William Martin "Billy" Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American rock musician, singer-songwriter, and classical composer. He released his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973. According to the RIAA, Billy Joel is the sixth best-selling recording artist in the United States.Top Selling Artists. RIAA. Retrieved on December 7, 2008.

Joel had Top 10 hits in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and has 33 Top 40 hits in the United States overall. He is also a five-time Grammy Award winner, a 23-time Grammy nominee and has sold in excess of 150 million albums worldwide.(September 21, 2004). "Billy Joel in Walk of Fame honour". BBC News. Retrieved on December 7, 2008. He was inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame (1992), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1999), and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame (2006). Joel "retired" from recording pop music in 1993 but continued to tour (sometimes with Elton John). In 2001, he released Fantasies & Delusions, a CD of classical compositions for piano. In 2007, he briefly returned to pop songwriting and recording with a single entitled "All My Life" -- written for his third wife Katie Lee Joel. Joel returned to touring in 2006 after a three-year hiatus from the road and has toured extensively ever since, covering many of the major world cities. In March 2009, Joel resumed his popular Face to Face tour with fellow piano man Elton John. The tour is expected to go on and off for two years and travel around the world. The two artists first paired up in 1994 but hadn't toured together since May 2003.

Early years

Billy Joel was born in the Bronx and raised in Hicksville, New York. His father, Howard (born Helmut), was born in Germany as the son of Jewish merchant and manufacturer Karl Amson Joel who emigrated to Switzerland and later to the United States, because of Nazi antisemitism. Billy Joel's mother, Rosalind Nyman, was born in England to a Jewish family (Philip and Rebecca Nyman). His parents divorced in 1960, and his father moved to Vienna, Austria. Billy has a sister, Judith Joel, and a half-brother, Alexander Joel, who is an acclaimed classical conductor in Europe, currently chief musical director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig.Tallmer, Jerry (July 16-22, 2003). "Billy Joel grapples with the past". ''The Villager, 73 (11). Retrieved on December 7, 2008.

Joel's father was an accomplished classical pianist. Billy reluctantly began piano lessons at an early age, at his mother's insistence; his teachers included the noted American pianist Morton Estrin and musician/songwriter Timothy Ford. His interest in music, rather than sports, was a source of teasing and bullying in his early years. (He has said in interviews that his piano instructor also taught ballet. Her name was Frances Neiman and she was a Juilliard trained musician. She gave both classic piano and ballet lessons in the studio attached to the rear of her house, leading neighborhood bullies to mistakenly think he was learning to dance.) As a teenager, Joel took up boxing so that he would be able to defend himself. He boxed successfully on the amateur Golden Gloves circuit for a short time, winning twenty-two bouts, but abandoned the sport shortly after having his nose broken in his twenty-fourth boxing match.