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

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.