My First Celebrity Crush

I don't often have celebrity crushes, but the one that stands out most in my mind is the first one I ever had, at the age of 6 or 7. I was in love with Billy Joel. I knew that he was too old for me, so I fantasized about marrying his son. (As it turns out, he doesn't have a son, just one daughter, who is 4 years younger than I am. His third wife, who he divorced last year, is my age. So I guess that I do have a shot at him, although he is 32 years older than I am, and I've moved on in the last 20 years.) Somehow, this crush came up at work awhile ago. My boss was surprised, since he doesn't consider Joel to be very good-looking. But at the age of 7, I loved the photo of him on the back of the greatest hits album, with his crazy-curly hair, almost a fro, and his jean jacket slung over his shoulder.

In our home in Utah, my parents had a record player, along with a selection of records from their lives before children. My mother often put on records for my brothers and I to dance to--although our definition of dancing was loose--more often marching or hopping around in a circle. There are photos in my photo albums of us in over-sized tee-shirts, probably our pjs, rocking it out. We did learn to be careful not to dance too close to record player--it had a tendency to skip when you jumped up and down right next to it. One of our favorite albums was Billy Joel's Greatest Hits. As a matter of fact, that was one of the first CDs I bought as a teenager; I think my brother and I bought it together. When I was leaving for college, we fought over who got to keep it. I won. He later bought another copy. (This was before we had i-tunes and could have continued to share from the one copy.)

Today I pulled up i-tunes on my computer to listen to some music while cooking. Billy Joel's Greatest Hits came up. It's funny to think back about the ideas I had about certain songs as a kid. I often took the lyrics very literally--I imagined the woman in "The Stranger" jumping ninja style to give him a swift kick in the face. My very favorite song from the album as a kid was "Only the Good Die Young." I am baffled by this now, and unsure why, or what exactly I thought the song was about. I wanted to be a good girl--I guess that the idea of dying young sounded somehow romantic. I remember envisioning volcanoes erupting during the song, I have no idea where this image came from. I certainly had no idea what he was really talking about. I did, and still do, like "Just the Way You Are," "Tell Her About It," and "She's Always a Woman," for pretty straight-forward reasons (although that last one is a little twisted, if you think too much about it. I still like the sentiment). "You May Be Right" is another good one. At the lyrics "turn out the lights, don't try to save me," I envisioned him left alone in a dark room, trying not to be sacred of the dark. "Remember how I found you there alone in your electric chair" brought an image of a row of beauty parlor hair-drier chairs. I think that we even had a mini-record of Alvin and the Chipmunks with a cover of that song. Why anyone thought it made sense for the Chipmunks to sing that particular song is beyond me. For the song "Goodnight Saigon," I remember my mom telling us that Joel had not gone to Vietnam himself, but knew many people who had. When I was in high school, we had a Vietnam vet come to talk to us, and he used the song to start off his presentation, which was very powerful.

Another song that has a very different meaning for me now than it did when I was younger is Cat Steven's "Wild World." As a kid, I always imagined it as a father singing to his daughter (I think that the lines "I'll always remember you as a child, girl" and "don't be a bad girl" gave me this impression). He was giving her advice as she grew up and left him, even though he was having a hard time letting go of her and letting her be an adult. One day a few years ago, listening to this song after being in a relationship that I wished would have lasted, I can see it as him singing to a lover who is leaving. I wish that I had the same grace and goodwill towards my ex as he expresses.

Given my love of Billy Joel and Modern Dance, I am surprised that I didn't see the musical ballet "Movin' Out," which is made up of several of Joel's songs and choreographed by Twyla Tharp. It was showing in NYC when I was in for my internship during college. Maybe I didn't see it because ticket prices were too high. Or maybe I didn't want anything to dilute my memories and associations of the songs from childhood.