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

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.