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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVX80UpMPDI

My Life, the album's million-seller lead single, reprises some "Movin' Out" themes with a smoother groove and another smattering of irresistible hooks. Per the album jacket, backing vocals are not (as I'd always assumed) multiple Billys attempting a Linda McCartney/Denny Laine kinda sound. Rather, it's Peter Cetera and then-current-Chicago-member Donnie Dacus, who were recording Hot Streets with Ramone that same summer. One Final Serenade pulls together some of the best trivia, and links to this great piece by Blair Jackson on Ramone and Boyer's recording approach with Joel and company. Many may know it best (?) as the theme song to the ludicrous sitcom Bosom Buddies (Tom Hanks, Peter Scolari, Wendy Jo Sperber), in a chintzy soundalike version featuring session vocalist Gary Bennett.

The million-selling lead single, it held the #3 spot for three weeks in January 1979 (blocked from the top by "Too Much Heaven" and "Le Freak"). It did well pretty much everywhere - #12 in the UK, #6 in Australia and NZ, #1 in Zimbabwe. For the single, the song was cut down to three five oh by nipping and tucking several instrumental sections, and once again it's this version that appeared on the original release of Greatest Hits I & II. (I neglected to mention it but "Big Shot" also got cut down a bit.)

This one also had a promotional film clip - and it's a proper one, with all kinds of ACTING! It opens with a long stretch of album track "Stiletto," before, to quote an old Eisbaer post, Billy and crew morph from looking they walked offa the set of either mean streets or the warriors into the slick 1970s NYC studio hobbits that they really were and the song kicks in. (I don't quite agree with that characterization, but it's always stuck with me!)

https://img.discogs.com/SJI7VRmB8wXhxvU7Qxp0z9K6t0s=/fit-in/600x605/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-476018-1435138498-4858.jpeg.jpg

https://media.giphy.com/media/txanrh2nsTBCg/giphy.gif

I remember sitting around after this came out, visiting with some slightly older friends of my parents. The tune came on the radio, general discussion ensued. They did not approve of this song's message one bit.

"Der Single-Hit in USA"! I love that.

I like the breakdown a lot.

Lyrically, this song is not paired in my memory not with "Movin' Out," but rather with the upcoming "You May Be Right."

BTW, the plots of specific individual Bosom Buddies episodes are etched in my memory.

Long, pointless tangent possibly deserving of its own thread: In a given hour of after-school reruns, Bosom Buddies was often paired with Three's Company in the way that Facts of Life was paired with One Day at a Time; Silver Spoons with Diff'rent Strokes; What's Happening with Good Times; Sanford & Son with Chico & the Man; Happy Days with Laverne & Shirley. These pairings are prominent in my memory. Brady Bunch / Partridge Family; Beverly Hillbillies / Gilligan's Island; Flipper / Gidget; MASH / Taxi; Cheers / Family Ties.

There is a whole lost world in those programming choices. Sometimes the pairing was incongruous, sometimes it was thematically obvious: Happy Days with Laverne & Shirley or Leave It to Beaver with My Three Sons. Also even the hour-long shows got paired, lilke Fantasy Island with Love Boat.

Interesting how so many of us discuss these songs in terms of childhood memory and in terms of how "adult" their themes sounded at the time. Which is not how I think about the Beatles or Zeppelin or Floyd (or, for that matter, Duke Ellington).

In my case, I didn't get into the Beatles, Zeppelin or Floyd until later - Joel's Greatest Hits was in steady household rotation from whenever I was, idk, age eight or ten or something. Those other three I got into a little more consciously and self-directedly, between fourteen and sixteen. Even then I can remember certain things that I related to in a more kiddish way - "Paperback Writer" on first listen struck me as a genuine melodramatic tragedy - this striving writer!

I don't remember ever seeing Bosom Buddies, but in my after-school watching I really favored cartoons, and Nickelodeon's kid-specific sitcoms and gameshows. I remember a lot of surfing past some of those heavily-syndicated shows though, enough that I know the theme songs to "The Facts of Life" and "Cheers" and others without necessarily having ever watched a single episode. If I watched any adult type shows at that age, it was the old fun-for-the-whole-family Technicolor ones with big obvious gimmicks that USA and Nick at Nite would run - Gilligan, F Troop, The Monkees. When I was around thirteen, Nick started rerunning Welcome Back Kotter and I did get into that, which reminds me that apparently Billy's first lyric for this song was "Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back to the real life!"

my favorite thing is the riff
Bah dum, bom
(tinkle piano keys)
Da-da-da-da da da duh

the tinkling piano keys makes me happy

Veg is right, the tinkling is great.

Dr. C., My parents (born 1943-44) may have felt they were slightly too old for Joel.

My mother and stepfather had Beatles, Beach Boys, Judi Collins, John Denver. Some Motown, Ray Charles. Plus some incongruous things like the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. My father possibly regarded himself as "hip to the scene" and he tried to keep up with new music. He had Stones, Blondie, Bowie, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, David Johansen.

I guess I absorbed this stuff from peers and siblings.

i think my favorite thing that happens in the billy joel catalog (at least w/r/t the songs i'm already familiar with) is the "i never said" digression in "my life." also this thing is packed with hooks and the sound is so smooooov

I think it must have been my mom who was the Joel backer - my dad was born in '42 after some kind of stint following rock and roll or doo woop or something, he gravitated towards your Dylans and Dave Van Ronks, and then I know nothing about his musical taste until he started buying CDs in the 90s and it was the M People, Dylan's new albums, Natalie Merchant, etc. My mom was born a few years later and was a real Beatles type of teenager. By the time of Joe's stardom my brother and sister had both been born and their record-buying and music-following slowed a lot. I don't think we had any Joel vinyl until I started getting things at yard sales, but The Stranger and 52nd Street MIGHT have just been down in the basement.

That greatest hits cassette, though, that was just around, on road trips and days at the lake and so on. It was like Graceland.

xp yes and the backing vocals in that bit are especially fun

As for this song, I know I've used the word "confident" before but man does this sound like guys who know they are making hits now. He just slides right into the story with "Got a call from an old friend..." It's not just that the arrangement is smooth, he's shed a certain amount of sweatiness and desperation, he knows he already has the audience and he can just sing it out. This tendency ultimately leads him to become a little too slick, a little too much of a 'showman' but I'm digging it here.

The confidence also helps bind together several really disconnected lyrical ideas and voices: a brief sketch of a guy who became a stand-up comedian, first-person assertions of independence against (parents? know-it-all friends? industry execs?), idle comic musings on how they'll tell you this and that about sleeping places, the out-of-context laid-back defensiveness of the "I never said you had to..." bits. But the chorus is so strong - especially after we've gotten it stripped back for dramatic clarity around 2:40 - that pretty much everybody is going to find something to relate to, and all those other bits are hooky and fun to sing in and of themselves so hey whatever! Great track.

yeah conceptually it's hard to figure out but everything's so hooky it's impossible not to sing along

I am learning that the only kind of Joel I find tolerable is Joel in late 50s/early 60s r'n'r pastiche mode

i love singing along with this part

They will tell you you can't sleep alone in a strange place
Then they'll tell you can't sleep with somebody else
Ah but sooner or later you sleep in your own space
Either way it's okay, you wake up with yourself

can't fuck with that Stilleto opening on this one though, Marley Marl otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNqTz2mMwNE

are those backing vocals in "i never said..." the single most beatles-y moment in the billy joel catalog?

I'd give the honor to "Don't Ask Me Why" but that might be more solo McCartney-y.

There's something about - not just being a kid, but being someone who has only been alive for a few years and starting to recognize moments in culture.

My parents owned a little corner grocery store out in the woods, and every Tuesday, our magazine guy would deliver the latest periodicals. Stuff like Rolling Stone, Creem, Hit Parader... magazines that looking back on it now, seems kind of a weird inventory for such a rural retailer.

This was 1983 or so, when I was 9 or 10. I was getting into Top 40, and sometimes in these interviews, someone would point out something like "When Glass Houses came out in 1980..." I had memories of that year, but they were limited mostly to family things. Any culture from that year was likely "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" or CHiPs.

So to suddenly become aware of this musical past that happened without my knowing it was always a weird feeling. And yet, it had only been three years since it happened.

I went through this later in my teen years -- "Wait a minute, I was listening to Billy Joel in the 4th grade when I could've been digging on some ZEN ARCADE?"

Anyway. I remember Bosom Buddies when it first aired, but didn't realize it was a Billy Joel song until later. Boy was I excited.

ha, there's a stretch in my never-to-be-finished Girl Talk-esque megamix project that makes extensive use of "Stiletto," maybe i'll upload that when we get to that song, for all y'all's listening "enjoyment."

I'd give the honor to "Don't Ask Me Why" but that might be more solo McCartney-y.

or white album-y! whereas my life harmonies are more sgt peppery.

catching up:
Only the Good Die Young - hot Joel on a platter, verritfied club banger
She's Always a Woman - Gloppy
Everybody Has a Dream - i kinda hate when songs feel like are trying to be a singalong and the "ALL TOGETHER NOW!!!" aspect to the chorus kills this for me....

Big Shot - never really thought about the benny and the jets thing before but I hear it now...hearing Axl sing it on YouTube made it it rise in my estimation, I never really thought about the verses being GnResque but they kind are...
Honesty - it's okay...
My Life - Def one of my fav Billy Joel jams, and seems like a very iconic

my favorite thing is the riff
Bah dum, bom
(tinkle piano keys)
Da-da-da-da da da duh

yes! the tinkly keys are everything! i think i've already said this somewhere upthread, but that's one of those billy joel piano signatures that i can never get enough of and if he did it on every song i'd be ok with that. "ballad of billy the kid" is another good example. "all for leyna" maybe the pinnacle.

did Paul Simon rip off this melody/vocal phrasing for "I Know What I Know"...? I can't unhear it now.

general groove/piano riff also really really remind me of Steely Dan's "Time Out of Mind"

For some reason, I've always imagined that the rival in "My Rival" was Billy Joel.

― nitro-burning funny car (Moodles), Friday, 4 April 2014 13:41 (three years ago) Permalink

this is amazing

― some dude, Friday, 4 April 2014 13:47 (three years ago) Permalink

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/Thestranger1977.jpg

"I was the whining stranger"

― some dude, Friday, 4 April 2014 13:48 (three years ago) Permalink

for some reason the production on 52nd Street is starting to feel "80s" to me where everything previous feels v "70s" but couldn't really point to what's changed.

folks! just dropping in with a question… haven't been listening along and for that matter have no viciously strong views pro or con…

why is Springsteen so universally beloved in white people NJ (like maybe Ira Kaplan, Glenn Danzig and their respective constituents do not care for him, but I'm not aware one way of the other) but white people LI has shit tons of people who can't stand him? why does he not represent the hopes and dreams of working class LI? does he not rock enuff or something?

but white people LI has shit tons of people who can't stand JOEL

I have no idea but would hazard that Springsteen's rep is that he treats people well/pays back into the community/etc. and Joel seems like a garden variety self-absorbed drunken asshole...?

for someone who's been as iconic and super famous for as long as he has, there's remarkably little dirt on or bad blood w/ Springsteen

Some great anecdotes in that MIX article:

Ramone wrote in his book, Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music, “To help Billy find the right voice when he was recording, I made him a control box with Echoplexes, MXR phasers and flangers. We labeled the buttons ‘Elvis,’ ‘Doo-wop,’ ‘R&B,’ etc. and put it right on the piano so he could switch the effects around until he hit one he liked.”

In Ramone’s book, he quotes this anecdote about “My Life” from Liberty DeVitto: “[Phil] wanted me to play a very straight beat, and I bucked him. ‘I ain’t playing that disco bullshit,’ I said. Phil got up, slammed something on the console and scolded me like he was my father. ‘You’ve been in this business for what—12 minutes? And you’re gonna tell me what you’re gonna play? Just get the hell in there and play the way I told you to play.’ I grumbled about it then, but every time I see the Gold record I received for ‘My Life’ on the wall, I mutter, ‘F—in’ guy was right!’”

lmao

truly, who could have guessed in 1978 that disco beats sold records

I *GUESS* the hi-hat pattern is discoish (open every other beat) but I don't think of this as a disco number.

I have known so many drummers who are like "I won't play a [insert random genre] beat" it is the weirdest thing. (and different from not being *able* to)

like there is an unspoken Drummer Code and if they play the wrong kind of beat they will be thrown out of the Drummer's Guild and barred from Rocking in Public.

Οὖτις, sometimes it is both won't and can't.

Back to "My Life," I suppose one could cite the octave bass line, but the guitar is nondisco; so are the halftime bits.

yeah i have never thought of "my life" as disco

"it is the weirdest thing." I don't think its weird at all, but it is becoming less common. up until 20 years ago, I encountered the "I won't do this because it sucks and is not real music" attitude all the damn time.

lets be real, drummers are weird

haven't been following this thread too closely, but I see someone stumbled on my comment about "My Rival". I can confirm that I was specifically thinking of The Stranger, because of both the "whining stranger" line, and also the reference to "Anthony's Bar & Grill", which I thought was maybe a joke on the Anthony of "Movin' Out".

"sure, he's a Jolly Roger": Captain Jack

..."until he answers for his [ain't no] crime"

Something about "My Life" is more 70s/80s/timeless lounge than "Piano Man" itself. The piano sounds almost like a fake synth piano, the whole thing is made for a one-man piano busker. Not so much disco as easy-listening cha-cha-cha samba, kind of self-aware easy listening à la Rupert Holmes and "Margaritaville."

agree! that opening riff and into the flourish is total piano lounge in my mind

like it's the musical version of the when harry mey sally "white man's overbite" & the men are wearing leather sportcoats & the women all smoke dunhills

https://media.tenor.com/images/5ca3980117f310c62f933d891b31232f/tenor.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yget4xVAulE

Zanzibar, my favorite album track when I first got into this record, closes out side one. It began life as a hazy idea to do some kind of exoticist sketch of faraway lands, etc. Maybe Billy'd been listening to Dylan's "Mozambique." Thankfully, Phil Ramone, on hearing the title, proclaimed that it sounded like the name of a "jazzy sports bar," and Joel wisely reverted to his write-what-you-know approach.

The trumpet solos, as mentioned above, are courtesy Freddie Hubbard, who probably needs no introduction with the jazzbos in the room; in addition to an extensive discography as bandleader, he'd recorded with John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, and the list goes on. The 5:13 album version fades out on the second solo, but the full 6:46 take can be heard on the "My Lives" box set. Wiki: Joel also recalled that after playing with Hubbard on the song, drummer Liberty DeVitto claimed that "Now I feel like a grown up."[4]

Re Devito and "My Life" -- boy, did these guys hate disco.

i absolutely adore this song. mostly for the sublime chorus, but also: the swagger of the verse melody, which sounds like it's dancing along with ali and running the bases with pete rose. the gorgeous breakdown and build back up into a completely different song (and completely different band) in the bridge/solo section with the freddie hubbard payoff. the sound of the piano (is that all electric, or is there both electric and acoustic piano going on here?). the details behind the piano, especially the vibes. i even like the lyric even though i'm not sure it works. is this a high-school kid out for a night in his old man's car, trying to get to second base with a waitress? or an older dude who's a regular with a tab at the bar? do older dudes/regulars have dreams of getting to second base? do younger dudes run tabs? and where exactly is this bar that has muhammad ali on the tv (which would've been a pricey pay-per-view event) and a shantytown nearby? what country are we in? or what's going on here? but i really don't care. he gets to the "i've got the old man's car/i've got a jazz guitar" part and i am melting, and if leon spinks is somewhere in this here bar, he can knock me out with one punch and i won't even feel it.

i also adore action bronson's homage:

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

i like this! even more so than Movin Out or Scenes from an Italian Restaurant this one really feels like it's straight out of a broadway show

that repeating fast-paced piano line reminds me of "At The Ballet" from A Chorus Line:
"Daddy always thought that he married beneath him
That's what he said
that's what he said"