Joel loves famous dad, but is her own piano woman

Joel loves famous dad, but is her own piano woman
Chicago Sun-Times - United States
Some have come expressly to see and hear budding musician Alexa Ray Joel -- former New York University musical theater student and 20-year-old offspring of pop ...
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 Joel loves dad, but is her own piano woman

June 1, 2006

It's Memorial Day eve at the Hard Rock Cafe. The all-ages crowd shuffles in. But not everyone is here to ogle Tom Petty's lucite-encased Rickenbacker or guzzle overpriced pomegranate martinis.

Some have come expressly to see and hear budding musician Alexa Ray Joel -- former New York University musical theater student and 20-year-old offspring of pop giant Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley -- do her thing on the main stage.

Chicago is the last stop on this monthlong Hard Rock tour. Like her previous (and much shorter) stints on the road that kicked off in January, it's largely about helping Joel to gain exposure and find her footing in a notoriously tough business -- one that has given her father, who bankrolled a portion of the multistate swing, great wealth and considerable heartache.

Joel readily talks about him -- and, especially in the large and lushly lashed eyes, looks like him -- but she'd rather make it quick. She is, after all, her own woman.

"I feel like it's been going really well," she says during a pre-show chat in a roped-off upstairs area overlooking the stage. "I mean, every now and then there's the occasional person who comes up to me after the show and is like, 'Oh, you're just like your father,' and 'Can I get tickets to his show?' And I'm like, What?"

In fact, the ticket requests and pleas for introductions to Billy became such a problem that she addressed the situation on her well-trafficked myspace.com blog.

"I had to say something," she says. "It was getting out of control. It's like a double-edged sword, because I am really influenced by him and I am proud to be his daughter. He's a huge part of why I'm doing this. And yet, at the same time, I feel like I can't talk about it too much because then it'll just bite me years later. So it's a hard thing. It's a no-win situation in a way."

'I write all my own songs'

Chicago residents Paul Haider and his girlfriend Jeanne Phillips are seated barside. "I was saying to [Jeanne] that I hope things go better for Alexa Ray than they did for Julian Lennon," Haider says. His white T-shirt bears the faded cover art (designed by Brinkley) from Billy Joel's 1993 album "River of Dreams." "And things worked out for Jakob Dylan, but he's kind of an anomaly among the sons and daughters of rock stars."

At a table near the stage, Chicagoans Rose Porento and her 11-year-old son Jake eagerly await Joel's entrance with Jake's aunt and a friend. Jake, Rose points out, is a huge Billy Joel fan and a talented pianist. "You should hear him play," she says. "He'll blow you away."

Chicago investments specialist Richard Jablonowski, on a first date with Chicago attorney Caitlin O'Connor, is disappointed that the special invite and ticket he received for the event turned out to be useless -- it's free to anyone who wanders in. They're making the most of it anyway. "We were just naming our top five Billy Joel songs," O'Connor says. "But only I could name my top five."

Joel's scheduled 7 p.m. performance, which begins 45 minutes late and runs under an hour, gets enthusiastic applause from the good-size crowd. Most of them look on intently from bar stools and stageside seats as she offers up such poppy-angsty-jazzy tunes as "Sapphire Night" (a "quite mushy" romantic ode written in her late teenage years) and the Alanis Morissette-ish "Jaded," among seven or eight others.

"I write all my own songs, everyone should know," she quips from behind her Yamaha keyboard after the first number. "My dad doesn't write them for me."

Afterward, having exited to claps and whistles and you-go-girl yelps, she heads upstairs, where 40 or so fans (of her and her father) are lined up for autographs and photos. A couple of them are less than half her age.

"I love her music and her voice," says turquoise tank-topped Chloe Kausal, 9, aglow in girlish giddiness. During the show, she'd darted back and forth in front of the stage snapping pictures of Joel with a disposable camera.

"She's a Billy Joel fan, too," says her mother Maria. "I grew up with Billy, now she can grow up with Alexa."

Eight-year-old Marissa Garapolo, the niece of Joel's drummer, has similar praise. "She has a really good voice," the smallish and small-voiced Garapolo says, clutching a Hard Rock T-shirt and a miniature CD for the star to sign.

'That's Billy Joel's daughter'

Judging by the queue of mostly twenty-, thirty- and forty-somethings, the grown-ups dig Joel the Younger as well. Of course, this is also the closest many of them will ever get to Billy, and surely that vicariousness is part of the allure. Still, their praise seems genuine.

"Very good music," assesses longtime Billy Joel fan Mark Beckwith, waiting in line with his wife and a friend. "What lured me was her wanting to carve a niche for herself. And she has. She's a very good keyboardist and a very good singer."

"We were impressed," says Haider, whose "River of Dreams" shirt will soon bear Joel's Sharpied inscription. "She's got a lot of potential and a lot of talent."

Signing one item after another, Joel looks thrilled with the onslaught of attention -- even if some of it is merely because of her DNA.

"I mean, I want people to come to my show so they can hear the music," she'd said earlier. "I don't particularly care what gets them to the show. If they leave liking my music and a fan and inspired, then that's the goal. But a lot of these people only come because, 'Oh, that's Billy Joel's daughter. I'm a fan of his music, what does she have to offer?'

"And, you know, that's fine. Because that's how people know me. For now."