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

whoops i accidentally didn't check this thread during the entirety of turnstiles

Its four US singles have all become radio staples, and clearly helped propel the album's success, but interestingly, they weren't massive hits, peaking at #3, #17, #24, and #17

he was definitely not viewed as a "singles artist" yet. in 1977, he was very much an "album rock" guy, an FM guy, a long island springsteen. the stranger made him a rock star. full-on pop stardom was still a little ways away.

also worth noting: every album took awhile to climb to #1 or #2 in those way-pre-soundscan days. debuting at #1 was incredibly rare. albums literally had to climb the charts, and it took time.

This was the first song I played through a $1500 stereo system I built a couple years ago and man did it sound glorious

Elton's Captain Fantastic and Rock of the Westies and ISongs in the Key of Life were the only albums to debut at #1 for a few years.

I also see Aja and Little Criminals just a few spots down from Billy in that chart above, and both of them came out the week before The Stranger in Sepetember 1977. Talking Heads: 77 was the week before that. Quite a time. But yes, climbing the charts - the Queen album came out in October, the Rod Stewart and EW&F in November... and of course, Rumours dropped way back in February 1977 and there it is in the top ten a year later.

@ BradNelson - no time like the present to catch up, if you're inclined! I feel like the long haul through Streetlife Serenade may have shed a couple of posters here, which is a shame because the Turnstiles material deserves the attention much more imho.

er not "sepetember"

"Well it was Sep-eptember when my album came OWOOT"

(in Billy Joel voice)

So much detail about money for a pop song! Overtime, taxes, building a life around saving money to lead up to a better life.

I was in the Village once, walking north from Soho, and realized I was looking at *the* Medical Center! Such a fun detail, something totally apart from anyone's mental image of Greenwich Village.

It wasn't until sometime in the past decade that I realize the bridge is a total Layla.

Movin' Out is super classic-ick-ick-ick-ick-ick-ick

So cool to see the album cover again. The Stranger was one of the first albums I purchased. Probably based on hearing one of the singles on the radio. Think I spent more time staring at the back cover to commune with the guys who made this great music.

Alec: You cannot have the Pretenders' first album! That's mine.

Leslie: I bought it.

Alec: You did not! You can have all the Billy Joels... except The Stranger.

http://i.imgur.com/S8ty7pR.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/19pKOEv.jpg

Judd OTM

it's too bad Billy lets this guy play on every song

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fheadphonenation.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fst-elmos-rob-lowe-saxaphone.jpg&f=1

well Joel did erase some of Batman's solos later on right?

lol

I may have said this before and it will certainly come up again, but determining the line between endearingly cheesy and eye-rollingly cheesy with Billy Joel is always going to be an inconsistent, indefinable and entirely personal thing. This song may be the strongest example of this so far: there's a lot to like here, as many have noted already (Alfred's "Confidence in his arrangement meets lyrical bravado" is OTM), but there's something a little too on the nose about this to me, particularly re: the ethnic detail here. I'm referring mostly to "Mr. Cacciatore's down on Sullivan Street" which, even as a kid, just never sounded quite right to my ears in that it comes across as more of an Italian sounding name than an actual person's name. Probably because my mind goes to "chicken cacciatore," I guess (Wikipedia: Cacciatore (pronounced [kattʃaˈtoːre]) means "hunter" in Italian. In cuisine, alla cacciatora refers to a meal prepared "hunter-style" with onions, herbs, usually tomatoes, often bell peppers, and sometimes wine"), but "Mr. Cacciatore" feels a bit too much like an Italian-American stereotype that you'd see on Who's the Boss or something. A silly thing to get caught up on, perhaps--and especially when there's so much more going on this song--but I caught myself still cringing at the lyric when listening today.

Still, that stutter is A LOT of fun to sing along with.

re: Mr. Cacciatore sounding like a too-on-the-nose pedestrian detail = feel like you could say this about most of his lyrical details tbh

(my real suspicion is that he used those two names - Cacciatore and Sullivan - because they are names where every syllable is stressed evenly and thus they perfectly fit into the delivery of the melody)

feel like you could say this about most of his lyrical details tbh

Exactly. And as I've said (and will say again throughout this) I can't think of any real metric by which to determine which of these work for me and which do not (other than recognizing them).

that's fair. I mean by comparison the Piano Man cast-of-characters doesn't work for me at all precisely because all the details seem sort of misplaced or misshapen but y'know ymmv

I thought "Mr. Cacciatore's down on Sullivan Street" was a deliberately cheesy name -- an Italian joint in the city with a catchy name. Not unlike Mama Leonne in the Broadway district!

Aha!

"Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)": The lyric "He works at Mister Cacciatore's down on Sullivan Street" refers to Napoli Restaurant in SoHo, at the corner of Sullivan Street. It is now closed.

my real suspicion is that he used those two names - Cacciatore and Sullivan - because they are names where every syllable is stressed evenly and thus they perfectly fit into the delivery of the melody

billy has made clear at various points that he generally, if not always, writes the music before the words, so it pretty much goes without saying that fitting the melody is a priority. see also: "allentown," which (spoiler alert) is actually about bethlehem.

Well, at least that freed up "Bethlehem" for Paula Cole.

LOL

He does crank up the Guido a little too much sometimes -- that "You had to be a big shot, didn't ya?" line near the end where you can practically see him making this gesture as he's singing it:

http://i.imgur.com/vOzyyb4.gif

haha maybe that's why I had assumed he was Italian all these years

FINALLY. Confidence in his arrangement meets lyrical bravado. I love the stutter.

yes! i love this from the get-go. the pop swagger of the intro, sealed with the "whoo-hoo" part. so many perfect little details in the arrangement. everything so precise, even liberty's slightly overzealous crash cymbals, which i kinda wish there were fewer of, my only gripe here. super catchy. the outro with the piano-and-motorcycle breakdown makes me want to throw a rock through my bedroom window and move out RIGHT NOW.

throw a rock through my bedroom window

And I thought I was skipping ahead by mentioning "Big Shot".

(that was unintentional, i swear!)

i also like that this is sort of a less judgy re-write of "james," with the focus now on me moving out instead of on sad little you pursuing your education or your cadillac or your house in hackensack or whatever ack ack ack ack ack ack.

goddamn I love this song so much!
makes me feel like a kid

i was thinking this morning that it's almost like a grown-up/miserable/dissatisfied version of Penny Lane

yknow, in terms of characters & actions tied to a specific neighborhood etc

the layers of instruments is really cool, but i can never quite hear what everyone's doing because i get so caught up in the hook!

ps i listened to it 3 times in the car on the way into work & sang loudly every time

ACK ACK ACK ACK

Going back to Turnstiles, I have Billy Joel: An Illustrated Biography, and it states that Turnstiles has two clunkers; 'James' (too like McCartney) and 'Summer Highland Falls' (too like Jackson Browne). Joel says about 'The Great Suburban Showdown' that Browne got to him while he was living in California

A lot of its appraisal of his discography is actually pretty reasonable, but it does rank 'Captain Jack' along with VU's 'Heroin' as the two great drug songs, which seems like a bit of a stretch.

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

"So let me get that straight in my head one more time so I understand it correctly. That Hicksville guy, Mr. Piano Boy, ranked his little pirate song about his sister and the shoe polish and 'the junkies and the closet queens' and whatever as the sole equal to the Underground's 'Heroin'. The song where we said we feel like Jesus' son next to the one about the dad in the swimming pool. That song, do I have that one clear?"

http://i.imgur.com/SF3F5d0.jpg

"Whatever, Lou. They loved it in Philly."

Hahaha

Joel didn't say it - his biographer did.

Was trying to recall how Movin' Out goes while cleaning, but it keeps turning into Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly in my head - something about that turnaround in the chorus is v similar

strumming my pain with his fingers, is that all you get for your money

GAH Cannot un-hear that now, thanks a lot.

who needs a house out in Hackensack, singing my life with his words

roberta flack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack

Heh

i liked that one, fcc

http://i.imgur.com/lhnr9IR.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr2PPHbgbmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8oDW5UuxN0

huh, first one of those is kinda cool

About every sample of this I found had the vocals pitched up.

Guess you can take the boy out of the Cold Spring Harbor, but you can't take ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5ofVsxTPoc

The Stranger: one of the great whistlin' tunes of the album era. It was not released as a single in the US, but was included on the Greatest Hits, perhaps reflecting its #2 performance in Japan (or maybe FM airplay?).

Le trafic ralenti en Boulevard de Palais de Rue de la Hatchett jusqu'à Boulevard de Magenta ...

http://i.imgur.com/kdRwp44.png

I've always thought the Stranger was a high-quality track, even when I didn't particularly want to listen to it for the thousandth time. Thoughts in no particular order:

- Piano/whistle intro seems longer than necessary to me (because I know that there is RAWK coming and I am impatient). But hey, it was a time of expansive album tracks with contrasting sections. If you're like me and this one seems drawn-out, "Scenes" will be well-nigh interminable.

- The vocals on the verse sound boxy and a bit lo-fi. Perhaps an accident of recording technique but they do.

- The falsetto is an interesting choice for Billy. He's not as effective in this register, but I can understand wanting to try it on for a change.

- Lurve the finger cymbals or crotales or whatever on the chorus. Joel & co. do like to pull out the lush auxiliary percussion in ways that I think are generally spot on. One can't imagine "Say Goodbye" or "Don't Ask Me Why" without castanets, handclaps, etc. This stuff was more joyously prevalent in the 70s than in later pop. Pop percussion diverged into either a drumset-only camp (hard rock and metal) or genres in which the go-to accents tended to be electronic in origin, like the Cars' Simmonsy PEW PEW PEW.

- I also lurve the funkae rhythm guitar. I am not as fond of the thin lead guitar, but it would be 100X worse if that had been a sax lead.

The best moment in this song is the crash/rest, for example after "there are some we never tell KSSSH!!!" It reappears a few more times but I have always loved its high drama. I was schooled in keeping the beat going as a young drummer, and it took me a long time to learn how cool it can be if you stop for a bit before getting back into it.