Joel reframed the musician's identity from career choice to essential nature — 'like tall or short or straight or gay.' He had opened with the question every musician hears ('When are you going to get a real job?') and noted that Beethoven, John Lennon, Bob Marley, and Janis Joplin had all heard it too. Then he told his own story: 'When I was 19, I made my first good week's pay as a club musician. It was enough money for me to quit my job at the factory and still pay the rent and buy some food. I freaked. I ran home and tore off my clothes and jumped around my tiny little apartment shouting "I'm a musician, I'm a musician!"' The declaration wasn't about career success — it was about recognizing what he already was. And that recognition, Joel argued, was the real commencement.