I'll never forget the first time I heard this tune.  I was 12 years old, and it was the opening number of his television concert special, "Billy Joel: Live at Yankee Stadium".  I thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever heard, and during the opening salvo with the horns blaring, you could see Billy at the piano in the shadows....wearing his signature Ray-Ban Wayfarer shades.  I didn't yet know I wanted a career in it....but I knew that I HAD to learn to do what he was doing.

It was one of those rare before / after moments in life....I was literally never the same again after seeing that concert, and the shift happened right as the first notes of this opening song were played.  A fire was ignited inside me that nobody could ever put out....come hell or high water, I was going to figure out this thing called piano....and I wasn't going to figure it out just any particular way....I was going to figure out how to do what HE was doing on it, and I was going to get it down well enough that I could sing while I did it.

When I look back at that moment and other moments from my youth, I'm struck by the fact that the greatest advantage of that time in your life is that you don't have enough experience yet to doubt everything.  I didn't know what it would entail to learn to do those things he was doing, I just knew I wanted to learn them.  My enthusiasm far outstripped my doubts.

When we get older our life experience is certainly a benefit and advantage in so many ways, but it also has a tendency to make us just a little too logical in too many situations.  We know so much, that we forget that all things are possible.  We start to assume that we're not capable of more than we've already learned to do, and even worse, we assume that the journey between where we are standing and where we'd like to be will be too hard and not worth it.  So, we start making excuses.

It's okay....there's nothing wrong with deciding not to learn a new skill or explore a new interest.  Not everything is worth pursuing for every person.  But, I hate to see "grown-ups" extinguish honest flames burning within themselves simply because they can't quiet the chatterbox inside their head telling them all the reasons they don't have enough time or talent.  It's really just a fear of watching yourself be bad at something on your way to being good at it.

It's a good thing toddlers don't have this same shame about sucking at something until you polish your skill and execution or else none of us would be able to walk or talk.  Let's all resolve to listen a little more to our passion and enthusiasm and pay a little less attention to the doubting voices of logic chattering inside our minds.  Dare to suck....because it's the first step toward....not sucking.  ;-)   

Enjoy my cover of this song from a livestream show I did on July 1, 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and then check out that iconic Yankee Stadium performance I mentioned of Billy himself below. 

If you'd like to explore my piano method more deeply, my best students use my video courses and join me for conversation and twice monthly Q&A Livestreams in my private community...you can find it all HERE. Thanks.

If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube

If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube