On this day · 31 years ago · 1995
31 Years Ago Today: Billy Joel's Longtime Bassist Doug Stegmeyer Dies at 43
Doug Stegmeyer anchored Billy Joel's band through its biggest run of albums, from Turnstiles to The Bridge, and helped bring both Liberty DeVitto and Russell Javors into the lineup. He died August 25, 1995, at 43.
By Lowe, Bass desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Bassist Doug Stegmeyer, who anchored Billy Joel's band from 1974 through the late 1980s, died August 25, 1995, at his Smithtown, New York home, at 43. He played bass on Joel's run from Turnstiles (1976) through The Bridge (1986). Joel called him 'a very talented player' and 'the leader of the nucleus of the group that was the band.' Stegmeyer was posthumously inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2014.
From a Long Island club band to Billy Joel's band
Douglas Alan Stegmeyer was born in 1951 in Flushing, New York, and grew up in a musical household, his father a working musician, his mother a singer and pianist, per the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame's account of his life. He picked up bass at 14, and by the time he graduated Syosset High School, he was playing in a club band called Topper alongside Russell Javors and Liberty DeVitto, one of the busiest acts on the Long Island circuit.
Billy Joel, another Long Islander, was assembling a backing band on the West Coast and wanted a New York sound behind him. A mutual friend pointed him to Stegmeyer, who flew out in 1974 to join Joel's band for the Streetlife Serenade tour. Once the tour wrapped, Stegmeyer suggested Joel give his old Topper bandmates a listen. Joel auditioned DeVitto and Javors, brought them in, and Topper had effectively become the Billy Joel Band.
The run: Turnstiles through The Bridge
Stegmeyer anchored Joel's band through its defining commercial run: Turnstiles (1976), The Stranger (1977), 52nd Street (1978), Glass Houses (1980), The Nylon Curtain (1982), An Innocent Man (1983), and The Bridge (1986), plus the live albums Songs in the Attic (1981) and Kohuept (1987), recorded during Joel's landmark tour of the Soviet Union. Between Joel tours and sessions, he also worked with Karen Carpenter, Phoebe Snow, Hall & Oates, Paul Simon, and Debbie Gibson.
He left Joel's band in the late 1980s. Joel later reflected on their run together in warm terms: "He was a very talented player," Joel said. "He was with me from the 1970s through 1988 and was the leader of the nucleus of the group that was the band." In 1988, Stegmeyer opened his own recording studio in Centerport, New York, and continued working as a session player and producer.
Death and legacy
Stegmeyer died August 25, 1995, at his home in Smithtown, New York, at 43. Contemporary reporting and Wikipedia's account both describe his death as a suicide. Joel's tribute at the time focused on the music: Stegmeyer, he said, had been the backbone of the band during its most successful stretch, the kind of steady bass foundation a working band leans on for over a decade.
Nearly two decades later, in October 2014, the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame inducted Stegmeyer, recognizing a Long Island bassist whose playing sits underneath some of the best-known records of the era, on a roster that also includes Joel himself and, from a very different corner of rock and roll, KISS's Gene Simmons, born on this same August 25 date in 1949. It's also, coincidentally, the same date Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton would announce his cancer diagnosis, eleven years later.
Nickel Wound Bass EXL170 (.045-.100)
Why this one: Stegmeyer's own late-1970s and 1980s string choice isn't documented in a source CYS can verify. A balanced, all-purpose D'Addario nickel roundwound gauge in the range most working bassists of that era reached for.
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