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

By the way. Hey Bill, I also know a woman in New Mexico. Her name is Susan. So there.

Creamer (née Polkinghorne)

fact checking cuz I also said awkward which I personally think all those are if you read my post

Missed posting yesterday due to illness, sorry y'all! Back in action with the first of three deep-cut, never-anthologized Side Two tracks: Stop In Nevada. It's kind of a jam, y'all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri786Rt2KwM

wow yeah - kinda Captain Jack-adjacent with the quiet verses & big chorus

but:

she left a little lettuce?

wtf does that even mean

I think it's "left a little letter"?

my home state makes an appearance on a billy joel record! who knew. surprised nevadans don't uniformly hold a grudge against billy for pronouncing it "incorrectly"

this is not objectively terrible, p much standard issue 70s AM Gold radio fodder. Stylistically it pushes some childhood nostalgia buttons for me but that's about the highest praise I can offer it

hmm

well it sure sounded like lettuce

my home state makes an appearance on a billy joel record! who knew. surprised nevadans don't uniformly hold a grudge against billy for pronouncing it "incorrectly"

billy's the reason i pronounced nevada wrong my entire life until last november, when my clinton campaign canvassing package instructed me on the proper way.

We can forgive The Three Degrees for mispronouncing it too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anv4aishbmU

my annoying minnesota accent is actually helpful for once in correctly pronouncing nevada

That completely changes my perception of your username, UMS.

i didn't remember a thing about this song except the mispronunciation. it's a really good countrypolitan song! billy sherrill or al de lory could've done something nice with this. melodically, the "goodbye, goodbye" tag at the end of the chorus doesn't sound like billy at all to me for some reason. i keep wanting to sing "so long norman" from warren zevon's "the french inhaler" over that part. the fadeout is about 20 seconds too long.

That completely changes my perception of your username, UMS.

― okapi paste (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, August 3, 2017 1:29 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha mine's not super bad, i'm from way southern MN, down by Iowa, so it's not as pronounced as the northern MN/fargo type accent but it's there sometimes if i hear myself record

I just mean that I thought your name had southern flavor; it didn't occur to me that "upper Mississippi" refers to the upper reaches of the river, not to the upper portions of the eponymous state.

Which is especially silly because I'm from St. Louis, within smelling distance of the river, and I have no connection whatsoever to the state of MS.

Regional radio hit (I only know having grown up in Minnesota as well)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy0vPnFKR5A

haha yeah old KQRS staple, like the Gear Daddies virtually nobodies outside of MN beloved within

Like "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," only Billy begins with escape rather than concluding with a possibly imagined one. Joel's song isn't nearly as poignant as Marianne Faithful and Shel Silverstein's, but I don't think anyone outside of country music bothers to write the lives of adults anymore, never mind adult women.

*ABOUT the lives

upper mississippi shakedown vs north mississippi all stars

The "lettuce" problem is just because he rolls right from "letter" to "said she's," right? I like it though - left town in such a hurry, all the perishables are still in the fridge. Mama Leone will have the sense to just leave a note on the door and avoid the aural confusion.

I'm digging this song - exactly the kind of "could have been part of the Joel canon, but wasn't" song that I was hoping to discover in the course of this project. It's a little overblown, but the vibe is cool and here he seems to have found the right way to shift between different arrangements to give the song structure and impact, rather than the weird lurches we've seen before (e.g. "Tomorrow Is Today"). The chorus is definitely memorable, and along with "Piano Man" and "Captain Jack" this marks an important shift from the debut I think, where for the most part the hooks were single lines. Here he's writing full refrains and it's making the songs feel much more substantial. If you don't like him, I guess it'd make the songs feel doughier and bloated. He's still hit-or-miss on the rest of the lyrics though - the melody on this is fine, and he tries hard to sell it at the end of each verse, but the tale told is kind of flat and generic.

Lettuce IS old timey slang for money (cf. Guys and Dolls: "Where did you acquire this fine bundle of lettuce?"). Like bread or dough. But p sure the BJ lyric is "letter" followed by sibilance from the next word.

xpost yeah it definitely feels like lyrically he's still growing . like, he's trying things out but maybe still doubting his own ability perhaps

it's still so cool to see him slowly shaking off all the habits that might have kept him in a stale & much more generic realm

I have a pet theory, backed up by nothing since I've read no biographies or lore really, that actually his bandmates in the "classic" lineup, assembled between Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles, contributed a lot more to songwriting than the credits would suggest. There's a big leap in lyrical specificity and the use of memorable details right around that time. Apparently, Liberty DeVitto sued Joel for back royalties on uncredited songwriting in 2009 (it was resolved out of court) which does make me wonder... though that might not mean lyrics so much as the more typical songwriting contributions made by non-singing bandmates. And, of course, Joel could just have developed a lot as a songwriter in his mid-to-late twenties.

interesting!

This song is great! The marriage of the lyrics and music really comes together, and the arrangement, while slightly overdone, suits the story. I hope there are more hidden gems like this to come

DeVitto is a skilled drummer, with a pervasive style and pretty good taste. The string-of-pearlsy rapidly descending tom fills that occupy piano rests appear to be a signature (cf. both "Billy the Kid" and "Angry Young Man"). He has the veteran rhythm section player's knack for impressive, yet almost-invisible feats of creativity.

I have sometimes been reluctant to embrace the notion that all semi-improvisatory instrumentalists are songwriters (that is, "songwriters" in the same sense that the deviser of the lyrics, chord progression, and melody is a songwriter). But I am coming around to it.

TLDR: If Liberty DeVitto successfully forced royalties out of JoelCorp based on the argument that his drumming constitutes a portion of the songwriting, well, then, more power to him. I hope all the horn players and such do the same. Ditto the extremely talented Crystal Taliaferro.

This one's fun. Feeling the upbeat Billy more than the ballads from this era. There are some countryish touches but I get more of a show tune vibe. This one's a long long way from Charlie Rich.

DeVitto didn't play on this album, iirc

Argh right sorry, should have checked first. Shit, I know exactly nothing about Rhys Clark (thanks Wikipedia).

But the motif where the instruments go "bawm Bawm BAWM...", then the drums pipe up during the sustain part of that last chord with "whackity whackity whackity CRASHCRASH" was, or became, the style of Mr. DeVitto.

Rhys Clark was on the previous album, and on this one appears only on "Captain Jack" which is interesting since it was the song that got Joel signed - maybe there was some "let's not mess with success" thinking on that or something, or maybe it got recorded separately from the rest of the session as some kind of demo reel or....? Anyway, the rest of the tracks feature ubiquitous pro Ron Tutt.

Heard "Piano Man" just now in the car, driving back to a hotel at 2:15 AM with no traffic, little spitting rain hitting the windshield. It sounded great. Just as a recording, even - it's really solid studio craft. Listening to the aforementioned demo with the funny lyrics it's clear that he walked in with a lot of the key pieces, including the harmonica, but not the transitional riffs for the piano. Or the solos, which do really crucial work to push the verses and choruses apart from each other, disguising the fact that the chords and tune don't vary at all. In a way it's a case study of how good session players and recording/arranging craft can turn a kind of weak composition into a hit record.

If I Only Had The Words (To Tell You):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQjb9IA2_Co

Not too much online about this song. This live version from 1974 is interesting for the absence of the string section, if you're curious.

Sounds like a holdover from Cold Spring Harbor. In other words, meh.

"i only have these arms to hold you, and it's all that you can ask of any man"??? that's some serious piano mansplaining there. is that billy's idea of how you get a woman back?

also, maybe write her a better melody. this is all kinds of meh. but the live version is a step up, mainly because it drops that weirdly upbeat rhythmic change on the "life goes on and on" bridge and replaces it with backing vocals that glue the bridge to the rest of the song. the maj7 chord on "if we try" on that bridge is nice; that's the billy i know and love.

i'm learning from this thread that i've blocked a good chunk of this album from my memory.

"piano mansplaining" = lol

(Sidenote: does he always and everywhere pronounce "piano" with two syllables?

Pyanno. Very pointedly not peeyanno. I guess that it is correct for Italian, and many classically trained people seem to say it that way.

I listened to this song earlier today and I'm already not really sure how it does

Yeah, this isn't making too much of an impression on me. The tune keeps almost sounding like something I know but I can't place what. The more operatic/musical-theater singing is probably the main distinction between this and a Cold Spring Harbor track... Ironically this might be one case where the more wistful "lonely guy singin baout things" delivery might have helped him - the bombast here feels a little outsized for this pedestrian ballad, makes it seem like a more forced reach.

Is that really a Long Island accent? He sounds like Anthony Newley on about 50% of this tune

Leading us toward the album's conclusion, Somewhere Along The Line is another hangover song, this time in the first person. I'm on a phone and not sure anything will embed right so I'll just link the clip.

The song was evidently a live staple - you can find lots of rockin' versions, like this one from 1978. I have to assume it was in the running for Songs in the Attic, where it would have fit in nicely.

(for posterity's sake)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEYZzFX_rR0

This is replacement level Billy Joel. Could see it sub in for later better tunes and still be a recognizable Billy song. Might even take folks a verse or so before they realized they'd never heard it before.

"If I Only Had the Words (To Tell You)": so plodding, melody is a little awkward. the bridge is nice though

"Somewhere Along the Line": I like the organ touches and bursts of vocals, makes an otherwise standard song a bit more interesting

organ touches

If I Only Had The Words - it's like he took a halfway decent melody & just dumped in a bunch of platitudes to make it a song. It's all just so amorphous & beige, the big build doesn't pay off bcz no-one cares!

Somewhere Along The Line - same kinda thing. Feels more like an advertising jingle (or a Manilow song lol). Is that first verse about pooping? It's about pooping, isn't it. :(

it's like he took a halfway decent melody & just dumped in a bunch of platitudes to make it a song

potential new thread title and/or board description.

Is that first verse about pooping? It's about pooping, isn't it

i'm pretty sure the whole song is about how everything leads to pooping. the more fun you have, the more you will poop. also, the more likely it is that you will turn into an oompah band before you get to the end of your song.

everybody poops somewhere along the line

and captain jack will make you poop tonight