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

liberty devitto & richie cannata are the keys to my love of Billy Joel

and i love Ronnie Spector's cover of this

last summer i saw a band called the lords of 52nd st, with richie cannata, liberty devitto, russell javors, and some guy imitating billy joel. they were good! it was free and outdoors and all, which might have contributed. they played on a bandstand overlooking "richie cannata place."

http://www.glencove-li.us/mayor-spinello-recognizes-musician-richie-cannata-honorary-street-dedication/

Yeah, I love this song. The title alone puts it up there with "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" (and "Curtains," also by Elton) in its evocation of a departure that is necessary but perhaps bittersweet - both Hollywood and the Yellow Brick Road sound like places that have at least some things to offer, but in both cases the narrator has made the existential choice that it's time to leave. So you root for him in his big move, while growing a little wistful for the places you've left behind in your own journey. In Elton's, this gets larded up with some down-home imagery and a relationship drama, a close cousin of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight": I had to get away from you and your scene before it all snuffed out what's special about me.

Billy's lyric is frankly much vaguer - I've never been entirely sure what to make of Bobby and Johnny's adventures, driving around and being troubadours - but that's all right because of that great bridge, unafraid to risk platitudinous triteness in capturing the turning-point stakes of moving away, foreshadowed from the moment you arrive: moving on is a chance you take every time. After the underwitten fare of the last album, it's also just exciting to hear a song fully kitted out with verses, chorus, bridge and solos. You can see why so many people would try their hand at covering it - there's a hit here somewhere even if nobody ever figured out how to extract it.

The delivery of "rent-a-caaaaaar" might also mark the arrival of Joel's mature vocal style, a kind of operatic, unafraid-of-uncoolness delivery that owes more to, say, Volare than to anything in the rock or singer-songwriter traditions.

yeah this seems like a big step forward and on par or better than the best songs on Piano Man

I've always liked this song, but because I grew up with the Songs in the Attic version (via GH), this one just doesn't sound right to me, mostly owing to his delivery of the title on the studio version vs. the live cut. What can I say; having grown up with "Say Goodbye to Hollywoooood," I can't hear it any other way. There's an irony here, perhaps, as I just complained about his elongated vowels a couple of songs ago, but his delivery on the live cut just emphasizes the joyfulness of an already joyful song. The Clarence Clemons-y sax, too, in the original, is too muted; the live version lets it shine.

Hearing the Turnstiles, Ronnie Spector and Bette Midler versions just now does clarify something for me, though: the lyric I always heard as "now he won't be my mascot anymore" is actually "now he won't be my fast gun anymore." Huh.

I used to hear it as "fast button," like a weird way of saying he had him on speed dial.

i always hear it as "fast butt" even though i know it isnt

Best thing yet. Love the Be My Baby style intro and pulse through the song. Gives Billy some forward propulsion and he rides it like a champ.

much more than "everybody loves you now" or "piano man" or "the entertainer" from albums 1, 2 and 3, this is the birth of billy joel as billy joel. a perfect album opener. i love the vocal, the production, the "in my life"-ish sentiment of "some will last, some will just be now and then." this song may be the first hint that billy himself will be more than just now and then. i have absolutely no idea what he's going on about with bobby and johnny, though i suspect between the spectorisms, the saxophone and the image of the lovers in their heavy machines, there was a well-worn copy of born to run not too far away.

i love that he gets right to it in this song: two bars of drums, two bars of music and we're off. same structure as "be my baby." this is AM radio and there's no time to waste.

hey, you got to make it fit if you want to have a hit.

I know so little about springsteen but from what I do, the connection makes sense. could argue that essentially he swaps tumbleweed connection for born to run and that's the missing piece to the formation of joel. but obviously that's a little reductive... and again I think the bandmates have to be critical here. the songwriting is just instantly more developed and the non-piano, non-vocal parts are much more integral parts of "the song" as a piece of work. or maybe he just benefited from having more time. or maybe the west coast really was holding him back.

the bandmates

for sure. the arrival of liberty, richie, russell and doug (RIP) is huge.

i just saw dunkirk again so i'm all ww2 aviation brain but imo it's like when they finally put the rollsroyce engine in the p-51 -- NOW we fightin some nazis

one of his best imo

i think the band is key because in so many of my favorite upcoming songs the music ceases to be just a bed for his lyrics like it was before; they share the heavy-lifting... his lyrics can still be maddeningly indirect or awkward at times but the band can step up to brightens those spots and/or redirect your attention with sweet riffs or fills or solos etc

yes! And we see that already here in a way - I mean it's certainly possible Joel came in and said "I want the 'Be My Baby' beat," but it seems just as likely to me that he had this song going - plong, plong plong dong - and DeVitto was like you know what would be cool on that is to start it with the "Be My Baby" beat and then kick it up a notch in the chorus. Who knows? Starting with the next album, lead guitar riffs start becoming major hooks in the songs and I highly doubt Billy was working all of those out first and dictating them to the band. It's just a weird artifact of acts being seen as "solo artists" that their bandmates never get woven into the story as much - like, if with this album and his move east they'd decided to take on a new name as "The New Hassles of the Oyster Bay" or something, it would just seem obvious to assume that some of the key parts of the songs are not coming from the lead singer and lyricist.

(next song tomorrow AM, sorry folks)

otm

the mystique of the solo artist definitely keeps the other guys out of the picture

there's a little bit of that with Springsteen, he talked about in his book - he started as a solo artist and that is how he saw himself, and he made it so that he was the band's employer, as tight and creative as they were it was always him AND the band, a very clear delineation for him
but not necessarily them at first. until they realized later on like oh it really is him AND us

Nick Cave to an extent as well.

"Say Goodbye to Hollywood" is a big step-up for his/his band's arrangements. The castanets and strings fit into the picture very cleanly, unlike the stuff on the last album. Not really a favorite song of mine because I feel like his voice stays in the same lane too long, but I like the "moving on is a chance" sections. I wasn't familiar with the "Songs in the Attic" version before but his delivery is a little more diverse there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tQKW9aquT0

I haven't checked on this, but Summer, Highland Falls has to among the highest-ranked non-hit, non-radio-staple fan favorite Billy Joel songs, when it comes to polls and individual countdowns. Named for the time and place when it was written, back in New York if not Long Island, it also takes us back to the confessional Billy Joel of Cold Spring Harbor, a few years older and more mature as a songwriter. Appropriately for a fan favorite, it appeared on Songs in the Attic, and as the b-side to the live "Say Goodbye to Hollywood," with a performance from D.C.'s Bayou, 7/23/1980.

Sounds like Joel was paying attention to Jackson Browne ("For we are always what our situations hand us/It's either sadness or euphoria")

you're lucky it's the wee hours of the morning in vegemite country, sir

I get why this is a fan favourite: it's sonically graceful and lyrically mature. But it leaves me wanting a stronger hook.

This is the first song about which I can say "lovely."

Someone might have observed this further back on the road, but this feels like finally nailing a kind of song he had in his head since "Falling of the Rain" at least. The groove from DeVitto - laid back but tightly locked into the arpeggios - is one key ingredient, but the lyric is also a lot stronger and the flows and stops of the melody give emphasis and pace in a way that was absent before.

My Schtick Failed in Hollywood

idk about Say Goodbye to Hollywood, it has all these pieces that ought to work but I find myself thinking "where is the hook?" cuz that melody is nothing. and then it goes on for way too long. Spector would never have let such a half-baked pop-single song drag out like that.

Summer, Highland Falls is a little more tolerable, maybe because he isn't belting so much, for once? I'm learning that I hate is over-emoting shout-y style, he's better when he lets the natural sweetness of his voice just come out without straining.

even so I couldn't make it all the way to the end of either song lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAHl4C4Jk0g

All You Wanna Do Is Dance - not to be confused with the similarly-titled Henley hit - is one of Billy's very few cracks at a reggae number. The link the lyric makes between musical genre and a sense of personal untimeliness foreshadows "It's Still Rock 'n' Roll To Me" and "An Innocent Man."

this is unacceptable

Just about every Billy song is somebody's favorite, but I have never seen anybody rep for this one. IMO it's justifiably the least-heralded thing on this record. I could get on board with the lyric, maybe (tho it's sort of innately filler-ish, as a pretty low-stakes bit of observational comedy or whatever) but the arrangement and performance... yeesh.

Happy to hear what I believe is that Moog again, though.

'back to a time when tomatoes were cheaper' is a long stupid walk to get a rhyme with speaker, billy

he sounds so faraway and throughly bored and frankly so am i

big old nope for that one

the whole genre of "old guy sez music was better in my day" music is not my favorite. but at least "its still rock n roll" has a bit of pep!

"Summer, Highland Falls" - really enjoyed that, the piano is beautiful

To be fair to old man Billy, this is a "You're So Dumb" song - it's the addressee who's hung up on that old time rock 'n' roll!

Still doesn't make for a great premise, since these kind of second-person harangues, removed from any relationship drama where you can imagine the speaker as wounded and lashing out ("Positively 4th Street," "You Got Lucky"), start to seem extremely petty, like Chandler from Friends dumping someone because they pronounce it "supposably." And yeah, wow, that tomato lyric.

wow, that tomato lyric.

My only takeaway from this song.

All You Wanna - Sounds like he's trying to do a C Moon, but at least there aren't any kettle dr– oh for god's sakes, what the hell is he forcing that Moog to do for him?

Highland Falls - It's pleasant enough.

Say Goodbye - Favorite part of this is when it hits the gas on the "Movin' on, taking my time" line. Thanks LD.

Cool trivia about the cover: That's his step-son right behind him.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/Say_Goodbye_to_Hollywood.jpg

Can't tell if he looks like Lou Reed or Steve Guttenberg here.

What's the first song to make lyrical reference to the Beatles, paired with Beatlesesque backing vocals to drive the point home? Generation X's "Ready Steady Go" (which goes with "Wooooo!" rather than the Rubber Soul la-las heard here) is 1978...

Summer Highland Falls imo is a serious grower - feel like it washed by me the first few times I heard it and then at some point once my brain had absorbed the major pieces, it would just cling to me. Had it going in my head the whole afternoon at the beach yesterday, combing for shells after the eclipse, and it was not unpleasant.

Cheap Trick's "Taxman" is '77 but there's gotta be stuff even earlier than that

xp

o/t but not http://people.com/music/billy-joel-wears-yellow-star-of-david-at-new-york-show-amid-rising-neo-nazi-activity/

summer, highland falls - beautiful performance. making good use of his predilection for piano arpeggios. maybe overdoing it a bit with his predilection for multisyllabic words, but it works. he should've tried to work the word "arpeggio" into the lyric. it's either sadness or arpeggios.

dance - this was an automatic skip back when i listened to this album pretty much daily. it's not as terrible as i remembered it. it's also not good.

'back to a time when tomatoes were cheaper' is a long stupid walk to get a rhyme with speaker, billy

eventually he'll learn that he can get more mileage from a cheap pair of sneakers.

shuddering to think how narrowly we missed out on "you got more mileage when tomatoes were cheaper"

really like "Summer, Highland Falls", filter great Plains Copelandisms through the Beatles into a piano part that feel like proto-Hornsby

Def hear some Jackson Browne in this too in the way he phrases certain lines

As for the other song...

What the heck was it where EVERY FUCKING ROCK ACT felt like they had to try their hand at cod-reggae?? it's such a disease in the 70s, I wonder why? I guess maybe it was a like a 50s exotica fad deal and emphasizing the 2 and 4 with a guitar chop is such an easy and superficial way to sort ape reggae...but god almighty what terrible music resulted.

anyway this song sucks...though the Moog "steel drums" are goofy enough they almost remind me of something Zappa would do in a funny way

I imagine we have whole threads about cod reggae but imho most charitable reading, and I have to reach for this, is that it was (to them) a 'new' sound and yet within their instrumental grasp and probably very enjoyable to play. Not a great argument in favor of cultural appropriation but I can see how it happened. After Clapton hit #1 in the US with "I Shot the Sheriff" and Typically Tropical did the same with "Barbados" in the UK, further attempts were probably inevitable.

If I'm going to give BJ any credit on this one it's that the choice is either wildly incongruous to the song, or pays it off lyrically in a surprising way: the contemporary music that the fuddy-duddy subject things she can't dance to is reggae, which is actually very danceable! Hey lady, get over your nostalgia for the glory days of Elvis, the kids are listening to Bob Marley! I dunno... another reach maybe. But I think he comes off well versus Anglos trying to mimic Jamaican accents and Patois, or in the case of "Barbados," singing in the first person as a Barbadian immigrant (aka minstrelsy).

i was bracing myself for nope-inducing patois, thank god that didnt happen

I'm trying to keep my mouth shut out of respect for all of you but really

Nope-inducing patois inna Hicksville stylee, mon. We didn't start the irie.