Billy Joel tells Bill Maher he's over what 'woke' people think of him

Daily Mail​

6 days ago

Billy Joel might go to extremes - but woke isn't one of them.
The famed singer and pianist, 76, was the latest to appear on the Club Random podcast with Bill Maher, where he vented about the current state of politics and social norms while speaking about his new two-part HBO documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes.
'At this point… I'm inured to it,' the five-time Grammy winner, sitting in his home in front of his piano, told the outspoken media personality Maher, who has had his own ideological clashes with the left.
The Bronx-born musical artist was asked about his take on contemporary culture - citing his 1976 track Angry Young Man - and didn't hold anything back.
The song features the lyrics: 'I believe I've passed the age, of consciousness and righteous rage, I found that just surviving was a noble fight / I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point of view, and life went on no matter who was wrong or right.'
Maher sang the lyrics and said he was sure the generation gap in play would inevitably lead to misguided takes on the issue.
'I feel like that is the message of the age, even though some people will hear that and say, "Look at these two a*******!"'
The Piano Man artist added, 'Boomers.'
Maher said that in contemporary culture, people on the left get upset when others don't blindly agree in their condemnation of President Donald Trump.
Maher cited lyrics from Joel's 1982 song Goodnight Saigon, in reference to the Vietnam War.
The song included the lines, 'And who was wrong? And who was right? It didn't matter in the thick of the fight.'
Maher asked Joel, 'Do you still feel that way?' who responded that he did.
Said Maher, 'And you don't care what they say about you – the woke?'
The Just The Way You Are singer responded, 'At this point, no.'
Joel said that when he doesn't agree with someone, he makes a point to try to understand where they are coming from in their respective viewpoints.
'I'm always trying to find out the other point of view,' Joel said. 'What's, you know, not my point of view - somebody else's point of view.
'Okay, I'd like to understand why they think that way.'
Maher said he feels that it's 'so difficult in this day and age' to have those discussions.
'I mean it is what I am always trying to do on my show,' said Maher, a graduate of the Ivy League's Cornell University. 'It is, look, this is one safe space for everybody and I will take the heat from either – both sides.
'I mean I do feel like the left, who, ironically I'm more actually aligned with, is more snippy about it, and has a worse attitude about it, and makes me viscerally not like them more sometimes.'
The chat between Joel and Maher also ventured into how the proliferation of social media has changed the landscape.
'People say things all the time on [social media] they would never say, if they had to say it to your face,' Maher told Joel.
Joel replied, 'It just always surprises me how people, they express this hatred - it's like, you hate a musician because he wrote something?'