I think our job, our skill if you like, was assembling a variety of them.ĬNN: What gave you guys the idea for the book? Very little of it wasn't already in the public domain. It's a whole gaggle of different sources. Hopkinson spoke with CNN about why fans are fascinated with the stories behind songs, the reasons some musical artists like to maintain the mystery and whether there will be a book about men who inspire songs.įrank Hopkinson: We did loads of research, on the internet, through old biographies, through cuttings agencies, pieces from Radio 4, broadcasts. She went on to appear in his video, they married in 1985 and divorced in 1994.
The song was originally titled "Uptown Girls" and changed to the singular after things fizzled with Macpherson and Joel took up with Brinkley. 'I didn't think that was necessarily a sensational fact, but people are shocked by that," said Hopkinson.Īccording to the book, Joel met both Brinkley and Macpherson during a Caribbean vacation. Michael Heatley and Frank Hopkinson are the authors of the book "The Girl in the Song: The True Stories Behind 50 Rock Classics." In it they claim that Joel originally penned the hit tune for another beauty: model Elle Macpherson. The pair was a couple at the time, so of course Joel wrote the song for her, right? There's Billy Joel, dressed as a mechanic singing the praises of his "Uptown Girl," the nattily dressed supermodel, Christie Brinkley.
(CNN) - The music video is almost iconic for the 1980s.