Billy Joel Symposium at Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame looks at music, legacy, impact

A discussion of suburban motifs in Billy Joel’s 1980 album, "Glass Houses." A comparison between the piano-based compositions of Joel and George Gershwin. A talk, subtitled "Billy Joel and the Anthropology of Deindustrialization."

If America's colleges ever offer a major on the Piano Man, these could easily be among the course requirements. For now, they’re among the events making up the first-ever Billy Joel Symposium, which runs Saturday and Sunday at the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame in Stony Brook.

Six months in the making, the symposium is intended to achieve a few different goals, according to Tom Needham, the Long Island hall’s vice chairman. One is to keep Joel’s fans satisfied while the singer undergoes treatment for a brain disorder that led him to cancel all upcoming concerts last year. Another is to highlight the hall’s induction ceremony for Dennis Arfa, Joel’s longtime booking agent, which takes place Saturday evening. Yet another purpose, and perhaps the most important, is to improve Joel’s standing as a serious songwriter, musician and performer.

"He wasn't always treated the best by music critics," Needham said, pointing to Joel’s frequent abuse at the hands of Rolling Stone during the 1970s and his omission from The New York Times’ recent list of America’s greatest living songwriters. "But I reached out to academics who study music, and put the word out," Needham said. "And the response was overwhelming."

That call went out in December and invited "fans, scholars, critics, musicians, and students to submit individual papers." Needham wouldn’t estimate how many submissions the Hall of Fame received, instead calling it "an awful lot." Ultimately, 20 papers were chosen, though there will also be nonacademic talks from such folks as David Rosenthal, Joel’s keyboard player of 33 years; John Jackson, director of the Billy Joel Archive; and Wayne Robins, a former music critic at Newsday.

Robins, a Franklin Square native who has also been inducted into the hall, covered pop music for Newsday from 1975 to 1995, a stretch that included most of Joel’s recording career (his final rock album, “River of Dreams,” came out in 1993). Robins, 76, said his talk at the symposium will focus on the delicate line he walked as both a reporter who cultivated a relationship with Joel and also a critic who had to honestly express his opinions.

One early review stung Joel so much that he brought it up during their first interview together, Robins recalled. But they also forged enough of a relationship that Robins joined Joel’s tour through Russia in the summer of 1987. “I never asked him for favors or vice versa,” Robins said. “We were just acutely aware of each other’s existence and had to deal with each other.”

Jackson, the archivist, said he’ll present audio and video artifacts that have not been seen or heard by the public. One possibility: extremely rare footage of Joel’s “Glass Houses” tour, filmed at the Budokan arena in Tokyo. Included are portions of just three songs, “You May Be Right,” “My Life” and “Honesty," that were meant to be handed out to television stations. Jackson may also bring a clip of Joel playing “My Life" for an underwhelmed crowd in Philadelphia before the song had been released.

“It's one of his most identifiable, enduring songs. And you're like, ‘No one knows what this is,’ ” Jackson marveled. “It’s just fun to hear things like that.”

One of the younger presenters will be Kendall Biehl, 22, a Brooklyn Law School student from Tolono, Illinois, who was in her early teens when she fell in love with Joel’s music. Biehl became such a fan that she wrote “Billy Joel’s Musical Narratives and the Tapestry of Collective Memory” as her undergraduate thesis at the University of Tampa. When she saw the symposium’s call for papers on Joel’s Instagram Stories, she sent hers in.

Biehl said she’s seen Joel live only three times, including at his 149th Madison Square Garden concert, but she understands the singer’s need to stay off the road and mind his health. “I think that if he needs to focus on that, he should. He's given up so many decades of his life already,” she said. “But selfishly, I would love to see him again."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com