Billy Joel Discusses His Jewish Origins in Archived Video

It's no secret or surprise that singer Billy Joel is a member of the tribe.  One of the great musicians of our time, with 150 million records sold, his music has been covered and parodied by Jewish singers and musicians and college a cappella groups. But he doesn't often talk about his Jewishness and it's hard to find anything particularly Jewish about his music.

This week the Israeli web site Ynet News published an article about a video that has just been released showing an interview with Joel on a German concert stage in 1995, in which he relates some of the experiences he had when he first discovered he was Jewish.

In the September 3 edition of Ynet News, David Shear writes:

On the sixth question in the series, his brother Alex Joel accompanied Billy onstage at Meistersinger Hall and translated the question from German into English. In his answer, Billy looks back on his life as a young child growing up in Hicksville, Long Island, a predominantly Christian neighborhood.

Regarding his circumcision he said, "I had the snip and I had nothing to say about it. I'm still a little pissed off about that."

Later on as a child, when Billy found out he was Jewish, he broke the news to the girl across the street, who replied, "You're going to grow up and have horns on your head." For months afterwards Joel would obsessively check his temples for signs of horns coming in.

It's a funny and very open discussion that all fans of Billy Joel should watch.