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

I was looking forward to this one, and listening for what must be the first time in 30 years I realise maybe I like this more than the rest of the album, tho Laura and Saigon are on par. I’m a little stunned at how blatant the Waltus pastiche is - he must have wanted to respond to Lennon’s death I guess. But yeah this is slinky and queasy and cryptic and menacing, I remember trying to decode it as a kid and feeling there was a lot I didn’t get.

Argh, Walrus

I am the Waltus

goo GOO JOOB____ ... goo GOO JOOB______

the (awful) effect on billy's vocal brings out a reedy lennon-ness

there are moments here ("the tour of ger-MAH-neeee") where i would swear the vocal was being autotuned. what did phil ramone know in 1982 that nobody else knew?

Phasing gives that modulating effect on the timbre of the voice that sounds like autotune. Another very Lennon thing to do ("let's run it through Ken's flanger").

i've always understood the nylon curtain to be billy's attempt to (re)assert himself as a serious artiste after waking up one morning and realizing he was a pop star. circa 1982, channeling psychedelia-era beatles would have been one obvious way to do that, even without the john lennon news cycle the world had just lived through. i hear "surprises," "scandinavian skies," "laura" and probably "goodnight saigon" as the heart of the album he was trying to make, whereas the hits constituted the somewhat different album he'd be remembered for making, which as a (more or less) singles artist (and pop star) is kind of hard to avoid.

(and thanks, vampire!)

Released the same year, let's point out, as Donald Fagen's The Nightfly, another album by a boomer glancing backward.

What Joel said at the time:

People my age, 25 to 40, who grew up as Cold War babies, we don't have anybody writing music for us. There's a lot of formula rock aimed at the 11-year-old market, and there's a lot of MOR for people over 50. But this is an album dealing with us, and our American experience--guilt, pressures, relationships, and the whole Vietnam syndrome."

Boomers, the neglected generation

If only they had a media landscape to themselves

hey man at the time they had only just started voting for Reagan, relax

Fact checker OTM re the album makeup.

Οὖτις, lol.

When I told my mother (b. 1943) that I (b. 1971) was going to a Billy Joel concert with my girlfriend (b. 1973), my mother said - and I quote - "Hmph! Get a generation."

n.b. that was in 1989 (Storm Front tour)

listening to "scandinavian skies" again it really is kinda cool... like even without the effects and textures it feels different from most of his catalog.

as we saw on the last album and I think even moreso on the next, writing "in the style of" really does seem to help him out on writer's block and only really goes wrong when the style he picks just sounds incredibly forced in his vocal chords (all those leon russell/joe cocker numbers). what I'm saying is that he should have issued an allentown/pressure double A side and then made an entire album of beatles tributes --- this is me trying to do "revolution 9," this is me trying to do "I wanna be your man"... i'm guessing the songs would have just poured out, versus "this is me trying to make an important and respected LP" which has some real highs but also some very dodgy filler when he doesn't actually have much to say.

Doc, out of curiosity, which do you think are his "joe cocker numbers"?

oh man theyre all the ones i already don't remember. would need to load whole thread and do some searching. "ain't no crime" and all that.

Oh, Lord. Why did I search that.

https://i.imgur.com/mXU3ciK.jpg

"A Room of Our Own": really uninspired song. the chorus barely sounds like one, and even the solo is weak

"Surprises": reminds me a lot of mid-period Split Enz, when their writing was still a little meandering and weird, but moving towards conventional. That's not a bad thing though, it's a decent song. Though I doubt Billy was inspired by Split Enz. Probably both artists are drawing from the same older sources

"Scandinavian Skies": I was about halfway through when I was thinking "the only thing missing is Mellotron". And of course he uses it near the end. This is true pastiche, but it's not bad. The strings do a lot of heavy lifting in this song - they are most of what I like about it

With one song left, gotta say, this album is pretty bad. One of the worst overall

<SPOILER> but we're going to get another reprise!</SPOILER>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX3nFG6Js-Y

Where's the Orchestra? closes The Nylon Curtain. It might also be called "where's the band," as the regulars don't appear here - just Billy, some chamber musicians, and saxophone work by Eddie Daniels, a jazz vet who'd appeared on some previous Ramone records and will also be heard on the next few Billy albums.

A nice little finish, and again, very Nilsson-esque to my ears.

i've always understood the nylon curtain to be billy's attempt to (re)assert himself as a serious artiste after waking up one morning and realizing he was a pop star. circa 1982, channeling psychedelia-era beatles would have been one obvious way to do that, even without the john lennon news cycle the world had just lived through. i hear "surprises," "scandinavian skies," "laura" and probably "goodnight saigon" as the heart of the album he was trying to make, whereas the hits constituted the somewhat different album he'd be remembered for making, which as a (more or less) singles artist (and pop star) is kind of hard to avoid.

(and thanks, vampire!)

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, October 17, 2017 10:30 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is totally OTM. I think I love this album more because than in spite of the fact that its Billy making his Serious Album Artist Album, and while I think it ultimately "fails" in that ambition, I think it does it in very interesting ways. Also this cassette was permanently in the family car, and my dad would put Goodnight Saigon on the mix tapes we'd take on holiday, so I was brainwashed with this album at a very early age and it probably skewed my critical parameters somewhat. But I do love that self-conscious "albumness", and when, as an 8-year-old, I realised it ended with the elegiac retread of the Allentown melody, it blew my mind.

Weird song. The lyric is awkward, like he's making it up as he goes along. The closing "Allentown" reprise is lovely.

I'd say it's his Serious Dad Album

As this thread progresses, I'm looking forward to a transition from mostly-childhood reminiscences to more adolescent and young-adult reminiscences.

My parents were too old and snobbish for these records, so I don't have the memories others do of parents having these records. They reached me anyway. But it's interesting how many comments have been about our childhood impressions, childhood misunderstandings of the lyrics, etc. What will happen when we get to the 90s, when we heard new Joel stuff as more fully formed people?

Oh we'll be shameless.

Disappointing Prince Vaults Found To Contain 37,000 Hours Of Billy Joel Covers https://t.co/xagWWhSywH pic.twitter.com/FFvjwBAewx

— The Onion (@TheOnion) October 18, 2017

Laugh all you want, but just imagine what he could've done with "Laura".

30-minute Stilletto funk workout

"You don't have to watch Dynasty, I love you just the way you are..."

OMG I AM GOING TO WORK ON THAT MASHUP RIGHT FUCKING NOW

In the interview Joel, who performs monthly shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City, also spoke about his dislike of President Donald Trump.

He said he often drives past his New York home while riding his motorbike, and pulls the fingers.

"I do that all the time," he says. "It is probably on film somewhere. I'm sure they've got cameras all over the place. I'm not a fan. I think he's got a pretty thin skin. I don't think he is very happy in the job. I don't know what he's doing there. And neither does he."

given their tendency for beatle worship and including utter bullshit on their albums i wonder if oasis didn’t model their career after billy joel

where's the orchestra - in which he closes his brief psychedelic rock phase with an attempt to write one for the american songbook, like mccartney waltzing into the studio with some orchestral charts to put an end to a lennon album side. but mccartney has been snacking on some of lennon's leftover lsd, which is why he appears to be having some kind of mild acid trip while sitting in the balcony trying to watch a broadway show in which there are chairs for a pit orchestra but nobody in them, and in which the movie-star lead is saying lines that don't make any sense. or maybe he just walked into a pinter play by mistake. i kinda like this one, which is definitely a bit nilsson-esque as doctor c says. billy likes it too. he used it as his final encore for years (so long "souvenir") and still plays it frequently.

(V. evocative but I must quibble: I doubt McCartney was any more capable of producing "orchestral charts" than Lennon was - or for that matter Ringo. For a chart to exist, didn't he have to hum the bits to George Martin or whoever, who turned that humming into notation? Your larger point stands, of course.)

ha, true, i do believe george martin would have to had to produce those charts. and hire the players.

Even Joel (to swerve back on topic), who studied piano in his youth, says he can't even sight-read anymore; to do his late-career classical dabblings he needed a collaborator. As did McCartney and Costello for their late-career classical dabblings.

I'm not a huge Lennon stan but had he lived, you can be damn sure he wouldn't be writing a fucking string quartet called "The Walrus Variations" or whatever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5bH-qg7QFY

Elvis Presley Blvd. is the first of a couple of obscurities that - at the risk of overtaxing everyone's patience - I'm throwing in before the next album. The aforementioned b-side to "Allentown," it is not to be confused with the Rick Ross and Project Pat song of the same name. By my count, it's one of only three non-album B-sides we'll encounter; it wasn't anthologized until the 2005 My Lives set, which also includes a totally different arrangement and lyric dubbed The End of the World. I have to say I prefer that one, which may please fans of the McCartney-oriented Billy.

Doc, your thoroughness is a monument. I had never heard this song (though I guess I was vaguely aware that it existed). I can see why it's obscure. Sonically quite good - the guitar tone and vocal treatment especially. But pretty much hookless and instantly forgettable.

revisiting nylon curtain as a whole album today and man "pressure" is just the best song

i'll tell you what it is.... BESTSONG!!!!!

hmm came out looking a bit young-money-ish. a style billy has not attempted to the best of my knowledge

I was so psyched to hear for the first time today a Billy Joel song from the Ramone era I hadn't heard before!

It deserves to be a B-side, but it's an excellent - if I may - bridge between Nylon Curtain and An Innocent Man.

You know me, I get a little wary when people start singing about Memphis and Elvis. But ending it with a car crash instead of becoming a Christian tonight, I'll accept it.

Also, leave it to Billy to write a song about Elvis, but have it sound like the title track to Sgt. Pepper.

You think he ever listened to that record the summer after he turned 18 and sang BILLLLLL LLLYYYYYYYY JOELLLLLL! as they went into With a Little Help from My Friends?

No wonder he envied Joe Cocker.

lol thank you for that indelible image of young starstruck Billy

hah, pplains, that is great.

Is he singing into a hairbrush in front of his bedroom mirror in this vision, or does he have a cheap Radio Shack condenser mic by that point (plugged into the aux input of a dual-cassette boom box)?

he had already been in his first band for a couple years, and joined the Hassles that year, so it seems reasonable he might have had acess to some mic or another

access

the verses of "elvis presley blvd" sound like they belong on streetlife serenade. the chorus, if that's what the "step on these shoes" part is, could have been the 8th or 9th single from an innocent man. guitar riff sounds like a late-period beatles leftover. nothing sounds, feels or even remotely suggests elvis.

I'm guessing this was a Glass Houses leftover shelved because the main riff sounded too much like The Stranger, and the better, mellower demo version sounded too much like "Don't Ask Me Why" and they wanted to make sure the balance of the album stayed on the rock side of things. Also that just puts it closer to Presley's death, though obviously rockers were far from done with contemplating Graceland and the Ghost of Elvis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX8xwDsWGHI

Nobody Knows But Me, our other little palate-cleanser, hails from the second of the Children's Television Workshop's two-volume In Harmony series, which featured popular musicians doing kid-friendly tunes. Many of the artists went with existing kid's ditties, and Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming To Town," taken from a 1975 concert recording, has enjoyed some airplay. James Taylor even got away with recycling an old album track. But Billy, perhaps unable to find anything really kid-oriented in his catalogue, pushed through his writer's block to come up with a (minor) original work, riffing on the idea of imaginary friendship.

Like its predecessor, the album won the Grammy for Best Album for Children. While it should be allowed that this is not usually a wildly competitive category, the winners are generally quite respectable entries in the genre. Sadly, the album was a commercial step down from its #156 predecessor, failing to chart. However, Billy may have taken some solace in being able to, for once, see his name on a record without Artie Ripp's Family she-wolf logo. A promo single, maybe only issued in Europe, puts Billy and The Boss back to back.

https://img.discogs.com/zrym8uWBYsim_pNAq5sqtKXOmFM=/fit-in/600x588/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1540758-1367364607-7189.jpeg.jpg https://img.discogs.com/Ny4Pvszg4LTLI_hfZl2DDl0DZ5A=/fit-in/600x587/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1540758-1367364613-2683.jpeg.jpg