Mars Earth plus Air appears to be a recipe for multiple marriages and enduring, pro-active careers according to two showbusiness types in the news. One is ‘motormouth’ Janet Street Porter, English broadcaster, journalist, writer, media personality, at one point a BBC executive and then editor of the Independent. The other is Billy Joel, American singer, songwriter, and pianist, nicknamed the “Piano Man” who has had a successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s.
Janet Street Porter 27 December 1946 12.30am, is about to launch a one woman stage show called Off the Leash and has been touting herself as “the nation’s favourite pissed-off pensioner”. In an interview she talked about how she “hated” her mother, tried to kill her sister and cheated on her four ex-husbands. One commentator said of her: “She is one of the giants of British media, and has always stood out – a loud-mouthed, working-class woman in an urbane, upper-middle-class men’s world; an aesthete with a love of pop culture and opera, often dismissed as a philistine because she was born with neither silver spoon nor plum in her mouth.”
She has a short-fused Sun Mars BML in Capricorn in her communicative and journalistic 3rd house, with Mercury in outspoken Sagittarius also there. Her Sun Mars are in a publicity-attracting square to Neptune in her 1st. Her Neptune is trine North Node Uranus in Gemini trine an Aquarius Moon in her entertaining and romantic 5th house. Turned into an influential, not-to-say bulldozer Kite with Moon opposition Pluto Saturn in Leo (square Jupiter). Her mother does not come well out of a Moon Pluto Saturn. And her impatient, argumentative Sun Mars in her 3rd house of siblings probably explains why she once tried to push her sister downstairs.
Four marriages and divorces and countless publicized affairs have culminated in a 26 year partnership with a restaurateur. Settled at last.
Billy Joel, 9 May 1949 9.30 am New York, was born into a musically-inclined family with his parents splitting when he was young. He has admitted to suicide attempts in his 20s and problems with alcohol, drugs and depression. He has a Taurus Sun and Mars, as well as Venus as befits a singer (Taurus rules the throat). His Mars is in an intense and frustrating/trapped square to Pluto and his Venus is square Saturn in Leo. He has an Air Grand Trine of a 4th house Libra Moon and Neptune trine Mercury in Gemini trine a 7th house Jupiter in Aquarius.
There is not much obvious in the way of similarities between their temperaments but it is interesting to see how the Mars Earth plus Air Grand Trine they share has worked out – both in career endurance and romantic musical chairs until they finally settle down.