In a flurry of questions, recorded at Mount Holyoke College in March 1996, Billy was asked if he remembered doing an impression of Walter Brennan, star of ABC TV series The Real McCoys, during a show sometime in 1972 when he opened for Taj Mahal on several dates of the "Cold Spring Harbor Tour." That tour would begin Billy's solo career on November 9th 1971 with the release of the "Cold Spring Harbor" album and ended with little fanfare at The Schaefer Music Festival in New York City, in June 1972.** Billy and the band would crisscross the country for 7 months as an opening act.

"The song came out as a single and it might not have gotten the attention that it got, but it got banned on a few stations. It got banned in Boston, and banned here, and banned there. I think banning it made some people wonder what they were banning, 'Let me hear what they are banning, I want to decide if I want to ban it.' And that controversy I think contributed to it being a hit record. I think if these people hadn't tried to squash it out it might have died a quiet death."

"I write the music first and then if I like the music I write lyrics. I think every piece of music has something apparent in it lyrically. For me it's like fate knocking on the door. Beethoven's symphonies were written when, if you look at the time period, there was some awesome stuff going on. And you think that's what he must have been writing about. But maybe it was something as banal as what's with the rent? It's like Michelangelo sculpting marble. Inside that marble is the sculpture, he's just got to find it. That's how I write lyrics.

Forty years ago tonight, Billy Joel performed live on radio station WLIR. The broadcast took place at Ultrasonic Recording Studios, on Long Island. It would be his first performance as a solo artist. He played: "Everybody Loves You Now," "She's Got A Way," "All American Blues," "Got To Begin Again" and "Captain Jack."

This week marks the release of "Billy Joel - The Complete Albums Collection" and the two-disc Legacy Edition of his landmark album, "Piano Man." In honor of these career retrospectives, Spinner has two exclusive videos of Billy discussing two LPs from his discography, 1977's "The Stranger" and 1983's "An Innocent Man." Check out both clips below, plus enter to win a copy of the 15-disc box