Updated August 2025
"AND SO IT GOES" THE BILLY JOEL HBO DOCUMENTARY &
Because I Was There When The Hassles Happened , Don't You Think I Ought To Know !
FIRST THINGS FIRST
THE HBO MAX DOCUMENTARY IS FLAT OUT FIRST RATE ALL THE WAY . THE INTERVIEWS, THE INFO , PRESENTATION ETC. FILMED EVERY BIT AS GOOD AS JON SMALL'S LAST PLAY AT SHEA AND LIVE THE CONCERT AT SHEA WAS. IT' CONTAINS MORE "STUFF" THAN PROBABLY ANY OF US OTHER THAN THE PRINCIPALS COULD EVER BE ENTITLED TO KNOW.
Post interviews with producers and directors give even further insights into what it took to bring 5 hours of an historic and iconic life time of AMAZING peaks and valleys . They are easy to find on the internet. Like any epic event, the editing was probably as much of a task as was producing it. I learned there was an additional 90 minutes left in the cutting room. I would say the only one thing I would have liked to have seen was a sound clip or two from the second Hassles album, not because I was there when some of it happened, but because it would show the INCREDIBLE LEAP he took as a TUNESMITH from there to what was to come just a few years on.
BRAVO BILL & BRAVO ALL WHO WERE INVOLVED
First time I met the Hassles, it was in August of 1966, when they came into the club My House to do an audition during our break, for Danny Mazur the clubs owner. They were the original group with three instruments, Harry Weber on portable organ (Vox? ) with a bass keyboard side piece (not bass pedals) like The Doors used, Ritchie McKenna on guitar ( Gibson 335 ) Jon Small on Drums ( pretty sure Ludwigs ) and front man "Little John" Dizek shakin' his tambourine, dancing up a storm and doing Mick Jagger & Eddie Brigati impresions. My impression was they certainly had a lot of unbridaled energy and were showmen ala the Rascals ( we all were influnced by the Rascals back then). Jon Small was an absolute mad man, pounding away seriously on his drums. Harry crouched over his organ a lot and seemed to be out there. Richie was a bit more staid like Gene Cornish of the Rascals.
Fast Forward : It's New Year's Eve 1966. I have now played 1000's of gigs since my first paid one at Mercy High School, May 10th 1961, mainly as a guitarist and I am on the verge of going full time pro but also now in my first year of college, which was required to keep from being sent to Vietnam. I have gone doubling on guitar and Farfisa portable organ in the last year so and am now a full time Hammond organist, thanks to the popularity of the Rascals.Who created dozens of organists and sold bueaucoup Hammond B-3s ( which cost as much as a new Chevy) since they first turned up at The Barge, in the Hamptons during the summer of 1965 where they got signed to Atlantic from that gig.
Danny Mazur : Billy would describe him as " a typical Long Island club owner, kind of a tough, older Jewish guy, pinky ring, very heavyset, kind of gruff." ___Billy Joel The Definitive Biography
I was getting ready to go to my New Years gig playing with The Strangers and also backing up Bobby "Tossin' & Turnin" Lewis , when the phone rang. It was Danny Mazur, a club owner and now the Hassles very authortarian band manager. I had worked for Danny many times in the past, going back to '65 when his club was called The Cat & The Fiddle. He was calling to offer me a spot in the Hassles who he now managed. (The success of the Rascals, not only sold a ton of Hammonds they also created dozens of copy style bands on Long Island with similar sounding names)
I told Danny I would think about it, but was not really sold on going with those guys, even though the Strangers were going through some shaky personel changes and Danny (who could be very persuasive) told me he had big plans for the Hassles, including a major label record deal. When I passed on the Mazur's offer, they eventually got a kid named Billy Joel and things went well for them for a spell. But Danny was really pissed off at me, probably for the reason the search for an organ player was going to interupt the Hassles for a bit from earning high % commisions. According to Jon it would be sometime in the spring of 1967 that Billy joined the Hassles. Danny actually banished The Strangers from working at his club for about a year, until he heard my new group Mrs. Murphy's Basement. Not only did we resume gigs there, he also wound up managing my band for a time. He got us to package tour with them both at high schools and clubs and record along with them for United Artists. Not much came of the whole thing for us or the Hassles. In December of '68 Jon Small stopped by one Sunday during one of our recording session at Studio Three right next to Carnegie Hall. Jon told me Billy & he were quitting the Hassles even though their album was finished and about to come out in January. They split and formed Attila, which turned into a heavy metal trainwreck for a while and then things got real ugly ( no better way to get that entire story from either Fred Schruers bio book on Billy, or now this most excellent documetary "And So It Goes") Post Attila & afterwards the Cold Spring Harbor / Artie Ripp disaster topped by the domestic entanglement of Jon, Elizabeth and Billy and his drinking furniture polish etc. Most everyone knows Billy the Kid & Elizabeth Weber Small went out west coast to regather and did ok for themselves with BIlly playing piano and much more.
THE HASSLES INDUCTION INTO THE LONG ISLAND MUSIC HALL OF FAME (BETTER LATE THAN NEVER)
Speaking as someone who has been around the block a time or two with Music BIZ politics and those of places known as several Halls of Fame, I sometimes wondered why it took this place so long to finally give the Hassles their due. Especially since both John Dizek, Harry Weber and Howie Blauvelt were deceased, only Jon Small, a very frail Richie McKenna, and a short term bass player Phil Marden (who was long lost in the wind except in several of their publicity photos) and of course Billy, who Newsday called Billy JOE in a feature article about their Long Island success and bright future in 1967 !
As far back as Novmber 2006, Richard L'Hommedieu,the LIMHOF musuem's brainchild / founder approached me at the Mastic Shirley Library. I was back on Long Island from Nashville Tn, doing a book talk on my The Knapps Lived Here Book. The Hall ( there was no physical hall yet) had just held their first induction ceremony at the Patchogue Theatre. Richard had read this full page article that Newsday did on me, mainly regarding the Knapp book , but at the end delved into my now successful Music Biz history and association with the Hassles. He p resented me with a Museum Hat and T Shirt and said I want you to be in next years inductees. He gave me his buisness card, told me to call him anytime and to make plans to be there next fall.
I had friends and former band members who were really jazzed by this news and wanted to make plans to attend . Some coming from as far away as California. When I tried contacting Richard several times, in the spring or early summer, I got no further than his answering machine . It was probably around August that a former band member, who lived on Long Island, told me that the LIMHOF was in difficulty and that the induction ceremony was cancelled and the future of the hall was in doubt. It was disappointing and I later heard that Sam Ash Music ( a huge NY based chain super store ) had stepped in to rescue and restructure the hall, but for now , no more inductions and that Richard L'Hommedieu was no longer even associated with it.
As a veteran of the music biz I just thought Well That's That.... I still have the shirt , but lost my hat some where in Paris in 2007.
HATS OFF TO LARRY & RICHARD L'HOMMIDIEU
Jon Small talking at the Hassles Induction June 2025. Notice the slide show screen behind him with a Newsday Ad from July 11, 1968. That was the night record producer Tommy Kaye and some of the United Artists label suits came out to hear Mrs Murphy's Basement for the first time. By September both The Hassles & Mrs Murphy, would be sharing studio time for several long months. Billy would be using my Hammond A-100 a B-3 in a different cabinet, on The Hour Of The Wolf album, becacuse B-3s could not fit the turn on the stairway to hell at Studio Three. You can view the entire ceremony on YouTube.
And so it goes on with some "FUNNY BIZ" and more
WHERE DID BILLY JOEL COME UP WITH
