Story

The fastest yet !. That’s what comes to mind, and I thought it was going to be a tough one. The last time Billy toured Australia I missed on the chance of meeting him, but this time around I prepared early. I planned to try and meet up with Billy upon his arrival into Sydney, (November 2008) I made my way to the hotel he would be staying at and met up with a couple of friends there who told me they had heard that Billy was supposed to be arriving within the next ten minutes. I was finding this hard to believe as ive never gotten an autograph that quickly, certainly not from someone on Billy Joel’s level.

Twenty mins passed by, I was teasing my two friends for getting poor information, when suddenly it all happened! Billy arrived and I noticed him in the front of the car, as I got my painting ready I could see him admiring it from within the car. He got out and straight away came over to me, holding his hand out to take a pen to sign, he seemed to be in a hurry and as he admired and signed my work I asked for a photograph just as he begun to sign my friends records, all nine of them, Wow !, as he was doing it we encountered a slight bit of rudeness from one of Billy’s entourage who was watching over Billy’s shoulder, making sarcastic accusations to my request of a photograph, he was saying “ oh is that to authenticate it”, then to my friend with all the records, (yes I agree it was a lot), the guy was commenting, “seems quite a lot of records you want autographed”, it was quite annoying, I mean if Billy didn’t want to sign anything im certain he would have said so himself, anyway he turned to face the camera for a photograph with me as he signed the nine records. The guy is a legend and very friendly, it’s a shame I cant say the same for his entourage.