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

The "lettuce" problem is just because he rolls right from "letter" to "said she's," right? I like it though - left town in such a hurry, all the perishables are still in the fridge. Mama Leone will have the sense to just leave a note on the door and avoid the aural confusion.

I'm digging this song - exactly the kind of "could have been part of the Joel canon, but wasn't" song that I was hoping to discover in the course of this project. It's a little overblown, but the vibe is cool and here he seems to have found the right way to shift between different arrangements to give the song structure and impact, rather than the weird lurches we've seen before (e.g. "Tomorrow Is Today"). The chorus is definitely memorable, and along with "Piano Man" and "Captain Jack" this marks an important shift from the debut I think, where for the most part the hooks were single lines. Here he's writing full refrains and it's making the songs feel much more substantial. If you don't like him, I guess it'd make the songs feel doughier and bloated. He's still hit-or-miss on the rest of the lyrics though - the melody on this is fine, and he tries hard to sell it at the end of each verse, but the tale told is kind of flat and generic.

Lettuce IS old timey slang for money (cf. Guys and Dolls: "Where did you acquire this fine bundle of lettuce?"). Like bread or dough. But p sure the BJ lyric is "letter" followed by sibilance from the next word.

xpost yeah it definitely feels like lyrically he's still growing . like, he's trying things out but maybe still doubting his own ability perhaps

it's still so cool to see him slowly shaking off all the habits that might have kept him in a stale & much more generic realm

I have a pet theory, backed up by nothing since I've read no biographies or lore really, that actually his bandmates in the "classic" lineup, assembled between Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles, contributed a lot more to songwriting than the credits would suggest. There's a big leap in lyrical specificity and the use of memorable details right around that time. Apparently, Liberty DeVitto sued Joel for back royalties on uncredited songwriting in 2009 (it was resolved out of court) which does make me wonder... though that might not mean lyrics so much as the more typical songwriting contributions made by non-singing bandmates. And, of course, Joel could just have developed a lot as a songwriter in his mid-to-late twenties.

interesting!

This song is great! The marriage of the lyrics and music really comes together, and the arrangement, while slightly overdone, suits the story. I hope there are more hidden gems like this to come

DeVitto is a skilled drummer, with a pervasive style and pretty good taste. The string-of-pearlsy rapidly descending tom fills that occupy piano rests appear to be a signature (cf. both "Billy the Kid" and "Angry Young Man"). He has the veteran rhythm section player's knack for impressive, yet almost-invisible feats of creativity.

I have sometimes been reluctant to embrace the notion that all semi-improvisatory instrumentalists are songwriters (that is, "songwriters" in the same sense that the deviser of the lyrics, chord progression, and melody is a songwriter). But I am coming around to it.

TLDR: If Liberty DeVitto successfully forced royalties out of JoelCorp based on the argument that his drumming constitutes a portion of the songwriting, well, then, more power to him. I hope all the horn players and such do the same. Ditto the extremely talented Crystal Taliaferro.

This one's fun. Feeling the upbeat Billy more than the ballads from this era. There are some countryish touches but I get more of a show tune vibe. This one's a long long way from Charlie Rich.

DeVitto didn't play on this album, iirc

Argh right sorry, should have checked first. Shit, I know exactly nothing about Rhys Clark (thanks Wikipedia).

But the motif where the instruments go "bawm Bawm BAWM...", then the drums pipe up during the sustain part of that last chord with "whackity whackity whackity CRASHCRASH" was, or became, the style of Mr. DeVitto.

Rhys Clark was on the previous album, and on this one appears only on "Captain Jack" which is interesting since it was the song that got Joel signed - maybe there was some "let's not mess with success" thinking on that or something, or maybe it got recorded separately from the rest of the session as some kind of demo reel or....? Anyway, the rest of the tracks feature ubiquitous pro Ron Tutt.

Heard "Piano Man" just now in the car, driving back to a hotel at 2:15 AM with no traffic, little spitting rain hitting the windshield. It sounded great. Just as a recording, even - it's really solid studio craft. Listening to the aforementioned demo with the funny lyrics it's clear that he walked in with a lot of the key pieces, including the harmonica, but not the transitional riffs for the piano. Or the solos, which do really crucial work to push the verses and choruses apart from each other, disguising the fact that the chords and tune don't vary at all. In a way it's a case study of how good session players and recording/arranging craft can turn a kind of weak composition into a hit record.

If I Only Had The Words (To Tell You):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQjb9IA2_Co

Not too much online about this song. This live version from 1974 is interesting for the absence of the string section, if you're curious.

Sounds like a holdover from Cold Spring Harbor. In other words, meh.

"i only have these arms to hold you, and it's all that you can ask of any man"??? that's some serious piano mansplaining there. is that billy's idea of how you get a woman back?

also, maybe write her a better melody. this is all kinds of meh. but the live version is a step up, mainly because it drops that weirdly upbeat rhythmic change on the "life goes on and on" bridge and replaces it with backing vocals that glue the bridge to the rest of the song. the maj7 chord on "if we try" on that bridge is nice; that's the billy i know and love.

i'm learning from this thread that i've blocked a good chunk of this album from my memory.

"piano mansplaining" = lol

(Sidenote: does he always and everywhere pronounce "piano" with two syllables?

Pyanno. Very pointedly not peeyanno. I guess that it is correct for Italian, and many classically trained people seem to say it that way.

I listened to this song earlier today and I'm already not really sure how it does

Yeah, this isn't making too much of an impression on me. The tune keeps almost sounding like something I know but I can't place what. The more operatic/musical-theater singing is probably the main distinction between this and a Cold Spring Harbor track... Ironically this might be one case where the more wistful "lonely guy singin baout things" delivery might have helped him - the bombast here feels a little outsized for this pedestrian ballad, makes it seem like a more forced reach.

Is that really a Long Island accent? He sounds like Anthony Newley on about 50% of this tune

Leading us toward the album's conclusion, Somewhere Along The Line is another hangover song, this time in the first person. I'm on a phone and not sure anything will embed right so I'll just link the clip.

The song was evidently a live staple - you can find lots of rockin' versions, like this one from 1978. I have to assume it was in the running for Songs in the Attic, where it would have fit in nicely.

(for posterity's sake)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEYZzFX_rR0

This is replacement level Billy Joel. Could see it sub in for later better tunes and still be a recognizable Billy song. Might even take folks a verse or so before they realized they'd never heard it before.

"If I Only Had the Words (To Tell You)": so plodding, melody is a little awkward. the bridge is nice though

"Somewhere Along the Line": I like the organ touches and bursts of vocals, makes an otherwise standard song a bit more interesting

organ touches

If I Only Had The Words - it's like he took a halfway decent melody & just dumped in a bunch of platitudes to make it a song. It's all just so amorphous & beige, the big build doesn't pay off bcz no-one cares!

Somewhere Along The Line - same kinda thing. Feels more like an advertising jingle (or a Manilow song lol). Is that first verse about pooping? It's about pooping, isn't it. :(

it's like he took a halfway decent melody & just dumped in a bunch of platitudes to make it a song

potential new thread title and/or board description.

Is that first verse about pooping? It's about pooping, isn't it

i'm pretty sure the whole song is about how everything leads to pooping. the more fun you have, the more you will poop. also, the more likely it is that you will turn into an oompah band before you get to the end of your song.

everybody poops somewhere along the line

and captain jack will make you poop tonight

Nice melody hooked to generic tune, lyric, and structure.

generic, but also relentlessly pessimistic. it's like he's trying to say "i know there's gonna be hell to pay, but at least i had me a good time" but instead it comes out like "i might have had an ok time, but what was the point?"

doin a poop, i'm the piano man

"if i only had the words (to tell you)" - this is basically only verse, augmented verse, and bridge, which gives it the temporally endless quality of torture

"somewhere along the line" - holy shit the opening riff of this sounds so similar to the counting crows song "if i could give all my love" which itself is a band ripoff. counting crows song is better, but this is still p good boilerplate imo

Closing out Piano Man is the song that got him the record deal - a little ditty about suburban anomie, immaturity, and depending who you ask, heroin, booze or masturbation. It is, of course, Captain Jack.

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

For reference, here's the 4/15/72 WMMR performance that became a regional radio-request hit and won Joel his career; there's also some intro chatter if you're curious. A 1980 performance, again in Philadelphia - Joel had apparently mostly retired the song except when passing through the area - would appear on Songs in the Attic.

And that's another album done! I may be running around tomorrow around the right time for the next post, so maybe this is also a good time to pause and take a moment to listen back to Piano Man as a whole and see how it hangs together as either a pseudo-debut, or a sophomore solo effort. I'm totally enjoying this little journey and stoked at how much participation we've had on this thread so far. Thanks, y'all!

ahhhhhhhh yes

i fucking love Captain Jack!!!

i love the lyrics & phrasing & imagery
languid verse suddenly crescendoing into that huge chorus then back into quiet languid verses is so perfect to me

the way he does those "ahhhhhh but"'s really gets me

interestingly, Cap wasn't on my Mum's cassette copy of Greatest Hits vI&II. It wasn't til about 17 years ago when I finally got my own cd copy of GHVI&II that I first heard it.

i didnt even know any of the mythology or anything until later

i really like the story of everyone calling & asking for it and turning it into a hit, adds to the appeal imo

plus the cynicism & wry humor is definitely what i regard as Billy's wheelhouse & this is kinda his rosetta stone for *that* particular tone imo, much more so than Piano Man which is v lightweight comparitively

ha, had the same experience with the GHVI&II cassette, and coming to this as a later-in-life song. but man talk about things that would have gone over my head as a kid. i wonder if my parents would have even let the tape pass as a continuous soundtrack if this was in there!

yeah idk if mum would have approved of captain jack getting you high tonight

as a kid i woud have liked the picking yr nose line tho

The song entered the news again in 2000 when it was mistakenly used during Hillary Clinton's announcement that she would be campaigning for U.S. Senate. According to an NPR report on worst campaign songs, a staffer notes that the playing of "Captain Jack" was a mistake. It was played from the Billy Joel compilation CD Greatest Hits Volume 1, and the song intended to be played was "New York State of Mind", which was track five on the CD.[23] The Clinton staffer inadvertently played track two, which was "Captain Jack".[23] Her presumed opponent, Rudolph Giuliani, who ended up not running for the Senate, criticized the song's use because of its alleged glorification of drugs. Giuliani even read the lyrics to the song in a live press conference.[23] Joel replied in a statement, "There are a lot of important issues facing the voters in this Senate race. Is a politician's interpretation of a song I wrote nearly 30 years ago an issue to the voters of New York state? I do not think so."[24]

loool

Staffer was probably like "pffft i love i Hil but imo fuck New York State of Mind let's get this party fkn STARTED"

some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood
hop a flight to miami beach or to hollywood
but you just sit and home and masturbate
you're in a new york state of mind

(pretty much works, imo)

Pointless anecdote: some time ago, a friend of mine, X, called a radio station to request the 10,000 Maniacs song "Trouble Me," which is side 1, track 4 of the album Blind Man's Zoo.

More to the point, she asked to send it out as a dedication (remember those?) to a friend of hers, Z, who was going through a rough time. According to my friend, the radio station instead played the 10,000 Maniacs song "Eat for Two," which is side 1, track 1 of the album Blind Man's Zoo.

This was in a small and insular enough town that apparently, for weeks thereafter, people came up to Z saying "So, I hear you're pregnant."

"Captain Jack" is a weird song to get his career started. I mean, yes, catchy tune, but he also pronounces the word "masturbate" as elegantly as I've ever heard it

Not a bad album overall, huge improvement over the debut

Listening to the studio Captain Jack for the first time in a while - maybe the first time ever? It's a good performance and a wonderfully lush early 70s recording. Sounds great in headphones, even if a lot of the added details (all that organ!) don't necessarily benefit the song. The Songs in the Attic version, lived in for a few years and a little bit drunker and looser, just feels right to me.

Musically it's reminding me for the first time of "Levon" and there are enough similarities there that I almost wonder if Joel conceived of this as in some part an American answer to that, or a grim sequel: the merchant's dreamy-eyed son, now grown to young manhood and an empty shell, sailing on heroin instead of balloons to Venus. Anyway, a comparison between the two would capture a lot of the differences between Joel's and Taupin's lyrical sensibilities... and especially the influence of Dylan's "you're so dumb" mode. Of course, the emptiness and ugliness of the coming-of-age narrative are very much of the period (see: Last Picture Show, Midnight Cowboy); "there ain't no place to go anyway," and the casual availability of drugs that don't offer anything worthwhile are particularly post-60s. Like what do you do after the end of Easy Rider, especially if you never had much shot of being Captain America in the first place?

The most interesting moments are the ones where Joel isn't actively sneering at his subject, or where there's at least some ambiguity or space to get a glimpse of actual real life people Joel knew and was maybe even friends with. I like "and you guess you won't be going back to school, anymore" for not completely spelling out the logic: is he now trapped at home taking over the family business? Realizing he hated school and was only there under parental pressure? Is he about to have some kind of epiphany, or just fall into a stupor under the pernicious influence of the Captain? For me at least this is all more compelling than the "hey, check out this loser here" stuff.

Hearing this song makes me think about what Lou Reed must've thought of this guy. This Hicksville motherfucker talking about staring "at the junkies and the closet queens." The fuck does he know about the life? Did he learn that one in the Executive Room?

Or did he respect him as a songwriter, knowing that hey, he might not be as rock and roll as the rest of us, but he's got chops. Can't hate a Long Island boy for getting by, someone's gotta lead that front.

Can't find any quotes from Lou about Bill, but I did find this photo of those two, with Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen in between, backing up Dion at MSG.

http://i.imgur.com/yzlQe9b.jpg

After another listen, I think what's really key in the SitA version is the added emphasis on the little PUSH! - there's a glee in Joel's delivery that rides the line between joining the protagonist in his release, and standing behind him, shoving him off a cliff. The raucous treatment of the chorus also takes us along for the ride of the high... it's a different revelry, with a bleaker backdrop, than the one that produced the various other hangovers on this record, but Joel still sells it as the good time the character is seeking. The presence of the crowd, if you can set aside eyerolls at the cheers for "pot," "high," "masturbate" etc., also helps.

I dunno about Lou Reed but I suddenly wonder if Bono ever listened to Billy Joel. There's some overlap in the swing-for-the-bleachers singing and the desire to produce crowd-pleasing anthems.

heh that Clinton staffer story is very Veep

i def owned and religiously listened to the first billy joel greatest hits collection and yet i remember nothing about "captain jack," which is p great