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

crypto, 80% is about right, yeah

And God all the words and syncopation, it's like some erudite old geezer's rendition of Subterranean homesick blues

The intro makes me wonder if anyone's ever tried to cover "Baba O'Reilly" manually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PVlMTCG-BI

First comment HOF on that, too

I like the bass line and those staccato acoustic strums.

The verse melody sounds like something Belle & Sebastian would write twenty years later.

I don't hear what's so repellent about the lyrics -- it's a sketch. The arrangement has so much energy that it palliates the angry. To me "Angry Young Man" is Joel's wry take on the kind of fella he knows well and may recognize in himself.

it's a shitty sketch!

it's more like a page from a coloring book

I don't expect narrative complexity from Billy Joel.

^ ding ding

Eazy, thx for posting that video!! great stuff
Man Devitto really whales on those drums holy crap

One thing I took away from recent live vids ITT is that I would rather be in a band with DeVitto than Weinberg. Max is fine but staid in comparison.

wtf max is cool

Max is cool but Liberty brings more dynamism imo.

But my fave live version of this is probably the Russian tour doc released as "Matter of Trust," in which I think Stegmeyer does goofy dances wearing Miami Vice-colored pants and narrow leather suspenders.

Wow at the Baba video. Would've been cool even if he hadn't played the "regular" chords.

Man, my dad went off on Liberty DeVitto one night while we were watching them on The Tonight Show or something. "I'd FIRE that guy! Look at how much of a DISTRACTION he is!"

"There's a place in this world..." "Give a moment or two..." "It's a comfort to know his intentions are good."'

i hear all that as sarcasm.

The verse melody sounds like something Belle & Sebastian would write twenty years later.

this is very otm

how do i get brenda & eddie out of my head, it's whirring around in my head like a broken tape machine now heeeeeelp

BRENDAR

That's like all you need to know about BJ

Why are we not discussing Can or some shit. Is this how far we have fallen? 😀

love the energy from the piano & drums. back in high school the lyrics sounded so sophisticated and wise even if we didn't know anyone who fit the description. now, i'll just choose to ignore the lyrics and listen to the music.

yeah billy isn't a soul searcher by any means

tbh we talk about the music and the lyrics a lot but for me, and i came into it feeling this way already, but pretty consistently through these 3 albums i really do love his singing

idk enough about the mechanics of singing to say why exactly, just, something in his tone is really pleasant and nice to hear, i think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBW7jfCA-wU

I've Loved These Days is either another, more bittersweet, farewell to the Hollywood scene, or more generally a reflection on mid-twenties debauchery. Here, it's the penultimate track; a live performance, recorded at the Rosemont Horizon (7/16/1980), served as the closer for Songs in the Attic.

A little too Broadway for my tastes. The (even) older and wiser version of this is probably "Famous Last Words," from River of Dreams, and I like that one a lot better.

i really like this

especially the clarinet! lovely touch there

yeah i never think about this song but it's kind of prime joel - big and a little blowsy with equal splashes of something like sneering resentment and something like wiping-away-a-tear sentimentality. a reveler's rewrite of auld lang syne, that remembers all the hangovers but still isn't gonna write off the good times entirely. the first-person plural in the verses is key here - turn it to "you" and it becomes another judgment song, but there's something reliable about a big "we" song with layabouts casting about for another form of adulthood. "time to pretend," which i love, is a very distant cousin of this song.

I have no trouble embracing this song and sharing the sentiments therein. I think it's a decently specific lyric, that adequately describes a certain attitude.

Just a couple days ago Οὖτις wrote of BJ's character songs: "like there's no twists or turnabouts or mysterious details everything is just 'hey this guy's a jerk!' or 'these people are losers!' or 'this couple's in love!' and like... that's it."

I think his introspectionfests are less one-dimensional. They allow for completely respectable - even postmodern - levels of ambiguity and ambivalence. I don't think he's a sophisticated intellectual or a Bowie-level eccentric genius, but I do think his lyrics do a good job of encapsulating the dualities that can accompany even the most conventional of lives.

We walked on the beach beside that old hotel; they're tearing it down now, but it's just as well. You can make decisions too, and you can have this heart to break. We shot on sight... we promised our mothers we'd write. Our lifestyle is excessive, and I know it needs to end - but damn, I've had a great time. I don't know why I go to extremes. You may be right; I may be crazy.

Is it a French horn preceding the clarinet?

yeah i think so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coYwBvysy3Q

Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway) closes out Turnstiles, and with the benefit of hindsight, Joel's pre-blockbuster career. Another fan favorite and killer live staple, its appearance as the rampaging opening number on Songs in the Attic (Madison Square Garden, 6/24/1980) single-handedly justifies the entire "let's do my earlier songs justice" premise of the album.

One detail I never appreciated until digging a little more into New York history is the allusion to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. This surely hinged on audience awareness that the Brooklyn Navy Yards had only been decommissioned in 1966, with the loss of near 11,000 jobs. Another twist of the knife for the struggling metropolis.

Interesting to think of this one, released in mid-1976, as steeped in the decline of NYC. And yet, at the same time, in parts of NYC Billy wasn't interested in, the mid-70s saw the birth of hip-hop and NYC punk not to mention a thriving dance scene.

I enjoyed hearing him doing this post-9/11 more than I did when he did NY State of Mind. It was like he was saying, What else you got?

i've loved these days - why didn't guns n' roses cover this?

miami 2017 - this is the single most billy joel song ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI7WNCqLrWA

in this video, billy explains which song everyone on the cover of turnstiles is supposed to represent. but he leaves out two songs: ny state of mind and summer, highland falls. i suppose he himself is in a ny state of mind. but what happened to summer, highland falls? did he forget it was on the album? did it slip his mind when he was meeting with the art director?

i guess billy could be summer highland falls, and the subway backdrop is new york state of mind? kinda sloppy though.

Ok catching up:

James is fucking terrible ugh almost Henley level condescending and a shitty, dumbo rewrite of Do You Remember Walter? by the Kinks.

Prelude - all these instrumentals, Billy could have been a great TV/film Mike Post type dude in that era

Angry Young Man - hell if I'm gonna spend more than 10 seconds thinking about how #woke some old Billy Joel song is. This is ok, mostly due to the drummer who's putting in some speed metal skiffle work. Dang.

I've Loved These Days, Miami 2017 - love both of these! I mean this widescreen overblown turbo charged sentimental shit is what Joel does. If you don't like these I wonder if you like Joel at all.

thanks to yours truly, miami 2017 is one of only a couple songs we'll deal with that has its own thread: ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=72073

this contenderizer post from Veg's poll thread of the greatest hits is key imho:

I like Billy Joel's lyrics. Not all of them, certainly, but enough to count. They're simple, and they invite easy identification. They pick out the emotions in big bold strokes, the rhymes and rhythms underlined in red so you can sing along at home. They cut a little, maybe, but never too deep. That's not such a bad thing.

I love "Miami 2017", for instance. It's a juvenile apocalypse, drunk on romantic rebellion and defeat, a blur of places and names dipped in cheap cynicism and set alight. Whatever the fuel, it roars right along, the verses always ending on an open 'oh', 'ah' or 'ee' so he (we) can wantonly belt the Big Note to the stars. It's a fun song, engagingly clever without being terribly insightful, subtle or even particularly honest. It's a fantasy of youthful war against vast powers, of survival in the bombed-out remains. But what of it? Sometimes a megaphone and a match do the job just fine.

It reminds me of two other, more generally well-respected songs that I like in a similar way: Leonard Cohen's "First We Take Manhattan" and Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime". I guess I'm a sucker for doomy, paranoid and slightly hysterical rebel fantasies. The edge on Joel's satirical knife might be a little dull, relatively speaking, but the general gist and tone aren't too far off. And Billy beat them guys to the punch by a matter of years.

― preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture (contenderizer), Wednesday, 11 April 2012 07:11 (five years ago) Permalink

also, this seems like a good time to mention one Chad Erickson's YouTube channel, which collects a bunch of Billy Joel snippets recorded for Sirius XM a couple years back. some familiar or predictable anecdotes, but a lot of little snippets about minor songs, if you're into that kinda thing.

Hey, sorry, no time for a post today introducing our next album, which is a doozy and deserves a little background. But... a great day to get caught up if you've lost the thread, or reflect on Turnstiles or the entire pre-breakthrough career if you're so inclined! Or just listen to "Miami 2017" on loop all day, that's cool with me.

this song was unfamiliar to me. Deploys his strengths well and doesn't contain any of the missteps that have marred previous tracks in this thread, so it has that going for it. I don't love it but it's not bad. Once the guitar starts chugging it does a reasonable facsimile of rocking.

chug all night!

Feel like we're at that place we were on in the Eagles thread when "I Wish You Peace" flipped over to the next tune.

Same year and everything!

turnstiles was my favorite billy joel album for a long time, until it was supplanted by a rather obvious one we'll get to in a few weeks. it didn't have hits like the next album did -- it didn't have any -- but it's a perfect distillation of what was good about billy in the '70s. quiet balladry. loud balladry. big, post-goodbye-yellow-brick-road arena pop-rock. glittery piano magic. enough place names to fill a fodor's guide. but mostly, his melodic gift has finally come into full focus, and he's found the band that knows what to do with it.

also, and i assume lots of artists have exactly this kind of album, since it sounded very much like the commercial breakthroughs to come without being a commercial breakthrough itself, if you were a billy joel fan in those days, this was the obvious non-obvious choice for favorite album. this was the "cool" one.

yeah, it's like a captain fantastic - just coming before the blockbusters rather than after. but similarly consistent in style with them, yet somehow more fan-ready, and heavier on autobiographical reflections than the surrounding LPs.

The Born to Run influence is all over this one, and except for a horn flourish in one of the latter verses, it works, mostly thanks to an ambitious and poignant lyric. I'm less crazy about the echoey quality of Billy's voice, which I find to be a genuine distraction; the Songs in the Attic corrects this, and is probably my preferred version as a result, but the ideal take of this song exists somewhere between the two.

Also, I like that it took me until 2017 to finally hear this song.

http://www.onefinalserenade.com/uploads/2/9/1/2/2912571/1109669_orig.jpg

actually - - - so here's a little evening listening for those looking for something "between the two": one of billy's June, 1977 dates at Carnegie Hall. these nights were the conclusion of a long half-year of touring, and this one in particular was issued on the thirtieth anniversary CD of the stranger. (the fortieth arrives next month - i'm going to pretend i had that in mind all along.) anyway, spoiler alert as this recording does include two then-unrecorded songs that we'll be meeting in a short time.

but it's a great recording of a great concert. maybe better than songs in the attic which i've always sworn by. band sounds fresh, tight, and very warm, and they stretch out a little more. where the SITA versions are almost all within a few seconds of their studio running lengths, here we get an eight-minute "new york state of mind" (with ad-libbed "...Chinese food!" and a lot more sax activity), and a six-minute "Entertainer" with the weakest verse replaced, and DeVitto (and the hall's acoustics) throwing some real muscle behind those Moog breaks. this take on "miami 2017" is very fresh, very hot imo, though i'd love a little more bile in joel's vocal. richie cannata is having a fucking ball.

anyway but yeah not to get a jump on tomorrow but it makes me think how much of the breakout success of the stranger also reflected a long-term touring grind, building up a fanbase and making them hungry for an album that really delivers everything you've heard from the guy in concert. comparisons to the previous year's surprise smash frampton comes alive would probably be a bit off the mark, but, still. i'm kicking myself for never having listened to this show before - it's got SO much of what i want out of a billy joel recording.

https://ewedit.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/billy-joel-1977-tour-poster-fairleigh-dickenson.jpg?w=1200&h=1811

And before we leave the bicentennial, had to post this photo.

http://i.imgur.com/EjBfbue.jpg

This man doesn't take shit from no one.

Hey Billy - don't you know that your tie's too wide?

being able to see that lit bulb thru his barnet = generally considered a photography no-no AND early indicator of worse to come hairwise

https://img.discogs.com/w9KnUJIb_os_j4l-qiWdMNrDy1E=/fit-in/600x604/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1108650-1441271466-9874.jpeg.jpg https://img.discogs.com/UfTIxmQjpXhYDcB_bEXieOz99xE=/fit-in/600x608/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1108650-1441271468-7773.jpeg.jpg

The Stranger, recorded in the summer of 1977 and released that September, was Billy Joel's breakthrough. Following a couple of flop albums and a substantial, band-tightening tour, as noted above, Billy apparently still had enough support at Columbia that they made an honest go of making a great record. The self-production effort on Turnstiles having underperformed, they initially turned to none other than George Martin, obviously best known for the Beatles. At the time, most of his work was for America (the band), and despite some big hits a few years earlier ("Tin Man" and "Sister Golden Hair" are Martin productions), their '76 and '77 albums had both flopped hard and so it might be that this wasn't quite the STAR PRODUCER SAVIOR move it would seem today. Anyway, the story goes that Martin - true to form - wanted to ditch the touring band and return to session players. Joel understandably said no, apparently with the label's backing, and it didn't happen. (In Billy's telling, Martin would later write a "you were right" note, after the album's success.)

Instead, the producer's chair was taken by Phil Ramone, who as noted above was coming off Still Crazy After All These Years, a big hit in Billy's general wheelhouse. He'd also been the engineer (de facto producer?) on Blood on the Tracks, as well as producing some Garfunkel records and Phoebe Snow, who contributes backing vocals on one track here. (DeVitto and Stegmeyer would in turn play on her 1978 LP.) After this, Ramone would produce all of Billy's albums through An Innocent Man; here, he strikes a balance between the "just me and the band" vibe, and a host of session players and vocalists reminiscent of the Los Angeles records. Engineer Jim Boyer, who I'm guessing came along with Ramone since they worked together on the Streisand/Kristofferson A Star Is Born, would stay with Billy through The Bridge, plus work on some later live albums. (The same year as he recorded this album, Boyer worked on Marquee Moon - now there's a case where I wish some personnel-swapping collaborations could have somehow come to pass.)

One more personnel note: despite all this keep-the-band-together business, the guitarist position was apparently a hard one to fill. Howie Emerson appears on Turnstiles and the following tour; Russell Javors was on Turnstiles, is absent from The Stranger and then returns for everything through The Bridge. On this album, it's all session pros: Steve Khan (also heard on Aja, released the previous week, and 52nd Street), Hugh McCracken (huge pop/rock resume, including a couple of Phil Ramone productions, and Katy Lied), Hiram Bullock (a jazz fusion prodigy, later heard on Gaucho) and Steve Burgh (a guitarist slash producer, again with Phoebe Snow connections, who somehow never appeared on a Steely Dan album but is on Swans' White Light from the Mouth of Infinity).

https://img.discogs.com/5ESWmKTWnGzncO1mGqGgBZRJdEE=/fit-in/600x582/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1108650-1441271464-6078.jpeg.jpg

But anyway - - - - The Stranger! Billy's biggest seller besides Greatest Hits, it spent six weeks at #2 on the albums chart (kept from #1 by Saturday Night Fever). It was eventually diamond-certified, and at least one source has it as the USA's #12 best-selling album of the 1970s. Its four US singles have all become radio staples, and clearly helped propel the album's success, but interestingly, they weren't massive hits, peaking at #3, #17, #24, and #17, though two did very well on the Easy Listening chart. We'll cover all that as we get to each song, but I do think it's worth noting that it's not a Rumours or Thriller situation where every single is in the top ten and half are #1s. I'd love to know how long it was on the charts overall, how much it felt like a phenomenon versus a burgeoning success.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJtL8vWNZ4o

Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) drops us right into the album with an essential slice of the classic rock radio landscape as I understand it. The second single, it peaked at #17 in the US (#40 on Adult Contemporary), #35 in the UK, and #11 in Canada. Much later, it would be the title song for Twyla Tharp's Billy Joel Broadway revue. Per Wiki, the vrooming car engine heard near the end is a Corvette belonging to Doug Stegmeyer.