Billy Joel Boulevard? N.Y. lawmakers question if honor should be given to the living

If so inclined, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Buddy Guy, Dave Grohl and the rock bands Korn and Flaming Lips can stroll along streets or alleyways bearing their names.

Billy Joel will just have to wait.

A bill that would rename a stretch of Route 107 in the Piano Man’s Long Island hometown of Hicksville, N.Y., as Billy Joel Boulevard has gotten snagged in the state Legislature, the Associated Press reports. It’s not that lawmakers have anything against the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer – they can leave that to certain music critics, who haven’t been as universally friendly to Joel as they tend to be to similar stars.

No, the problem for opponents of the name change is that at 66, Joel is still around to walk the streets, whatever their name might be.

State Sen. Jack Martins, a Long Island Republican, introduced the bill last year, but it hasn’t gotten through his chamber or the state Assembly, both of which would need to OK the name change.

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“This is a man who has sold 150 million albums and still lives in the area,” Martins said. But that, said Deborah Glick, a Democratic Assemblywoman from Manhattan, is precisely the problem – not the impressive album sales, but the fact that Joel “still lives.”

“It [should be] a posthumous honor,” she said. “It’s so future generations know about their contributions. Obviously people today are fully aware who Billy Joel is.”

Martins said it’s “self-righteous” to deny Joel his name on street signs, considering that lawmakers were OK with naming the erstwhile Queensborough Bridge after former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel after former Gov. Hugh Carey when they were still living.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently pronounced Joel and his new bride, Alexis Roderick, husband and wife when he officiated at their July 4 nuptials. But it’s not within his power to pronounce that Route 107 will be Billy Joel Boulevard. He can only lobby for it, issuing a statement that praised Joel as “an iconic New Yorker” for whom “it would be fitting for his name to grace a street of Long Island, a place he has dedicated so much to and proudly calls home.”

Billboard Magazine has reported that you can find a Bob Dylan Way in Duluth, Minn.; Korn Row in Bakersfield; David Grohl Alley in Warren, Ohio; Tom Petty Road in Dickson, Tenn.; Flaming Lips Alley in Oklahoma City; and Buddy Guy Way in Chicago.

Twitter: @boehmm