Billy Joel: The Miracle of 52nd Street

NOBODY EVER mistook Billy Joel for a matinee idol. In a world that worships angular, tall, rangy types like Robert De Niro and John Travolta, Joel is out of place. Short and thick-bodied, with eyes as enormous (and frequently as bloodshot) as Robert Mitchum's, with a busted nose and lopsided grin, Joel is a perfect Hell's Kitchen wise guy, a real-life dead-end kid. He walks in a rolling lope, too fluid to be a limp — a gait common only to sailors and young men who grew up wearing pants that, while stylish, were cut a bit snug in the crotch. His diction would appal the Shangri-Las.