last week, after what seems like ages, i went impromptu cd shopping and ended up holding, among five others, an essential billy joel in my hand. 

now billy joel probably isn’t someone a thirty-something would pick up at this age and time – you’re expected to have either grown out of him or forgotten him. at least the twenty-something counter-boy at planet m seemd to think so, going by the curiously puzzled look he gave me as he scanned the basket, wondering what this shortish druggy-eyed oh-so-unpretty anomaly of a “pop”star (no, i wasn’t describing myself!) was doing among the likes of led zeppelin, r.e.m. and collective soul. shouldn’t the myriad boy-band versions of uptown girl and the hundred-and-one video reruns of we didn’t start the fire or even the occasional river of dreams have covered this guy’s claim to fame?

well, frankly, I could go on at length about billy joel being a somewhat short-changed musical phenomenon. i could passionately start a case, like i’m so often wont to do with perceived underdogs, for his straight-from-the-guts deep-throated singing, the skillful songwriting, the connoisseur melodic compositions, the smooth pianoman’s fingers, the perennial sad look of the egoistical misunderstood lonely artist etc etc. not to mention an exposé on the difficult task of classifying his music – too complex for rock-n-roll, too clear-dictioned and guitar-riff-barren for classic rock, too deep for pop, too four-by-four for blues-jazz yet bordering on the classical, to name just a few.  

but i don’t want to talk about billy joel's music here. this is rather about the effect of listening to 18 songs of his at a stretch after more than ten years.

listening to billy joel brought me back to a period of my life when success meant getting to carry the house captain’s sweater around your neck. 
when fourteen was neither the house captain’s age nor the lowest marks you got at the half-yearlies but johann cruyff’s jersey number. 
a time when the mind was overworked with ingenious and succeedingly daring pranks to play out on unsuspecting teachers, when limbs and spirits were sprightly swift and supple in escaping from the self-same teachers’ menacing gaze. 
when friends were the blood vessles of your bio-psycho-logical existence, when bliss was an accidental eye-contact with your secret admirer and devastation his innocuous interactions with your best friend. 
a time when april thundershowers were a certainty and orange juices came only in winter through a mechanical squeezer. 
when the word “parents” was spelt correctly as “enemy”, “sister” as “spy” and “dentist” as “pain in the neck”. 
when tears of rage came out with the same frequency as pimples acoss the forehead.

at such a time my vacation afternoons were spent in the old living room, curtains drawn, door shut - ostensibly to let the sleeping “enemy” lie - and the only recorded tape of the household playing early eighties boston radio hits. this was a compilation accidentally recorded by my father about six years back in the u.s. while testing the new two-in-one he had just bought. yes, my father was the second “successful engineer” in our glory-laden family of engineers to have tasted the sweet grapes of an american sojourn. this, mind you, at a time when indo-u.s. relations were reeling under reaganism and, depending upon your political convictions, working on an american project was perceived as a subversive or grand affair.

but coming back to that tape: in those primitive days of doordarshan and a.i.r. national fare, this compilation was my gateway to musical globalisation. due to the random and post-dated nature of the recording, my initiation into western pop and rock came through a not-so-obvious selection of tracks and artists. as a result my first ever favourite song was steve winwood’s rather obscure and critic-bashed still in the game. my first exposure to the beatles was through power to the people and the first song I knew by heart was the utterly forgettable my best friend. that the latter actually did not discourage me from delving into queen big time later on says much for my youthful enthusiasm. it was much, much later that i discovered in that same hotch-potch collection some rare gems of crosby stills and nash, david bowie and early aerosmith along with a couple of memorable one-hit-wonders. or realised that the who in the eighties was actually a ghost of their early talent.

the songs i listened to the most were the kinks’ hummable apeman and the who’s longish  eminence front. especially this latter track was ideally suited for the long afternoons i was talking about. strumming on my upturned badminton raquet in dedicated accompaniment to pete townshend’s long electronic-guitar-riffs, i acquired my air-guitaring skills effortlessly at an early age. to be practised to perfection, along with lead-singing antics with a rolled-up magazine-microphone, on aerosmith’s dream on. the tousled hair i sported since eternity easily allowed me to tie my school red-ribbon a la steven tyler’s head-band. not that i knew who tyler was back then - i only knew rockstars without a red bandana were no rockstars. 

my musical odyssey had begun.

and then there was billy joel on side b, caught between one half of the doobie brothers and another half of the wailers, regaling a live audience with say goodbye to hollywood. in an age without music television, youtube and wikipedia i had no idea who this "billy joe" (as it had registered in my twelve-year-old ears) was. but the voice was mesmerising, deep, confident, melodious. the lyrics were a jumble of strange words – i was sure johnny soko featured in them somehow – but they were anyway secondary to the thrill of the live concert feel and the sleek, husky voice, the first male voice to have touched my adolescent nerves. in the heightened sense of happiness created i even allowed my sister to sing along with me, loud and clear, johnny soko et al. of course it was another matter that she was better at the singing than me, but then she didn’t have half as good a sense of rhythm as mine, to mention nothing of her absolute lack of style. the clincher for the song was the ecstatic staccato “wo-o-o-o-oh” at the end, which i later discovered to be an impromptu live concoction. it transported me to the palm-lined sunset boulevard, a sunglass-wearing windblown face driving by in a steel-blue cadillac, waving goodbye against a clear blue sky to a magical city full of rock-n-roll heroism.

thus was born my first musical crush. and a love affair with music for life.

thanks, piano man. we’re all in the mood for a melody, and you got us feeling alright.