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

Synchronicity is their worst album, but ILM is quite alone in thinking so

contributions to comps and soundtracks

One vote here for his cover of Cohen's "Light as the Breeze."

oh yeah shit, the Police definitely....that's even more walking away at your peak, that's retiring after your thriller

but bands breaking up is a different thing. none of the three walked away from making records. they just didn't want to do it with each other anymore.

my ears kept getting perked from some of the callbacks: last of the souvenirs, one final serenade

yes! this song is a perfect going-away gift, from the person who's going away. another callback, maybe maybe not intentional: the opening tom-tom hits, which make me think he's about to start playing "allentown." the yacht-rock breeziness of the tune and arrangement are a perfect soundtrack for this final scene in which we stand on a dock on long island sound and watch our middle-aged hero sail away for the last time, having learned from his mistakes, and now off to repeat them somewhere else over the horizon, out of our view.

damn this album.

damn you billy for sailing away.

thank you doctor c and everybody else i got to drink alone with and walk through bedford stuy alone with in this amazing thread. and yes, keep going, good doctor. we don't have to quit just 'cause billy did.

i love this song and i think it's a really unusual yet fitting final track of both the album and his career

if the classical stuff is getting covered then i'm sticking around bc i'm curious

personal ranking of billy albums:

an innocent man
glass houses
river of dreams
the stranger
if songs in the attic counts it goes here
the nylon curtain
the rest

which make me think he's about to start playing "allentown."

Swear for a moment maybe he'd add a little reprise of Allentown ala Where's the Orchestra?

will also extend big thanks to the good Doctor for running this and everyone else, this has been a very pleasant and fun thread

I'll stick around for anything including cassettes of Atilla band practice, I mean I'm in front of this computer all day anyway

Swear for a moment maybe he'd add a little reprise of Allentown ala Where's the Orchestra?

a little reprise of "she's got a way" would've been the perfect way to end everything.

It's poetry, it rhymes

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

You Picked A Real Bad Time was the B-side to "All About Soul" - by my count, the third and final Joel composition to come into the world as a non-album b-side. Today again I can't listen, so I must ask you: how does it compare to "Elvis Presley Boulevard" and "House of Blue Light"?

and btw thumbs up to all of y'all :)

Bluesy Billy. Blah.

oh this reminds me i never listened to "house of blue light," the reactions to it itt put me off

this song isn't the worst but is kinda whatever. the "ain't it the truth" bridge or chorus, whatever it is, is the most lively moment in it melodically

also this song is wayyyy too long, this man's got the bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuues

oh wow "house of blue light" is way unendurable, "you picked a real bad time" is much better imo

real bad song, obvs. might've worked as a hassles b-side, though.

trying to figure out what bubblegum classic the bridge melody starting at 1:35 is cribbing from.

"Can't Take My Eyes off of You"?

hmmm i can sort of hear that, but i don't think that's the one that i think i'm remembering that i can't quite put my finger on dammit.

lol the intro

"the new Ford F150 - a truck that's tough enough to handle the toughest jobs. Now with our industry leading 100,000 mile drivetrain warranty. Get behind the wheel and feel the power."

hahaha

yeah wow this is lame. when it gets to the middle eight you can almost hear him writing it as it goes, struggling to find a tune for it... i think it's better than the last one of these though. the mix is making it shittier and more truck-commercialy. i like the vocals and beatlesy backing vocals on the chorus. but basically it's a kind of weak bar-band workout that was rightly left off the album. i guess it could have fit on storm front but certainly not river of dreams. i wonder if cuts like this were part of how billy got warmed back up for an album or something.

"You Wrote A Real Bad Song"

If I heard this on the radio, I'd go, Hey, pretty good effort from Paul Rodgers!

By the way, Netflix has a documentary now called "Hired Gun" with a lot of interviews with DeVitto, Stegmeyer, and Javors. They describe their unceremonius departure feom Joeldom with some bitterness.

hey sorry been running around a bit / recovering from travel / grading papers - next track coming later today tho!

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51TXpZDHiwL.jpg

http://www.freecovers.net/preview/1/3164427e08942e8f8b73ae16ad1ca0ae/big.jpg

A Voyage on the River of Dreams was an AUS/NZ/JP-exclusive three-CD box set containing River of Dreams plus a disc of Q&A and a six-track live album taken from the RoD tour. This might sound to you and me like a tremendous rip-off or at best a very lame stocking-stuffer, but like the unwieldy Souvenir from a few years earlier, it actually did okay, peaking at #33 on the Australian albums chart. I considered not bothering with it at all before discovering that one of the concert-exclusives, a Beatles cover, was actually issued as a single. Billy's Australian fans dutifully sent A Hard Day's Night (backed with a live "Piano Man") rocketing to #85. It sounds exactly like you'd expect, but the music video is kinda worth it for Billy's fashion sense and how into it the Frankfurt crowd seems to be.

The other cut that we haven't heard before, Billy's take on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, remained an exclusive for die-hard fans with money to burn on the box. I actually can't confirm that I've found it on YouTube, which is saying something given the dedication of the fans. 1994 did see the first "Face to Face" tour of Billy and Elton, so maybe the version on this disc is actually an Elton duet such as the one I've linked below. If so, it's weird that they don't mention that on the back cover. Anyway, they would do eight more such tours between 1994 and 2010, so maybe this is a good time to just talk about the pros and cons of that whole (very profitable) enterprise...

https://img.discogs.com/27LkWZzZSoH4qD8vLDSDVf0Z-DM=/fit-in/600x593/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7331890-1439100671-6904.jpeg.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdpoASVph2A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN1PqJ2-vpQ

hard day's night - a more than passable bar-band version, but six points for deducted for not using a 12-string guitar and six more deducted for not even trying to get that opening chord. the sea of overhead clapping arms in the arena is a little frightening.

goodbye yellow brick road - billy should have changed "vodka and tonics" to "tonic and vodkas" obviously.

hahahah otm

haha

In the bio, there's a pretty lengthy passage about these shows and how Billy got soused with U2 and flew around Northern Europe before getting the worst hangover in the world. He cancelled his show at Wembley, and Elton, being the pro's pro he is, was aghast at such poor showmanship.

I didn't realize that the two had been covering each other's songs for awhile, but in the book, picturing Elton performing "Piano Man" and "Uptown Girl" in Billy's absence was hilarious. "OH WE'RE ALL IN THE MOOD FOR A MELODY, SO WHERE YOU AT, BILLY?"

Billy got soused with U2

Better than drinkin' alone?

Between those two options?

He loves U2 just the way U2 are

We Can't Forget The Fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX53Cy7lwZc

Light As The Breeze is Billy Joel's contribution to the Leonard Cohen tribute album Tower of Song: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, released in late 1995; which also features the likes of Don Henley, Tori Amos, Aaron Neville, Suzanne Vega, and Trisha Yearwood. Quoth Wiki:

The album received a negative review from critic Roch Parisien at AllMusic, who called the album "a total train wreck."[3] However, this view was not shared by Cohen himself who discussed his generally positive view of the album with Chris Douridas at KCRW Radio Station, citing his personal preference for Billy Joel's version of "Light As the Breeze" over his own version.[4]

Cohen's own version was in fact pretty recent, debuting on 1992's The Future. Not being a Cohen-head myself I keep second-guessing whether that's the real recording - was he known for these karaoke-type backing tracks? If that's indeed what it sounds like, I have to hand it to Joel's take just for choosing a tasteful (if safe or even bland) adult-pop arrangement. It would later appear on Greatest Hits III, together with two other covers which are our next entries.

(I was going to consolidate these into one entry, but their different provenances and the fact that one was actually issued as a single made me decide to treat them like the originals back on GHI&II. After this I'll start consolidating the various compilation contributions again though.)

Yep, doom-karaoke over synth demo patterns is pretty much the musical idiom of later Cohen albums. It takes discipline to hear the excellence of the songs around the iconoclasm of the arrangements!
Dreading the Joel cover of the Dylan lowlight "To Make You Feel My Love".

I could complain about this, but I just looked at the track listing for the tribute album and saw that Bono does "Hallelujah," so mostly I'm grateful to be listening to anything else.

"Hard Day's Night" and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road": pretty unnoteworthy covers, didn't feel there was enough energy with the former

"Light as the Breeze": I've heard Billy's version on GHIII but this is the first time I'm hearing the original (first time I've heard any Cohen outside of "Hallelujah", actually) and it's not what I was expecting at all. yeah, very karaoke arrangement. but I'm also surprised how much Billy transformed it - a more muscular, melodic song. wouldn't say I like either version much though

I could complain about this, but I just looked at the track listing for the tribute album and saw that Bono does "Hallelujah," so mostly I'm grateful to be listening to anything else.

otm

billy's mannered vocal on this one is making me a little ill.

is he the token jew on this leonard cohen tribute album?

I lacked the patience to listen all the way through but arrangement- and vocal-wise this is a dead ringer for "Everybody Has a Dream", right?

this isn't great as an active listen but a whole album of it might be fine as nice evening music. cements my sense that a line of "american songbook" type albums might have been an okay direction for him to go in the late 90s. before doing this whole project i would have told you that would have been a disaster, but that was before RoD and the other 90s recordings convinced me hadn't lost his ear entirely. plus if he was picking odd things like 90s leonard cohen album tracks and the next couple of covers, that's way more interesting to me than hearing him run through "blowin' in the wind" or other covers that folk/rock/soul song-interpreters of the '60s and '70s would have on their records .

https://img.discogs.com/63a5y0xvpj3nw9wmD_XR1yEyJpc=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-641458-1282504489.jpeg.jpg

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The somewhat anticlimactic Greatest Hits Volume III dropped in August of 1997, twelve years after the blockbuster I & II. Despite featuring a number of decent-sized hits, the set has only been certified single platinum; perhaps most of the target audience already owned Storm Front and/or An Innocent Man and therefore found most of the tracklist redundant, or perhaps Joel's 1983-1993 output simply wasn't the soundtrack of as many people's lives as the 1973-1983 period. In an apparent effort to sweeten the pot, it does contain three songs that would be "new" to most fans (counting the previously-issued "Light As The Breeze"): all covers, despite what I may have erroneously said somewhere upthread.

1. "Keeping the Faith"
2. "An Innocent Man"
3. "A Matter of Trust"
4. "Baby Grand"
5. "This Is the Time"
6. "Leningrad"
7. "We Didn't Start the Fire"
8. "I Go to Extremes"
9. "And So It Goes"
10. "The Downeaster 'Alexa'"
11. "Shameless"
12. "All About Soul" (Remix)
13. "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)"
14. "The River of Dreams"
15. "To Make You Feel My Love" (Bob Dylan)
16. "Hey Girl" (Gerry Goffin, Carole King)
17. "Light as the Breeze" (Leonard Cohen)

Available but left off are "Modern Woman," "Leave A Tender Moment Alone," "That's Not Her Style," the non-US "No Man's Land," the soundtrack single "All Shook Up," and of course any of the items left off the first set... which might have added a "oldies but goodies" angle despite being sonically incongruous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXRBuMpEOl0

Lead single To Make You Feel My Love is a slightly retitled cover of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love," which - in an odd twist - had not actually been released yet. Dylan's version debuted on Time Out of Mind (late September 1997). Billy's peaked at #50 on the Hot 100 (just above a rising "6 Underground" and beneath a sinking "Alone" by the Bee Gees); #9 on Adult Contemporary.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/B._Joel_-_ToMakeYouFeelMyLove.jpg

This could have been a passable movie soundtrack ballad, but Billy chooses to sing it in a strained Dylan-esque croak for reasons I can't fathom. No matter what you think of the song itself, Adele's later version captures the spirit of the thing much more effectively.

yeah it's not super exciting and the faux-90s-dylan arrangement just makes it sound like a Wallflowers track. i still think it's neat that he seemingly toyed with sliding into being an interpreter of contemporary material. the whole "covering super-recent album tracks" thing is such a throwback to another age in pop-rock. like now that billy's mostly done writing songs he's shifting into the other side of the role he originally thought he'd have, of being just another gigging 70s songwriter who puts out albums mainly in hope that someone more famous picks them up to cover.

this is another one of those songs where billy's vocal tone changes from line to line, moment to moment, and it's just kind of annoying. but listening to the first verse, before the band kicks in and the voice gets away from him, i can hear how he might have turned this into a pretty good billy joel ballad, if he could just accept that he is, in fact, billy joel. i mean, you're billy joel, bitch. you don't have to meet that song on its own terms, or on some weird '90s wallflowers terms. make the song come to you. (see: contemporaneous johnny cash.)

Never liked this version, the voice is too much. Sounds like Billy is trying to do Dylan, but in a really overdone way. Never had the desire to hear the Dylan original, but I'd imagine I prefer it. Adele's version is certainly better

My loathing for this inexplicably popular Dylan track iswell-documented -- is its anonymity its virtue? "To Make You Feel My Love" defeated Bryan Ferry, it defeats Billy Joel.

Another vote for Adele's version here. Not least because a song about romantic persistence sounds better coming from a woman right now for obv reasons.

I recently played guitar accompaniment for a young female singer in a casual party gig. We covered this, and she was definitely looking to Adele rather than Bob or Bill (though she knew its provenance).