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

given their tendency for beatle worship and including utter bullshit on their albums i wonder if oasis didn’t model their career after billy joel

where's the orchestra - in which he closes his brief psychedelic rock phase with an attempt to write one for the american songbook, like mccartney waltzing into the studio with some orchestral charts to put an end to a lennon album side. but mccartney has been snacking on some of lennon's leftover lsd, which is why he appears to be having some kind of mild acid trip while sitting in the balcony trying to watch a broadway show in which there are chairs for a pit orchestra but nobody in them, and in which the movie-star lead is saying lines that don't make any sense. or maybe he just walked into a pinter play by mistake. i kinda like this one, which is definitely a bit nilsson-esque as doctor c says. billy likes it too. he used it as his final encore for years (so long "souvenir") and still plays it frequently.

(V. evocative but I must quibble: I doubt McCartney was any more capable of producing "orchestral charts" than Lennon was - or for that matter Ringo. For a chart to exist, didn't he have to hum the bits to George Martin or whoever, who turned that humming into notation? Your larger point stands, of course.)

ha, true, i do believe george martin would have to had to produce those charts. and hire the players.

Even Joel (to swerve back on topic), who studied piano in his youth, says he can't even sight-read anymore; to do his late-career classical dabblings he needed a collaborator. As did McCartney and Costello for their late-career classical dabblings.

I'm not a huge Lennon stan but had he lived, you can be damn sure he wouldn't be writing a fucking string quartet called "The Walrus Variations" or whatever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5bH-qg7QFY

Elvis Presley Blvd. is the first of a couple of obscurities that - at the risk of overtaxing everyone's patience - I'm throwing in before the next album. The aforementioned b-side to "Allentown," it is not to be confused with the Rick Ross and Project Pat song of the same name. By my count, it's one of only three non-album B-sides we'll encounter; it wasn't anthologized until the 2005 My Lives set, which also includes a totally different arrangement and lyric dubbed The End of the World. I have to say I prefer that one, which may please fans of the McCartney-oriented Billy.

Doc, your thoroughness is a monument. I had never heard this song (though I guess I was vaguely aware that it existed). I can see why it's obscure. Sonically quite good - the guitar tone and vocal treatment especially. But pretty much hookless and instantly forgettable.

revisiting nylon curtain as a whole album today and man "pressure" is just the best song

i'll tell you what it is.... BESTSONG!!!!!

hmm came out looking a bit young-money-ish. a style billy has not attempted to the best of my knowledge

I was so psyched to hear for the first time today a Billy Joel song from the Ramone era I hadn't heard before!

It deserves to be a B-side, but it's an excellent - if I may - bridge between Nylon Curtain and An Innocent Man.

You know me, I get a little wary when people start singing about Memphis and Elvis. But ending it with a car crash instead of becoming a Christian tonight, I'll accept it.

Also, leave it to Billy to write a song about Elvis, but have it sound like the title track to Sgt. Pepper.

You think he ever listened to that record the summer after he turned 18 and sang BILLLLLL LLLYYYYYYYY JOELLLLLL! as they went into With a Little Help from My Friends?

No wonder he envied Joe Cocker.

lol thank you for that indelible image of young starstruck Billy

hah, pplains, that is great.

Is he singing into a hairbrush in front of his bedroom mirror in this vision, or does he have a cheap Radio Shack condenser mic by that point (plugged into the aux input of a dual-cassette boom box)?

he had already been in his first band for a couple years, and joined the Hassles that year, so it seems reasonable he might have had acess to some mic or another

access

the verses of "elvis presley blvd" sound like they belong on streetlife serenade. the chorus, if that's what the "step on these shoes" part is, could have been the 8th or 9th single from an innocent man. guitar riff sounds like a late-period beatles leftover. nothing sounds, feels or even remotely suggests elvis.

I'm guessing this was a Glass Houses leftover shelved because the main riff sounded too much like The Stranger, and the better, mellower demo version sounded too much like "Don't Ask Me Why" and they wanted to make sure the balance of the album stayed on the rock side of things. Also that just puts it closer to Presley's death, though obviously rockers were far from done with contemplating Graceland and the Ghost of Elvis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX8xwDsWGHI

Nobody Knows But Me, our other little palate-cleanser, hails from the second of the Children's Television Workshop's two-volume In Harmony series, which featured popular musicians doing kid-friendly tunes. Many of the artists went with existing kid's ditties, and Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming To Town," taken from a 1975 concert recording, has enjoyed some airplay. James Taylor even got away with recycling an old album track. But Billy, perhaps unable to find anything really kid-oriented in his catalogue, pushed through his writer's block to come up with a (minor) original work, riffing on the idea of imaginary friendship.

Like its predecessor, the album won the Grammy for Best Album for Children. While it should be allowed that this is not usually a wildly competitive category, the winners are generally quite respectable entries in the genre. Sadly, the album was a commercial step down from its #156 predecessor, failing to chart. However, Billy may have taken some solace in being able to, for once, see his name on a record without Artie Ripp's Family she-wolf logo. A promo single, maybe only issued in Europe, puts Billy and The Boss back to back.

https://img.discogs.com/zrym8uWBYsim_pNAq5sqtKXOmFM=/fit-in/600x588/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1540758-1367364607-7189.jpeg.jpg https://img.discogs.com/Ny4Pvszg4LTLI_hfZl2DDl0DZ5A=/fit-in/600x587/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1540758-1367364613-2683.jpeg.jpg

OK someone explain that tuxedo cat

nobody knows

shaved garfield

Catchy, in that way that I think would get annoying if I heard it a few more times. He goes a bit crazy near the end, doesn't he

Creepy song that I bet kids loved.

And I wrote that before he went crazy at the end, what the hell was that?

*Slams down lid on piano* Your move, Lou Rawls!

off-topic but "Jellyman Kelly" is great

While we're clearing out some of the leftovers, dig these Nylon-era Billy in the Suburbs portraits by Deborah Feingold.

https://i.imgur.com/NY0mHqL.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/iJZXQTZ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/b0oHWOb.jpg

What, you expect him to only occupy one lounge chair?

Clearly you are unaware that he's the pyanno man. AND, unlike you, he knows a woman in New Mexico.

tell her all your crazy dreams!

nobody knows but me - i like all bo diddley beats no matter what. i like little billy channelling his little mccartney. i like the 1-2-1-2-1-2 etc intro. i like him getting silly billy at the end. goofy and fun.

Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming To Town," taken from a 1975 concert recording, has enjoyed some airplay.

massive airplay where i come from! a classic rock christmas standard. (but not necessarily from this album. same version was released three years later as the b-side to "my hometown." and if memory serves, at least some radio stations had a copy even before in harmony came out.)

bragging rights: i was at the springsteen show where "santa claus" was recorded. at the c.w. post dome, 1976. my high school graduation was also held at the dome. it collapsed several years later; couldn't handle the snow drifts. there's a whole new auditorium there now called the tilles center.

1975, rather.

the weight of the snow drifts... or of nine tiny reindeer??

https://img.discogs.com/lBPfOqkaoOPbesdXsPV_CvTQ2Ug=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-822425-1352320536-1582.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/UCRkJ9gcQSbO4ze8yXi2rCrKC7k=/fit-in/600x589/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-822425-1441182124-7253.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/8O3m-sBHLTGlxISYwkAIMqbd_Is=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-822425-1324648628.jpeg.jpg

An Innocent Man, Billy Joel's ninth solo album, was recorded in Spring of 1983, probably while "Goodnight Saigon" was still on the charts, and released that August, less than a year after The Nylon Curtain. Most of you are probably familiar with the standard narrative: recovering from a long year of divorce and the grind of recording the weighty Nylon Curtain, a newly single Billy, flush with excitement at dating supermodels Elle Macpherson and future wife Christie Brinkley, drew a connection between his new mood and his teenage years. This led him to the American rock, pop, and soul music of the 50s and 60s, and he threw himself energetically into a string of generally upbeat and optimistic style exercises.

Whatever we may think of all that, the resulting retro-pop was an unlikely smash: six top-forty singles, of which three made the top ten. One topped the US charts and another did the same in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. On the Adult Contemporary charts they were unstoppable: #1, #2, #1, #1, #1, #3. Though the album itself peaked at only #4, it sold steadily, becoming the fourth-biggest seller of 1984 and, according to one list I've found, its 7.9 million sales make it the #32 best-selling album of the 1980s, just above (I swear) New Jersey. At the Grammys, it got an Album of the Year nom, inevitably losing to Thriller; the other noms were Synchronicity, Let's Dance, and the Flashdance soundtrack. "Uptown Girl" was also nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, along with 1999, "All Night Long," and "Maniac." The victory went to... Thriller.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdGzzfQ52TQ

Easy Money, the album-opener, has never been among my favorite tracks, but it certainly makes a clear announcement that we're going to get something different from The Nylon Curtain. I admit that it may have been ruined for me by this ILX post.

Wikipedia, by the way, spells out which act(s) each track is 'supposed' to be celebrating, but I won't be specifying those since it's more fun to approach them with an open mind, and ILM's collective pop knowledge no doubt exceeds that of the Wiki hivemind.

A cheese ball, one I find inexplicably endearing. I don't know if this was actually featured in/written for the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle that I think came out that same year (and which I haven't seen), but I cannot help but feel that Billy Joel writing a song for a Rodney Dangerfield movie from the 1980s is about as on-brand as you can get.

*BUT one In find...

One *I find...aw, fuck it

Apparently, it was the title song for the film! Never realized that.

I now kind of regret not picking up the $0.50 VHS copy of the film that I spotted at my local Goodwill store a few months back.

I still don't understand why this is the album opener. There is a veritable arsenal of hits here and the album starts with... this. I agree that the title track is too long and introspective to be an opener. "The Longest Time" is too unconventional to open.

"Tell Her About it" and "Uptown Girl" are too stereotypical - upbeat, major key, top-40 radio catnip - and those songs were always going to do fine as singles anyway.

For me the obvious opener is "Keeping the Faith." But they didn't consult me so I will shut up now.

"Keeping the Faith" is the perfect closer for me - feels like the curtain coming down for Billy to come out and say a few words about what he was trying to do; it's the only song that lyrically discusses his teenage lifestyle, and it explicitly discusses his "reasons for the whole revival," before he leaves to go have a beer in the shade. I actually wish his recording career had ended there too - one of those great missed opportunities for a perfect exit.

"Uptown Girl" would be an incredible opener, but it's tough to lead with something that's far-and-away the highest-energy thing on the record. I'd go for "Tell Her About It" as filling the same role as "Easy Money" while being a wildly better song.

It's fascinating how AIM was released as the Thriller model of milking albums to death took hold.

re "Easy Money" – man, bizzers sure like Joe Jackson, eh?

I saw the movie on HBO when it made its cable debut. Lots of Rodney smokin' doobs, lookin' at titties, taking pictures of young children...

Just watched the trailer. There's Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent. Wonder how many other Goodfellas are in there.

An Innocent Man came out at the peak of my WMJ fandom, which means it was around this point that it started to slide a little for me. Joel's albums always had that character thing that I loosely compared to Bowie's, but this one... irony of ironies, it was this one where he wore the mask much more. I don't know what wiki says about each song, but it was a little bit like a theme record. Not hating the songs themselves, but suffice to say that by the time the Uptown Girl video appeared with a dancing Billy Joel, I wasn't too surprised.

It's all fun though. I wouldn't have wanted The Nylon Curtain II fer chrissakes. And I'm in agreement with this song - might be the weakest one on the album.

i.... idk y'all, i weirdly love this song

i def had an innocent man in my cassette collection when i was a kid. i'm unsure of how much i listened to it, but my enjoyment of this song may be due to a deep subspace being accessed in my head

I actually wish his recording career had ended there too - one of those great missed opportunities for a perfect exit.

and then he should have returned, unannounced, 15 years later with a single, "a matter of trust," and then disappeared again.

as the biggest stylistic reach on the album, "easy money" makes sense as an opener, making his intentions and aspirations immediately clear. also, it's the kind of track any of the other groups he was paying homage to might have opened their 1983 album with. but, no, it isn't very good.

Yeah, I bought this album when it came out, recorded it onto cassette and listened to it nearly endlessly for a year or two, along with all of 1984's other big albums. I didn't mind this song too much in its context, but it's not nearly as good as most of the other material, obvs. T always struck me later as more of a Mitch Ryder pastiche for some reason.

I actually saw Back to School in the theater, with a date. I'd see anything with Rodney back then. For those unaware, that movie -- with the late, great Taylor Negron doing unfortunate brownface -- is source for the title of and silly quotes in the chorus of Anthrax's "I'm The Man."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1twdYHVG5Q

Back to School is waaaay better than Easy Money (which still has some good scenes/lines/gags + a great cast)

Fell into a hole of Easy Money YouTubes today and am loving it.