Allentown

While a generation older than many of the acts he shared the stage with in the 1970s and '80s, and displaying little interest in the haircuts, fashions and synthesizers of his contemporaries, he still managed to record some of the most memorable hits of the era, including "Uptown Girl" in 1983. Joel grew up a member of middle America's working class society. At the insistance of his father Joel had taken formal piano lessons in his youth, but it was clear early on that his musical ambitions lay more in the popular realm. He joined his first unsuccessful rock bands in the late 1960s, playing British-invasion/psychadelia-inspired pop, before his embarking on his first unsuccessful solo project. In 1973 he finally found a winning formula with the record "Piano Man," and his stock rose significantly in the music industry. Through the '70s and into the '80s Joel continued to record thoughtful, intelligent, light rock, winning a Grammy in 1977 for "Just the Way You Are." He returned to his working class roots in "Allentown," chronicling the plight of America's industrial centers as production contracts and jobs went overseas. In 1983 he released "Uptown Girl," a light-hearted, 1950s-era pop song, the video to which featured Joel's future bride Christie Brinkley. And while Joel and Brinkley's marriage disolved in 1994, Joel's musical career has been longer lived as he has continued to record and tour.

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