When Freddy Wexler was a kid growing up in New York City in the Nineties, there was no artist he loved more than Billy Joel. The 37-year-old singer-producer — who has has written songs for everyone from Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande to Kanye West and Celine Dion — used to sit in his bedroom, put on The Stranger, Turnstiles, or River of Dreams, and dream. “I would imagine it was me performing,” Wexler tells Rolling Stone via Zoom from his house in L.A. “I wanted to be Billy Joel.” But despite all his songwriting success over the past few years, Wexler’s more realistic dream of meeting and working with Joel seemed just as unlikely. Joel quit making pop albums after 1993’s River of Dreams, and hadn’t shared new material of any sort since 2007 when he released the romance ballad “All My Life,” and the politically-charged rock song “Christmas in Fallujah,” which was sung by Cass Dillon. But for Wexler, the impossible challenge of getting in the studio with his hero became a goal he had to achieve. “I love the word ‘impossible,’ Wexler says. “I’ve always been somebody that loves to make the impossible possible. I’m a dreamer, but I’m an executor and I’m relentless. There’s nothing more motivating than someone telling me I can’t do something.” It took that level of determination to persuade Joel to release his new single “Turn the Lights Back On,” which was produced and co-written by Wexler. That nearly two-year journey culminated Sunday night when Joel performed the song to close out the Grammy Awards. “This has all been so humbling and such an extreme honor,” Wexler says. “I am a storyteller and a guy on a mission. That’s what I’ve always been.” The journey started for Wexler as a kid accompanying his mother to Sloan Kettering hospital and watch her play the piano for cancer patients. “I would watch her hands,” he says. “That’s how I learned how to play.” Back at home, his parents introduced him to jazz artists like Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, along with Stevie Wonder, the Beatles, Paul Simon, and Joel. “They became,” he says, “the soundtrack of my youth.” Editor’s picks His first concert was one of Sting’s semiannual Rainforest benefits shows, where he first saw Joel perform, followed by a Janet Jackson gig not long afterwards. “That one had a totally different vibe,” he says. “I remember her taking a fan onstage who did some really inappropriate shit, and security had to take him off. It was insane, but it showed me the power that one creative person could have onstage.” Wexler starter writing his own songs at 13 after a girlfriend broke up with him, but didn’t get serious about it until three years later when he had a particularly vivid daydream about a close friend dying. “It felt so horrible and so real,” he says. “There was a keyboard in my room, and I just started playing chords. I just knew in my soul that I needed a catharsis at that moment.” Shortly before heading off to college at the University of Pennylvania, Wexler enrolled in an NYU class about the music industry. This wasn’t for college credit, but he was interning at Sony Music and wanted to learn more. He played one of his original songs for the class, impressing an 18-year-old student named Stefani that coaxed him into recording her demo tape in the laundry room of his parent’s apartment building. “I’m a real gut and instinct person,” he says. “I just knew she was going to become famous.” He was so sure that he gathered up the nerve to march into a meeting of top executives on the 32nd floor of the Sony Building on Madison Avenue, uninvited, to tell them about his discovery. “I was wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt,” he says. “I shouldn’t have been there, and I was scolded for it later. But I said, ‘I just want everyone to know that I found the next Madonna.’ They sent someone to see her play at the Bitter End a few days later, but didn’t wind up signing her. She ended up becoming Lady Gaga. Related “To be very clear,” he continues, “I take zero credit for her success. But I clearly remember telling my parents, ‘She’ll be the next Madonna, and then she’ll become Streisand,’ which is really what happened.” Unsure of the direction he wanted his life to take, Wexler majored in English at Penn. But he sent off the demo tape that impressed Lady Gaga to all the major labels. “It triggered the largest bidding war in North America in 2006,” Wexler says. “The Financial Times wrote about it. I signed with Virgin, and I left college to record my first album.” The label teamed him up with Matt Wallace, the producer of Maroon 5’s 2002 debut Songs About Jane. Members of Maroon 5 and Buckcherry played on it. The future seemed very bright. But Virgin merged with Capitol Records at this exact time. There was a huge shakeup on the executive level. His album simply fell through the cracks and vanished, unreleased. Wexler headed back to college dejected but much wiser about how the music industry works. The dream of somehow making it as a pop star remained, but he started looking for other talented acts he could bring into his orbit. He met pianist Eric Wortham in the dorms while working on a school project, signed him to a management deal, and set him a course that eventually landed him a job as Adele’s pianist, a role he holds to this day. Not long after first encountering Wortham, Wexler met Rachel Platten, and signed on as her manager. “I really saw a vision and a potential in her,” he says. “I sent her to Sweden to record. In between my classes, I would travel to New York, take her to every show, and lug her keyboard around. I’m always really passionate when I love something. I was an artist in my heart, but also a business guy. I wanted to protect other artists, and I felt that I could help them with their songwriting and the business side.” This whole time, Wexler was posting original songs on MySpace, hoping to land another label deal. “Everyone wanted to sign me prior to the Virgin deal,” he says. “The problem is that once your deal gets to that level, it better go right because you piss off a lot of people by not choosing them. I couldn’t get a deal to change my life. They were all like, ‘Fuck you, you should have signed with us.’” One day, the phone rang in his dorm room. The voice on the other end said they were calling from The Kidd Kraddick Morning Show, which was syndicated on the radio across America. “We’ve just discovered your music on Myspace,” they said. “Why aren’t you famous?” Wexler hung up three times, positive someone was pranking him. But it wasn’t a prank. Kidd Kraddick wanted to talk to him on the air in front of millions. And when the DJ heard the details of his shelved Virgin record, he invited him to his studio in Dallas. “I drove a U-Haul truck,” Wexler says. “I played shows along the way to pay for my gas. It was called the Freddy Needs Gas Tour. People gave me $14,000 of donations for gas, which I donated to the DJ’s charity. They actually asked me to stay in Dallas, and I become a guest co-host of the show for months.” When Wexler’s bizarre Kidd Kraddick experience came to an end, he moved to Los Angeles with the ambitious scheme of starting a publishing company and management firm. He scoured the Internet for raw talent, and invited seven complete strangers to live with him out there. “I said to them, ‘How would you like to come to L.A.?” he says. “‘I’m going to pay for all your studio time, your entire cost of living, Ubers to drive you around, and engineers.’ I then picked all these people up at LAX in my used Ford. It was like a fuckin’ reality show.” It seemed even more like an un-filmed reality show when Kevin Rudolf let them spend a year in his rented Hollywood…