IT'S BETTER THAN DRINKIN' ALONE: The Official ILM Track-by-Track BILLY JOEL Listening Thread

http://www.moosevilleusa.com/uploads/6/7/5/9/6759109/4503061_orig.jpg

Welcome one and all to what is sure to be one of the most popular threads in ILM history, as we take a song-a-day, track-by-track journey through the musical output of the Piano Man himself. A quick glance at Wiki confirms his significance: thirty-three self-penned Top 40 hits, twenty-three Grammy nominations (six wins), an estimated 150 million records sold worldwide, and a position just one slot shy of the Eagles as the sixth-best-selling artist of all time in the USA. If this staggering track record has not always translated into critical cred or hipster kisses, all the more reason to dig deep, listen close, and re-evaluate.

To get things started...

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It's July, 1971. Buffeted by the troubles of the times, rock listeners find themselves reaching for the heartfelt, melodic expressions of the singer-songwriter. Perhaps taking note of Carole King's position at the top of the charts, the tiny Family label sees no reason not to take a chance on a demo tape of earnestly-sung, piano-backed ballads by a twenty-two-year-old keyboardist from Long Island. Already the veteran of a few flopped-out rock combos, but stripped of his earlier West-Coast freakout and heavy-metal trappings, William Martin Joel enters the studio to record his solo debut, Cold Spring Harbor.. It hit the streets that November, and we begin our journey with the kickoff track and sole, non-charting single: She's Got A Way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUn-XOQoN3U

Note: This recording is from a 1980s remix correcting a legendary mastering goof on the original record: the entire album ran slightly too fast, producing an up-pitched "Chipmunk" effect on Joel's vocals. Chronological purists who want to experience the music as it was originally released should click here.

Wow - I didn't know that She's Got A Way was first-track first-album! I loved this already ... but even more now know it pushed the boat out

it's just so clean & simple & pleasing.

omg @ chipmunk version LOOOOL that is hysterical

Well, to add to the embarrassing recording goofs, I've still got the wrong version up there! Sorry, Billy! The Youtube above is actually the Songs in the Attic live version from ten years later, which did chart. It's sort of hard to pin down these versions but give me a second here.

that Songs in the Attic version is the one i already knew. interesting!

So, the full, pitch-corrected 1983 remix of the album is here; it's also on Spotify. Individual YouTubes are a mishmash, with both the live hit and the original Chipmunk version getting slapped up with the CSH album cover, and a bevy of do-it-yourself corrected versions. But basically this is what we should listen to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXAKedxxVe4

It's very interesting to compare the "corrected original" to the "live hit" versions - the lingering psychedelic "let us be like children together in the garden" tweeness of the earlier recording gets ironed out of it, and he adds a pinch of harder vocal grit to the second pass through "she touches me, I get turned around." Essentially, he brings it much closer to his signature late-70s sound, though he retains the very, very stripped-down arrangement.

To be honest, I've never really strongly connected with this song - good melody, great opening line... without the Chipmunk thing, and with the right promotional backing, you imagine he could have gotten at least a regional hit out of this. But it's one of these "she's great, she's great, she's really great" kind of songs without conflict, narrative or rhythm section... makes it a bit too easy for it to just drift by. I do think I like it better in its original, rather less professional incarnation. Elsewhere, I love Joel's grand-entertainer, crowd-pleaser populism, but on these first couple albums I like also hearing this kid - affectations and fumbles and evident desire to be Paul McCartney and all.

i enjoy the way he over-enunciates as a young man. like someone said to him it's important that we understand all the words

totally!

it's probably more proto-air supply than anything tbh

but even in that category it's head and shoulders above. like, compared with the overwrought verging on gross "baby ima want you" syrup that will be pouring into listeners ears in the coming years, it's great

Just based on this song, in a vacuum, I would've expected him to turn into more of a Manilow-type than he ever ended up being.

the path of earnest songwriting is fraught with danger

it's funny I haven't heard joel and manilow compared much - sure their careersan attitudes and styles are quite different, but as showtunes holdouts and staples of the adult contemporary charts... idk

joel has way better songwriting (as this thread will hopefully bear out) - it's his abilities as a storyteller that navigated him out of those waters imo

manilow had good hooks but his lyrics are pretty bad, more like long commercial jingles

though i agree with dr c that there's not much to the lyric on "she's got a way," it's A-plus compared to most of what we're going to be listening to over the next week and a half, simply by virtue of billy not trying too hard. he's infatuated with a girl, he says so, he rhymes "about her" with "without her," he tosses in a bridge, he's done. he can do worse, much worse, and he will. and the melody sticks. a telling start to his career: he's a piano man with a gift for a hook and not a lot to say, not yet.

having not heard cold spring harbor in years, i miss the octave vocal leap that ends the song in the songs from the attic version. that was a nice touch.

This recording is from a 1980s remix correcting a legendary mastering goof on the original record

warning: they also re-recorded the backing tracks on a couple songs, without billy's involvement. the relationship between family productions' artie ripp, who signed him and owned these masters, deteriorated fast, and though billy quickly dumped him for columbia, ripp won a lot in the divorce: he owned a piece of billy's next ten (!) albums, and his logo appears on all of them.

christ that's awful, the music industry really is full of absolute bandits.

i love how he put out 'Greatest Hits I And II' as one CD/album, not bothering with the traditional 1 and 2 volumes separated by say half a decade like most folk.

http://www.thatericalper.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Attila-008.jpg

We're going to pretend this never happened?

re: Manilow and jingles, I had no idea he actually did some of that! "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there" - wow. Another difference, as Attila reminds us, is that for all his wistful balladeering, Billy wants to ROCK, and to be thought of as a rocker. This too connects him with Lennon and McCartney much more than Manilow or most of the other archetypal singer-songwriters.

I had floated the idea of including Attila and the Hassles in this thread but ppl pointed out that they were distinct "things," and anyway we were looking at a lot of tracks on this thread. But I think ppl should check 'em out - we could do a short pause after CSH and just say "today is Attila Day," rather than going track by track... idk!

I mean I guess people can also just talk about it whenever, also! Just thinking in the spirit of dedicated group experience or w/e.

The ratio of "discussion of Attila as music" to "lol, that cover" is historically quite lopsided. Not that I want to be the person to correct the imbalance - just sayin.

"She's Got a Way" is gr8 btw

Woah, hadn't realized we had started this!

So, "She's Got a Way." The version I know is the Greatest Hits one, which is the Songs From the Attic one, and this is my first time hearing the CSH version. I've always found it decent but unexceptional, not to mention tonally jarring within the chronological ordering of GH, sandwiched between the more, uh, muscular 80s material.

Listening to the original for the first time, I can see why he went with a later version. The mixing on CSH really is disgusting and I imagine that it will make the next 9 days of this thread something of a slog.

There is a piece from Entertainment Weekly from around the time of River of Dreams where Billy offered brief commentary on all of his albums. I tried to dig it up, but I couldn't find it. Also, EW's website is the worst.

Basically, as I recall, Billy dismisses the record due to the mastering error, claiming that he can't ever listen to it. Having my first taste of it just now, I can see why.

Tuneful prettiness. Not bad.

affectations and fumbles and evident desire to be Paul McCartney and all

Listening to the Chipmunk version you linked above (only being familiar with the GH version before) and given the year, it strikes me that this is definitely his attempt at re-writing "Maybe I'm Amazed."

CSH is canon, but I can't help but always thinking of Piano Man as his first record.

Similar to Bowie.

(Just thought I'd beat the rest of you to writing out that last sentence.)

(see also: warren zevon)

ATTENTION! NATALIE MAINES IS NOT A LESBIAN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxllU2WUak

I know singers have been tweaking lyrics to suit their gender/orientation for decades, but shifting it from first-person to third-person changes the context too much.

centuries

The song's vagueness--he likes this woman, but can't quite isolate her particular qualities--nicely mirrors my own ambiguous feelings towards it.

It's a vague sentiment, sure, but it's light-years better than "Always a Woman," in which the message is "she's a heinous bitch but I like her anyway."

i like this, nice little song

love the cover, i love how period it looks, like it could be some long forgotten "lost classic" reissued by Light in the Attic

though I'm pretty impressed, for a first song on a first album this feels very much like a "Billy Joel" song, like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something

new goal of this listening thread: to pinpoint the moment he loses his hopeful high voice

The vagueness also makes it one of VERY FEW love songs that a father could plausibly dedicate to a daughter and have it come off in a not-totally-creepy way.

This may venture into uber-maudlin TMI territory, but: the line "she's got a smile that heals me" does in fact make me think of my daughter. I know it's corny as hell but there it is.

no that's otm

and lovely <3

for a first song on a first album this feels very much like a "Billy Joel" song, like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something

haha. but i'm not sure he truly finds his "billy joel" voice until track 3 on this album.

his hopeful high voice

sounds like he's channelling paul mccartney via emitt rhodes, who at this particular point in time was making better billy joel records than billy joel was.

true!

I don't know if its the pitch issue, but his voice sounds more shaky than I expected. Starting from "Piano Man" on, his voice has a confidence that he never loses - I just figured he always had it. Interesting to hear, actually

i think he's trying to go for lilting & comes off as slightly petrified haha

yeah track three is KEY to joel's entire steez going forward, looking forward to that.

agreed about trying to sound lilting. ATTILA reminds us that he did already know how to sing in a more forceful and confident manner, so this here is as much a "poetic" affectation as his bellows over there are an attempt to find his "hard rock" voice.

"maybe i'm amazed" is a very apt comparison - and it, too, wasn't a hit until a live album years later! I picture joel watching it rise on the charts in 1976, clenching his fists, blood boiling at the CSH screwups all over again, and swearing that if HE ever gets big enough to merit a live album, he knows just what the single will be and won't THAT show 'em all? "your song" also probably had to be on somebody's mind, the label's if not the artist's.

like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something running down the road, trying to loosen its load....

i'm guessing this song's about the other member of attila's wife (later to be his own).

i'd always understood that the "mastering error" is because they wanted to cram too many minutes of music onto the album.

so many wives...

like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something running down the road, trying to loosen its load....

― pplains, Monday, July 17, 2017 12:41 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know...for some reason it never occurred to me till this very second that the protagonist of "Take it Easy" was shitting his pants

i'd lump the eagles in with billy as a band who didn't achieve their full aesthetic and identity until track three of their debut album. chug all night y'all.

i'd always understood that the "mastering error" is because they wanted to cram too many minutes of music onto the album

I hadn't heard that specifically about CSH. But I have heard that "Silver Springs" was kept off Rumours partly because the resulting length would have mean that they could just BARELY fit it in only by narrowing the grooves and unacceptably compromising the bass response.

Tangent: Interesting to think about the degree to which actual physical limitations were relevant - all of this in living memory. Les Paul was faking multitracking by ping-ponging, then the Beatles were on four tracks, then eight, then DSotM, then Steely Dan's automated mixes, then ProTools... all of this has happened within the lifespan of specific known humans. The time from the Wright brother's first flight to walking on muthaflippin moon? Many of us have grandparents who lived through both.

agreed about trying to sound lilting. ATTILA reminds us that he did already know how to sing in a more forceful and confident manner, so this here is as much a "poetic" affectation as his bellows over there are an attempt to find his "hard rock" voice.

Ah gotcha. I ain't heard CSH yet, so I sure as hell ain't heard Attila yet

so....does someone want me to post the next song? We can't break the streak.

I thought "She's Got a Way" was today's song?

yeah i figured that too

let's not pre-empt the Doctor yet

...not a huge fan, but i recently was gifted MFSL flacs from his "classic" years. so i might become a convert during the span of this thread.

the TV show Preacher used Uptown Girl to somewhat amusing effect in a recent episode

Don't know/haven't seen, but The Simpsons owns classic use of that song.

Hey yeah, sorry, was waiting til tonight... I'm stoked that people are gnawing at the bit for this thread!

Our next track underwent some of the biggest alterations in the 1983 remix of Cold Spring Harbor, losing a full three minutes of running time - which, since we're dealing with track two here, seriously affects the pacing of the album. I'm sticking with a 'homemade' pitch-corrected version (credit to YouTuber TheZestanor). Bask in the sudden expansion of the arrangement: drums, searing guitar work, and some sweet sweet backing vocals. It's You Can Make Me Free:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkNdRLwRLGE

The truncated and otherwise altered 1983 remix can be heard here, as well as on Spotify, etc. The Chipmunk version does not appear to be online anywhere handy, but I think we'll all live without it.

I'm mostly familiar with BJ from The Stranger on, so listening to all these older albums is kind of a neat thing to finally get around to. I've already jumped ahead, of course, but I'm primed.

I'm digging this whole experiment - I own a lot of Joel records and know most of them backwards and forwards, but I also have huge gaps in that listening, and my copy of CSH for example is a Chipmunk edition so I've actually never taken the time to track down corrected versions and pay real attention to (some of) these songs.

wow mccartney much, bill? lol

also it kinda sounds like a guy walking through a sound stage while random people are playing instruments loudly to themselves

you can barely hear him over the piano at first & then when the guitar kicks in it's ok wtf is happening

like i think the guitarist may be playing to a different song than Joel & the drummer

hey man, they made him free

free to do what we wanna do

free to get loaded & to party

and not to keep time or play together really at all

i still kinda like it though

I dig it, but I'm such a Ram stan that I love the idea of someone getting that record day one, devouring it, and entering the studio two months later all keyed up to attempt one's own "Back Seat of My Car." Of course there are earlier McCartney precedents - "Another Day" had been out for a few months longer, and I sorta wish that amid his vocal outbursts at the end he tossed in "JUDE JUDY JUDY JUDY JUDY JUDY JU-DY WAIIIOW!" The backing vocals in particular are a lot closer to Linda's sandy overdubs than anything on Abbey Road, to my ears anyway. This is a really bizarre choice for the second track on a singer-songwriter album but maybe Billy or somebody wanted to make sure you got that he was a rocker, that this wasn't just going to be an album of "Your Song" type ballads.

yeah i think the devout mccarrtneyisms itt to me are what i like about it, as a mccartney fan myself

much more than "she's got a way," i'd say this is his "maybe i'm amazed" moment. or at least his attempt at that moment. it's catchy, but it ain't mccartney-catchy.

maybe the ending jam is a gift to any hassles or attila fans who were still hanging around. with some beatles ah-ah-aah harmonies on top of it just because.

Digging this experiment. I also came in with The Stranger. But, wow, You Can Make Me Free, not so great. Much more pastiche than BJ himself. The underlying song isn't that hot so he just added more and more stuff.

Yeah agree that this is a very weird second track. That jam would disrupt any album momentum. It's a fine song, but I would have thought it was McCartney if I wasn't listening carefully

Everyone OTM this morning.

Gonna wake up the kids with this and tell 'em it's Aerosmith.

lol

I had resigned myself to an entire album of earnest piano ballads, so this was unexpected? I mean, it starts out as something very much in that mode, but then the production/accompaniment just goes kinda bonkers.

these threads (ie this, Eagles, Elton John etc.) seem like some mix of gluttony for punishment, genuine attempts at critical discourse re: artists people don't necessarily like all that much, and semi-closeted fans seeking vindication

not at all sure they beat drinking alone tho

thanks for your contribution

yeah this song was great cod McCartney, it's funny I mean of course Billy Joel loved the Beatles, everyone loved the Beatles but it's kinda funny to me to hear him sound so McCartneyesqe, I never considered him particularly a big Beatles influenced guy in terms of the stuff I knew.

Also the sound quality is crazy bad, like a bootleg or I think veg said upthread a rehearsal tape, which is weird because like this time frame in the industry you just don't hear a lot of bad sounding records, it was such a peak of good producers, good studios, etc, and I looked it up on wiki and it was done at Record Plant and some other big studios....

Since I'm not as familiar with this album as I am with the ones from 52nd Street on, I looked up the credits on Wikipedia, and lo and behold:

Denny Seiwell – drums on "You Can Make Me Free"

Later in the very same month this was recorded, Seiwell would of course be the drummer on the first Wings album, Wild Life.

Also the sound quality is crazy bad

surely this is attributable to it being a pitch-corrected youtube rip...? idk

I link to this Billy Joel interview with Alec Baldwin all the time, but in one section he goes into the Beatles influence and how his first songs even had their phrasing/accent.

Billy Joel: There wasn’t anybody but white people in my school. I think there were a couple of Jews, some Latinos. There was sprinklings, but everybody liked soul music, “Twist and Shout,” when everybody would do, 'Come on now, shout. Come on now.' And “Louie, Louie” – I think that was the Kingsmen. “What I Say,” Ray Charles. “See the girl all dressed in green?” You’d make up really dirty words to that. We came up with some really good stuff.

So, I loved that stuff, and then The Beatles came around, and there it was. Boom. Four working class guys from Liverpool, which is as close to Levittown, in England, I think, in sounding anyway. Okay, if four guys from Liverpool –

Alec Baldwin: I never thought of that. Levittown is our Liverpool.

Billy Joel: Yeah, Liverpool. And uh, it’s possible, it’s possible. They don’t look like Frankie Avalon. They don’t look like Bobbie Rydell. They look like four working class guys, from anywhere. They could be from Hicksville. They could be from Levittown. So I said, that’s possible. That’s what I want to do. I want to write my own songs. I want to play in my own band, do our own arrangements, and make our own way.

Dude worshipped McCartney. I've mentioned this before, but it still kills me.

...There's this part in the Billy Joel bio about his shows closing out Shea Stadium in its final year. This whole chapter about how they had to add a second show, controversies in ticket prices, how Joel rounded up all of these celebrity guests like Tony Bennett to sing "New York State of Mind" -- all leading up to trying to get Paul McCartney to show up as the cherry on top.

Negotiations went on for weeks, Paul jetting across the Atlantic, still in the air when the show started. Joel gets a note midway through proclaiming that his secret guest was "in New York airspace." Plane lands, McCartney and crew get rushed out by the airport by NYPD, bypassing Customs supposedly, with a motorcade all the way out to Queens.

McCartney comes on with Billy, crowd goes wild, they do some songs, and backstage before the final encore in Joel's hometown, McCartney says, "You know what you we have to close it out with, right?" Joel, deferring to his hero, says "What did you have in mind?" ... and Paul says, "We have to close it out with... LET IT BE."

You can just about hear the air leave the sails, deflating the whole chapter with those words. You get this idea that wherever Macca goes, he's doing something like telling Neil Young at the Bridge Benefit 'YOU KNOW WHAT WE HAVE TO CLOSE IT OUT WITH, RIGHT?"

― pplains, Sunday, June 7, 2015 2:36 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

- Take a Sad Song and Extract Every Last Ounce of Spontaneity from It: the Beatles Uber-Ballad Poll

haha god that is so McCartney

I quite liked this - Billy's top 5 according to Billy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEXQaxUjesE

also I would totally watch the movie about Piano Man + Rocket Man vs Tamborine Man

what, no Spoon Man

has McCartney ever praised Joel?

xpost lol shakey

and no "Mirror Man"!

Ramblin Gamblin Man could be good to have on yr team imo

idk he seems kinda unreliable

:/

He rambles, he gambles, is this guy even gonna show up? Sub in Particle Man.

haha

That Colbert clip is all-around great. Love his (friendly) dig at Elton.

Also, Billy OTM re: his #1 song.

he does pretty good impressions! his Tony Bennett was right on the money

also I like how visibly nervous he seemed at the beginning.

young billy doing piano impressions of neil young ("i would never write anything like that 'cause it's too simple, it's too obvious"), elton john and leon russell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AljfNsA6t30

cute clip

i like how mid 20's I'M MY OWN THING I AINT LIKE NOBODY ELSE

Dr C, thanks for starting this thread, it's already awesome...!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/Getting_Things_Done.jpg

yeah otm

it's like summer camp for music nerds who like music everyone else hates :D

Oh shit - sorry - wrong thread

Oh shit - sorry - wrong thread

idk seemed appropriate hah

many xposts to Alfred

From Paul's fanclub newsletter Club Sandwich, Winter 1994 Issue #72:

Is there one song by someone else you wished you had written? From Carol Orice, Coventry England; Kate Graham, Weybridge, England; and Adrian Rider, St. Ives, England
I really don't want to have written anyone else's songs, but as a fantasy question, I love 'Star Dust', by Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish. It's a beautiful song. And I remember thinking that Billy Joel's first hit, 'Just The Way You Are', was a nice song. I'd like to have written that one too. 'Star Dust' first though.

as far as McCartney praise goes, that's pretty high imo

def, and also led me to realize that it was indeed his first hit in the UK, with Piano Man having peaked at... #136. Makes me wonder if there are aspects of Billy Joel that are so "American" (or so "Long Island" ) that they don't export so well, sorta like how Americans don't know "Mull of Kintyre," which was pretty much Wings's biggest hit over there. But I just recently read Greil Marcus's /Mystery Train/, so I sort of want to check myself on making broad statements about "Americanness" - though man would Joel have been an interesting case study for that book.

Not sure listening to every Billy Joel track is better than drinking alone. And even if it was, by the end you'll be alone and drinking.

you never know! you might find out!

you may be right etc etc

i highly recommend joel's biography (which was supposed to be his autobiography), which shines some light on his version of 'american.' long island was in a few ways hermetically sealed off from the rest of the country until i would argue the mid-'90s (that was when kmart finally arrived) - a combination of geographical isolation and new york city looming so large over everything else. i remember feeling very alien when reading ya books about all-american teens and only really "getting" books written by ellen conford (from massapequa), lois lowry (the anastasia krupnik books were set in manhattan) and judy blume (the fudge books were set in nyc and princeton, which was close enough, and other books revolved around the new york/new jersey axis).

anyway, go comets
https://www.billyjoel.com/news/watch-billy-joel-give-heartfelt-speech-hicksville-graduation/

i was going to ask about the biography; I'm gonna check it out I think!

i highly recommend joel's biography (which was supposed to be his autobiography

Working title when it was still an auto was going to be from that one song on 52nd Street...

..."Zanzibar"

That 77 interview is great
Love how he breaks down the styles of Elton and Leon Russell

Alfred's list of Billy songs mentioned something about how Allentown could've been done by Neil Young.

So I've been terrorizing the house all week, singing my warbly falsetto version, "Every child had a pretty good shot?"

I am not a huge Stern fan but this extended Town Hall interview with Billy Joel from 2014 is really great imo if you have a couple of hours to spare

They have a good rapport & there's some good stuff covered

https://youtu.be/c0Xh0BqUaNY

my sister in law recommended this to me the other day! his appearance on alec baldwin's podcast (is that still a thing?) is also solid. at one point the two of them devolve into long island accents and it's glorious

http://www.wnyc.org/story/225651-billy-joel/

stern locks in to joel & maybe bcz of their friendship is able to grt him to talk about in-depth stuff in a v conversational way

also melissa etheridge covers "only the good die young" and it's one of my favorite things ever

i didn't see this thread. how many songs have you done? i might be dumb enough to play along.

only 2 songs so far! join us :)

i might...i'll check my appointment book.

all the cool kids are doing it

Okay, seems like some folks weren't quite buying Billy as McCartney. Well... how about Lennon then?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrMcc-5APtg

Everybody Loves You Now, with ugly resentment wrapped around a brilliant hook and relentless strumming, would go on to be a fan favorite and Joel-song prototype. Nasty as it is, it's been stuck in my head for the past three days straight.

As elsewhere, the 1981 Songs in the Attic version (check the promo clip) has a lot more thunder - especially versus the profoundly murky, home-demo-like audio we have above - even if its showmanship loses something of the wounded, vicious edge. The 1983 remix of the album, while easier on the ears than the Chipmunk version, has a totally different rhythm track and was made without Joel's involvement. For the obsessed, I also found a 1971 promo clip on "The Old Grey Whistle Test" (nigh unlistenable), a 1974 live show in Memphis with some laddish stage banter and some really goofy (or... great?) drumming, and, maybe my favorite of these, the 1972 'Sigma Sound' performance on WMMR.

And Scott, do please join!

ugly resentment ... and he still has a crush on her. so much of billy joel as billy joel is born in these two-and-a-half minutes. the not-so-repressed anger and bitterness, directed at a woman who presumably rejected him (and also at the industry that he assumes will reject him, too). the fast piano arpeggios. the acoustic guitar/piano interplay. the random long island/staten island shoutouts. the big, obvious, good hook. the big, obvious, good middle eight.

can we/should we discuss the line "ahh they all want your white body"?

Like this one much better. Great melody in the bit right before "everybody loves you now." I tried to find a stripped down version - all the acoustic guitar strumming a little overstuffed - didn't see a good one though. This one fits much better with the rest of the catalog.

i was at one of the club shows where "songs in the attic" was recorded. a beyond-orgasmic night for a young billy fan. this was a million years before the internet and, as far as i knew, a million years before word-of-mouth was invented. we had no idea what billy was going to do or why he was playing the paradise instead of boston garden or how on earth i was going to get through the front door with my older brother's fake ID. he opened with "you may be right," guitar in hand (!), sure, ok, cool, but then he played something old and unlikely, and then he kept going backwards, and very soon, holy shit, "everybody loves you now," from an album that at the time existed only as a bootleg and a rumor and it was basically like jerry garcia had walked into my bedroom and played "dark star" for me. with liberty devitto almost within arm's reach. and then they just kept going. #1 highlight of my billy joel life.

Lyrically, this whole genre of "how DARE you be successful, well ugh you're obviously HORRIBLE and SHALLOW" sour-grapes songs is pretty hard to take. not quite the same, but e.g. Peter Sarstedt's "Where Do You Go To My Lovely?" and Stevie Wonder's "Superwoman" hit similar notes but neither is quite as ugly, nor as willing to show the hurt. The only tangible crime this woman seems to have committed, besides people besides Joel loving her, is a failure to come to Cold Spring Harbor often enough for his taste. I'm pretty sure if I heard this for the first time in 2017 I'd hate it. But again, my god how it gets stuck in my head.

omg, fcc, that's awesome! I'm so jealous.

Will Sheff does a good take on the genre in "Calling and not calling my ex"

omg, fcc, that's awesome! I'm so jealous.

― ﴿→ ☺ (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, July 19, 2017 12:38 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And between you, me, and the Staten Island Ferry, I figured I'd throw this in before we go all Hollywood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS7OzmlDiRI

the fast strummy thing and "the every BODY luuuvs you now" kinda feels like Dylan kinda

really enjoying rhys clark's drumming on that song

yeah the importance of dylan to joel's songwriting and performance style, aside from the harmonica on 'piano man,' (and maybe even the idea/structure, vs. 'mister tambourine man' which to my knowledge billy has never covered though 'captain jack' sorta sounds like what he would come up with if he did) has probably been under-studied. the mccartney and showtunesy is easier to identify, and of course pretty much any singer-songwriter of that generation owed *something* to bob... but the specifics can be tougher to locate. certainly this kind of "you suck, lady!" song was a dylan staple, as much as the display of bruised male ego owes to lennon. or as man alive put it a while back, "a lot of Dylan songs could be retitled 'You're So Dumb.'"

About time Dylan wrote a song called "You Suck, Lady!"

^^Working title for "Ballad In Plain D", iirc.

was gonna say "Lay Lady Lay" but the joke got a little blue as I was trying to make it work

"you suck, lady! (she acts like we never have met)"

I like this! Reminds me of Radiohead's "Thinking About You" in that the narrator sounds so angry and bitter that the song becomes a character piece about an angry (and possibly stalker-y) loner rather than a kiss-off to a perceived sell-out.

As for "they all want your white body," I got nothing.

wow yeah I really like this - honing his laser focus

also the tone of voice he's using here loosely anticipates how he sounds on Captain Jack, those "oh's" that precede the most biting lines etc

contenders for 'You're So Dumb' songs in the Dylan catalog: Positively 4th Street, Ballad of a Thin Mad, Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?, Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, Just Like a Woman, Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, Maggie's Farm

among other prime dumb-cuts Like a Rolling Stone is more of a 'Do You Feel Dumb?' and Idiot Wind has a 'We Were Dumb' vibe

One of Us Must Know, I Threw It All Away and the Grammy Award winning Things Have Changed are kinda 'I Am Dumb' songs

the meanness doesnt really bother me but maybe it's bcz curmudgeon billy goes a long way with me? idk. it's not like it makes me feel protective of my gender or anything.

then again, i think it shows how effective the song is if it makes you feel protective of "her" whoever she is

who knows, maybe she IS a jerk! lol

on another note Piano Man seems to be a "songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller" song for Joel, at least on Spotify it's got 123 million plays, Uptown Girl hardly a close second with 66m and wtf We Didn't Start the Fire #3 with 53m

such a bad song imo

from RS:

I like the obscure stuff more than the hits. I never thought "Piano Man" would be a hit. "We Didn't Start the Fire" is essentially a novelty song.

What are you thinking as you're singing "Piano Man" onstage?
"Oh, good, it's almost over!" I'm kidding. It's gratifying to hear an audience sing your words.

incidentally, this was the possibly ill-fitting b-side to "She's Got A Way":

http://www.onefinalserenade.com/uploads/2/9/1/2/2912571/350193_orig.jpg

^^^ amazing he wasn't an overnight success, with marketing like that

this is slightly better:

http://www.onefinalserenade.com/uploads/2/9/1/2/2912571/852337_orig.jpg

http://www.donlinke.com/images/Vlad/vlad_tepes_big-x01.jpg

looking at the sparse available footage of joel from '71, the mustache doesn't seem to have lasted a day past the cover shoots. or maybe past the day he saw the prints.

Trying to write an "I am the Vlad Impaler" parody. Where's Old Lunch when we need him most?

The mention of Zanzibar upthread led me to realise that 52nd Street was the first of his records I heard, my Dad bought it around the time of release and I listened to it a lot as a kid.

I wonder just how many songs he wrote about or included aspirational performers (often trapped in a kinda neon-lit demi monde) indeed my favourite BJ track is Rosalind'a Eyes, there's something about the way it sounds that is very nostalgic to me and the outro fade with the cowbell is ace.

Zanzibar, Roslinda's Eyes, Piano Man...I bet there's a ton more.

i want someone to c+p mustachioed Billy Joel from the CSH album cover into famous photos, artworks, album covers etc

sidebar i have had "she's got a way" in my head since sunday & it's quite nice

dying @ "i'm the vlad impaler"

"looking at the sparse available footage of joel from '71, the mustache doesn't seem to have lasted a day past the cover shoots. or maybe past the day he saw the prints."

the mustache seemed out of place in the psychedelic woods too. all of billy looks out of place there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdO6HCZEDds

haha. somehow with that hair/look it kinda fits in better i think - just one of many many dudes in the late 60s staring stoned at the sgt. pepper's gatefold and thinking "hey... i could pull that off...."

i've never seen either of the hassles records or attila out in the wild but if i do i'm snapping 'em up. super interesting joel curiosities for sure, but also from what i've skimmed they'd just be enjoyable no-name psych-rock background music for when you're in the mood for that kind of thing. to think, he could have been known as the Electric Organ Man.

i like how simple that "she's got a way" is above. under three minutes. demo style. in the 80s it would have been 8 minutes long with full orchestra. i can also picture barry manilow singing that in the 70s. they both loved a melody. definitely the most unpretentious and unadorned joel classic. no big deal. but so memorable because catchy. its a song that all those early 70s dudes were trying to write on so many albums but they usually fell short. wouldn't have been out of place on one of those early paul williams albums.

it made me think of andrew gold or gilbert o sullivan

like they are worse/more saccharine versions of that style

Barry definitely would have glooped it up something fierce. and would have sold 20 million copies of it.

And it would have had four key changes.

i was thinking about andrew gold yesterday in reference to this thread. he was a total session-player insider but his real chart success, like billy's came in '77. there was a little clutch of late-70s piano guys (i'm thinking also of dean friedman) that overlapped with the yacht-rock electric-piano smooth-jazz aesthetic (michael mcdonald, bertie higgins, paul simon on 'still crazy' and 'one-trick pony'). won't go so far as to say that billy laid the groundwork for all that, but it does make it seem like the huge success of the stranger was part of a little wave, even if it owed its success as much to light rockers as to pretty evening ballads etc.

o'sullivan is an interesting contemporary for this early joel period! never thought about that before. he does seem more self-consciously "old-timey" e.g. on "matrimony." but i wonder what billy thought of "alone again, naturally."

listening to "you can make me free again" - man is it weird. super underwritten but with all this energy thrown in to make it feel like a big end-of-album jam where you'd get away with that kind of thing. and then it's track two. the hell.

Was googling to see if Willie Nelson covered "She's Got A Way" and ended up instead at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7pRf3TJVC8

DON: Billy Joel was an East Coast guy we could get behind. Like us, he could Rock, but he also could be quite sensitive and even Political when the song demanded it. It's not an easy mix to achieve, but he nailed it time and time again.

GLENN: Locking down Christie Brinkley for as long as he did was something else we could get behind!

DON: Well, yeah.

he could Rock, but he also could be quite sensitive and even Political

Dunno why but I'm irrationally annoyed that "sensitive" isn't capitalized here.

For the stans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7pRf3TJVC8

Make that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypTaxS2awdA

the phenomenon of the 70's am gold/aor male singer songwriter emotional confessional is v interesting to me

like neil diamond suddenly being all you are the sun i am the moon

i've never seen either of the hassles records or attila out in the wild but if i do i'm snapping 'em up. super interesting joel curiosities for sure, but also from what i've skimmed they'd just be enjoyable no-name psych-rock background music for when you're in the mood for that kind of thing. to think, he could have been known as the Electric Organ Man.

I've got a Hassles "Best of" CD on Razor + Tie from the late '90s (Billy quashed EMI's plans for expanded editions of the two LPs a few years prior). It's not great, but also not bad. They had kind of a Poppier Rascals thing going on. Because they were on United Artists Records, they had access to some of Traffic's publishing demos, and they actually recorded and released a fine, lite Vanilla Fudge-esque version of "Coloured Rain" prior to the original's official appearance on these shores.

I also once came across a vinyl copy of (iirc) Hour of The Wolf (the second Hassles LP) at a used shop, but balked at the $20+ price tag (this was back when vinyl was cheap, natch). I seem to recall this place also had a Wind In The Willows LP (WITW being Debbie Harry's '60s band) for a similar price.

xpost ok that's how wormholes are created, that's just irresponsible

all of billy looks out of place there.

I guess they couldn't lug the electric organ out into the wilderness either.

Lovin' this shot though:

http://i.imgur.com/JbDHPgb.gif

Hour of The Wolf

title track prefigures most meat loaf and "thriller" by a decade or more. with a minute-plus drum solo in the middle. and with billy recapping a lifetime worth of piano lessons at various points along the way. in other words, the freakout at the end of "you can make me free" is amateur hour in comparison.

i've said this on other threads so y'all probably know this but: i actually saw the hassles. johnny small, their drummer (and attila's), lived two houses down from me. i was a kid, and he was in high school, so we weren't buddies or anything. but they went through a period where they rehearsed in the garage, and me and a bunch of neighborhood kids used to gather around in their driveway and watch. i'm pretty sure "a taste of honey" was in their setlist, and i knew that one already from the beatles. i'm not even totally sure that billy was in the band then, but he probably was.

i asked one of them for their autograph once and they scribbled "the hassles" on a piece of paper. i think i might still have that. also a business card with their photo. there's a remnant of a hassles bumper sticker on a door in my mom's house.

yeah, you know what, billy joel is on that photo on the business card, so he must have been in the band.

okay I am now more jealous of you, sorry fcc. that rules.

holy shit

okay I am now more jealous of you, sorry fcc

me too!

Meanwhile, our next track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik3kpLWHHqg

Why Judy Why - named for Joel's sister, and with not a single keyboard instrument in earshot. This is the 1983 remix, but in this case it really is just a remix, and an opportunity to fix the Chipmunk problem - I'm fine with it. But if the clarity does seem anachronistic or false, the pitch-corrected version is out there.

This was my favorite when I made my first pass at CSH the other night. Very "Yesterday"ish.

Listening for the hit maker he would become... not hearing it with this one. Don't even like his singing on this track.

haven't heard this one in a long time and hardly remembered it. i kinda like it. a sweet little ballad. feel like it could slip onto any number of later bj records as a side 2 album track if you played around with the arrangement and production. something about the melodic sensibility -- or maybe it's just that the "oh what a scene" bridge sounds like an early draft of the "oh she takes care of herself" bridge from "she's always a woman."

and yeah i hear the "yesterday" thing for sure. that sounds intentional. it's no "yesterday" though, obviously. i cringed at "a man my age is very young, so i'm told, why do i feel so old?" lyrically he's no cat stevens. or jim croce.

This is nice. The singing and melody sells the sentiment even if the lyrics aren't much (which has happened many times in his career). He has a real way with a melody, even this early on. I only listened to "You Can Make Me Free", "Everybody Wants You Now", and this song one time each but I can remember the melodies clearly

Yeah, I think this is a good one! Nice sentiment, though possibly that's colored by the knowledge that it's invoking a sister as trusted old friend... rather than painting a scene of this sad sack dude glomming onto the nearest female acquaintance with an eye on rebounding with her ("times have changed, I need more").

From what I turned up last night it doesn't seem to have had much of a presence in his live set, maybe because of the minimal and guitar-based arrangement. If you're Billy and you need to give the band a break and go "solo" for one tune, you'd stick with the piano and "She's Got A Way," I imagine.

"This is nice" is all I can write.

Would've sounded great on AM radio.

Pretty, unmemorable.

Only song of his with acoustic guitar? Feels like his Brill Building version of "Suzanne" -- with Judy the right name for the genre. Nice for sure.

Only song of his with acoustic guitar?

Huh? "Everybody Loves You Now," "Always a Woman," "Allentown"?

I think he means like a naked acoustic "Blackbird" type deal like this w/o piano etc

also I like this song, nice charming little tune w/a memorable hook

overall i find all this stuff pretty charming, i guess it's tentative and transitional in a way, he's not quite fully formed and he sounds so young...

Yeah, I usually brush past most of this record but I'm a lot more sympathetic to even the more middling material now that I'm taking it one at a time, and thinking about where I was at that age and the kind of songs I was trying to write as a hopeless keyboard singer-songwriter. It's neat.

After some more digging, it doesn't look like Billy himself plays the guitar on Why Judy Why, though I'm not sure who does. Makes sense I guess, that "Spanish" solo is not the kind of thing I'd imagine being in his guitar wheelhouse.

Yeah he can strum but doesn't pick

I think he means like a naked acoustic "Blackbird" type deal like this w/o piano etc

Yeah, that's what I meant -- piano-less, nylon-string picking.

This is a little early in the evening, but I won't be at the desktop for a bit so here's our next song, closing out side one of the debut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mRRVhAukE&list=PLGsxlhKkg1xiWMIgCZtimqqMTlMTh_ynh&index=5

Falling of the Rain takes us back to the solo piano; lyrically, it's the first on the album to be mostly in the third-person, introducing us to a girl in a forest, a painter in a house, a fool on a hill (!), and the falling of the rain. The YouTube above is another kinda murky pitch-corrected version; the 1983 remix is considerably clearer and brighter, for better or worse.

The piano playing is nice but, you know, dorky as it is, I really cannot wait for Billy's sense of humour to kick in to his music.

I hear that, tho I'm still basically smiling at all these young man's songs. Again I'm reminded of my own halting efforts, where once I hit upon a combination of a string of memorable words fitting onto a memorable hook, it's like, okay! I've got a song, it's got a title, let's record this sucker! The downside is that the rest of the lyrics are a bit undercooked, but otoh, aside from track 2 they've all been three minutes or less, and the melodies and the playing are all pleasant at worst.

As for this song specifically I think it's really lovely but I suspect if I really lingered on the lyrics I'd be groaning. The premise - a looped-around story of a wasted life and missed opportunity? I think? - reminds me of Mark Lindsay's labored and bathetic "The Old Man At The Fair" from the same year - I think Billy's doing better than THAT at least.

also: the hooks tend to be of the form "catchy line ending each verse" rather than completely worked out choruses, which will definitely change on the next album...

someone please take billy's typewriter away from him and find him a lyricist, stat. does bernie taupin have any free time? i like where the piano playing is going though. slow those arpeggios down, look for some darker colors and maybe he'll come up with a "summer, highland falls" before too long.

I remember my slovenly, black trench coat wearing, Diet Coke drinking, Nintendo 64 playing college dorm neighbors playing the greatest hits cds all the damn time and that was enough to put me off BIlly forever.

Give him another go! At least so far, we're pretty far afield of the Greatest Hits, though slovenliness will probably become an issue sooner or later.

I tried, doc. Cold spring is so schmaltzy though.

Song's ok, but I want that riff for my ringtone. It even sounds like rain! Everyone will look to the skies when someone calls me.

xpost fair enough! I don't think I could say with a straight face that the schmaltz factor ever goes away, exactly, though it takes different forms perhaps.

buy the ticket take the ride

forget it jake its schmaltztown

v enjoyable song, there's macca not only in delivery but also the lyrical concept

this debut album is sounding a lot better than I remember Piano Man sounding

Those are some very Roy Bittan arpeggios on "Falling of the Rain," except I'm pretty sure Billy got there first. Was "the Professor" doing sessions before he joined up with Bruce?

I'm shocked no one invoked the name of Queen with "You Can Make Me Free." I mean that's "I Want to Break Free" before "I Want to Break Free," except Freddie always gives you a wink and a smile with the high drama and Billy always really means it. Which latter is kind of endearing if you give a fuck about Billy Joel, and grating if you don't.

Not sure it's that binary imo. Billy both means it and doesn't; one can find it endearing and grating in equal measure in different moods.

Some Joelian corn is earnest corn but some is homage, pastiche, goofery. Keeping the Faith, For the Longest Time, River of Dreams - did he mean all those things, or did he find it useful as an artist to appear as though he did? That 70s interview where he's talking about Billy the Kid indicates that he is aware that his job is to wear masks.

We all have a face that we hide away forever, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.

this is ok, not my fav

that one piano bit is SO "Jungleland" but yeah before that song existed

anyone else getting kind of a Styx vibe from this?

Side two of Cold Spring Harbor takes us in a country direction, with pedal steel guitar courtesy erstwhile Burrito Brother, Sneaky Pete Kleinow. It's Turn Around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3StsW-Gvwg

Again, that's an attempt at pitch-correcting the 1971 release - very welcome, since the 1983 remix in this case is a real hatchet job. Note new and pretty cheesy drum track, embarrassed synths ghosting in to try and add sweetening, and around thirty seconds cut out. Bleh! This 1972 live version maybe gives the best sense of what the song actually sounded like, though the non-Sneaky guitar part isn't exactly classic. I also note a very strong hint of Nilsson, starting at 2:44.

crap I'm behind!! i will catch up tonight <3

Why Judy Why - agree with the 'Yesterday' comparisons obv; also gives me an amateur Simon & Garfunkel vibe. The climbing notes or something? idk. Definitley feels like the phrasing is something he's trying out but it's a little out of his reach. His voice sounds so great though. pplains otm, this one has AM radio all over it. Or coming through a tiny speaker on a receptionist's desk in a dentist's office.
That 'ohhhhh' in 'ohhh what a scene' gives me a bit of 'Just Like a Woman'.

Falling of Rain - i enjoy the effort, the trying in this song but overall it's kind of forgettable somehow. very wordy but the words don't really make much of an impact. the piano riff is the best part.

Turn Around - country now! I love listening to him trying on all these different musical 'hats'. I'm with Dr Casino, the fun of listening to this album is getting to know him as a performer who doesn't quite yet know who he is, something about the innocent intensity is very endearing imo.
There's a bit of The Band about this one that I don't hate; but the arrangement is also a little bit too busy for the song that it is and for that it gives me a bit of Eagles as well, just noodling away on the steel guitar and throwing in random drum fills and hey lets just see what happens guys. AM radio gold though. tinny speakers ahoy.

"Falling of the Rain" is the first real miss for me. The piano riff would work better in a more energetic song, it doesn't quite come together

And "Turn Around"... so Eagles-y! (Before the Eagles I suppose). Agreed that it's cool seeing him try these different styles, even if they don't always land

Agreed re: wordiness vs impact on Falling of the Rain. Wonder why that is - maybe just how vague and generic the story feels from word to word. Maybe if he'd named the boy and girl Brenda and Eddie I'd be more invested but it does become a bit like a rainfall of words, just washing past my ears. Maybe he needed some more variety to the rhythm, pauses for things to land, I dunno. It's one of the better discoveries for me on this listen, though.

Yes I hear Eagles and Band in "Turn Around" but also, weirdly, John Denver.

With a dash of Allmans "Blue Sky"

John Denver. That's it exactly.

Knowing so little about the actual making of these albums, I keep wondering how much is Billy wanting to do X, versus Ripp pushing for X, or both. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" was released in April 1971, so I can easily imagine two people hoping for a hit that summer going "hey, let's try some of this too." But actually I'm not sure when Country Roads started climbing the charts... according to Wikipedia, it *also* had a bungled, distorted first pressing, with the difference that Denver's people fixed the mistake and kept promoting him.

I also wonder: did anyone ever try marketing Billy's songs through the A&R channels to other artists? I can picture another universe where The Carpenters have a hit with "She's Got A Way" or Three Dog Night pick up "Everybody Loves You Now" or something. Maybe more to the point in triangulating our subject's outlook on his career: I wonder what Billy thought of Newman and of Nilsson.

Yeah he seems like the type of dude the industry used to really push in that direction, like really talented musician and pop craftsman but not exactly a super marketable look and persona

Very 1971. I started listening to those Rhino Have a Nice Day 70s soft rock comps a while back, and this would fit in perfectly on one of those. Which is to say, kind of sweet, but basically anonymous.

^^ totally

Interesting 1978 Rolling Stone piece by Dave Marsh (who wasn't a fan, but to paraphrase Marsh, listening to Billy Joel is not having dinner with Billy Joel):
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/billy-joel-19781214

Like Turn Around much better than the last few. I wonder if our hero BJ was listening to Tumbleweed Connection from 1970? Not too many others doing piano ballads. Maybe Tapestry? That also came out in 1971. Anyway, I'm a sucker for pedal steel so good on Billy for having Sneaky Pete add a nice new element.

I think I like Turn Around, or maybe I just like the texture and sound of stuff like this. It's the kind of thing I'd expect to add to my AM Gold playlist after stumbling on it through Spotify radio, credited to some earnest-looking guy you never heard of - let's call him Joel Williams. Again, not super memorable lyrically. I really wonder whose idea the guitar part was; it was a very commercial sound at that date (c.f. George Harrison, "Teach Your Children" etc.) and I can imagine the song coming in the door as a "She's Got A Way" solo item.

You Look So Good To Me: another sonic turn! Billy dusts off his Hammond organ, ripped free from whatever amplification was beefing it up to Attila size, and lays down a jaunty, sunshiney little love song. Harmonica, too! Credit watch: This is another one with Denny Seiwell, session drummer and future short-flying Wing, in between Ram and Wild Life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMr5e60PX64

That, again, is a pitch correction by TheZestanor. The later remix is, to my ears, far too punchy and FM-ready, losing that slightly-hazy early 70s bubblegum sensibility. I cannot confirm that Joel ever performed this song live; if so he didn't do it much. Presumably, the arrangement's double-duty of piano and organ posed some difficulties, and certainly you're not going to schlep the organ around on tour if you're not using it for much...!

turn around - yup i hear the allman bros and elton things here, but more than anything i hear james taylor, in both musical and lyrical structure. he doesn't have the lyrical chops for that, not yet, not by a mile. but the music is, yeah, AM gold, and the change into the chorus is nice.

you look so good to me - i hear a really good idea for a song for exactly 12 seconds -- the organ intro and the "aah you look so good to me" melody -- followed by another 2 mins and 15 secs of trying to figure out what to do with that idea and not coming up with anything.

Sounds like Nilsson to me!

Interesting 1978 Rolling Stone piece by Dave Marsh

this is great (save for the parts where marsh tries to marshsplain what "rock" is).

i'm not so sure of marsh's assessment of the first hassles album ("something of an obscure classic"). i i don't think anybody ever actually thought that, not in 1971, not in 1978, not now. and i'm not so sure of billy's self assessment that "I'm one of the most self-contented, happiest people," but then again marsh doesn't seem to buy it either. and as a relatively early portrait of who exactly our billy is, it seems pretty spot-on.

The main hooks of "You Look So Good To Me" deserve a more focused and memorable song imo. As with "Turn Around," I like the sound - which suggests a mild and pleasant little sitcom theme - more than the song.

A Billy Joel song for a sitcom theme, ha! Not on my life!

Pleasant but inessential, now I can't help seeing freeze frame 70s opening sitcom montage playing against it

Boring song.

Tomorrow is Today, track eight on Cold Spring Harbor, takes us back to a man and his piano, before taking some surprise turns. Discogs defies Wiki and confirms that this was indeed released as a single sometime in 1972 (chopped down to 3:25, sometimes misspelled as "Tomorow," and backed, again, with "Everybody Loves You Now"). Evidently, it did not chart, and I can't actually find the single edit online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY1y2jLJjIU

Despite TheZestanor's scratchy source, I'd recommend listening to that pitch-corrected version first, then checking out the 1983 remix. The latter, by stripping out everything but Billy and the keys, does much better by the prettiness of the melody (which now seems to prefigure McCartney's "Warm and Beautiful") - but it's a very radical change and we're sort of in Let It Be... Naked territory. As a compromise, fans might again consider the 1972 Sigma Sound performance, which fills out the space in the arrangement in a different fashion while giving you a lot more clarity than the LP.

wow. I find this one quite beautiful.

A very lovely melody, sometimes feeling a little too upbeat on a set of genuinely quite personal lyrics that describe major depression - days that run together, nothing to look forward to in a tomorrow. Like "Second Wind" many years later, this is directly related to Joel's own attempted suicide in 1970; apparently, he's stated that the lyrics here are derived from his suicide note. With that in mind, for once I actually prefer the more stripped later arrangement to the orchestral overdubs, which seem totally indifferent to what the song is actually about and are just riding the sense that, hey, it's the end of the song, there should be a big swelling climax here. But even his live arrangement, which tries to make a rousing rocker out of it also feels kind of weird. Maybe this was his way of reclaiming the experience and conveying a sense of surviving it, having new hope?

The "oh my, goin' to the river" bridge, and its very affected vocal style are, er, a little much for me. Looking forward to him finding other ways of reaching for ~soul~ in his performances...

omg I got to 2:30 minute mark of that song mostly thinking eh unremarkable piano balladry which then abruptly veered into HOLY GOD STOP THAT NOW

2:35 certainly was a surprise

lmao this song is so much

yeah i def agree about the 2.30 min turn into NOPE

stripped back version is preferable for me

fucking hell....y'all

is that weird voice at 2:30...the origin of Axl Rose's low "where do we go now" or "gonna kick him on down the line-ay-ne" voice??????

definitely him trying to pull off a "blue-eyed soul" thing... so it goes back at least to mccartney on "i've got a feeling." or the blues as rendered by eric burdon or long john baldry or someone like that. or, obviously, directly to soul and/or blues records by black artists. but given the mccartney-isms we've observed elsewhere, my mind kinda goes that direction.

mccartney for sure. and he worshipped ray charles.

also similar to that voice he uses on It's All About Soul

this is worse tho

s that weird voice at 2:30...the origin of Axl Rose's low "where do we go now" or "gonna kick him on down the line-ay-ne" voice??

Nah Axl borrowed that from Black Oak Arkansas/Big Jim Dandy

kicking myself for not thinking of ray charles, and not just because much later on we'll be getting to a duet between the two. very strong reference point for his playing and songwriting.

maybe but i think this sounds more like axl than jim dandy esp the ow lawd deliver me down to the riv-vah

h8 u for getting Axl's adlib of "Stepping Stone" stuck in my head :)

Thought the same thing about the Axl voice -- especially after seeing this clip of the two Bill's performing together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5ooZnySKdU

DEEN CHA

lol

quite possibly my least favorite song on the album. the melody doesn't pay off, the lyric is a C+ suicide note at best (apologies if that's in bad taste, which i assume it is), and then he tries to rescue both with that ray charles axl rose thing, which makes *me* want to commit suicide. instead, i cleansed my palate with a quick listen to gilbert o'sullivan's far superior "alone again (naturally)."

Nocturne, the penultimate track on the debut, is one of very few instrumentals Billy ever committed to record - prior to his 2001 side-step into classical composition, anyway. It was put out as a single in the Netherlands (and maybe elsewhere?) but doesn't seem to have made much noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl0CIhD1i6s

If that's not enough to sink your teeth into, consider the demo - not an instrumental, but a lyrical number also known as "Silver Seas." I had no idea.

You Look So Good To Me: Cute. The Hammond organ is a nice change-up

Tomorrow is Today: Oh I quite like this one. Very "Let It Be", timeless melody, one of those songs I uh what is going on in the bridge... and an overblown ending too. what a way to kill a promising song

Nocturne: I've never heard a Joel instrumental, this one's ok. Pretty, but not much there. I like that he often has one unexpected chord change or section in many of his songs, but this one didn't really have that. Maybe the b-section I guess

Tomorrow is Today: wasn't doing anything for me until the big WTF moment. Didn't make it good, but did make it distinct. And he sorta does that same voice during one bit in "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant."

Nocturne: um, nice?

xxxpost

damn it's weird how the phrasing and riff of the rocked-up verses to "Big Shot" kinda SOUND like GnR

Nocturne: "It's called Lick my Love Pump"

"tomorrow is today" is my fav so far for its total commitment to being both ridiculous and pretty, which, same

lol @ums

It's like a Machturne, really.

"nocturne" is like one of those piano interludes on "zen arcade," only better composed, better played and longer. i'm not sure any of those three metrics actually helps. there are better, more fun instrumentals to come, and i wish billy did more of them over the course of his career.

iirc --- this is probably Allmusic info I absorbed decades ago, and the real story may well be more nuanced --- the presence of two instrumentals on "streetlife serenade" was because the album was sorta rushed and he just didn't have that much material with lyrics ready. but finding out that "nocturne" began as a more typical joel song and got the lyrics chopped made me wonder.

i love those streetlife serenade instrumentals. they might well be the best two songs on the album. looking forward to those discussions in a couple weeks. but i can't imagine the side 1 instrumental was ever intended as anything but an instrumental. the side 2 one, on the other hand, hmmm, maybe?

I feel obligated to mention that, due to this thread, I am thinking of making the protagonist of the YA novel that I've been brainstorming (though I probably wouldn't get around to starting it for another 2 years) a die hard Billy Joel fan.

How is Joel rated as a keyboardist?

xpost woo!!! thread is worth it imho

I feel obligated to mention that, due to this thread, I am thinking of making the protagonist of the YA novel that I've been brainstorming (though I probably wouldn't get around to starting it for another 2 years) a die hard Billy Joel fan.

"I memorized every Billy Joel song, from Allentown to Zanzibar. I played each song until I mastered it, then moved on to the next one"

lol

omg that bigshot clip, so bad, so good. bald billy just sitting there like a schlump when the guitar comes in, fat axl with his fucking shirt around his waist

Over the line, calstars. Time to go home.

please pack yr knives and go

There are many gems of awesome in that song but I can never quite be reconciled with the out-of-placeness of the goofy sax break.

Polishing off Cold Spring Harbor: Got To Begin Again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKA7y0iKHWA

This one's another piano-and-vocals arrangement that was not substantially altered in the remix, so that's what I'm using. If you really want some warble and muffle, the fan attempted at correcting the 1971 release is here. With a tip of the hat to TheZestanor, I am glad to put this album and its weird release history behind us - things get simpler from here!

er, "fan attempt"

How is Joel rated as a keyboardist?

Here's what he told A. Baldwin:

Billy Joel: I know what good piano playing is and I’m not good. My left hand is lame. I am a two-fingered left-hand piano player.

Alec Baldwin: As opposed to?

Billy Joel: As opposed to somebody who knows what they’re doing with their left hand. I never practiced enough to use all my fingers on my left hand, so I just play octaves, bass notes. My right hand tries to compensate for my left hand being so gimpy, so I overplay on my right hand. My technique is horrible. I can’t read music. I never really got--

Alec Baldwin: You don’t read music?

Billy Joel: I used to but I don’t anymore. I forgot how.

Alec Baldwin: If I took a piece of music that you didn’t know, if I got a score and put it in front of you and I said, 'Play this—'

Billy Joel: It would be Chinese.

a lot of this feel very much like a "first album"...pleasant enough, he's obv a talented guy and piano player but a lot of it kinda fades out of my mind the mind the song is done

also definitely doesn't have the sort of chutzpah (for lack of a better word) that I associate with Billy...to me his is maybe the ultimate "try hard" in music history (to his credit and discredit)....like it's funny in that clip above where he's imitating Elton, Neil and Leon Russell, he's like a really good piano student showing off for his parents almost, like look at I can do what they do, and in particular he seems to talk a little sideways about Neil like "I would never write anything like that, it's too simple" or "Elton's more rhythmic, I do more five finger stuff" haha, like Neil in particular I think drives "try hard" people really nuts (like the Eagles and Stephen Stills) because he just puts stuff out there half formed at times or just abandons really great stuff for no reason, or does shit like On the Beach or Tonight's the Night when he's perfectly capable of making something really polished like "Old Man" or "Heart of Gold"...his indifference towards his own gifts must drive a work ethic guy like Joel nuts

I go back and forth cause his try-hardness also comes across in his later vocal style, the sort of almost bellowing, HERE'S THE HOOK I'M A CROWD PLEASER force behind the big lines and OHHHHHHHHHH she takes care of herself, etc... most of which I *love*, but listening closely to this album, and especially those songs that show up again in later live versions, I'm a little torn. Like until this week I would have always agreed 100% with the Songs in the Attic liner notes that the later live versions, undoubtedly with a tighter, beefier performing unit, were the definitive, ripened versions of these early songs. On most of those I agree, but there are moments when that confident for-the-bleachers singing seems like he's almost deliberately rubbing out some of the vulnerability of the songs, like he's embarrassed about what a twee bedroom saddo sap he was.

Tighter, beefier, ripened. No bot writes like that.

She's Got a Way is definitely better on Songs in the Attic. I guess I agree that he's effacing the Sensitive Guyness of Cold Spring Harbor but that's not much of a loss.

You want sensitivity, go buy one Dan Fogelberg record.

I think i can sum up most, if not all, of Cold Spring Harbor as pleasant juvenilia, but I'm anxious to hear him develop the qualities that I more closely associate with his songwriting and performances. "Everybody Loves You Know" is probably the closest that this album gets to what I think of the classic Billy style--cranky lyrics given a tuneful presentation that only partially obscures his withering scorn.

yeah that's OTM

basically I can see why, if I were an A&R back then, you'd sign the kid, but also in the immortal words of Tom Petty's fictional A&R: "I don't hear a single"...but the future was wide open

before we leave cold spring harbor behind, here's billy on the unfortunate mastering:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCxAr69kLv8

Got to Begin Again: damn that is gorgeous
Maybe my 2nd favorite next to She's Got A Way

It's clear from the album that he has ~something~.
Aiming for the AM radio mush market may be what is creating that overarching "well, it's nice but meh" feeling from these songs

the confidence to show more of yourself/to understand & define your "style" in yr writing comes with experience imo

Like even just to relax enough to sing in a way where he sounds like he's from Long Island is a leap he hasnt quite made yet

Exciting to see this early Billy tho, I've enjoyed it

Exactly, VegemiteGrrl. It's interesting to see him in the larval phase, but the Lawn Guyland Brawler in him deserves full rein. So does the Tin Pan cheezemeister.

He could have gone the tweemo bedroom saddo route, and been James Taylor With a Piano, but we would miss out on so much that is to come.

i mean, imagine if they'd been like," nah these guys are a dime a dozen, NEXT"

In a sense, that's what happened! I don't really know the ins and outs, but what with the ginormous mastering screwup (not rectified) and the difficulty of finding even, like, posters from 1971-72 (the kind of thing you'd figure fans would have obsessively webified years ago, if they existed), I don't get the sense that Family was really doing much to promote the guy. Maybe I'm wrong and Artie Ripp was driving around delivering payola and calling in favors on his own time but I dunno.

I guess they at least managed to get him booked on regional radio shows, because the next key piece of Billy's narrative is that Philly "Sigma Sound Studio" radio gig that I've linked a couple times. The whole set is worth listening to as a well-preserved and high-quality recording of what he sounded like at that point, and he's already stepping away a bit from the AM Gold stuff, with a guitar solo taking the place of some of the bused-in orchestra on "Tomorrow Is Today.". But anyway, one of the new songs he was gigging with by that point is a bolder and much more distinctively Long Islandy ode to suburban anomie called... "Captain Jack.". We'll be dealing with that song soon enough but the thing is, it became this big airplay hit in Philly, most requested song in the station's history, that kinda deal, and this is what led to Clive Davis signing him up at Columbia, who *did* promote him. If not for that he really could be a totally forgotten dime-a-dozen guy and not this megaselling inescapable cultural force.

thread delivers, thanks

with the ginormous mastering screwup (not rectified) and the difficulty of finding even, like, posters from 1971-72 (the kind of thing you'd figure fans would have obsessively webified years ago, if they existed), I don't get the sense that Family was really doing much to promote the guy.

"got to begin again" turns out to have been the perfect sentiment to end his first solo album with. the solo album itself was him beginning again after two failed attempts to make his name with rock groups, and a suicide attempt, and who knows what else. but he'd have to begin again, yet again, as it turned out. and it's almost like he already knew.

Probably this is the best song on the second half, but the first half of the album really outshines the second. The trademarks I recognize in later Joel can be found in the first three tracks especially, like he already knew some of his strengths

woah suicide attempt??

He got his second wind.

woah suicide attempt??

yup. see discussion of "tomorrow is today" lyrics, above.

...or, yeah, see discussion of "you're only human (second wind)" two or three months from now.

guys.

i think i figured out the problem with the first album.

it's all bcz of the mustache.

it's a'me, maury-joel.

LOL

that was a terrible, wonderful joke pplains

This thread is amazing, and we haven't even gotten to Piano Man yet.

watch the rats jump off the ship at that point

A bit more background before our next song... so Billy spends late '71 and '72 on the road, playing shows. Wiki tells us that the band consisted of Rhys Clark (drums), Al Hertzberg (guitar) and Larry Russell (bass). Clark had been on the record, the rest not AFAICT. They opened "for groups such as the J. Geils Band, The Beach Boys, and Taj Mahal," which sounds like pretty good work!

http://www.onefinalserenade.com/uploads/2/9/1/2/2912571/billy-1971_1_orig.jpg https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/16/fa/86/16fa864f13b27aa1dfe0440971bbf584.jpg

As noted above, someone from Columbia (I said Clive Davis, but Wiki says Herb Gordon) notices the "Captain Jack" buzz in Philly and gets him signed up, though as we've discussed, Ripp held on to a piece of Joel for basically forever. As best as I can reconstruct events through very lazy Internet research, relocates to Los Angeles late in '72 with Elizabeth, she his lyrical muse and manager, formerly wed to his Attila bandmate. He picks up a piano-bar gig for six months or so, which some claim as the source of the "Piano Man" lyric - - - though if you dig around for more than a few minutes you'll find this disputed in the comments section by old-time New York Staters, who will insist variously that it was actually their local bar in Oyster Bay, Huntington, Massapequa, or somewhere up the Hudson. I'm sure people who've read actualy Joel biographies can untangle this - was he searching for inspiration? Biding time until a hole in the studio schedule? No advance from the label? Or just trying to make ends meet, with Eliabeth having a kid from her previous marriage? Anyway, the sessions for his Columbia debut don't begin until September of 1973 - right alongside his marriage to Elizabeth. Congrats!

The new album was produced by Michael Stewart (brother of the Kingston Trio's John, father of Xiu Xiu's John, and veteran of "You Were On My Mind" hitmakers The We Five). Apart from one track carrying Rhys Clark over, it's an all-new lineup of session guys (various players on various tracks), and, when the album drops in November, it's an all-new marketing campaign:

http://www.52ndstreetband.com/img/memoir/pianoman%20poster.jpg

http://www.onefinalserenade.com/uploads/2/9/1/2/2912571/cold-spring-harbor-promo_1.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/xAMg9NxlniJkVu-9coFXAioEf-I=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1674119-1373588955-6612.jpeg.jpg https://img.discogs.com/L_hukCWbcx68ycA2YUu32VQS4nE=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1674119-1373588958-7290.jpeg.jpg

The title track is a moderate hit; I'll get into the chart performance details when we get there. Columbia issues three more singles, none of them "Captain Jack" - obscenity concerns? - and while they make far less of a splash, the promotion is enough to get the album to peak at #27 on Billboard - #56 on the year-end pop album chart. Not bad for what is effectively a second debut.

Oh - - - and in one of my biggest and most obvious blind spots as a Joel fan, I've never heard the Piano Man album. Every time I've seen it in the cheapo bin, I pause, think about it, then look again at that cover and go "....nahhhhh." So this is almost all new to me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1K80k4NLio

Travelin' Prayer kicks off the record, and was later issued as the third single, peaking at #77 (#31 on Easy Listening). It's also one of a couple of Joel songs to get a prominent country cover later on - it won Dolly Parton a Grammy when she covered it in 1999.

And man... what a way to introduce an album called "Piano Man."

It's a'me,

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/16/fa/86/16fa864f13b27aa1dfe0440971bbf584.jpg

I like Parton's cover.

This is OK: he may have himself heard a Parton song or two by this point. Reverse influence!

And man... what a way to introduce an album called "Piano Man."

Not to get ahead of ourselves, not to slam the song-a-day format, but the segue between this one and the title track is one of my favorite of his.

Just on production value alone, this track makes Cold Spring Harbor sound like a paper sack full of gray slush found at the end of the driveway.

yeah no kidding. I don't know if I've ever heard him get this country, but this works just based on the arrangement

The single version, by the way, runs to 3:03 (not quite 3:05, an important number later on). I can't find it online so I'm not sure what was cut, but I have to assume the majority of it is the instrumental jam at the end. Mouth-harp fans were not a key demographic in the early 1970s.

Incidentally, folks here probably know this, but the Easy Listening chart, which would be good to Joel from this point forward, was the precursor to the Adult Contemporary chart. While certainly more laid-back (and overwhelmingly whiter) than the main chart - this is Carpenters territory for sure - it was sonically a little more open than you might expect, and the country flavor of this song may reflect a desire to score with precisely this audience. Just to give a sense of the musical landscape, toppers of this chart in 1973 include Carole King's "Been to Canaan," Weissberg & Mandel's "Dueling Banjos," Edward Bear's "Last Song," Dawn and Tony Orlando's "Tie A Yellow Ribbon," Wings's "My Love," Helen Reddy's "Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)" and "Delta Dawn," and B.W. Stevenson's marvelous "My Maria." In 1974, when this single came out, highlights include Barbra Streisand's "The Way We Were," Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" and "Carefree Highway," MFSB's "TSOP," The Three Degrees' "When Will I See You Again," Dave Loggins's forgotten and underrated "Please Come To Boston," Roberta Flack's "Feel Like Makin' Love," and three each by Reddy and John Denver.

Ready to make that mouth-harp outro my ringtone.

Heard now, this comes off as a bit too self-conscious in its attempt to do country (the fiddles! the banjo! that boingy sound!), but as a performance, it's solid. Agree that it feels like a big leap from both the production and the overall quaintness of CSH; he's making a statement here about his range, and this song is anything but indistinct.

"Captain Jack is one of the strongest musical pieces ever created for the popular music idiom" - haha okay Dennis Fine at Zoo World, pump yr brakes buddy...good tune and all but

also I want a t-shirt with that Mar Y Sol 72 triangle graphic so fucking bad

Travelin' Prayer is an odd concoction!

Like uh....Meatloaf meets Pure Prairie League or something?

haha when the bullfrog jaw harp comes in is great

love the breakneck tempo

drummer on this is great

this song is a lot of fun and yeah the production is such a dramatic step up

Yeah, this is cool! Billy must have been stoked to get home and put *this* on for the first time. Even though I don't normally think of him and country in the same breath, he feels like much more his own person than on the last album - not a lot of McCartney here. But as before, short and sweet, and a nice showcase for his piano skills (tho that's really confined to one stretch in the middle). The rapid-fire phrasing continues the approach from the Falling of the Rain, but with more rests, you can take it in better. I dig this. The forward momentum reminds me a bit of Albert Hammond's "I'm A Train," also released in '74 (and charting higher than anything from this album, though like a lot of Easy Listening hits, totally radio-homeless these days).

it won Dolly Parton a Grammy when she covered it in 1999.

hfs - I love this Dolly album but totally missed that this was a BJ song

has a 70s Gene Clark vibe to it

xxp yeah I was gonna comment something to the effect of "RIP Easy Listening format"

it's pretty much gone the way of the "Oldies" stations, i.e. mostly vanished from the American psyche

Albert Hammond's "I'm A Train,"

goddamn that's a great song

We've touched on the sad decline of Oldies before, maybe in the Three Dog Night thread - tons of great, great songs that I still heard on the radio in the 80s, and maybe some of 'em in dentists' offices through the 90s, but now lost. Particularly sad since the 70s AM gold era (which obviously would overlap a lot with this chart) was basically the best period ever for the marriage of fabulous studio musicians and professional songwriting, imho.

Yes, all those great songs, music that just makes you feel good - but if you had to hunt down all those songs individually, it could take you years, and you could spend hundreds or thousands of dollars... and those scratchy, noisy old records! If only there were an easier way!

i've always adored "travelin' prayer," which absorbs its country and gospel influences casually and confidently, as if this is what billy joel actually sounds like. it's a good, crisp, straightahead country-rock road song. but it's *not* what billy joel actually sounds like, is it?, and i've therefore always found it a strange song to lead off what most of the world thought was his debut album. while there's still more toying with country-rock to come, and while, yeah, there was lot of that in the easy listening air in the early '70s (see also: elton john, of course), it's still basically a career-launching head fake.

this is a good line that sort of acknowledges the head fakiness: "said now if this song seems strange it's just because i don't know how to pray."

well, to be fair, the calling card was really "piano man" as lead single, so unless that completely flopped, they probably figured people arriving at the album would find this an interesting curtain-raiser, where's this headed, seems like it'll be a stylistically diverse album etc. and then maybe if "piano man" did flop they'd have a backup plan: force a bunch of country numbers on him and start repackaging the "john denver of the adironadacks."

goddam this is great

*waves goodbye to Cold Spring Harbor*

it feels like a legit country song, the structure, the repitition, the arrangement: shakey otm about 70's gene clark

has billy talked about how he ended up writing recording this one, where it came from?

and a fkn great way to start an album

i'm excited!

great first cut. not sure it's his most memorable melody or lyrics (despite all the repeated lines) but the beat and the piano chords move really well & pull the listener in.

gonna be a real mood shift in this thread for the next track

The lyrical theme of Travelin' Prayer is also interesting to me - I think of Joel as kind of a tough-talking wiseass, who affects having been around the block, with advice to dispense and judgments to call. Nice hearing him in a position of vulnerability, hoping for the safety and peace of mind of someone else.

^ yeah i liked that too

agreed. a sincere, unselfish, nonjudgmental love song. not sure we're going to see too many more of these as we move forward.

http://streamd.hitparade.ch/cdimages/billy_joel-piano_man_s_1.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Billy_Joel_Piano_Man_single.jpg https://e.snmc.io/lk/f/l/893d2b64a228ece69af849d6cb8f7a10/1671195.jpg

Piano Man, usually regarded as Billy Joel's signature song, was the first single off his Columbia debut; the single version, which is what a lot of us grew up with (depending which version of Greatest Hits I & II you had!) is a minute shorter, and there was a 3:16 promo release at some point.
This promotional clip might also be of interest, but c'mon, it's all about the full-bellied album version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwVjTlTdIDQ

Released in November, 1973, it was a slow grower, reaching its chart peak of #25 the following April - #4 on Easy Listening. As Wiki reports, being a moderate-size hit, it did not immediately become a radio recurrent; it was after the success of The Stranger several years later that it found its way back into the playlists and gradually became a ubiquitous standard. In Canada it peaked at #10, establishing a solid market for Billy.

As a kid, I thought the crowd at the bar was saying, "sing us the song of a piano man," and Billy was kindly obliging.

same actually!

Something I've never figured out after thirty-some years: what is a "real estate novelist?"

I think "real estate novelist" means that he works as a real estate agent, but really wants to be a novelist. Kinda like working in a piano bar and wanting to be a globally adored rock star.

Anyway I am on record as a moderate BJ stan but this song has never sat well with me for various reasons. I Have Thoughts.

First, one of the minor tyrannies accompanying singer-songwriterdom is the risk of conflation of self with speaker, and a the quicksand of related temptations.

Many s/s types (myself included) want to have it both ways. One wants to be allowed to sing a song like "Honesty" or "She's Got a Way" or "Just the Way You Are" and the presentation is understood as being from the heart, as oneself. Singer-songwriters want to be applauded for their, um, honesty. I'm sure James Taylor and John Denver would co-sign on this desire.

But at the same time, one wants to be permitted to do ventriloquism when it suits one. "Allentown," "The Downeaster Alexa," "Goodnight Saigon" are obvious examples relevant to the thread. Paging a million folkies like Phil Ochs or Richard Shindell (who writes as a biblical woman, a Civil War soldier, or a long-distance trucker as often as he writes as a middle-aged suburban dad).

Case in point: No one asks Levon Helm whether he was actually present during the Civil War. But if he sang a song about being in a band or losing a woman, we'd naturally assume he was Speaking From the Heart.

All of that is a really long and completely pointless introduction to my thoughts about "Piano Man."

The song would be okay in third person (like "Angry Young Man" is).

But in my view it's untenable in first person because it's so self-flattering. "I, the artist, float above this human misery. And by the way everyone loves me because I make them so happy. And, further, I am so awesome that people are surprised that I am doing this instead of being the global superstar I was clearly meant to be."

Which might be true, but it is so douchey to say out loud that I cannot stand to hear it said, and I will change the radio station when this song comes on, despite it being the signature song of an artist I generally either love or tolerate.

By "and a the quicksand of related temptations" I guess I mean the wish to have it both ways.

Personally, if I were a professional songwriter, I would want a song about my tender love for my wife and children to be taken as sincere. But at the same time I would want songs about being a zombie or a psycho killer (or shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die) to be taken as imaginative fictional ventriloquism.

I never need to hear this again (it plays in my head, unbidden, at the slightest jog of memory) but I want to note that My Dick's "Piano Dick" version works pretty well as an antidote

I wish this song sunk into quicksand.

oh man... My Dick... just... wow...

haha you're welcome

I had forgotten about them but thank you, yes

i forgot about my dick, so hilarious

but yeah Piano Man, it's like...I can't even really rate it...it's just "there" like a mountain or "Sweet Caroline" or something so ubiquitous for so many years that it's hard to have any critical thought about it

I'll be an island and say that I still like it. Maybe it's only nostalgia keeping it alive for me at this point but I do enjoy it.

re Ye Mad Puffin, my read is not that he thinks he's so great.
all of these people he sees at the bar have aspirations beyond their day jobs (novelist, politics, movie star etc- and they're all saying to him what are YOU doing here but he's the only one getting paid to be there.
they could all be chasing their dreams but they're all drinking to forget instead

or something like that

it's like the tonic of shared loneliness and disappointment is somehow more powerful than ambition or something

idk

it speaks to me on a small-town level

this song is awful

just give up guys

you may be right
we may be crazy

Wow, I really like Veg's reading! Never occurred to me - I loved the song as a kid but somewhere along the way I settled into finding it kind of douchey. It was evocative of a smoky and fascinating adult world, I loved the cast of characters and pondered the meaning of things I misunderstood (it's not literal bread in the jar - oops) or just plain misheard ("but it's better that drink is alone"). Even if I don't really need to hear it again, ever, I have a baseline affection for it.

YMP's analysis does a great job of articulating the possible douche problems. I wonder, without that "what are YOU doin' here?" would the default reading lean so hard on the songwriter's pretensions? Or would it meanwhile rob the song of something important? I think younger me just took the drama of the situation at face value, not thinking of the narrator as basically patting himself on the back, but just finding something moving in the idea of this great piano player unappreciated in his time. A third-person equivalent might be found in all the "Fool on the Hill" descendents about misunderstood artists - Don McLean's "Vincent" or Brian and Michael's "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs" - which are almost all terrible since now singer and audience are patting themselves on the back for being among the Few Who See. "Deacon Blues" is a first-person version that shreds the illusion - the guy's a wannabe who hasn't even sat down with the instrument, and is looking forward to being an unappreciated loser.

I can imagine a version of "Piano Man" closer to that, maybe - or one more like "Lose Yourself," where Joel dropped some of the pose of a wise man at the piano and more Honestly sweated out the desperation of a repeatedly flopped songwriter facing down the prospect that his dreams, too, will wind up withered: I cannot grow old with Dave and Paul. I don't know if either would have worked, but I feel like partial echoes of them are already there in the song, making it a little richer than it might appear. Another thing I kinda appreciate is that he's *not* just complaining; it seems like he likes the regulars well enough, he gets by on the tips okay, and the boss appreciates him. Ehhh this piano bar... it's not so bad. There's a line straight from here to the "Cheers" theme, which may suggest some of what this song's audience found in it.

Joel's lyric has a few pretty good phrases imho, even if they're worn out by overfamiliarity and rubbing shoulders with some clunkers and stock ironies. I like "and I knew it complete," as odd as it is, and "real-estate novelist," and "Bill, I believe this is killing me," even if it's then stifled by the cartoonish, would-be poet's business about a smile running away from a face. "And probably will be for life" turns a walk-on about whom we know basically nothing into a miserable Ethan Frome - dunno if that's good or hackneyed but I found it very grim at age 10 even if I couldn't guess what's supposed to be so bad about being a Navy lifer. "The piano sounds like a carnival, the microphone smells like a beer" is nice: one second the Piano Man's conjuring up a sonic world that's not there in the mix - the closest he comes to the Tambourine Man - the next second we're back in the banal reality of this kinda shitty, dingy old-man dive bar.

Fun fact that doesn't fit anywhere else: Larry Kenchtel of the Wrecking Crew - who will appear on Joel's next album - played bass on the Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" and was, as a member of Bread" the guitar man on "The Guitar Man." I would love for it to come out that some Columbia exec, unsure of Joel's talents, brought him in to ghost-plink "Piano Man" and complete the set.

"piano man" is a pretty good harry chapin imitation.

it's also a weird structure for a pop hit. it proceeds from verse to pre-chorus to first chorus in businesslike fashion, and then keeps putting off the second chorus, first with an unexpected extra verse, and then, after that extra verse, an unexpected piano solo. it takes more than two minutes to get from the first chorus to the second. paul the real estate novelist could finish his novel while waiting for that chorus to come around.

in my fantasy paul writes novels *about* real estate.

i like that piano solo. it's not fast and flashy like billy often likes to do, just a cool melodic interlude. he has a couple different ways of playing it live, which are equally fun.

always read this song as "sketch of people in bars" more than anything specific abt the protagonist

I wonder, without that "what are YOU doin' here?" would the default reading lean so hard on the songwriter's pretensions?

This makes me realize that "Walking in Memphis" really may be the successor to this song: similarly loved and eternal, but also hated for being a star's own portrait of being anonymous but also anointed.

Though that line to me always showed the Piano Man to be as much of a failure as his company, all living below their potential. (Alcoholics?)

my main problem w this song is that the cast of characters are poorly conceived, adorned with sloppy details and described with clumsy lines that don't really scan

Wow, "Walkin' in Memphis" is a great connection - and it's also constructed as a series of encounters with various characters (some more fleshed-out than others), with the musical anointment coming at the end of the last verse.

I wonder, without that "what are YOU doin' here?" would the default reading lean so hard on the songwriter's pretensions?

Yes. Because that's only one of the douchey self-congratulatory lines. You also have to contend with (1) the pianist knowing that the manager knows that the pianist is the draw, (2) the pianist knowing that he has correctly read the mood of the room, and (3) the pianist knowing that it is he who has them "feelin' alright."

This seems very presumptuous, and downplays the role played by alcohol, which one preumes accounts for some of the audience "feelin' alright."

Also it insults John, who not only works hard at serving people drinks, but he is also an entertainer of sorts, a smoking enabler, and a personal confidant. He is at least as responsible for the crowd's good mood as Bill is!

Also there is no such drink as a "tonic and gin." I could potentially forgive every other problem with this sobg, but not that one.

where do you stand on "ah la, deh dee dahh"

Also there is no such drink as a "tonic and gin."

ugh yeah this kind of shit - which is just bad writing in the service of a forced rhyme - drives me up the wall

Crap this thread is moving fast.

I also wanted to echo Dr. C in saying that this song contributed to my childhood sense of what adulthood was like.

There is a passage in Annie Dillard's American Childhood where she addresses "x walks unto a bar" jokes. She notes it as given that an 8-year-old girl will naturally understand what it is like to walk into a bar. The regulars will be there, the bartender will be wiping the bar with a cloth, etc.

I wonder how much of our sense of "x walks into a bar" comes from actual bars, how much from the TV show Cheers... and how much from this fucking song.

I knew it led to the Cheers theme, but had not until now thought about its relation to Walking in Memphis. That is a great point, Eazy.

I think somewhere ILM has discussed "Late in the Evening," specifically the extent to which Paul Simon "blew that room away."

specifically the extent to which Paul Simon "blew that room away."

and bon jovi has seen a million faces and rocked 'em all. and paul stanley will drive you crazy. and and and...

is it douchey to know you're the guy everyone came to see and to know you can in fact rock 'em all while they're nursing their tonic-and-gins and to be a little arrogant about it, or is it only douchey because you're sitting at a piano and you're an easy-listening singer-songwriter with a harmonica strapped around your neck? would it be less douchey if you were wearing leather and screaming? is the sentiment douchey, or just the manner in which it's delivered?

I wonder how much of our sense of "x walks into a bar" comes from actual bars, how much from the TV show Cheers... and how much from this fucking song

this song! this song is *still* what i think a bar is supposed to look and smell and feel like!

FCC et al., you people continue to amaze and delight me, with your willingness to keep unpacking new aspects of this completely overexposed bit of boomer culture. Thank you.

Backing upthread to Dr C - la dee dah etc. is fine here! In fact, comparatively laudable.

Inside the frame narrative, the old man is trying to hum, to Bill, the melody of the song he's trying to recall and request.

For me, that is like Ilsa in Casablanca humming "As Time Goes By" to get Sam to play it, after Sam claims to not remember the tune.

Much more defensible, lyrically, than the lazy LIE LA LIE bits of Paul Simon's "The Boxer" and Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising."

• Did not know this came out in November 1973 -- the month I was born!

• Still go huh? when he says they're all getting stoned. I guess "drunk" doesn't have the same cadence to it, but it's such a weed word.

• Song does have classic wordplay like ''real estate novelist,'' but there are phrases like "when I wore a younger man's clothes" that sound like, well, they fit in there and worked ok? Stop hassling Billy!

• But seriously, I still wear flannel shirts that I wore in college. The pants, maybe not so much.

• And I've said it before, and I'll say it again: No person has ever ordered a "tonic and gin" unless they were trying to be cute about the song.

would everyone still find this song terrible if it wasn't so heavily & mercilessly overplayed?

i guess it is impossible to answer

Still go huh? when he says they're all getting stoned. I guess "drunk" doesn't have the same cadence to it, but it's such a weed word.

it never occurred to me that the businessmen weren't actually getting stoned! i assumed they were in a dark booth quietly passing a joint around. but, um, you may be right. your interpretation - that billy just liked the word better - makes more sense and is in character for our tonic-and-gin swilling songwriter.

honestly my earliest memory of this song is from a comic book: Dan Pussey "air piano"-ing to it in an early 90s issue of Dan Clowes "Eightball". I don't think I actually heard the song til a little later, at which point I found myself actively annoyed at the "slowly gets stoned" line.

I just want to post in this thread every photo in this link: http://www.popspotsnyc.com/billy_joel_piano_man/

excellent link!

that is very cool!

mum used to listen to her cassette of Greatest Hits vi & ii while she was baking or getting dinner ready & us kids would be playing in the living room - piano man & goodbye hollywood especially remind me of playing lego on a blanket in the living room

Thank you for your valiant defense and evocative takes, Vegemitegrrl.

I think for me, this material was mostly greatest hits cassettes and bad boombox mix tapes grabbed from the radio circa ninth grade. I doubt I heard these albums in full till much later.

Listening to 'Piano Man' for the first time on headphones. I never noticed the mandolin before!

Maybe Paul the real estate novelist writes books like this

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51s8GjGTdyL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41PFv26dxmL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

but this is my favorite

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41szxseGdmL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

The Romance of Real Estate

"Good real estate novelists drive us out to parts of town we've never seen before."

Disclosure: I am a professional writer with a degree in English literature. My particular specialty was, and is, 20th century novels.

I have no problem believing there are, or have been, actual "real estate novelists" working in the years 1990-2017.

Not sure I believe there was such a thing in 1970-73. Sorry.

cant we dream

hey now hey now

Richard Ford is a real-estate novelist.

did HE have time for a wife i wonder?

cant we dream

can't paul dream

lets spare a thought for navy davy tho

give a moment or two to the navy dave man

Richard Ford is a real-estate novelist.

― Eazy, Friday, July 28, 2017 6:30 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See my link upthread!

I'm not surprised anyone would hate this song. Not only has it been massively overplayed, but it has the same problems as "American Pie" - designed as a sing along, and it's quite long. You've heard the melody a hundred times after just one listen. Yet I never got as sick of this song. Maybe I just heard it at the right age, but I think as far as Joel lyrics goes, it succeeds in painting a vivid picture, despite some clunker lines. I can still sing along and enjoy it in the right mood. "American Pie" can fuck off though

It's twelve o'clock, Tuesday afternoon
A happy couple enters the bar,
There's an old man sitting next to me
Peeling labels off his bottles of Bud...

I have no problem believing there are, or have been, actual "real estate novelists" working in the years 1990-2017.

Not sure I believe there was such a thing in 1970-73. Sorry.

― okapi paste (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, July 28, 2017

Louis Auchincloss?

Yeah god American Pie is like 45 minutes long - any self-respecting Buddy Holly fan would have made a song honoring his death a thousand times more succinct

I went camping over 4th of July and the campground was very 'activities-based' and held a karaoke event. I watched this poor old fool get up and do American Pie probably just thinking hey I like this song I never hear it no more but after the 79th verse he was practically blinking 'help me' in morse code it was brutal

poor dude was a least 4 bars off the whole way through too lol

lol at the 'help me' bit

re: Paul Simon: https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=31830

re: "stoned" as "drunk" - this is an older usage, right? feel like I've heard it in very square comedy or movies from the early 60s and clearly referring to, yeah, businessmen on their third martinis. if so it would date the song dramatically except that the weed usage had already half-supplanted it and today is presumably what 99% of listeners assume is going on. the surreptitious joint in the corner booth just about works, though it does change the kind of bar that a guy walks into. pplains's link to popspots helps me reconcile that to some degree. if that's the same site I've been to before, they also locate the "streetlife serenade" cover. fabulous work.

and yeah, "all I wanna do" is pretty clearly in this song's debt. doesn't hurt it none!

Meanwhile, it's time for our next track - but if you're inclined to keep the Piano Man discussion rolling, well, It Ain't No Crime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWS5xUF1nlA

This is a slightly more obscure track and there's not much to add here. This 1978 performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test shows how the fully-formed Billy Joel Band tackled it. Almost no online discussion of the song exists, save the every-Billy-Joel-song blog One Final Serenade which I really should have linked already, especially as I've linked to a couple of the images collected by the author. Mea culpa.

Except for the backing vocals, which sound like they're out of a Leon Russell record, the fullthroated singing and piano boogie could've been from an Elton single.

Yeah, this could have come straight off of Tumbleweed Connection.

The boogie could also be from a Leon Russell record - I could see this wandering into "Shootout on the Plantation" without much effort. Long John Baldry comes to mind again. Joel's vocal here, and especially in the live version, take him into a zone that I never really like from him, where he's trying to get all husky and barky and soulful. "Easy Money" is the nadir for me.

The song's fine, I guess? It's interesting in that it's basically the same setup as "Big Shot," speaking in the second-person to someone who partied a little too hard last night - but there he's full of venom and judgement, and sounds very comfortable being an asshole, while here it ain't no crime and he sounds a little forced trying to embrace the revelry. "I've Loved These Days," in the first person and mixing celebration with a sense of emptiness and futility, also works better imho.

this is very cute if sort of undistinguished

elton leon joe cocker a bit of all of that. more than a bit. billy used to do a good joe cocker impression. during the instrumental bits with the sax i feel like i'm listening to the saturday night live band play us out of a commercial break. good early '70s album filler. rod stewart could've done justice to this one.

Wow, SNL band is harsh but fair FCC.

"Only Human" is another lyrical descendent of "Ain't No Crime," imo.

My interpretation of the businessmen slowly get stoned is that they are periodically going out to the alley behind the bar and burning a J, thus slowly getting more stoned throughout the evening

Woah this Ain't No Crime REALLY doesn't seem like a Billy Joel song, I don't like him trying to be all funky

maybe they are bumming their tokes off paul simon

"Big Shot" comparison is accurate - even that bass riff in the chorus is Big Shotty.

Not a huge fan of this voice either. I haven't decided if I'm going to take a day off from this thread or not for the day we hit "Everybody Has a Dream".

I mean, it's one thing to fudge all the details and play faux western on Billy the Kid, but this boogie woogie stuff just doesn't ring true for me. And I love this man, you all know this.

TL;DR - Had I been his dad, I too would've slapped the shit out of him had I heard him trying this on Beethoven.

oh god i got 30 seconds in and had to stop to gather my rage into an incandescent pyre

MAWNIN
OWN THE FLAW
WAWKIN OWT THA DAW

wtf is this deeply shity embarrassing bad dr john impersonator voice you are doing dude

i want to slam the cover down on his hands & make him stop

ugh that was gross

i need a silkwood shower

lol pplains I didn't see yr post til just now

jinx

lol

Lost opportunity for this to be the theme song to a 70s ABC sitcom.

Which is the worst faux-western pastiche: "Billy the Kid," "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," or "Glitter Gulch"?

FWIW I don't have an answer because I hate them all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATQ5ays9t1I

You're My Home, track four on Piano Man, takes us back into love ballad territory, again with some country shadings. It did double duty as the B-side to the title track, and perhaps reached most people via Helen Reddy, whose cover on 1974's Love Song For Jeffrey also appeared as the B-side to "Keep on Singing" and perhaps made Billy a little nugget in royalties (the album went gold and the single topped the Easy Listening chart). A live version from 1980 would appear on Songs in the Attic and was issued as a single - check this promo video - which peaked at #100 in Australia and did not chart anywhere else.

Did Helen Reddy really sing the lyrics, "You're my Pleasuredome?"

Good Sunday morning track. Bless whoever it was who planted this sensitive singer-songwriter into Hell's Kitchen later on with a shaky marriage and Phil Ramone.

I actually like "You're My Home," and it's interesting to compare it thematically with "And So It Goes," where in every heart there is a room. Or how Brender and Eddie have an apartment with deep-pile carpets. Or how the angry young man sits in a room with a lock on the door.

Not trying to reignite the issue of "real estate novelist," but it does seem there is a running theme here of spatial metaphors for emotional states.

An understandable metaphor for a young guy, first marriage, buying a house, all the headaches and worry that come with that, and then of course the musician thing of being on the road and away from said home... though maybe Elizabeth came along? Not sure exactly what their arrangement was. I learned the other night that right around when I was born, my dad was out of work and facing down two mortgages (both for houses in cities that we'd moved to for jobs at companies that closed down a few months after arrival). Your basic "Marge is pregnant with Lisa" episode in a lot of ways - holding the baby in your arms and having no earthly idea how you're going to work this all out. Mortgage payments get really mixed together with the whole rest of one's life at times like that. Joel of course had a recording contract but presumably there was still some uncertainty, or maybe the song is from a slightly earlier moment.

The early 70s was such a golden age for drumming, every song had some sick session dude and those great super dead/no verb boom bap Harvest/Deep Purple Ian Paice sounds

Yeah, all those great big honking drum kits in utterly dead rooms with carpet on the walls. I still love that sound. I sometimes strive to recreate it, but engineers hate it when I want to play good drums in live rooms, but then mute the hell out of them.

Have you tried oil filled drum heads? 2 ply with a thin layer of oil... Never actually seen them in the wikd but I know Paice used them, supposed to stop the ringing

have you tried setting the engineer on fire?

xp Yeah; Remo Pinstripes, Evans Hydraulics, pretty much the same tone.

lovely, john denver-y guitar ballad, but...

why does telling your girl she's always with you no matter what shitty city you're playing in or driving through sound so much less sexy and romantic than telling her to forget you ("wherever i lay my hat that's my home") or that you're fucking up even as you miss her ("can't hardly wait")? or is it that i just don't believe a guy on the road who tells his girl at home that she's "my castle ... my cabin and my instant pleasuredome," which, besides being a strange hallmark card, is entirely about him, not her? or is it that i know a little too much about where this actual dude is headed? "i'll never be a stranger." hmmm. run away, lady, before it's too late.

i much prefer "travelin' prayer," where she's on the road and he's at home longing for her and resorting to prayer even though he doesn't know how to pray because what the hell else is a guy supposed to do? that's a dude i'm rooting for.

side note: i had a friend in college who told me he preferred bruce springsteen to billy joel because most of bruce's songs had proper endings while too many of billy's songs faded out. he thought that was a sign of lack-of-commitment and halfhearted craft. "you're my home" is a particularly lame and unnecessary fadeout.

Nice song, very early 70s. I'd heard it before, but I can't figure out where, as I'd never heard the Piano Man album before. Did it ever turn up anywhere else?

cryptosicko - Songs in the Attic

my blurbs ;_;

"Ain't No Crime" - everyone otm. sounds like a totally different artist, SNL, slam the cover on his hands, 70's sitcom, all of that. "Big Shot" >>>> this

"You're My Home" - at least this one sounds like Billy singing. pleasant, but I feel like the metaphor has run itself dry before the third verse

ahhh much better

def john denver vibes, in the best way. i really like that a lot. A good KIP Billy track before the cynicism sled starts gaining speed lol

"You're My Home" is pretty enough that I can get past any of its lyrical shortcomings. The Denver connection is probably right, though the main guitar figure, especially in the opening, makes me think of the then-slightly-dated "Everybody's Talkin'." I like the "home could be the Pennyslvania turnpike" bridge where the rhythm section gets a little more oomph to it, and the pleasant AM gold incidental music right after that. "You're my instant pleasuredome" is such a distractingly awful lyric though, and it looms over the song once you know it's coming at the end. How the hell did he convince himself that was a good idea?

Helen Reddy, with Tom Catalano (who had produced, I think, all of Neil Diamond's records to that point) dials down the rhythm track and layers strings over the thing (with a bigger orchestral section blaring in for the bridge). It's more AM goldy which I like, but maybe a little too corny and certainly more dated. She certainly gets hold of the melody, and yes, she sings "instant pleasuredome," though she manages to make that sound prettier.

Here's Billy being a dick about the cover (though also zinging himself on a Storm Front album track):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDUWJA5W810

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ASIT5DqN0

The Ballad of Billy the Kid is the epic Side One closer; not quite a ballad of Billy the Kid but also not exactly the autobiographical theme song one might be dreading, it would be issued as a single in the UK (where "Piano Man" was failing to take off) in April 1974. It stuck around in the live set and Billy clearly liked it --- in that cute interview clip fact checking cuz posted a while back (with the Young and Russell impressions) he amuses himself by tossing one of the key piano riffs from this song in at the end, almost like a signature. A 1980 Madison Square Garden performance made it into the set of songs selected for Songs in the Attic; that version isn't radically different besides taking on Billy's mature bellow and roar, but it's maybe just slightly more comfortable in its skin. The crowd seems excited, in any case.

Another one that sounds like it sounds like Billy heard Tumbleweed Connection and went "hey, I could do that!" I've never liked TC, but (to my knowledge) Elton never pulled that stereotypically clip-cloppy Western music that Billy uses to open this song, which makes this measurably worse than any of Elton's C&W pastiches.

I basically like Tumbleweed Connection, for its songwriting much more than its aesthetic. The lesser tracks kinda blend into the background as western-y texture, which maybe works better when that's the whole gimmick of an album, rather than coming in for a song here, a song there.

At this point I have to assume there was some crumpled-up draft of "Piano Man" that went for Tumbleweed territory, with all the 1970s set-dressing swapped out for your stereotypical passel of saloon extras. Yee-haw deh dee dah, deh dee dah.

I hope Henley went nuts hearing the inaccuracies as he, Bernie, and Glenn tried to hammer out "On the Border".

Elton never pulled that stereotypically clip-cloppy Western music

when people cite this riff (which gets recycled all over the place), how come it isn't ID'd as "Happy Trails" (instead of "generic Western film music" or whatever - I've seen this happen a bunch recently, it feels like)?

the post hippie diaspora's fascination with outlaws/cowboy mythology is super interesting to me, like psychedelia was initially a very urban movement (NYC, London, SF) that so quickly moved agrarian/farmer then on to druggie cowboy outlaw stuff, which lasted for so long stripped of its original 60s origins w/Bon Jovi, Kid Rock etc

when people cite this riff (which gets recycled all over the place), how come it isn't ID'd as "Happy Trails"

'Cause I didn't know that's what it was called!

which is to say i'm kind of a sucker for this bullshit, but i have such an allergy to aaron copeland the string stuff esp at the end really irritates me, the arrangement really sinks this, he should've gone for more a (god help i'm saying this) Eagles feel, more pedal steel less beef-its-whats-for-dinner pomp & circumstance

it's not just you, there was something else recently where this riff came up and the composers themselves iirc referred to it as "Western movie music" but I can't remember who/what it was argggh

might've been The Who's "Soon Be Home"? eh whatever

xp

i really like this; the Happy Trails nostalgia & the Bernstein Mag-7 nod with the big strings
There's an earnestness that appeals to me I guess - like he genuinely was into Billy the Kid & wanted to write a song about him & here it is

and i feel that Tumbleweed Connection vibe too - i liked that album a bit as well so I don't hate the style or what he's going for

i love the spot-on elmer bernstein hollywood western homage. it's thrilling. i've always been a sucker for instrumental billy joel. i loved the rest of the song, too, when i wore a younger man's clothes. i always got a kick out of the switch from that billy the kid to this billy the kid with the six-pack in his hand. oh shit! he's singing about himself! cool!

but today, this one mostly makes me yearn for warren zevon. "frank and jesse james." "boom boom mancini." "bill lee." any of those. character sketches with actual characters. outlaw tales with actual outlaws. this one's a movie without a script. elmer bernstein scoring a picture that should never have been greenlit. buy the soundtrack. but skip the film.

(and it's 100 percent made-up, innit? "his age and his size took the teller by surprise" is a decent, telling detail, i suppose. but that's it.)

there's a cool, super-high, super-fast piano thing he does (at 0:57 and 1:30, for example, in the video dr. c posted of the song) which i don't know what it's called but it reminds me of a thing he will do several years later in "all for leyna," and it's one of my favorite billy joel piano things.

Yes, the fast, high piano runs are really cool. Actually the whole song works well - reminds me a little of "Songs From an Italian Restaurant" in places, another epic third-person tale. Before reading y'alls descriptions of this song, I figured it was another autobiographical song. Nope, but he sneaks a little bit in at the end

"Scenes", that is

I agree with the Dr. that I call that intro music "Happy Trails," though perhaps HT copied it from somewhere else and so it is not the original appearance of that motif.

Sigh. This song. There is a lot going on in the accompaniment, like the piano ornaments and the vigorous, dramatic drumming. Instrumental bridge = bad Copeland, yeah.

I find the lyrics stupid and the vocal melody dull as dishwater, though. At some points you hear Elton ("soon put many older guns ta SHAY-HAME").

Compare "SHAY-HAME" with "tryna drink WHISKAY, oh, from a bottla WHY-HINE"

or "hung my head in SHAY-HAME" in "Ballad of a Well-Known Gun." agreed with fcc that I'd like this song a lot more if the narrative actually held my attention, or if there were just a few more lyrical turns that stuck in my imagination. I'm okay with this kind of exercise generally, and have nothing but affection for "lily, rosemary, and the jack of hearts," or any of dylan's shaggy-dog songs really.

I like the lyrics because it's parody and self-parody at the same time. The overblown legendary status given to these Western guys, and the locals out on Long Island who think West Virginia is way out west.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlFmE4enqaI

Worse Comes To Worst opens side two of Piano Man with another smattering of different genre cues. Released as the album's second single in a 2:48 edit, it peaked at #80 on Billboard and #62 in Canada. Scarcely anthologized, it's probably one of his most obscure singles, but it apparently had some shelf life in the live set; this 1977 version bangs it together with "Ain't No Crime," with both songs getting a nice shot in the arm and some very lively keyboard work.

haha sounds like something off Superfly for like 10 seconds at the beginning

That sonofabitch thumb brings me back to the stoned businessmen in "Piano Man" for a second. I get that FM radio was playing anything in 1973, but Billy was getting pushed more toward AM/Top 40.

So with that in mind, how in the world would any program director allow a song with the word "stoned" in it on the air if it meant anything other than getting tooted on dry martinis?

I'd start counting the placenames - from the Pennsylvania Turnpike to New Mexico - but "We Didn't Start the Fire" would ruin it.

The overall sound of this is in line with what I think of as his style; even the tone of his singing voice. barring the Superfly/Tell Me Something Good intro of course lol

lyrics wise there's not a lot of "there" there, but musically it's pretty enjoyable

I like it!

A little too white reggae--aka, my least favourite sound in the world--for me.

billy as jimmy buffett. enjoyable, sing-along fluff. i like how the harmonies kick in on the chorus. the bridge makes no sense. "when i am together, when i sing my song"? smart of him not to come back to the bridge a second time.

somebody should sample the intro. action bronson, do it.

this also reminds me of ringo starr for some reason.

does anyone else find the cover image of this album incredibly creepy? my wife said it was the reason she's never listened to this album. I can't quite put my finger on it myself.

yes i hate it

it looks like a drawing someone did in a booth on the boardwalk for five dollars.

It's a painting, right? Or is it some kind of re-touched photo? It makes me think of Catholic icons for some reason.

It's hard to think of white reggae in this period without mentioning Eric Patrick Clapton. However this predates 461 Ocean Boulevard, does it not? (73 vs 74)

I do think that the chorus of "Worse Comes to Worst," the backing vocals especially, has a somewhat Ocean Boulevard-ish sound.

clapton is otm. there's a general vibe here of what people who knew, or were in, the beatles were doing circa 1972-73.

does anyone else find the cover image of this album incredibly creepy? my wife said it was the reason she's never listened to this album. I can't quite put my finger on it myself.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 1, 2017 2:38 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes i hate it

― Yoni Loves Chocha (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, August 1, 2017 2:39 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it looks like he's supposed to be dead & that is his ghost, but yeah terrible cover image

the back cover upthread is even more horrifying!

it's AM Gold's version of the Exorcist demon pazuzu

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/c/cd/Pazuzu-0.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150401021629

it looks like he's supposed to be dead & that is his ghost

and the coffin, it sounds like a carnival
and the skeleton smells like a beer

fcc, I can't determine whether of the Delaney & Bonnie crowd were involved in Piano Man. I don't think so. Maybe it was just a sound that was in the air at that time.

captain jack is dead
undead
undead
undead
undead un

fcc, I can't determine whether of the Delaney & Bonnie crowd were involved in Piano Man. I don't think so. Maybe it was just a sound that was in the air at that time.

i don't think there was much crossover in personnel, so yeah, i assume it was in the air. but if you click thru enough wiki pages you eventually discover, not surprisingly, that everything is pretty much connected to everything:

Laura Creamer (née Polkinghorne) is a songwriter, vocalist, and arranger who has recorded and/or toured with Billy Joel, Bob Seger, Van Morrison, Glenn Frey, Bruce Hornsby, Kid Rock, Eric Clapton and many others. She is credited as a backing vocalist on multiple albums including Billy Joel's 1973 Piano Man.

RE: The album cover: It wasn't until I started working at Kinko's that I finally went "Wait a minute..."

http://i.imgur.com/p9G80jI.jpg

lol

They call him the wild rose
But his name is Billy Joel

guys i skipped the day we were supposed to listen to the title track, anyway i somehow forgot the line "making love to his tonic and gin," please throw all recorded evidence of this song into the sea

it wasn't until this very moment the horrific image of billy joel jammin his dong into a saffire tonic invaded my sanity

the cover is really really bad. though tbh if theyd gone the more obvious route of a photo of him at the piano (maybe even at the Executive Room) it would just be generic 70s Yawnsomely Literal material. the Shroud of Turin approach is at least memorable I guess.

I believe "Jammin his Dong" was the original album title but the label scrapped it

so it's supposed to be like a death mask image?

xp

jam a dong
jam a dong
gin and tong

his eyes are so hollow

i hate it
i hate it

I believe "Jammin his Dong" was the original album title but the label scrapped it

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 1, 2017 1:18 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh so "piano dick" is actually the unearthed original draft

it wasn't until this very moment the horrific image of billy joel jammin his dong into a saffire tonic invaded my sanity

So the gin's Beefeater then, right?

I believe there is a Piano Man demo, with different lyrics, on the "My Life" anthology, but I forgot to dig it up the other day. Hmm.

the infamous "soda and scotch" demo.

apparently it goes like this:


Lyrically

FREE - In Google Play

Install

in: LyricWikia 

Billy Joel:Piano Man (Demo Version)







Piano Man (Demo Version)

This song is by Billy Joel and appears on the box set My Lives (2005).



Song of the Day
January 31, 2007

Well, it's nine o'clock on a Saturday
The drinks are going fast
There's an old man sitting next to me
Regretting the time that has passed

He says, "Son, can you play me a memory?
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"

La la la la la la
La la la la la la la

Sing us a song, little piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright

ew sorry abt all that accidental pasting

omg little piano man

I am totally calling Billy that if I ever run into him

"The drinks are going fast"? Come on, Bill, you can do better.

The regular crowd shuffles in; the manager looks at his watch...
There's an old man sittin' next to me, makin' love to his soda and scotch.

Hm. No.

The regular crowd has just seen a film by Fellini...
There's an old man sittin' next to me, makin' love to his dry martini.

Still no, but better.

The regular crowd brachiates in like a rufous gibbon...
There's an old man sittin' next to me, makin' love to his Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Maybe. Crap this is hard.

lol

My Lives]
Oh he's SO important

look at this fucking cover:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/My_Lives_BJ.jpg

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/09/20/513259474_13195159_wide-360d295b5726058b589b84b5d341f077b1cde4a7.jpg?s=1400

Just remembered another misheard lyric from my youth: "Well we're all in the mood for a melody / And you got us spinnin', all right."

See? The whole "Man, whaddya doin' here?" part isn't some sort of revelation that the PM is a god amongst men. It's the final reveal that narrator describing this sad sack of shit place is none other than a sad sack of shit himself!

The whole time, we're being told about these guys who are roped into the military, selling condos instead of the great American novel, listless drunks – and who do they love? The Piano Man! They're no better than the men who drink coffee at Citgo, see the high school quarterback walk by, and go, "Now that Nathan Canterberry, now there's a guy who's going to be a big deal some day!" The fuck do they know?

Also, I never realized until just now that PM can stand for either Piano Man or ... Paul McCartney.

I've never really thought about Piano Man this much but for an iconic song it's really got a ton of weird/odd/awkwardly phrased lyrics:


Makin' love to his tonic and gin
When I wore a younger man's clothes
Now Paul is a real estate novelist
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
And the microphone smells like a beer

That's why it sucks

Plus its such a dirge

yr a dirge