Billy Joel 1989–1994
 The Nylon Curtain (1982)
The next wave of Joel's career commenced with the recording of The Nylon Curtain. Considered his most audacious and ambitious album, Joel took more than a page or two from the Lennon-McCartney songwriting style on this heavily Beatles-influenced album.
Work began on The Nylon Curtain in the spring of 1982. However, Joel was sidelined when he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident. At about 5:40 P.M. on April 15, 1982, Cornelia Bynum made a right turn at the intersection of New York Avenue and West 9th Street in Huntington. She then ran a red light and collided with Joel, who was going straight through a green light, on his 1977 XLCR Sportster. After the crash, he flew right over her car and landed on his back. Both his left wrist and hand were broken and badly damaged. Joel, lucky to be alive, managed to get up and take inventory of his helmet, leather, and boots, until a police officer arrived.
Joel was airlifted by helicopter to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Because of the ensuing surgery, which included the temporary insertion of five pins into his wrist, hand, and a month in the hospital, production of the album was shut down temporarily while Joel recovered.
Once The Nylon Curtain was finished, Joel embarked on a brief tour in support of the album, during which his first video special, Live from Long Island, was recorded at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, on December 30, 1982.
The Nylon Curtain went to #7 on the charts, supported by the popular singles Allentown, Goodnight Saigon, and Pressure. Allentown rose to #17 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it one of the most-played radio songs of 1982 and the most successful song from The Nylon Curtain album, besting Pressure, which peaked at #20 and Goodnight Saigon which reached #56.
Joel's marriage began to suffer as his success rose, and on July 20, 1983 he and wife Elizabeth officially divorced, having separated in July 1982. In accordance with the divorce agreement, Elizabeth took half of the singer's assets.
Following The Nylon Curtain tour, Joel retreated to the island of St. Bart's in February of 1983 for some rest and relaxation. At the bar of the hotel in which he was staying, Joel met supermodel Christie Brinkley, who had recently divorced her husband Jean-Fran?ois Allaux. They eventually became a couple, and married on March 23, 1985. As the story goes, when they met they didn't recognize one another despite both being among the most famous faces in the world at the time. This is supposedly what prompted the line He was always Joe to me in the song Christie Lee which appeared on the album An Innocent Man which is purportedly about their first meeting.
An Innocent Man (1983)
The song Uptown Girl was one of the first songs written when Joel returned from vacation. Uptown Girl is widely considered to be about Christie Brinkley, whom he started dating during the song's creation (the music video also included Christie Brinkley in it). It became a worldwide hit upon its release, and Joel's sole # 1 in the United Kingdom. The resulting album, An Innocent Man, was compiled as a tribute to the rock and roll music of the 1950s and 1960s, and also resulted in Joel's second Billboard # 1 hit, Tell Her About It, which was the first single off the album in the Summer of 1983. The album itself reached # 4 on the charts and #2 in UK. It also boasted 6 top-30 singles, the most of any album in Joel's catalog. At the time the album came out that summer, WCBS-FM began playing The Longest Time both in regular rotation and on the Doo Wop Shop. Many fans wanted this to be the next single released in the fall, but that October, Uptown Girl would be released, peaking at # 3. In December the title song, An Innocent Man, would be released as a single and would peak at #10 and #8 in the UK, early in 1984. That March The Longest Time, a Doo Wop song, would finally be released as a single and peak at # 14 on the Hot 100 and be a number one Adult Contemporary hit. That summer, Leave A Tender Moment Alone would be released and hit # 27 while Keeping the Faith would peak # 18 in January of 1985. An Innocent Man was also nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy, but lost to the inevitable winner that year, Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and 2 (1985)
Following the success of An Innocent Man, Joel had been approached to release an album of his most successful singles. This was not the first time this topic had come up, but Joel had initially considered Greatest Hits albums as marking the end of one's career. This time, he agreed, and Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and 2 was released as a 4-sided album and 2-CD set, with the songs in sequence of when they were released. The new songs You're Only Human (Second Wind) and The Night is Still Young were recorded and released as singles to support the album; both reached the top 40, peaking at # 9 and # 34, respectively.
Greatest Hits was highly successful, selling over 20 million copies worldwide and becoming the top-selling double album of all time by a solo artist (and second overall after The Wall by Pink Floyd). It has since been certified diamond by the RIAA for over 20 million albums sold. To date it is the 6th best selling album in American music history according to the RIAA.
Coinciding with the Greatest Hits album release, Joel released a 2-volume Video Album that was a compilation of the promotional videos he had recorded from 1977 to the present time. Along with videos for the new singles off the Greatest Hits album, Joel also recorded a video for his first hit, Piano Man, for this project.
Two versions of Greatest Hits were released on CD: the initial release on double CD in 1985, and a re-released Enhanced CD version in 1998. While both are the same basic album in general, there are a number of subtle differences between the two:
While all the longer hits (Piano Man, Captain Jack, Goodnight Saigon) are fully intact, many other shorter songs (Pressure, Just the Way You Are, My Life) were shortened significantly in the 1985 release. Oddly enough, the included booklet lists all of the lyrics, even the parts cut for time. These songs are fully restored in the re-release.
The 1985 release features the live version of Say Goodbye to Hollywood from Songs in the Attic. The version from Turnstiles was used for the 1998 re-release.
The 1998 re-release features enhanced content due to advancements in CD technology over the previous 13 years.
The Bridge (1986)
Joel had already scored a Top 10 hit with Modern Woman from the 1985 movie, Ruthless People, (starring Bette Midler, Danny DeVito, Helen Slater and Judge Reinhold), when he began work on the album that would become The Bridge in early 1986. Ray Charles duetted with Joel on the ballad Baby Grand (which Joel wrote by himself), and Steve Winwood played Hammond organ on the song Getting Closer. The final song recorded for the album was Code Of Silence. Cyndi Lauper contributed backing vocals on Code of Silence and garnered the only co-writing credit of Joel's entire career for helping him with the lyrics to the song.
Though it broke into the Top Ten, The Bridge was not a success in relation to some of Joel's other albums, but it yielded the hit A Matter Of Trust (#10). In a departure from his piano man persona, Joel is shown in its video as playing a Les Paul-autographed Gibson guitar. The ballad This Is The Time also charted, peaking at #18, and has been a favorite on the prom circuit ever since. Modern Woman was also released as a single and was quite successful, but Joel has since said in interviews he doesn't care for the song, and subsequently it has been left off most of his compilation sets (the exception appears to be My Lives).
On November 18, 1986 an extended version of the song Big Man On Mulberry Street was used on a season three episode of Moonlighting. The episode was titled Big Man On Mulberry Street. In a dream sequence, Maddie Hayes envisions David Addison with his ex-wife. An extra horn solo was added to the song.
It was also the last Billy Joel album to carry the Family Productions logo.
At around this time, Billy completed voice work on Disney's Oliver & Company, released in 1988, a loose adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist. Billy brought both his acting and musical talents to the film as Dodger. For the film, Billy recorded a song titled Why Should I Worry? Critics were generally positive toward the film, and pointed to Billy's acting contribution as one of its highlights, despite its being his first acting job. In interviews, Billy explained that he took the job due to his love of Disney cartoons as a child.
The USSR period 1987
Throughout his tour supporting The Bridge, Joel and his handlers started planning a trip to the Soviet Union. He would be one of the first American rock acts to play there since the Berlin Wall went up, a fact not lost on history buff Joel. There would be six live performances, three each at indoor arenas in Moscow and Leningrad. Joel and his family (including young daughter Alexa) and his full touring band made the trip in June 1987. The entourage was filmed for television and video to eventually offset the cost of the trip, and the concerts were simulcast on radio around the world.
The audience in at least the first Moscow shows was filled with members of the Communist Party, who received tickets from the government as a perk. Most of that audience took a long while to warm up to Joel's energetic show, something that never had happened in other countries he had performed in. As a result of that, a minor international incident occurred when he famously flipped over an electric keyboard during the second Moscow show as a show of frustration that his lighting engineers would not turn down the house lights to calm the audience despite several requests. The lighting engineers were more concerned with the amount of light being adequate for filming.
??????? (1987)
The album ???????, Russian for Concert, was released in the fall of 1987. Singer Peter Hewlitt was brought in to hit the high notes on his most vocally challenging songs, like An Innocent Man.
It has been estimated that Joel lost more than US $1 million of his own money on the trip and concerts, but he has said the goodwill he was shown there was well worth it.
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