Grammy Award winner, Platinum recording artist, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Billy Joel says being honored by his hometown tops all the other awards.

Joel was honored once again this past week, this time with a Proclamation from Governor Pataki and the New York State Assembly, declaring May 9, Joel's birthday, as Billy Joel Day in the state of New York.

The proclamation was presented to Joel this past Friday by Hicksville Assemblyman Marc Herbst, in the Bridgehampton office of Assemblyman Fred Thiele.

"This week we will honor one of Long Island's most famous native sons," said Herbst. "Billy Joel is not only a great musician and acclaimed songwriter, as well as a former resident of the Hicksville section of Levittown, but continues to be an esteemed member of Long Island's business community...This is a great time for all New Yorkers to pay tribute to this great Long Islander."

Joel, who turned 50 this last month, has great memories of growing up in Levittown. His parents, Howard and Rosalind Joel, were original owners of a Levitt house, just over the Hicksville border, where Billy Joel lived until he moved to Jericho when he was 18.

In an exclusive interview with the Levittown Tribune, Joel described a sense of connection with the Levittown/Hicksville area. "It had a huge impact on me...All my friends were in Levittown, my best friend to this day still was from right around the corner...I took piano lessons from the teacher who lived in Levittown, right down the street. I developed a love of music from listening to the radio that we heard in Levittown. That's where I'm from so that was probably the most influential time in my life."

Joel's first band, the Echoes, which was later known as the Lost Souls, practiced in a Levittown garage and featured, along with Joel, a drummer and bass player from Levittown.

The band's first gig, according to Joel, was Holy Family Church in Hicksville. "It was the first time I ever played anywhere and I thought we sounded great. I looked down and this girl was looking at me that I had a crush on,Virginia, from 'Come out Virginia, don't make me wait,' that was Virginia, Virginia Callahan. She was looking at me and I thought, 'This is so cool," said Joel of his Holy Family performance. He said that he was even more thrilled with the evening when the priest gave them each $15 after the show. He added, "I was completely hooked. I was in. There was no way I was going to do anything else but be a musician. That all happened in Levittown."

According to Joel his mother, who had a deep love for music and paid for his piano lessons and made him practice, had the greatest influence on him and his career. "If I had to point to one person and say, 'That person was responsible for me being a musician,' that would be my mother. As far as composers, probably Beethoven and then Lennon and McCartney." It was in Levittown, said Joel, that he first heard the Beatles, who so greatly influenced his life.

When asked how he felt about being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, Joel responded, "That was nice. I've gotten different kinds of awards, Grammy Awards, being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Platinum albums, American Music Awards, People's Choice Awards, and ACE Awards, you name it, I got it, but it really doesn't compare to the first time I got a check, from being a musician, where the check covered all the rent and food and I had a little money left over and I realized I didn't have to keep doing this day job." At that point Joel's day job was working in Franklin Carbon and Ribbon, a factory in Hicksville that made typewriter ribbon. "When I got that first check when I was about 18 years old and I realized that I could afford my own place and pay the rent and be able to buy groceries and some clothing purely from being a musician, that was the greatest award I think I ever got. So, being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is great but after that first check that covered all the bills, everything else has been gravy."

Joel said he worries that some comments he made about Levittown during his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame may have been misinterpreted. What he meant by his comments, noted Joel, "was that living in a housing development was strange to me. I didn't want to stay in this housing development. Everything looked too much the same, but there were great people in that town...I didn't want people to think that when I said, 'Levittown wasn't really a great place,' I was talking about the people. I wasn't talking about the people, I was talking about the way it looked. When I grew up it was still raw, the trees hadn't come in yet. I had a great childhood and I had great friends and I knew a lot of really good people. I never forgot where I came from."

It is because he never forgot where he came from that Joel feels so honored that his hometown remembers him. About being honored by his hometown Joel says, "That's nice, really nice." He went on to say, "Richard Evers, a very knowledgeable man, a very nice man, who was actually my history teacher when I was in junior high school, Hicksville Junior High, runs a museum, I believe, and he sent me some information about it and there was a little bit that had to do with me and for some reason or another that touched me more than a lot of these other awards that I've mentioned, just the fact that my hometown has a memento of me. That's moving to me, that's special."

Joel went on to say that he is a Long Islander and does not think he could live anywhere other than Long Island at this point. He says, "My exposure to Long Island started in Levittown," he said. "I fell in love with Long Island and I had the opportunity to do that because my parents were able to afford a house in Levittown so I have a great debt of gratitude to have been able to live on Long Island because of Levittown."

A major component of Levittown, said Joel, was the suburban lifestyle. He reminisced about different aspects of growing up in the early days of Levittown and the games they played in the sumps, hanging out in the village greens, and eating the various ethnic foods that were predominant in the area. Another pastime, said Joel, was walking down to Hempstead Turnpike. "For some reason or another, I don't know why, there was this whole mystique that if you walked up and down Hempstead Turnpike, somehow you could meet girls and it never happened. I don't know why, we'd just go down to the turnpike...that was supposed to be the big boulevard."

There were many stores and restaurants that Joel remembers as being favorites of his childhood. One of his favorite restaurants, Caruso's, was a Neapolitan restaurant with murals on the walls. He noted that he was very disappointed, this past Christmastime, when he brought his 13-year-old daughter, Alexa, to show her where he grew up, his old house, and his old hangouts, and he discovered that Caruso's was no longer there. Other favorites he said, were China Moon and Dave Shores. They used to shop for clothes, he said, at May's Department Store. "Then they built the Mid-Island Plaza [now the Broadway Mall], which is in northern Hicksville...that kind of tore the heart out of the old town of Hicksville because old Hicksville looked like small town America- it had a soda shop, a movie theater, a church, a shoemaker, a grocery store and a delicatessen- it was a nice, old-fashioned main street from around the turn of the century. It was a beautiful little town...and that became kind of a ghost town once they built Mid Island Plaza," said Joel. It is this old-town memory of his youth that Joel is searching for and seems to have found out on the east end where he has lived now for over a decade.

Joel said that where he grew up, "wasn't your typical suburb like you'd see now that had no soul at all. There were a lot of other things besides just tract housing." Joel's mother recently ran into another original Levitt owner, he said. "It's funny, when these original Levitt house owners meet another set of original owners, it's like they were in the war together or something. They can just sit and talk for hours about how life was when they were young people in Levittown." Being from Levittown, he noted, gives one an identity and a sense of place.

Joel concluded, "If it hadn't been for that particular development we would have never been able to have afforded to live on Long Island. At that time we didn't know that this was going to be this great experiment and it ended up being the prototype for all developments. I still think ours is the best. I look at these new ones, okay, so the houses look better, or they're bigger or fancier, or they're glossier or shinier, but I don't think that they have any soul- not like Levittown."