Billy Joel’s emotional coming-home story behind ‘New York State of Mind’ — as he says goodbye to his MSG residency
“Some folks like to get away/ Take a holiday from the neighborhood/ Hop a flight to Miami Beach/ Or to Hollywood.”
So mused a 27-year-old Billy Joel at the beginning of “New York State of Mind,” his 1976 saloon song that would become a hometown anthem for the ages — and a local crowd favorite during his 10-year monthly residency at Madison Square Garden that ends on Thursday night.
Unhappy with his contract with Family Productions — the label that released his 1971 debut album, “Cold Spring Harbor” — the Bronx-born, Long Island-bred crooner hopped a cross-country flight from New York to Los Angeles.
And the big move paid off: After making his getaway in 1972, becoming a resident lounge lizard in La La Land, Joel recorded his second and third albums, 1973’s “Piano Man” and 1974’s “Streetlife Serenade” under a new deal with Columbia Records.
But you can take the Piano Man out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the Piano Man.
With his fourth album, 1976’s “Turnstiles,” Joel said goodbye to Hollywood — in both song and geography. And his return east inspired his now-legendary love letter to his city.
“‘New York State of Mind,’ I wrote actually while I was on a Greyhound bus on my way back from a gig somewhere,” Joel told SiriusXM in 2016. “And I was really homesick for New York, and the words started coming to me on the bus, and the melody.”
For Joel, writing his own ode to the Big Apple — inspired on that Greyhound bus ride back from Highland Falls, New York — became a very personal mission.
“There’s a lot of songs about New York. ‘New York, New York,’ ‘On Broadway.’ This was about coming back to this place, which I think it really needed, especially back in the mid-’70s, when it was really kind of crappy,” he told Newsday in 2015. “A lot of bad things were happening in New York then.
“There was a lot of crime. Drugs were out of control. The city looked bad, it was really dirty. It almost defaulted financially. It really needed a boost, and I wanted to write an anthem for it.”
But after “Turnstiles” dropped in May 1976, “New York State of Mind” wasn’t even released as a single. That distinction went to “James,” “I’ve Loved the Days” and “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” with only the latter becoming a hit of any note.
But five decades later, it is “New York State of Mind” — nailing the rhythm and blues of his stomping grounds — that has endured as Joel’s signature song, neck and neck with “Piano Man.”
And Joel has performed the song on some of the most important occasions of his career, including the Concert for New York City in October 2001 and a 9/11 telethon a month before that.
“We did it as blues, rather than doing it as a standard. We played it kind of downbeat and soft and slow, almost like an elegy,” he told Newsday in 2015. “It was difficult to get through.”
Eight years later, the timeless tune even inspired a hip-hop spin with “Empire State of Mind,” the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys smash that went No. 1 in 2009. And it still never fails to give Joel’s beloved New York “a boost” whenever it needs it.
