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

except in some overseas editions where it replaces "Don't Ask Me Why."

So now I'm wondering about the reasons behind switching the songs, but I've got an idea what the answer would be if I posed the question.

Ha! I think it's just plain old chart performance and release history - "Don't Ask Me Why" either wasn't released or didn't chart in Japan, but "Honesty" at least got to #53 there... etc.

Owing to its absence on the comp, I'd never heard it til me or my sister found ourselves with a copy of the album (maybe my parents' old copy?). One of those medium-sized hits that just didn't have a super long-term airplay life, and from an awkward late-70s pop moment not well-served by a lot of the station formats I grew up with. That is, it might have been too "ballad" for Classic Rock as it got solidified, and too "power" for the adult-contemporary stations. Looking at the charts from early 1979, when "My Life" had its peak, there's all this kinda drippy ballad stuff in the top 40 that I never heard growing up - "Too Much Heaven," "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," "Sharing the Night Together," "Don't Throw It All Away," "Lotta Love," "We've Got Tonite"... if it weren't for the post-SNF disco wave, listening to Casey Kasem would have been seriously soporific. Thanks in part to the Yacht revival, I love that stuff now, but outside of the rare dentist's office spin, this stuff had all vanished by the mid-to-late-80s I think...

yeah Mum's cassette comp had Honesty on it, that's prob why I like it so much

and that 1979 syrupy ballad stuff was all over Australian MOR radio, especially our local AM station

yr examples - Too Much Heaven," "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," "Sharing the Night Together," "Don't Throw It All Away," "Lotta Love," "We've Got Tonite" - basically the songs that I remember as a kid

sidebar: some coworkers who are my age & older are obsessed with Yacht Rock and it drives me ~insane~ because they talk about it like it's now some kind of legit genre & not a stupid joke from 2005

*folds arms*

this song isn't very good

you arent very good

(sorry i dont mean that)

lol

Can't blame Brad for his honesty.

top 40 that I never heard growing up - "Too Much Heaven," "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," "Sharing the Night Together," "Don't Throw It All Away," "Lotta Love," "We've Got Tonite".

until you said 5 seconds later that you love this stuff now, i was all set to start another "doctor casino listens" thread!

Ok, so I have in fact mentioned this before:

Nobody in my class listened to Billy Joel. I'm not sure even how I got started on him. One of my fondest memories though is being in 4th grade and holding hands with a girl named Susan underneath a table in the back of the room, listening to "Honesty" while everyone else was out at recess.

― pplains, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:29 AM

She was the other "gifted" child in he class.

She's currently a high-profile attorney in a Western state while I'm a guy in his underwear posting on Billy Joel threads.

you had to be a LAW-YER, DEENT CHA

I feel like those are really the two logical endpoints for gifted kids

this album version sounds different to the version i remember, but i looked & there's only 1 slightly diff version

so maybe its just been a long time since i heard it

i remember it being more piano-y?

the thing is though that next to all those whooshy strings-drowned soft-rock classics ("weenie music," dave barry called the genre), phil ramone's production on this record sounds practically new wave. okay maybe not quite, i mean this is the sound of still crazy and so on, but mannn things had gotten a little bit out of hand by the end of the decade.

punks and rockers and pretty much anybody who has universally-agreed-upon ILM cred could sneer at him, but presumably if you owned only paul davis records, billy would feel like the gateway to a tougher, sleazier, rockier world. certainly sonically clearer.

I feel like those are really the two logical endpoints for gifted kids

Or, as a I prefer to think of it, two logical endpoints for characters in a Billy Joel song!

picturing her at her lawyering job, pausing midday as she's drawn into a wistful reflection on a guy she once knew, to the tune of "James"

plaaaaains

I first heard "Honesty" on the Kohuept tape and have probably only heard the studio version 2-3 times.

picturing her at her lawyering job, pausing midday as she's drawn into a wistful reflection on a guy she once knew, to the tune of "James"

plaaaaains

Ha.

I was thinking that today will be the day we all find out what happened to James.

Okay, I love that connection. Teeing up today's tune as we speak...!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVX80UpMPDI

My Life, the album's million-seller lead single, reprises some "Movin' Out" themes with a smoother groove and another smattering of irresistible hooks. Per the album jacket, backing vocals are not (as I'd always assumed) multiple Billys attempting a Linda McCartney/Denny Laine kinda sound. Rather, it's Peter Cetera and then-current-Chicago-member Donnie Dacus, who were recording Hot Streets with Ramone that same summer. One Final Serenade pulls together some of the best trivia, and links to this great piece by Blair Jackson on Ramone and Boyer's recording approach with Joel and company. Many may know it best (?) as the theme song to the ludicrous sitcom Bosom Buddies (Tom Hanks, Peter Scolari, Wendy Jo Sperber), in a chintzy soundalike version featuring session vocalist Gary Bennett.

The million-selling lead single, it held the #3 spot for three weeks in January 1979 (blocked from the top by "Too Much Heaven" and "Le Freak"). It did well pretty much everywhere - #12 in the UK, #6 in Australia and NZ, #1 in Zimbabwe. For the single, the song was cut down to three five oh by nipping and tucking several instrumental sections, and once again it's this version that appeared on the original release of Greatest Hits I & II. (I neglected to mention it but "Big Shot" also got cut down a bit.)

This one also had a promotional film clip - and it's a proper one, with all kinds of ACTING! It opens with a long stretch of album track "Stiletto," before, to quote an old Eisbaer post, Billy and crew morph from looking they walked offa the set of either mean streets or the warriors into the slick 1970s NYC studio hobbits that they really were and the song kicks in. (I don't quite agree with that characterization, but it's always stuck with me!)

https://img.discogs.com/SJI7VRmB8wXhxvU7Qxp0z9K6t0s=/fit-in/600x605/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-476018-1435138498-4858.jpeg.jpg

https://media.giphy.com/media/txanrh2nsTBCg/giphy.gif

I remember sitting around after this came out, visiting with some slightly older friends of my parents. The tune came on the radio, general discussion ensued. They did not approve of this song's message one bit.

"Der Single-Hit in USA"! I love that.

I like the breakdown a lot.

Lyrically, this song is not paired in my memory not with "Movin' Out," but rather with the upcoming "You May Be Right."

BTW, the plots of specific individual Bosom Buddies episodes are etched in my memory.

Long, pointless tangent possibly deserving of its own thread: In a given hour of after-school reruns, Bosom Buddies was often paired with Three's Company in the way that Facts of Life was paired with One Day at a Time; Silver Spoons with Diff'rent Strokes; What's Happening with Good Times; Sanford & Son with Chico & the Man; Happy Days with Laverne & Shirley. These pairings are prominent in my memory. Brady Bunch / Partridge Family; Beverly Hillbillies / Gilligan's Island; Flipper / Gidget; MASH / Taxi; Cheers / Family Ties.

There is a whole lost world in those programming choices. Sometimes the pairing was incongruous, sometimes it was thematically obvious: Happy Days with Laverne & Shirley or Leave It to Beaver with My Three Sons. Also even the hour-long shows got paired, lilke Fantasy Island with Love Boat.

Interesting how so many of us discuss these songs in terms of childhood memory and in terms of how "adult" their themes sounded at the time. Which is not how I think about the Beatles or Zeppelin or Floyd (or, for that matter, Duke Ellington).

In my case, I didn't get into the Beatles, Zeppelin or Floyd until later - Joel's Greatest Hits was in steady household rotation from whenever I was, idk, age eight or ten or something. Those other three I got into a little more consciously and self-directedly, between fourteen and sixteen. Even then I can remember certain things that I related to in a more kiddish way - "Paperback Writer" on first listen struck me as a genuine melodramatic tragedy - this striving writer!

I don't remember ever seeing Bosom Buddies, but in my after-school watching I really favored cartoons, and Nickelodeon's kid-specific sitcoms and gameshows. I remember a lot of surfing past some of those heavily-syndicated shows though, enough that I know the theme songs to "The Facts of Life" and "Cheers" and others without necessarily having ever watched a single episode. If I watched any adult type shows at that age, it was the old fun-for-the-whole-family Technicolor ones with big obvious gimmicks that USA and Nick at Nite would run - Gilligan, F Troop, The Monkees. When I was around thirteen, Nick started rerunning Welcome Back Kotter and I did get into that, which reminds me that apparently Billy's first lyric for this song was "Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back to the real life!"

my favorite thing is the riff
Bah dum, bom
(tinkle piano keys)
Da-da-da-da da da duh

the tinkling piano keys makes me happy

Veg is right, the tinkling is great.

Dr. C., My parents (born 1943-44) may have felt they were slightly too old for Joel.

My mother and stepfather had Beatles, Beach Boys, Judi Collins, John Denver. Some Motown, Ray Charles. Plus some incongruous things like the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. My father possibly regarded himself as "hip to the scene" and he tried to keep up with new music. He had Stones, Blondie, Bowie, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, David Johansen.

I guess I absorbed this stuff from peers and siblings.

i think my favorite thing that happens in the billy joel catalog (at least w/r/t the songs i'm already familiar with) is the "i never said" digression in "my life." also this thing is packed with hooks and the sound is so smooooov

I think it must have been my mom who was the Joel backer - my dad was born in '42 after some kind of stint following rock and roll or doo woop or something, he gravitated towards your Dylans and Dave Van Ronks, and then I know nothing about his musical taste until he started buying CDs in the 90s and it was the M People, Dylan's new albums, Natalie Merchant, etc. My mom was born a few years later and was a real Beatles type of teenager. By the time of Joe's stardom my brother and sister had both been born and their record-buying and music-following slowed a lot. I don't think we had any Joel vinyl until I started getting things at yard sales, but The Stranger and 52nd Street MIGHT have just been down in the basement.

That greatest hits cassette, though, that was just around, on road trips and days at the lake and so on. It was like Graceland.

xp yes and the backing vocals in that bit are especially fun

As for this song, I know I've used the word "confident" before but man does this sound like guys who know they are making hits now. He just slides right into the story with "Got a call from an old friend..." It's not just that the arrangement is smooth, he's shed a certain amount of sweatiness and desperation, he knows he already has the audience and he can just sing it out. This tendency ultimately leads him to become a little too slick, a little too much of a 'showman' but I'm digging it here.

The confidence also helps bind together several really disconnected lyrical ideas and voices: a brief sketch of a guy who became a stand-up comedian, first-person assertions of independence against (parents? know-it-all friends? industry execs?), idle comic musings on how they'll tell you this and that about sleeping places, the out-of-context laid-back defensiveness of the "I never said you had to..." bits. But the chorus is so strong - especially after we've gotten it stripped back for dramatic clarity around 2:40 - that pretty much everybody is going to find something to relate to, and all those other bits are hooky and fun to sing in and of themselves so hey whatever! Great track.

yeah conceptually it's hard to figure out but everything's so hooky it's impossible not to sing along

I am learning that the only kind of Joel I find tolerable is Joel in late 50s/early 60s r'n'r pastiche mode

i love singing along with this part

They will tell you you can't sleep alone in a strange place
Then they'll tell you can't sleep with somebody else
Ah but sooner or later you sleep in your own space
Either way it's okay, you wake up with yourself

can't fuck with that Stilleto opening on this one though, Marley Marl otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNqTz2mMwNE

are those backing vocals in "i never said..." the single most beatles-y moment in the billy joel catalog?

I'd give the honor to "Don't Ask Me Why" but that might be more solo McCartney-y.

There's something about - not just being a kid, but being someone who has only been alive for a few years and starting to recognize moments in culture.

My parents owned a little corner grocery store out in the woods, and every Tuesday, our magazine guy would deliver the latest periodicals. Stuff like Rolling Stone, Creem, Hit Parader... magazines that looking back on it now, seems kind of a weird inventory for such a rural retailer.

This was 1983 or so, when I was 9 or 10. I was getting into Top 40, and sometimes in these interviews, someone would point out something like "When Glass Houses came out in 1980..." I had memories of that year, but they were limited mostly to family things. Any culture from that year was likely "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" or CHiPs.

So to suddenly become aware of this musical past that happened without my knowing it was always a weird feeling. And yet, it had only been three years since it happened.

I went through this later in my teen years -- "Wait a minute, I was listening to Billy Joel in the 4th grade when I could've been digging on some ZEN ARCADE?"

Anyway. I remember Bosom Buddies when it first aired, but didn't realize it was a Billy Joel song until later. Boy was I excited.

ha, there's a stretch in my never-to-be-finished Girl Talk-esque megamix project that makes extensive use of "Stiletto," maybe i'll upload that when we get to that song, for all y'all's listening "enjoyment."

I'd give the honor to "Don't Ask Me Why" but that might be more solo McCartney-y.

or white album-y! whereas my life harmonies are more sgt peppery.

catching up:
Only the Good Die Young - hot Joel on a platter, verritfied club banger
She's Always a Woman - Gloppy
Everybody Has a Dream - i kinda hate when songs feel like are trying to be a singalong and the "ALL TOGETHER NOW!!!" aspect to the chorus kills this for me....

Big Shot - never really thought about the benny and the jets thing before but I hear it now...hearing Axl sing it on YouTube made it it rise in my estimation, I never really thought about the verses being GnResque but they kind are...
Honesty - it's okay...
My Life - Def one of my fav Billy Joel jams, and seems like a very iconic

my favorite thing is the riff
Bah dum, bom
(tinkle piano keys)
Da-da-da-da da da duh

yes! the tinkly keys are everything! i think i've already said this somewhere upthread, but that's one of those billy joel piano signatures that i can never get enough of and if he did it on every song i'd be ok with that. "ballad of billy the kid" is another good example. "all for leyna" maybe the pinnacle.

did Paul Simon rip off this melody/vocal phrasing for "I Know What I Know"...? I can't unhear it now.

general groove/piano riff also really really remind me of Steely Dan's "Time Out of Mind"

For some reason, I've always imagined that the rival in "My Rival" was Billy Joel.

― nitro-burning funny car (Moodles), Friday, 4 April 2014 13:41 (three years ago) Permalink

this is amazing

― some dude, Friday, 4 April 2014 13:47 (three years ago) Permalink

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/Thestranger1977.jpg

"I was the whining stranger"

― some dude, Friday, 4 April 2014 13:48 (three years ago) Permalink

for some reason the production on 52nd Street is starting to feel "80s" to me where everything previous feels v "70s" but couldn't really point to what's changed.

folks! just dropping in with a question… haven't been listening along and for that matter have no viciously strong views pro or con…

why is Springsteen so universally beloved in white people NJ (like maybe Ira Kaplan, Glenn Danzig and their respective constituents do not care for him, but I'm not aware one way of the other) but white people LI has shit tons of people who can't stand him? why does he not represent the hopes and dreams of working class LI? does he not rock enuff or something?

but white people LI has shit tons of people who can't stand JOEL

I have no idea but would hazard that Springsteen's rep is that he treats people well/pays back into the community/etc. and Joel seems like a garden variety self-absorbed drunken asshole...?