Billy Joel Green-Lights Musical

By C. Young

10/25/2001 at 02:33 PM EDT

Billy Joel has given the go-ahead to "The Thoel Project," a musical that tells the story of three Vietnam vets through 15-20 of Joel's songs. It will be choreographed by Twyla Tharp and produced by the Nederlander Organization. "Twyla put it all together from the material I wrote and recorded over my whole career," Joel told VH1.com. "I thought it was pretty good, but how objective could I be?" Watch for the debut early next year outside of New York and then a trip to Broadway within a month or two. His two-CD greatest hits anthology, "The Essential Billy Joel," is currently ranked 38 on the Billboard album chart, while "Opus 1-10 Fantasies and Delusions (Music for Solo Piano)," a collection of his compositions played by pianist Richard Joo, is all by itself at the top of the classical chart. "It feels great because I started out playing classical piano. So for all my teachers that told me I'd never amount to anything -- ha!"