Billy Joel hates being on TV.
Billy Joel doesn’t like being on TV
The 75-year-old musician has revealed he’s “camera-shy” despite working in the music industry since the 1960s and he really dislikes being on TV because he’s not “telegenic” he “feels like a geek” when he’s performing from behind his piano.
Billy told Variety: “I’m never crazy about doing TV. I don’t think I’m telegenic anyway. I think I’m one of those artists who should be heard and not necessarily seen.
“I don’t like being on camera. I’m camera-shy. I always feel like a geek when I’m on TV because I’m static at the piano, I can’t move around. I can’t use body language. I’m stuck at the piano. And it just doesn’t feel rock ’n’ roll when you’re on camera. You’re just locked into place.”
Billy also explained he doesn’t like editing tricks used in TV and prefers to be honest when he’s made a mistake. He added: “There’s a lot of fake stuff TV gets away with …
“The crowd likes that [when I restart songs after making a mistake] because there [on stage] you’re being true to that. On TV, you can fake a lot of stuff … “
Billy appeared in a CBS concert film called ‘Billy Joel: The 100th Live at Madison Square Garden – The Greatest Arena Run of All Time’ which aired in April to celebrate his long-running residency at the New York venue.
He performed at the Grammy Awards two months later and admits he wasn’t thrilled to be involved in the televised production.
Billy added: “I wasn’t crazy about doing that either. That was a TV audience, and it was done in Los Angeles, which is a showbiz town, and it was all based around their presentation.
“We were up there on stage, like, ‘Do we sound bad?’ … Because usually that’s the biggest song of the night! So, me and TV, we don’t always get along.”
