https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-20/billy-joel-and-so-it-goes-documentary-review/105537690
In my twenties' peer-group, i seemed to cotton-onto BJ long before my mates. Indeed i still recall one night, one of my oldest friends [who has stuck with me across all these years, & the great upheaval in my existence that severed many other friendships] & i were perched on high stools at a bar in a sort of cocktail bar cum disco in North Sydney [there were simply stacks of these, in the 80s of this part of my existence]. Somehow we got onto BJ, & i was effusively enthusing, to the somewhat disdain of D, who wasn't specifically rejecting BJ coz of his music per se
, but more afaict coz at that point BJ still hadn't quite cracked it big across the rock & my mate seemed to think he [BJ] was a bit daggy or otherwise uncool. Anyway i rabbited on, & eventually he said he'd give him a fair go... & i'm delighted to say that he later became a big fan, & remains so, including going to various concerts. Ha!
However there's another reason i still clearly recall that time on those stools. I did bang on about BJ to him, but i chickened out, after copious anguishing, on actually verbalising to him something of my confusion & despair wrt my Great Secret, my swirling confused anguished inner world... what i [thought i] was, what it might mean, yada yada
.
Decades later, once the die was cast & i simply had to emerge, or die, he was/is, totes fine with me. I wonder how it might have gone, way back on that night on the stools, if BJ was not all that i'd discussed with him? 🤔🤷
#BillyJoel #OldFriends #IntimateChats #InnerWorlds #transition