Stony Brook, NY (June 30, 2025)—New York City has always been a cornerstone of the music industry, but in the 1960s, nearby Long Island was a hotbed of new music, too, fueled by local nightclubs that encouraged original bands. One of the bigger names on that scene was The Hassles, an intrepid rock/soul group that included a pre-fame, teenaged Billy Joel. While The Hassles’ two albums and handful of singles on United Artists never caught on, the band was nonetheless a launch pad for a musician who would become one of the most significant songwriters of the 20th Century—after he was briefly half of a disastrous organ/drums heavy metal duo, Attila. The mixed legacies of both acts came to the fore Saturday, June 28, when The Hassles were inducted into the Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame.
While Joel was not present for the induction ceremony, currently taking time out of the public eye to deal with a recent diagnosis of Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, The Hassles’ drummer, Jon Small was on-hand to accept the award for the group.
Small, who also played with Joel in the short-lived Attila, went on to become a major video director/producer, working with everyone from Taylor Swift to James Taylor, while also creating concert films for Van Morrison, Lynyrd Skynyrd and country supergroup The Highwaymen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Small has also been involved in nearly every major video production by Joel.
In his acceptance speech, Small recalled The Hassles’ early days before Joel joined the band, sharing, “I got a call from Richard McKenna, the guitar player, who said, ‘Would you like to join a band?’ I said, ‘Sure. Where do you rehearse?’ He goes, ‘How about your house?’ They showed up, and for the first time, I met Richie. I met John Dizek [Vocals] and Harry Weber [Organ].”
When Weber left the band over the traditional “musical differences,” the stage was set for The Hassles to discover a teenaged kid who would become a musical superstar.
“We had a search for a new keyboard player,” said Small. “Our managers at the time, Danny Mazur and Irwin Mazur, owned a club called My House, and we were the house band. It was a great club, and we were building a following. Danny came up with this great idea—he said, ‘We’ll put an ad in the paper that My House is looking for a new house band and all the Long Island bands will come in. You just sit there and you’ll steal the keyboard player!’
“Band after band came in and there was nobody we liked—and finally Billy’s band came in, called The Lost Souls, and none of the remaining Hassles liked Billy. They thought he was too short. He wore a beret, and it was just very kind of corny; he sang on one knee! But he had ‘it’—I saw it. I came from a family of musicians, so I could see past the dust, and I knew he had it, so I asked him to come into Danny’s office, and I made him an offer to join The Hassles. He said, ‘I’m not leaving my brothers. I go to school with these guys. No, I can’t. How could I do it?’ I knew I was losing the argument—what am I going to do? All of a sudden, it came to me. I said, ‘So look, if you join The Hassles, I’ll give you this brand-new B3 Hammond.’ He said, ‘F— those guys!’”
Small’s charming speech fondly recalled the era, sharing moments such as the first time he and Joel heard themselves on the radio: “I was driving on the Long Island Expressway with Billy when we heard the record for the first time. It was just like that movie, That Thing You Do—we stopped the car in the middle of the road, jumped out and were running around the car so excited, like idiots!”
At other points, he recalled how the band snuck into The Beatles’ famed shows at Shea Stadium and nearly talked their way into opening for the Fab Four (It didn’t happen, but they did catch the show from the Mets’ dugout); how he worked part time for his great uncle Manny, namesake of New York City’s legendary Manny’s Music; and much more.
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Closing out the speech, Small briefly mentioned Attila, their post-Hassles duo whose lone album has a reputation as one of the worst rock albums ever.
“Me and Billy were together all the time,” said Small, “and we knew The Hassles were basically over after our second record. We would always just go to my parents [and] go down in the basement and we’d play…. One day, we talked [about it] to Irwin, our manager at that time, and he said, ‘I’ll get you a record deal’—and he got us a deal at Epic Records! He said, ‘I got you guys a $50,000 advance.’ We were in the elevator leaving, and we were jumping up and down—$50,000! We were so excited to get it. And then we went and we made the record in one day, including mixing it—and that’s why it sucked.”
Inducting The Hassles were pillars of Joel’s own backing band, guitarist Russell Javors and drummer Liberty DeVitto, who both played with Joel for decades. Other speakers at the event included Blue Öyster Cult co-founder Albert Bouchard and, via video, songwriter/producer Elliott Murphy. The event closed out with a set of Hassles songs performed by The Alessi Brothers, co-founders of 1970s act Barnaby Bye. Held at the LIMEHOF building at 97 Main Street in Stony Brook, NY, the ceremony was held just steps away from the Hall’s ongoing Billy Joel exhibition, My Life, A Piano Man’s Journey.
