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

ATTENTION! NATALIE MAINES IS NOT A LESBIAN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxllU2WUak

I know singers have been tweaking lyrics to suit their gender/orientation for decades, but shifting it from first-person to third-person changes the context too much.

centuries

The song's vagueness--he likes this woman, but can't quite isolate her particular qualities--nicely mirrors my own ambiguous feelings towards it.

It's a vague sentiment, sure, but it's light-years better than "Always a Woman," in which the message is "she's a heinous bitch but I like her anyway."

i like this, nice little song

love the cover, i love how period it looks, like it could be some long forgotten "lost classic" reissued by Light in the Attic

though I'm pretty impressed, for a first song on a first album this feels very much like a "Billy Joel" song, like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something

new goal of this listening thread: to pinpoint the moment he loses his hopeful high voice

The vagueness also makes it one of VERY FEW love songs that a father could plausibly dedicate to a daughter and have it come off in a not-totally-creepy way.

This may venture into uber-maudlin TMI territory, but: the line "she's got a smile that heals me" does in fact make me think of my daughter. I know it's corny as hell but there it is.

no that's otm

and lovely <3

for a first song on a first album this feels very much like a "Billy Joel" song, like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something

haha. but i'm not sure he truly finds his "billy joel" voice until track 3 on this album.

his hopeful high voice

sounds like he's channelling paul mccartney via emitt rhodes, who at this particular point in time was making better billy joel records than billy joel was.

true!

I don't know if its the pitch issue, but his voice sounds more shaky than I expected. Starting from "Piano Man" on, his voice has a confidence that he never loses - I just figured he always had it. Interesting to hear, actually

i think he's trying to go for lilting & comes off as slightly petrified haha

yeah track three is KEY to joel's entire steez going forward, looking forward to that.

agreed about trying to sound lilting. ATTILA reminds us that he did already know how to sing in a more forceful and confident manner, so this here is as much a "poetic" affectation as his bellows over there are an attempt to find his "hard rock" voice.

"maybe i'm amazed" is a very apt comparison - and it, too, wasn't a hit until a live album years later! I picture joel watching it rise on the charts in 1976, clenching his fists, blood boiling at the CSH screwups all over again, and swearing that if HE ever gets big enough to merit a live album, he knows just what the single will be and won't THAT show 'em all? "your song" also probably had to be on somebody's mind, the label's if not the artist's.

like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something running down the road, trying to loosen its load....

i'm guessing this song's about the other member of attila's wife (later to be his own).

i'd always understood that the "mastering error" is because they wanted to cram too many minutes of music onto the album.

so many wives...

like he's got his aesthetic and identity right out of the gate, like Black Sabbath or something running down the road, trying to loosen its load....

― pplains, Monday, July 17, 2017 12:41 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know...for some reason it never occurred to me till this very second that the protagonist of "Take it Easy" was shitting his pants

i'd lump the eagles in with billy as a band who didn't achieve their full aesthetic and identity until track three of their debut album. chug all night y'all.

i'd always understood that the "mastering error" is because they wanted to cram too many minutes of music onto the album

I hadn't heard that specifically about CSH. But I have heard that "Silver Springs" was kept off Rumours partly because the resulting length would have mean that they could just BARELY fit it in only by narrowing the grooves and unacceptably compromising the bass response.

Tangent: Interesting to think about the degree to which actual physical limitations were relevant - all of this in living memory. Les Paul was faking multitracking by ping-ponging, then the Beatles were on four tracks, then eight, then DSotM, then Steely Dan's automated mixes, then ProTools... all of this has happened within the lifespan of specific known humans. The time from the Wright brother's first flight to walking on muthaflippin moon? Many of us have grandparents who lived through both.

agreed about trying to sound lilting. ATTILA reminds us that he did already know how to sing in a more forceful and confident manner, so this here is as much a "poetic" affectation as his bellows over there are an attempt to find his "hard rock" voice.

Ah gotcha. I ain't heard CSH yet, so I sure as hell ain't heard Attila yet

so....does someone want me to post the next song? We can't break the streak.

I thought "She's Got a Way" was today's song?

yeah i figured that too

let's not pre-empt the Doctor yet

...not a huge fan, but i recently was gifted MFSL flacs from his "classic" years. so i might become a convert during the span of this thread.

the TV show Preacher used Uptown Girl to somewhat amusing effect in a recent episode

Don't know/haven't seen, but The Simpsons owns classic use of that song.

Hey yeah, sorry, was waiting til tonight... I'm stoked that people are gnawing at the bit for this thread!

Our next track underwent some of the biggest alterations in the 1983 remix of Cold Spring Harbor, losing a full three minutes of running time - which, since we're dealing with track two here, seriously affects the pacing of the album. I'm sticking with a 'homemade' pitch-corrected version (credit to YouTuber TheZestanor). Bask in the sudden expansion of the arrangement: drums, searing guitar work, and some sweet sweet backing vocals. It's You Can Make Me Free:

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

The truncated and otherwise altered 1983 remix can be heard here, as well as on Spotify, etc. The Chipmunk version does not appear to be online anywhere handy, but I think we'll all live without it.

I'm mostly familiar with BJ from The Stranger on, so listening to all these older albums is kind of a neat thing to finally get around to. I've already jumped ahead, of course, but I'm primed.

I'm digging this whole experiment - I own a lot of Joel records and know most of them backwards and forwards, but I also have huge gaps in that listening, and my copy of CSH for example is a Chipmunk edition so I've actually never taken the time to track down corrected versions and pay real attention to (some of) these songs.

wow mccartney much, bill? lol

also it kinda sounds like a guy walking through a sound stage while random people are playing instruments loudly to themselves

you can barely hear him over the piano at first & then when the guitar kicks in it's ok wtf is happening

like i think the guitarist may be playing to a different song than Joel & the drummer

hey man, they made him free

free to do what we wanna do

free to get loaded & to party

and not to keep time or play together really at all

i still kinda like it though

I dig it, but I'm such a Ram stan that I love the idea of someone getting that record day one, devouring it, and entering the studio two months later all keyed up to attempt one's own "Back Seat of My Car." Of course there are earlier McCartney precedents - "Another Day" had been out for a few months longer, and I sorta wish that amid his vocal outbursts at the end he tossed in "JUDE JUDY JUDY JUDY JUDY JUDY JU-DY WAIIIOW!" The backing vocals in particular are a lot closer to Linda's sandy overdubs than anything on Abbey Road, to my ears anyway. This is a really bizarre choice for the second track on a singer-songwriter album but maybe Billy or somebody wanted to make sure you got that he was a rocker, that this wasn't just going to be an album of "Your Song" type ballads.

yeah i think the devout mccarrtneyisms itt to me are what i like about it, as a mccartney fan myself

much more than "she's got a way," i'd say this is his "maybe i'm amazed" moment. or at least his attempt at that moment. it's catchy, but it ain't mccartney-catchy.

maybe the ending jam is a gift to any hassles or attila fans who were still hanging around. with some beatles ah-ah-aah harmonies on top of it just because.

Digging this experiment. I also came in with The Stranger. But, wow, You Can Make Me Free, not so great. Much more pastiche than BJ himself. The underlying song isn't that hot so he just added more and more stuff.

Yeah agree that this is a very weird second track. That jam would disrupt any album momentum. It's a fine song, but I would have thought it was McCartney if I wasn't listening carefully

Everyone OTM this morning.

Gonna wake up the kids with this and tell 'em it's Aerosmith.

lol

I had resigned myself to an entire album of earnest piano ballads, so this was unexpected? I mean, it starts out as something very much in that mode, but then the production/accompaniment just goes kinda bonkers.

these threads (ie this, Eagles, Elton John etc.) seem like some mix of gluttony for punishment, genuine attempts at critical discourse re: artists people don't necessarily like all that much, and semi-closeted fans seeking vindication

not at all sure they beat drinking alone tho

thanks for your contribution

yeah this song was great cod McCartney, it's funny I mean of course Billy Joel loved the Beatles, everyone loved the Beatles but it's kinda funny to me to hear him sound so McCartneyesqe, I never considered him particularly a big Beatles influenced guy in terms of the stuff I knew.

Also the sound quality is crazy bad, like a bootleg or I think veg said upthread a rehearsal tape, which is weird because like this time frame in the industry you just don't hear a lot of bad sounding records, it was such a peak of good producers, good studios, etc, and I looked it up on wiki and it was done at Record Plant and some other big studios....

Since I'm not as familiar with this album as I am with the ones from 52nd Street on, I looked up the credits on Wikipedia, and lo and behold:

Denny Seiwell – drums on "You Can Make Me Free"

Later in the very same month this was recorded, Seiwell would of course be the drummer on the first Wings album, Wild Life.

Also the sound quality is crazy bad

surely this is attributable to it being a pitch-corrected youtube rip...? idk

I link to this Billy Joel interview with Alec Baldwin all the time, but in one section he goes into the Beatles influence and how his first songs even had their phrasing/accent.

Billy Joel: There wasn’t anybody but white people in my school. I think there were a couple of Jews, some Latinos. There was sprinklings, but everybody liked soul music, “Twist and Shout,” when everybody would do, 'Come on now, shout. Come on now.' And “Louie, Louie” – I think that was the Kingsmen. “What I Say,” Ray Charles. “See the girl all dressed in green?” You’d make up really dirty words to that. We came up with some really good stuff.

So, I loved that stuff, and then The Beatles came around, and there it was. Boom. Four working class guys from Liverpool, which is as close to Levittown, in England, I think, in sounding anyway. Okay, if four guys from Liverpool –

Alec Baldwin: I never thought of that. Levittown is our Liverpool.

Billy Joel: Yeah, Liverpool. And uh, it’s possible, it’s possible. They don’t look like Frankie Avalon. They don’t look like Bobbie Rydell. They look like four working class guys, from anywhere. They could be from Hicksville. They could be from Levittown. So I said, that’s possible. That’s what I want to do. I want to write my own songs. I want to play in my own band, do our own arrangements, and make our own way.

bj posers itt

Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone

I'll give you one hint, honey

Give a moment or two to the angry young man

and lol @ Veg

saw hbo's new billy doc last night at tribeca. or, rather, part 1 of the doc, which is what they're showing at the fest. (i believe hbo is dropping both parts together in july.) part 1 takes us through glass houses, motorcycle accident and divorce. the divorce is the most important of those three things, because the entire two-and-a-half-ish hours of part 1 is the story of billy's first marriage, and it's a nice twist on the standard superstar rock doc. instead of a film about the price of fame, it's a film about the price of being married to fame. and managing fame, as elizabeth weber, in addition to being billy's wife, was his manager. she's the star of the doc, and she's great. apparently, it's the first time she's talked about him anywhere in 40-ish years. completely worth it for her.

it's in other ways a fairly standard rock doc which i'm pretty sure most participants in this thread are going to like, even if you know most of the stories and even it's a little long-winded here and there. pretty much everyone you'd want to hear from is here, from jon small (hassles, attila, elizabeth's first hubby) to liberty and richie, to bruce springsteen and nas (whose take on "ny state of mind" is great). billy himself is super open and candid about everything, including some really dark stuff. he's also really funny (as you already know). some cool footage i've never seen of the hassles, of billy trying to record turnstiles with elton john's band, and other such stuff. (the filmmakers said afterward that elton was the one person they wanted to talk to who turned them down. lol.)

also starring in the doc: lots and lots of alcohol. it is a rock doc, after all.

Downeaster ilxor

Downeaster ilxor

Omg lol

also starring in the doc: lots and lots of alcohol

Tonic and gin?

Perhaps a bottle of rose instead?

Thanks for the breakdown, fcc - I'd like to see that!

Never realized until this morning in a Panera that "Keeping The Faith" is basically cod reggae.

that is the best place for such a realization lol

HUWUNN
TWOOOO
HWUN TWOO THREEE FAWW

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl),

xpost-haha
Was playing in the background! Also thought how this might be the most untroubled BJ song.

wow, looking forward to this. What's the story re Elton?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DK2J6v5Au5v/?igsh=YnNqbTZwMGFkbWt6

idgi

wtf of course you get it this is not a hard thing to get stfu

We did have extensive discussion of egocentrism and condescension inherent in the lyrics of Bill the Piano Man. Therefore I thought the imagined "view from the perspective of 'the Waitress'" was thread-relevant.

I don't think that video is necessarily on point or well-imagined in every particular, but it is... a joke.

Mainly, I share the vlogger's dim view of the lyric "it's me they've been comin' to see." Bullshit. Alcoholics don't go to bars for the fucking piano playing, you self-aggrandizing schmuck. It's the booze.

John at the bar is funny and helpful, but here's the thing: he's also serving drinks, which is the actual reason people are feelin' all right.

Cute video. For those unready to open the entire thread, our own coverage of these issues starts at this permalink: IT'S BETTER THAN DRINKIN' ALONE: The Official ILM Track-by-Track BILLY JOEL Listening Thread

Now igi. I didn’t have the names of the characters that horrid song memorized, sorry

lol if you're gonna permatroll a fan thread you can probably try harder than "what is the joke in the video where she jokes about the lyrics in this song... does it have something to do with the lyrics ??... which by the way SUCK hahahaha!!"

Makes me want to have a soda and scotch