I used to play shows around Long Island with my band, the New York Workshop, and he was playing in his group, the Hassles. Tell me your first memory of being aware of Billy Joel. The fact that I could stay calm and actually play the song is a total miracle to me. It was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me. What did it feel like that first show, when you’re playing songs like “Devil in a Blue Dress” with the guy who sang them originally? I graduated high school in June, and by November I was on the road with Mitch. You’re so well-known for your work with Billy Joel that I don’t think most people know that you played with Mitch Ryder long before that. Ringo knocked down the trees, and he plowed up the dirt, and then he paved the road for us. He was an amazing drummer because we can’t say that Ringo paved the road for us. We started playing high school dances, and people would come up to me at school the next day and go, “Hey, you were the kid that played the drums.” The drums gave me an identity. When that happened, like thousands of other guys around the country, we started a band. I want to be a band with my friends and make girls scream.” I thought, “Wow, that is what I want to do. When the Beatles went on The Ed Sullivan Show, all these girls were going crazy for them. I wasn’t doing well because I didn’t play sports. I was in the eighth grade when the Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show. You write about loving Ringo Starr as a kid.
I want to trace some of your history here. I believe the path you take in life is how you become the person you become in the end. So I kind of outlined what happened in my life and the different things that went on and why I got to where I was. People ask, “How did that happen?” I ask myself, “How did that happen?” This book is how I went from my immigrant grandparents coming over from Italy and then I got to play on one of the top five albums ever, which is Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits I and II. I wanted to write it because I’m the kid that didn’t take any lessons in school or any drum lessons at all. Joel even agreed to write the foreword for the book, something that would have been unimaginable just a couple of years ago, when they communicated solely through lawyers and angry comments back and forth in the press.ĭeVitto called up Rolling Stone from a car parked outside his home in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill, on a sweltering New York afternoon (“the air condition is blasting”) to chat about the book, his long career, making peace with Joel, and learning to let go of the past. And when he was nearly done writing it, he reached out to Joel via email, and the two old friends agreed to meet up for breakfast and finally make peace. The finished book (which arrives on July 17th) still traces DeVitto’s whole life, focusing heavily on his three-decade run with Billy Joel, but nearly any hint of anger about the circumstances of his departure is absent.
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