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

I miss the Ronnie songs. While Billy's tendency towards pastiche obviously long predated Phil Ramone's collaboration, I suspect the latter played a big role in executing/synthesizing those urges in what (through Glass Houses anyway) remained a fairly tight recording process of a handful of full-band takes to nail the basic tracks of each song. (I'm thinking of the vocal effects console with buttons for Billy labeled "Elvis," etc.). I wonder how much of the Storm Front material Billy heard in his head as taking inspiration from so-and-so, but which lost this somehow in the recording process... like he and Mick were unable to translate these sources into the idiom of late-80s rock without just smothering them under the standard Foreigner operating procedure. Hence, perhaps, the baffling invocation of Jimi with regard to this song - what??

Never knowingly heard the Garth version and, to my knowledge, never heard the Billy original either. Pretty boring.

I mean aren’t there a hundred and one artists that are more worthy of your time?

Here's that cover by the Oklahoman.

I mean aren’t there a hundred and one artists that are more worthy of your time?

― calstars, Friday, November 24, 2017

what?

calstar not everyone's built for the streets it's ok go home

garth's is better; thanks pplains. not wild about the effect on his voice, but the New Country arrangement has aged better here i think. just as artificial a studio creation maybe, but goes down smoother. not a bad song really; a little generic maybe but cool that it connected with an audience (or that garth was just that unstoppable at that point, idk). the most successful cover of a billy joel song, i'd say.

calstars, you may be right. We may be crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r45dbYnldMs

Leningrad opens side two with a ballad in a classic Joel style. It was inspired by a real-life Soviet clown named Viktor Razinov, who'd attended all six of the Moscow and St. Petersburg shows, and the Cold War reflections prompted by that touring experience. It was released as a single in Europe, complete with a video; it peaked in the teens in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.

https://img.discogs.com/vdmMXms-ccvYIU6RnR4xW3tCaoc=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6222399-1414089675-7562.jpeg.jpg

Did we skip a song? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Front_(album)

Leningrad is a pretty song, and some of the lyrics have really stuck with me. I knew it must have been inspired by his Russia tour but had no idea it was based on a real person he met - the lyrical detail makes it feel personal either way. The B-section sounds really fraught as he describes the war from his childhood POV, it's a nice effect. The only part I can take or leave is the ending, maybe a little overblown

Oh gosh, we totally did! Sorry about that. Amazed it hasn't happened before. I'll swing back and do that one tomorrow...ooops.

He's telling an actual story here--and I don't doubt his sincerity--which automatically makes this vastly preferable to a certain Sting abomination that 80s songs about Russia will always inevitably bring to mind, but both the music and the singing are turgid to the point of lifelessness.

it is pretty funny how much better this song is than "Russians"

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

Storm Front actually opens side two, with swagger. The Memphis Horns join, along with Lenny Pickett (saxophonist with a million studio credits, best known as a longstanding member of the Saturday Night Live Band), Richard Marx (among the backing vocals), and Mick Jones (on guitar).

Exhausted 80s boomer Soul.

Billy Joel in the wild: "An Innocent Man" in the men's room of a Culver's in Chaska, MN

how were the acoustics? did u sing along? :D

the Muzak volume level was weirdly loud like at least double conventional levels

"80s boomer soul" - yes. i wonder how many tracks like this got recorded in the wake of "sledgehammer" and "roll with it." i also wonder if the managers of acts like billy had to have hard, sit-down talks with them, explaining that while they were still popular, and even popular with some teenagers, they were no longer popular with the teenagers and it was time to start taking that Adult Contemporary exposure seriously.

terrible song, it's funny you mention the Memphis horns I was just gonna say how terrible the digital keyboard horn sounds were but I guess that's the "magic" of the time's big budget production.

Leningrad is lovely, seems like Billy gets a little inspired on songs that have a historical or character angle (Downeaster, WDSTT, Leningrad) otherwise he sounds pretty used up on this album, which I think is actually maybe worse than the Bridge so far on balance. though the highs are higher. props to Garth's A&R skills for recognizing and realizing the potential of "Shameless" to be a huge hit and future standard. this version sounds muddled and forgettable.

but yeah shit like Storm Front has me thinking well calstars has a point lol

BJ in 1990 was my first adult concert, the seventh and final sow of a remarkable multiday stint in Miami. I wasn't a fan -- my buddy and I went cuz it was An Event. The show opened with "Storm Front."

Storm Front is my favourite Joel album outside his 1976-1983 peak. The good stuff is pretty solid (Leningrad, Downeaster) but the bad stuff is terrible (When In Rome, That's Not Her Style).

pretty much

Taking sides: Billy Job vs Blow Joel

TBH, pretty funky for a song called Storm Front!

No, not funky. In the least. What are you smoking?

this seems informed by "Sledgehammer" but way more plodding and basic

this song is not even in the same fucking league as Sledgehammer

"80s boomer soul" - yes. i wonder how many tracks like this got recorded in the wake of "sledgehammer" and "roll with it." i also wonder if the managers of acts like billy had to have hard, sit-down talks with them, explaining that while they were still popular, and even popular with some teenagers, they were no longer popular with the teenagers and it was time to start taking that Adult Contemporary exposure seriously.

― gimme the beet poison, free my soul (Doctor Casino),

cf. “We’ll Be Together”

fyi last night I had a dream that I had grown Bill Joel circa 1979 hair. My wife didn't like it. Then Billy Joel came over to tell me he was breaking up with me (?) and we couldn't be friends anymore.

so thanks a lot ILM

cf. “We’ll Be Together”

― ... (Eazy), Monday, November 27, 2017 7

I don't think it has much in common with yuppie blooze or yuppie soul – it's more crass contemporary craftsmanship.

Was just listening to it this weekend for the first time in decades...and at least through headphones, the organ and Jam/Lewis keebs made me connect it to "Sledgehammer" for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49IAISROxVc

State of Grace, which Billy claims he's "always pictured Daryl Hall singing," is another power ballad. This time, Billy attempts to describe the barriers that can come up between couples in love, or something. Though not a single, it's been anthologized a couple of times on compilations themed around Joel's love songs. As Erlewine puts it in regard to one of these, "this 18-track collection reveals an odd truth about Joel: he didn't write all that many love songs."

I bet it sounds great in a CVS.

*yawn*

I bet it sounds great in a CVS.

― pplains, Tuesday, November 28, 2017 9

uh I will not have you impugn the programming at CVS

yeah this is not too memorable

I REEEEAAAAALLLLLLLY hate Mick Jones' production on these MOR rockers, lord is there a trio of rag-tag ruffians from Seattle who could infuse the music scene with some punk energy and mosh pit hooks?

Just once I wish Billy Joel would get to the "-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack" part of Movin' Out and just keep going, walking out into the audience and getting up in people's faces, shouting it with terror-widened eyes and mounting desperation

— J Crowley (@jdcrowley) November 27, 2017

lol yes

Yeah, even when the songwriting on this album is a step up from The Bridge, the production kinda kills it for me. I also just think Phil was better at reining in Billy. One key move on The Stranger was to steer him away from overlong songs and superfluous instrumental breaks... that'd been breaking down since Nylon Curtain so now the typical song is 4:30 to 5:00 instead of 3:05 to 4:00. I feel like a stronger, old-fashioned producer's hand might have tightened up some of this stuff, or at least not added so much clutter to the mix. Failing that, I'd accept a busy or "overproduced" sound if it was at least someone with a distinctive voice (Lynne, Rodgers, Lange) so we'd at least get a new and memorable hybrid.

Richard Perry might've been a good fit for BJ, now that I think about it

Mick Jones makes this sound like an Aldo Nova comeback album from 88

uh I will not have you impugn the programming at CVS

Fine. Waiting at the elevator bay of a Courtyard Suites, hoping your partner finishes the check-in process before the doors open.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGr9yJPKTwU

When In Rome, second-to-last track, is another Winwoody number, celebrating a couple's strength against the working world. It reminds me a bit of "Half A Mile Away."

BTW, over on the "Talks About..." clips, there's nothing said about this song, but if you skip to 8:40 you can hear Billy's remarks on the title track which make explicit the Peter Gabriel influence. Hearing Billy perform the song just on piano also makes me realize how much of it survives in Ben Folds's "Song For The Dumped."

oh man this defines "undistinguished." I don't hear Winwood so much as Billy Joel trying to sing "Tell Her About It" in the style of Steve Winwood.

Almost the entire song is outside his natural range, it sounds like aural constipation.

Hmmm - wonder if he was also losing his range faster than he was willing to admit.