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

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.

i finally heard the new song & i like it well enough. enough to be interested in hearing more, anyway.

is Freddy Wexler any relation to Jerry Wexler? Freddy’s wikipedia entry starts at 2008 & eschews any real biographical info

BJ likes the disposable vapes apparently

So apparently "Vienna" is having a moment?

it's his tiktok hit!

It’s a good song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOf6CMbHPuA

Thru the ages

That was all right, but man, Billy. Don't give Elton any ideas.

i really really hate this guy and his music but ... i heard "Sleeping with the Television on" and didn't recognize it, so had to Shazam. really interesting to read everybody's thoughts on it here. i haven't listened to everything the man's made, but i agree this is a standout track, probably the best think i've ever heard from him. the rink organ is a shame but it's a pretty solid little power pop thing otherwise. can hear the comparisons to Joe Jackson but i think mostly it sounds like Squeeze in terms of the composition

killer song. my first karaoke performance coming out of the pandemic closure years!