For some reason, it didn’t dawn on me that it would affect my record, but radio dropped it like a hot potato.” But, it wasn’t the end of his country career. “I remember that I was in (producer) Nelson Larkin’s office watching TV, and we saw the shuttle go down. Then, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, and due to the title of the song, the release began to fall quickly back down the chart. The track was rapidly climbing the country singles chart, and had just entered the top ten in January 1986. His first release for the label, “Burned like a Rocket,” was sent to radio in the latter part of 1985. However, it was another five years until Royal tasted career success again, signing with Atlantic Records in Nashville. Royal would leave Columbia for stints on smaller labels in the 1970s, eventually landing on Mercury Records, for whom he released a self-titled album in 1980. The singer’s subsequent hits included “I Knew You When” and “Cherry Hill Park,” which became his final Top-40 on the pop charts in 1969. It was an amazing feeling, and led to a great career.” “I was living in Cincinnati, Ohio at the time, and a radio friend of mine named Dusty Rhodes played the record. In a 2010 interview, Royal recalled the first time he heard the song on the radio. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the Joe South composition helped him to become a star. Royal’s career path took him to Columbia Records, where he released “Down in the Boondocks” in 1965. Roy Orbison’s Top Hot 100 Hits: A Playlist For someone who hasn’t really released new music in more than 20 years, Billy Joel is having an epic third act.Patrick Haggerty, Country Pioneer Behind Cult Favorites Lavender Country, Dies at 78 Legendary Village Voice critic Robert Christgau derided him as “a force of nature and bad taste.” He has spent much of his life in battle: against his ex-wives, against booze, bad managers and bankruptcy, and against critics who’ve considered him too uncool for rock ’n’ roll. Today, at 65, Billy Joel is in the midst of an unprecedented residency at Madison Square Garden. His monthly shows gross him more than $2 million each. He has sold more than 150 million albums and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2013, he was among the recipients at the Kennedy Center Honors. A Hicksville native, he has been considered the poet laureate of Long Island for decades. “None of those people in the arena screaming your name really know you,” Joel tells author Fred Schruers in the new book “Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography.” (Joel, who sat for 100 hours of interviews, eventually withdrew from the project over fears it would be too revelatory.) Yet he’s always felt a failure where it most counts: love. “You just need one - one person out of millions - to know and accept and love you for being, well, just the way you are. I see old folks walking down the street who look like they’ve been together 50 years, and there’s something very touching about it - that they’ve lasted so long. I can even try to achieve it again, and often have.” I used to wonder: How come I don’t have that? I can dream about it, think about it, write music and lyrics and sing about it. The Shark Billy Joel and Elizabeth Weber WireImage His three tortured marriages - and the music they’ve inspired - are testament to that. Joel met his first wife in 1970, through his friend and bandmate Jon Small. Elizabeth Weber was married to Small, and they had a baby son, Sean - but Joel was knocked out. “She wasn’t like a lot of the other girls I knew at that time who had taken home ec and cooking classes,” he told Schruers. Almost like a European-type - not a typical American girl.” intelligent and not afraid to speak her mind, but could also be seductive. When Small discovered the affair, Weber left them both, disappearing for weeks.

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