.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I’m old enough to remember a guy named Mark Davis saying, oh, it’s just a flash in the pan.
SPEAKER 03 :
He can’t win. I didn’t say he can’t win. I said I was skeptical that maybe if there was reasonable candidacies of just sort of mainstream Democrats like Eric Adams and even Andrew Cuomo. Or Curtis Lewa. A Republican option. Listen, you’re not going to hear me say that the horrible shooting is great for Curtis’s campaign, but maybe it’s an eye opener where people can realize the ill wisdom of electing somebody who hates the police and who hates guns.
SPEAKER 04 :
As we mourn an NYPD officer who was working off duty and was killed. In fact, it was reported that his father was so stricken by the news of the death of his son that he had a stroke. The father had to be taken to the hospital. Lives are shattered. Families are ruined. Four people. And P.S., just a quick aside. Have you seen the leftists celebrating the murder of the Black Rock executive? It’s Mangione stuff, but now it’s like this is Luigi 2.0. I mean, after all, Black Rock.
SPEAKER 03 :
And this guy had nothing to do with Black Rock. It’s Black Stone.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m sorry, Rock and Stone. Blackstone had nothing to do with what he was doing. He got off on the wrong floor. He was targeting the NFL. He was targeting the NFL because he apparently thought he had CTE from high school. What the heck’s the NFL got to do with it? He’s mentally ill, obviously. And here we go with the gun control crap. Eric Adams himself confirmed that somebody he knew evidently bought the gun for him. Mm-hmm. All right, well, riddle me this, Jessica Tarloff, since you’re making gun control an issue out of this. What gun law is going to prevent somebody who’s able to legally purchase a firearm and give it to the guy who shouldn’t have a firearm? It’s what I said after Sandy Hook. You know, they all kept saying over and over again after Connecticut that terrible massacre of all those beautiful little kids and those teachers. Gun control, gun control. What law are you going to enact that’s going to stop a deranged kid, a son, from murdering his mother, stealing her gun out of the gun safe, and going to Sandy Hook and massacring all those kids? I mean, I’m not saying that to be provocative. What law do you think would have done that? There is no law to do that other than total confiscation. Which is where they’re headed. Well, that’s what they want. That’s what they would love. They would love to see. Look, I saw Jessica Tarloff make that argument on The Five yesterday. She said, point blank, when we had the assault weapons ban, the shootings were decreased. She always takes numbers and cherry picks polls. By the way, did you see Trump blast her the other day? Jessica personally?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Or just what he had to say about that?
SPEAKER 04 :
On Truth Social. He was pretty scientific. He said, I can’t stand that Jessica Tarloff. He posted that on Truth Social. I mean, it’s like, oh, gosh. But look, it’s a product. Back to Mamdani, which is what made me think of this whole rant about guns and this terrible shooting in New York. Mm-hmm. One of his past social media posts was unearthed after this shooting. So we got an NYPD officer. We have another security guard who was cowering behind a desk who got murdered. Two other people killed. One of Mamdami’s tweets said, somebody had posted, I just saw an NYPD officer crying in his car and with a smiley face emoji. You know what Mamdami himself responded with? Nature is healing. This guy loathes the police. In fact, it was revealed that the special elite unit that responded to this shooting on Park Avenue, he wants to disband. He wants to get rid. There will be such a mass exodus of NYPD cops if this guy wins. He’s going to turn it into the actual Gotham. From the right from Batman, it’s going to be Gotham. And it’s going to be a disaster. And guess what? If New Yorkers are stupid enough to vote for this guy, they deserve everything they get, Mark.
SPEAKER 03 :
Why do I want to believe? Why do I want to believe that they’re not? And I’m not going to sit here in July and talk about a November election and predict that Mom Donnie will lose because it looks like a steep hill for either Eric Adams or Curtis Lee with the Republican Party. or Andrew Cuomo. But I’ll believe it when I see it. And I guess if I see it, I see it, and I’ll be sad, and I’ll cry for America’s biggest and one of our greatest cities. But I somehow am going to cleave to some hope that New Yorkers will… I don’t expect Curtis to win, that a reasonable Democrat… I would love that! It’s not like it’s never happened before. Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg. But I’m going to pray for and hope for That great city to come to its senses and that maybe this tragedy has opened some eyes about the ill wisdom of electing somebody with views as poisonous as Mom Dot.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, to answer your question, why do you think this way? Because you are using EarthLogic. And EarthLogic tells anyone that there’s no way New Yorkers, no matter how exciting they are about his funny TikTok, his cute TikTok videos, and how appealing he may be, they’ve got to look at policy. They’ve got to look at what he will do to a city that has already racked with homelessness, with crime, with a quality of life that is terrible.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know the appeal? And here’s a huge theme of Democrats Forever, free stuff paid for by other people. City-run grocery stores, free public transportation. Senator Ed Markey and a member of Congress in Massachusetts has something called the Right to Travel Act or the Right to whatever, where they say that public transportation is a public good and it should be free. What? So free buses and subways paid for by whom?
SPEAKER 04 :
Rush used to say it all the time. It’s hard to beat Santa Claus.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s hard to defeat Santa Claus. It’s the crackpot. Free stuff paid for by other people is the crackpot. And by the way, you’ll see a lot more of this because it’s all the Democrats have. Go ahead. I’m sorry.
SPEAKER 04 :
Help me understand the Sidney Sweeney story because I posted yesterday. Are they actually mad that a white woman posed for a jeans commercial?
SPEAKER 03 :
Her sins are she is white, she is beautiful, she knows she’s a woman, and she does not weigh 350 pounds. That can’t be it. No, no, that can’t be it. It’s totally it. Totally yes.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, no, there’s got to be more to it.
SPEAKER 03 :
It is a return to white supremacy.
SPEAKER 04 :
Why?
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s beauty-ish.
SPEAKER 04 :
This is not the first white woman who’s posed for a jeans commercial. I know, but… No, no, there’s more. What are you missing? There’s a part of it. Is it an eagle and the eagle reminds them of Hitler? No. And the SS? It is her whiteness and a celebration of her beauty.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, it can’t be that. There’s no way. Tis the season, Mike, where what we must celebrate is obesity. And God bless people of color. God bless people of every race. But they’re like the only ones who can be lifted up and celebrated. And you’ll never hear me playing violin music for, you know, oh, we poor white people. But that’s a huge…
SPEAKER 04 :
No, you’re missing something. No, you are. You have to be. There’s no way. This country can’t be this crazy. I think it has something to do… Does it have something to do with her initials? Because I thought… I think it does. I’m telling you, Mark. No, no, no, no. There’s no way they’re upset that a non-obese, non-person of color is in a jeans commercial.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s no way. Do you know who’s catching holy you-know-what lately? Lizzo, incredibly talented singer who now weighs two-something instead of four-something. It’s like, oh, you gave in. You gave in? You gave in. Yeah, she just added 20 years to her life. Exactly right. She decided to become healthy and not die. Die in five years.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m telling you, the world has gone nuts.
SPEAKER 03 :
It has indeed so.
SPEAKER 04 :
You mentioned violin music. I hope you saw Cory Booker. Spartacus took to the floor yesterday. They’re livid about one of Trump’s lawyers getting appointed to the federal judiciary. And apparently some Democrats went along with that to Cory Booker’s chagrin. So he went off on this wild, his eyes is bulging, he’s screaming. Trump’s Hitler. And have you seen the meme, the social media popular post that shows Trump playing a flute and a violin when they’re screaming? Mark, you’ve got to see this. It’s so funny. It’s so good. Guys, can you play this real quick? We’re running out of time. Can you play this for Mark? Now, you’ve got to hear Spartacus, Cory Booker, and then the way the social media geniuses have done this. Then they’ve superimposed Trump, AI. He’s playing the flute on one side of the screen. and he’s playing the violin on the other. Hit it.
SPEAKER 02 :
There’s too much on the line right now in America. As people’s due process rights and freedom of speech rights and secret police are running around this country, picking people up off the streets who have a legal right to be here. There’s too much going on in this country.
SPEAKER 04 :
And mark the visual of Trump playing the violin and the whatever that music. What is that instrument? Is that a recorder?
SPEAKER 03 :
I thought it was the recorder.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, yeah. And you can see Trump is very intently playing these two instruments. And there’s Spartacus. It’s perfect.
SPEAKER 03 :
Speaking of memes, there are 500 Sidney Sweeney memes, real quick, about the people who are jumping to the Nazi imagery from her regime campaign. They have her starring in several movies. She stars as a Formula One star, and they’ve got her in a big helmet inside a car in her new film, Master Race. Oh, please. You had something real quick. Take us out.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, no, real quick. Charlie Kirk, our colleague here at Salem, and our friend, has officially entered the Zeitgeist South Park. South Park. He’s going to spoof Charlie. They’re going to do a bit where, is it Cartman? Cartman. Cartman is going to be Charlie, and he’s going to debate college campus kids. It’s the coolest thing. And Charlie, you know who’s the happiest about it? Charlie. Charlie. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
He’s having a ball with it. It’s a serious form of flattery, this sincere form of flattery.
SPEAKER 04 :
Because you want to know why? Because we conservatives, we actually have a sense of humor.
SPEAKER 03 :
Isn’t it something? Now that works out. We sleep better at night. We’re mentally healthier. Happy Wednesday.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome back. Fantastic.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mike Gallagher ready to go. 10 o’clock soon as we’re done on 660 AM. The answer.
SPEAKER 01 :
Americans may not agree on much, but we agree on Social Security. We all pay in. It ought to be there when we need it. Social Security could face a funding gap in less than a decade, and I don’t want to see a pay cut. I’m with AARP in the fight to protect the Social Security we earned.
SPEAKER 03 :
Pledge to protect Social Security at aarp.org slash we earned it. That’s aarp.org slash we earned it. Paid for by AARP.
Democrats Can’t Stop Fighting Each Other
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the early musical career of Billy Joel, exploring his time with bands like The Hassles and his evolution into a solo artist. We review the riveting HBO documentary ‘And So It Goes,’ which chronicles Joel’s journey and offers insight into his personal and professional life.
More Episodes
Hillary And Obama Are IN BIG TROUBLE
Mike Gallagher Week in Review for 08.01.25
Democrats CELEBRATE Cincinnati Brawl
Sydney Sweeney Has Liberals MELTINGDOWN