"Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?"

Here are a handful of excerpts from an enjoyable conversation that Billy Joel had with Alec Baldwin on the public radio program Here’s the Thing. The interview took place on July 29, 2012.

“I started taking lessons when I was about 4 or 5, and I went up until I was about 16. So it was almost 12 years of classical piano lessons. I loved it. But, I just,…when you become a teenager, everything changes. I didn’t want to read other people’s dots anymore.

“I grew up in a very musical home. I heard music all the time. We had an old upright piano. My father was playing. My mother would sing. The radio was always on,

“I used to bang on the piano. My mom got sick of hearing me bang, and she dragged me down the street and I started taking lessons. And I took to it.

“I’m not a front man, where you stand with a mic like Mick Jagger. I didn’t have the Mick Jagger moves. I had a keyboard. You’re kind of locked in. You can’t move around. You can’t carry a keyboard around with you unless you’re an accordion player, and that looks like Lawrence Welk. 'A one, and-a two.' So I stood at the piano or I sat at the piano. But then I realized, you know, that girl that I always had a crush on is actually looking at me. She’d never looked at me twice all those years at school. We’re playing at the Holy Family Church, the church dance. I was about 15, 16. Virginia is looking at me. You know, “Come out, Virginia”? That Virginia. She’s looking at me and I’m like, 'Oh, my God, she’s looking at me.' And the band sounded great. I loved what I was doing. The crowd went 'Yay' when we finished every song. And at the end of the night the priest gave us each $15.00, which in 1965 was $1,500. That was it. The door locked behind me, this is what I’m gonna to do. I don’t want to go to Carnegie Hall anymore. But I end up going to Carnegie Hall anyway.”