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

this really is the best billy joel album at least until the next one maybe. the bad songs are more innocuous than bad (or at least i don’t feel like i’m s u f f e r i n g through them like some of the deep cuts on 52nd street)

"Through the Long Nights" doesn't really feel like anything else on the album. It sounds like he deliberately composed it just to have a lullaby-like album closer, which may very well have been the case.

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Drawn from arena and club stops on the Glass Houses tour the summer of 1980, Songs in the Attic served both as a stopgap release in the annual Billy Joel schedule, and a roundup of tracks from his first four LPs for the huge audience he'd acquired since The Stranger, now considerably enlivened by the energy and tightness of the well-established Billy Joel Band. Ironically, then, it's also our farewell to sax-and-organ man Richie Cannata, who left or was let go by the time of The Nylon Curtain.

The album was a success, peaking at #8 on the US charts, #3 in Japan, #9 in Australia, and respectably elsewhere. As singles, "Say Goodbye To Hollywood" and "She's Got A Way" peaked at #17 and #23 respectively. "You're My Home" seems not to have gotten a US release and was not a hit anywhere that it did come out. The album has been certified three times platinum - pretty good for a live disc, if not quite Frampton numbers.

I linked to these versions as we hit them along the way, and I'm certainly not going to do a song-by-song runthrough of this release, but since I'm under a deadline for the next couple of days, I figured I'd propose it for some general listening. As previously discussed, I've come to slightly favor the pre-Stranger 1977 Carnegie Hall recording for being just a little rougher and live-r feeling, but still, I think this thing is great. The tracklist follows below, but for another fannish thought-exercise: anything you'd swap out? Suppose it'd been a double LP (one disc of "arena" songs, another of "night club" numbers) - what's missing? I'll nominate "Travelin' Prayer," "The Entertainer," "Falling of the Rain," and what the hell, "Tomorrow is Today," assuming a serious rethink of that Joe Cocker bridge...

1. "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)" - from Turnstiles
2. "Summer, Highland Falls" - from Turnstiles
3. "Streetlife Serenader" - from Streetlife Serenade
4. "Los Angelenos" - from Streetlife Serenade
5. "She's Got a Way" - from Cold Spring Harbor
6. "Everybody Loves You Now" - from Cold Spring Harbor
7. "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" - from Turnstiles
8. "Captain Jack" - from Piano Man
9. "You're My Home" - from Piano Man
10. "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" - from Piano Man
11. "I've Loved These Days" - from Turnstiles

BTW, YouTube has a couple people hawking "outtakes" from this album - sometimes miscellaneous cuts from the editing room, sometimes whole sets from the tour. I haven't really delved into this, but the version of "You May Be Right" that opens this set is pretty cool, and there's a hot "I'll Cry Instead" at 38:25.

1. never listened to any Billy Joel album ever until my band accompanied Jonathan Coulton (there's a name you don't read on ILM much, approvingly or otherwise) on the songs from GH. "through the long night" was BY FAR the hardest to learn and then to play.

2. in the front rank of 70s-80s mainstream rock guys and their bands, the ones in which the backing guys have the greatest name recognition, in descending order…
a.) E Street Band
b.) heartbreakers
c.) tie for Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, John Camp Cougar Melon's band and BIlly's guys…

Liberty is the only one a "rock fan" of the time and afterward would reasonably be expected to know in Billy's Band (aronoff is the only well known one for JCM,. Do Billy stans like FCC have other longtime favorites in his bands? are there any such guys for Seger?

strongly disagree on Mellencamp considering he had both Lisa Germano and Kenny Aronoff in his peak era bands

Prince's band has provided the world with some personalities as well.

There's no Angry Young Man or New York State of Mind of Songs in the Attic - they seem like the biggest omissions.

It's weird because I always THINK there's an "Angry Young Man" on there! Maybe he felt satisfied that he'd gotten the band's sound down on record on Turnstiles for that one -- whereas "Say Goodbye To Hollywood" and "Miami 2017" on the LP are really quite anemic-sounding.

I mentioned this way back when, but: the "Say Goodbye To Hollywood" on the Greatest Hits is this version - as was "She's Got A Way," when it got added for the CD release.

Strongly prefer the SITA "She's Got a Way."

o Billy stans like FCC have other longtime favorites in his bands? are there any such guys for Seger?

for bllly: liberty was always #1, but richie was always a fan favorite, too. as a saxophonist, he got a lot of featured spots, particularly on "new york state of mind." but maybe saxophonists are always the fan favorite: the one guy i could name from the silver bullet band is alto reed (the best-named sideman in the history of rock).

i believe the fan favorites in billy's bands now are mike delguidice and crystal taliefero. mike came to billy's attention as the frontman of billy cover band big shot, and he continues to play with big shot even while playing guitar and singing harmonies for the actual big shot his own band plays tribute to. crystal first came to prominence as a member of john melon cougar camp's band, where she played alongside the above-mentioned kenny aronoff and lisa germano.

where does crazy horse fit in the 70s/80s mainstream rock sideman rankings? do regular rock fans only know the name "crazy horse," or could they name the players?

Aren't Talbot, Sampedro, et. al. terrible players by any standard that isn't Neil Young's (I love them).

they're certainly less traditionally/technically gifted than many of their peers. i love them too. but i believe the question here was about name recognition, not chops.

i would add under to the bands tied in "c" any backing band that had waddy wachtel in it.

elton's guys too - dee and nigel surely known to EJ fans but nobody else.

ha and by dee I mean davey, proving the point

currently watching a live facebook feed of the lords of 52nd street (incl. liberty, richie and russell javors) playing "all for leyna."

"Through the Long Night" is a sweet closer. Glass Houses was a great album overall, certainly my second favorite after The Stranger - New Wave was kind to him

what up Doc

Soon!! Probably tomorrow AM actually... Sorry, been a packed week between finishing up a lecture and grading stuff. If you like, think of this as a simulation of the long writing and recording process for our next album...

oh sweet i'm gonna listen to songs in the attic tonight in preparation

can i just say that songs in the attic has the stupidest sleeve

billy: "you thought you could hide from me, songs, but i found you, in this attic... and all it took was my big flashlight"

haha yeah it's dumb. i assume it's supposed to be a ghost story? like oh I thought I heard something... almost like.... a song? but where was it coming from?

also makes me think maybe it started out as just an odds-n-sods comp and became a live album late in the process or something. which doesn't seem likely but boy is it not designed to look like a live album.

I'd no idea Attic was so popular.

I'd never heard of this album before and everything about it - the structure, the general idea, the sleeve, the actual tunes - sounds um misguided to put it mildly.

Ahhhh I think it's a cool idea! Lots of bands do some version of "here's the best stuff from before we reached our current popularity" right? And I do think most or all of these versions are solid improvements on the originals.

I wonder to what extent it influenced REM in the Attic compilation.

I wish Billy, too, had covered "Toys in the Attic," but changed the name for the album's sake.

i think it’s a cool idea too. and he pretty much pulled it off, all these songs sound better here

I'm gonna add "Mexican Connection," "Why Judy Why," and "Stop in Nevada" to my fantasy two-disc version of this album. Hell, I wouldn't even mind a big, bellowing, crowd-pleasing "Captain Jack.". Maybe some could get the Glass Houses style treatment; throw in a couple covers like that "I'll Cry Instead" and my imagined Aerosmith travesty and it's a real fun evening of Billy.

re sleeve: no guys the PIANO is haunted & it’s playing the songs in the attic

gu gu gu ghoooosts

lol wait captain jack is already on there what am I talking about

well it could be bigger and more indulgent I guess. or a lean, neurotic, cars-style rendition to try and grab the new fans

i'm picturing the chorus riff like the opening of "Let's Go"

bwehhh, bweh bweh BWAH bwah, BWHUMMH bwuh bwuh

haha I was gonna say, the live CJ is all I remember from this album, it was a big radio thing when I was a radio-listening teenager

i am way behind, kinda fell off after Petty's death, gotta study up

We've actually been on hiatus that whole time --- and I'm sorry to say that at this point I'm just gonna roll thru the weekend and start up Nylon Curtain on Monday. Sorry to all the fans and great thread participants, but we'll be back - it's hard to keep a good thread down!

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Following protracted sessions in 1981-1982, interrupted by a motorcycle accident that seriously injured Billy's fingers and wrists, The Nylon Curtain arrived in September of 1982, a full two and a half years after Glass Houses. An eternity in those days, but at least the accident offered a ready theme for his second Rolling Stone cover.. Known as his 'statement' album, it's also his early-thirties crisis album, his "the studio as an instrument" album... and his divorce album, with his marriage to first wife and manager Elizabeth Weber ending in July.

Musically, it's the same crew as the last few records, minus Richie Cannata. It was another hit, if a lesser one: in the US, it spawned a couple of medium-sized hits and peaked at #7 (with the last three having been #2, #1, and #1), and has been certified "only" double-platinum. It was, however, his sole #1 album in the Netherlands. At the Grammys, it was nominated for Album of the Year; with American Fool, The Nightfly, and Tug of War, it lost to Toto IV.

man the discogs image browser really gives a false sense of how big the images are actually going to be, sorry about that

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

Opening track Allentown had, according to Billy, been in gestation since the mid-70s, though for some long period it was a fragment called "Levittown" ("... and there's really nothing goin' down..."). The direct inspiration for the rewrite was Bethlehem, not Allentown, but more generally Joel has referred to his years of playing shows in the Lehigh Valley, being moved by the locals' plight and particularly a fan after a show once who bitterly observed that since Billy was getting more popular, he probably wouldn't be coming back. Typical of his approach on several songs on the album, the discussion is pretty sketchy on the larger-scale structural questions; in promotional interviews at the time he said he wasn't interested in political statements but in capturing the feelings of those affected on the ground. Hmmm.

As the album's second single, it made it to #17 (#19 on Adult Contemporary). This release includes one of Billy's very few non-album B-sides, which I'll pick up after the album's done. It also had a music video which at times seems more than a bit too goofy for the material.

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In January 1983, Allentown mayor Joseph Daddona awarded Billy Joel the key to the city (not his last). A 2007 interview with the local paper has a little more detail on this.

CHHHHHH
UNGH
HAAH

i know we get into territory now where he cops flack for not taking a stand politically but i think he does a good job of capturing the longing for a time long gone & the sense of betrayal, and how much of it was tied to their parents

i love some of the phrasing, like this section

Well our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers in the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow

like if you get away from what you WANT the song to be about, the character that is narrating has a pretty well-studied voice

(i feel the same way abt Goodnight Saigon later too)

yeah that's always been what works best for me in this song - very real sense of letdown and bitterness, the unfairness of it, and the timeline where it all goes wrong in one generation. from a post-2016 vantage some of this emotive territory reads differently perhaps.

this song gave me a pretty negative impression of unions, as a kid - "crawled away," sounds snakelike, and they left everybody else behind? opportunistic fair-weather friends, sounds like! oops. this part, and "taken all the coal from the ground" seem furthest from really understanding what was happening and who/what was responsible for plant closures. but maybe both reflected a real feeling he was hearing from people in the area, idk.

yeah i mean, i don’t think this is intended as a thesis ...it’s a very personal, emotional viewpoint that feels more believable because it’s flawed & simplified
like it’s one guy’s letter to the editor of the local newspaper

also, just remembered I need to dig up my allergy-themed rewrite, "pollentown," circa 1992

yeah agreed. just wish he'd heap some blame on the bosses while he's at it. elsewhere, in retrospective interviews, he's confusingly pinned the problems on reaganomics. but I wonder if at the time he would have agreed with the imagined letter-writer that the problem was the exhaustion of coal reserves combined with cowardice from "the union people."

Yeah he captured the sentiment well on this song. I also like the clanking sounds and other noises, which adds to the feeling. In general, he's good at matching the music with the subject matter

at least some PA miner types hated this song, iirc. Elvis Costello has an anecdote about being insulted in an elevator by someone who thought he was Billy Joel.

When I listed BJ's best songs, "Allentown" was my #1. He gets it right: the at times forced conviction works in a song about grinning through tears.

Intriguing point, Lord Alfred.

Springsteen's version of this song ("My Home Town") is elegiac and resigned... but also relaxed/mellow in a way that "Allentown" isn't. Maybe Bill's air of neurotic frustration and barely suppressed anger is more appropriate to the material! Bruce, for all his ostensible common-man sympathies, has always been a basically comfortable and happy person.

Other entries in the category - James Taylor's way-too-mellow "Letter in the Mail," Mary Chapin Carpenter's "I am a Town," all of Richard Shindell's trucker anthems - also fall limp for the same reasons. These pampered folkies with their nice guitars and calm voices SAY they sympathize with the plight of the downtrodden, but they don't betray any familiarity with hardship. Of course Billy never worked on a fishing boat or in a steel mill, but at least he brings some evident inner conflict and angst to the party.