Born just four and a half months apart, and just an hour's drive outside of New York City, Billy Joel (May 9, 1949, Levittown, Long Island) and Bruce Springsteen (September 23, 1949, Freehold, New Jersey) both have been highly influenced by the working class families and towns they grew up in and the laid-back artistic genius of their shared ruling planet: Venus.

Both Joel’s and Springsteen's Sun signs (Taurus and Libra, respectively) are ruled by (associated with) Venus, and both men also have the Moon in Libra. So what kind of effect does a strong Venus influence have on a person's chart? Well, it brings great artistic talent (check!), as well as a tendency to make big moves slowly. Neither musician is the "album a year" type, and Springsteen is notorious for taking years to perfect an album's sound in the studio.

Venus is also the most romantic of all planets. It dictates how we love and what we find beautiful. It can also make a strong Venus person a sucker for beauty: both men were married to models in the '80s.

Balance and fairness are driving forces in the lives of "heavy Venus" types. Bruce Springsteen has spent his entire career writing story-songs about how the working poor have been shunted to the back burner in the rich United States of America.

Joel was the first major pop singer to play concerts in the former Soviet Union after the Cold War ended. In interviews, he has spoken about how amazing it was to watch people who had never been exposed to American pop rock out. Other musicians were hesitant to tour there so soon after the fall of the Berlin wall. These guys don't just talk the talk of fairness. They walk the walk.

Going Back To Their Musical Roots...At 50

This is an incredible time of growth and childlike wonder for Joel and Springsteen, both of whom turned fifty in 1999. Joel played a widely-telecast millennium concert on New Year's Eve at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Boss did his first international concert tour in seven years in 1999, and he’s back to tour the states again in 2000.

Joel Returns to Classical Music

Yet, even with all the expected commercial success of rock albums and stadium concerts, each man is returning to his youthful roots when it comes to songwriting and composing. Joel has announced that he has no plans to do another pop album. Instead, he has been writing classical romantic compositions, similar to the music he first played while learning the piano as a child.

During those early 1960s years, when Joel was fighting off bullies (he literally had to learn to box to keep the tough guys who did not appreciate classical music away!), Saturn  was transiting the young musician's natal Jupiter. Jupiter is the planet of good luck and expansion. It gives us more than we could possibly need, while Saturn is the planet of discipline and hard work.

Joel certainly could not have realized at the time how much his hard work and practice (qualities of Saturn) would pay off (and generous Jupiter likes to pay off in a big way). In the late '90s, when Joel had firmly decided to return to his classical roots, Neptune, a planet often associated with music and a mystical, distinctly non-verbal quality, began to move through the early degrees of Aquarius, where Joel's Jupiter is, helping to bring him full circle to his classical beginnings.

Springsteen Returns to Folk

Springsteen, who was hailed as a successor to Bob Dylan after the 1973 release of his first album Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., is moving more deeply into folk music, very similar in style and substance to Dylan's major influence, Woody Guthrie. Bruce's last album of original music, The Ghost of Tom Joad, was a pure folk record that took its theme from the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath, about the morbid fate of a family of migrant workers in California during the Great Depression.

When Bruce was writing the songs for his first folk-tinged album in the early '70s, Pluto, the planet of self-transformation, was in Libra, his Sun, Moon and Mercury sign. When perusing the wordy (Mercury!) lyrics of some of those classic tunes, one can't help but notice that the focus of the stories was on Bruce himself, and the characters in his own little world.

An intense Pluto transit like this one, which touched his Sun (essential self), Neptune and Moon (emotional self), naturally made the Boss deeply introspective. In addition, Neptune, the planet of imagination, is conjunct his Moon, the planet of emotions, in thoughtful Libra, so he's prone to be introspective and hyper-articulate always.

Over twenty years later, when Tom Joad was released (in 1995), Pluto had moved into Sagittarius, a sign that is often thought to be wild and adventurous in youth, only to grow up to be a philosopher and fighter for justice in its older years. Sounds an awful lot like Springsteen, doesn't it?

During this period, Pluto was making a sextile (smooth, helpful angle) to all of his Libra (sign of fairness) planets. A sextile is not nearly as personal and "in your face" as a conjunction (when a planet is in the same sign and at a close degree as another planet in your chart), which probably helped to make Springsteen detached enough to write about more worldly issues like poverty and racism, as he did on Tom Joad.

What's Next For Billy and The Boss?

Generous Jupiter and reliable Saturn will both be exactly conjunct (in the same sign and degree) Billy Joel's Venus in June, 2000. Perhaps that means wedding bells for the divorced, but still passionately romantic, singer. At the very least, expansive Jupiter promises a honeymoon-like traveling experience with the lady in Joel's life, or perhaps a world tour for his classical music!

As for Bruce, Jupiter will be conjunct his Uranus (planet of progress and abrupt change) in August, 2001. Springsteen's Uranus is in Cancer, sign of the family, so perhaps the change and progress will take place on the homefront with his wife, bandmate and mother of his three children, Patti Scialfa. The Boss might take a younger musician under his wing (be a father figure, Cancer), change his residence or have another child! Perhaps he'll produce his singer wife's next album (the Sun and Mercury will be conjunct her Leo Sun and Mercury at that time, too).

Whatever they do, both Joel and Springsteen's true natures, as romantic, gentle, artistic Venus men (beneath the rough Long Island and Jersey exteriors!) are bound to come through again and again in their lives and in their beautiful, and beautifully-crafted music.