33 Years Ago, Billy Joel Revealed the Exact Moment He Knew His Passion Would Lead to True Success

This is a story about Billy Joel and the most important lessons we learn in life.

It starts many years ago from my perspective, when I was graduating from college, part of the 50th annivesary class. Some of my classmates and I were disappointed:

• The class before us had Joel as their commencement speaker, during a time when he was probably one of the most broadly popular and successful musicians on the planet.
• But our commencement speaker was a retiring professor named Carmen Donnarumma, given the honor because he had been teaching at our relatively young institution from the very beginning. 

Now, as it turned out, Donnarumma gave a fantastic speech. He won over skeptical audience and ending on a note that I still remember vividly decades later.

In fact, I’ve written here before about I consider this speech to be one of the greatest graduation addresses of all time.

However, in writing that article, I also took the chance to look up what Joel had to say the year before. 

And it turns out the musician who calls himself the Piano Man had a truly inspiring message that answers one of the key questions most people ask themselves — namely what marks the difference between successful people and those who only dream?

Today marks Joel’s last performance after a multiyear residency at Madison Square Garden. So, as he celebrates this achievement, let’s take a look at what he had to say to an audience of very recent graduates back in 1991.

I’ve embedded a video of his speech at the end of this article, but I think this is the most important part:

“I didn’t graduate from high school. … I’m a graduate of the University of Rock and Roll, class of 1970. …

My diploma was a check: a week’s worth of wages earned from playing long nights in smoky, crowded clubs in the New York area … enough to convince me that I no longer needed to work in a factory, or be a short order cook, or pump gas or paint houses, or do any of the other day jobs I’d had to do in order to make ends meet. 

That check meant that I was now able to make a living solely by doing the thing that I loved most: making music.

It meant that I had become self-reliant as a musician. 

I will never forget that day. I consider it to be one of the most important days of my life.”

Classic question right? Business leaders get asked this all the time; in fact, they probably ask themselves. Are people giving good advice when they say you should “follow your passion?” 

People have difference perspectives:

• Steve Jobs said it was a requirement: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust.”
• Mark Cuban said the exact opposite: “Follow your passion?  No. Follow your effort. No one quits anything they’re good at.”
• And a study out of Harvard Business School — actually, a study of previous studies — suggested a bit of a semantic change: don’t follow your passion, but do seek out your purpose.

But I think what Joel had to say, all those years ago carries is very insightful:

1. Yes, follow your passion. 
2. But don’t follow it blindly. Find a way to practice it that pays off enough to support your effort.

It’s poignant to think that we have an opportunity to look now at how Joel, who is 75, gave a speech when he was 42, in which he shared a pivotal moment he experienced when he was 21.

Some lessons are timeless. And that makes them worth remembering over and over.

Here’s the 33-year-old video of that Joel’s speech: