Billy Joel C/D?

amuse us and post some

Or ABBA or KISS or Andy Gibb or INXS or Biz Markie.

Billy Joel's songcraft is way better than INXS'. INXS was mostly about way too much repetition.

that said, I like the background harmonies in "It's My Life"

PETER CETERA

amuse us and post some

I recall one in which he was unconvincingly defending himself before a journalist who suggested that Joel was unable to make music that actually rocked. He was heard to say: "I-I-I don't have a soft cock. I have a hard cock."

waht

I guess he was trying to says that just because he churns out ballads doesn't mean he is cursed with a flaccid penis.

Maybe he's got a flaccid penis but likes to bottom.

I saw him on a PBS special or something where he was talking about writing "Only the Good Die Young" and he showed how it started out as a Reggae song- he started clanking out piano chords on the offbeat and singing in a vaguely Jamaican accent. But the guys in the band hated Reggae, so they re-arranged it.

I can identify four things in the preceding 'graph that make me dislike him. And yeah, the personification of a Northeast type that's really annoying.

classic.

someone told me that hard rock atilla band he was in was kinda tight. i haven't ever heard it.

attila sounds like late-period spinal tap with a hammond organ. and not in the good way either. but i'm probably not the right person to ask. the liner notes to the original album are hilarious.

for early billy joel psychedelic hilarity, i much prefer the second album by the hassles, hour of the wolf, which was his band before attila. attila is billy pretending to drop acid and lose his brain. the hassles is billy pretending to drop acid but still write pop songs, sort of. (or maybe he actually took acid, who knows?)

going backwards, the first hassles album, self-titled i think, is straight-up white soul garage rock pre-acid billy trying to be a long island version of the spencer davis group.

dude lived a full and varied life before he got to the pop charts!

Anyone want to comment on his Shea stadium performances? In the footage of it I saw on the news he looked like a sun-starved, bearded sea lion fresh from Coney Island. Ooh, close-ups of his hands on 50 foot video screens as he plays the runs from 'Billy the Kid!'

Pretty mean profile of him in last weekend's NY Times.

I really love the Nylon Curtain album...

Glass Houses, Nylon Curtain, Stranger = classics.

Some everything else pre-1990 or so, is pretty good.

Almost everything after then = dud.
Recent stuff aside, I LOVE this guy. Even the earliest stuff is harmonically interesting (see Cold Spring Harbour album and "She's Always a Woman to Me").

I still say "dud," but that NYT article makes Billy Joel seem . . . nice.

I'm predisposed to say 'dud,' but after reading this entire thread and seeing all of his 'hit songs' listed in one place, I must admit I don't actively hate a single one (except maybe "Piano Man," but hey c'mon that's a given - it's the poor man's "After The Goldrsh") and actually really like a few - "She's Always A Woman," "Big Shot," "Scenes From An Italian Restaraunt," even "New York State of Mind" - so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say 'competent.' I don't change the station when his songs come on.

When indie rock inevitably "re-assesses" BJ, it's gonna be a hilarious and sad few months

While Bruce Springsteen has stalled the aging process through blessed genes or some Faustian bargain, Mr. Joel looks like every heartbreak, bad review, car crash and attendant tabloid dig has exacted a physical toll...

OTM.

When indie rock inevitably "re-assesses" BJ, it's gonna be a hilarious and sad few months.

See, e.g., Spoon, The Underdog (Summer 2007).

While Bruce Springsteen has stalled the aging process through blessed genes or some Faustian bargain

and, um, perhaps a hair transplant?

"Billy Joel's daughter took pills in NYC"

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6755157.html

"Summer, Highland Falls" is fuckin awesome
― TB, Thursday, April 17, 2003 2:15 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The version on "Songs in the Attic" especially. That's my favorite Billy Joel album, actually. Even the bad songs ("Los Angelenos," anyone?) re perfectly framed in their most appropriate setting -- small club when necessary, big stadium when necessary. And "Everybody Loves You Now" draws real blood.
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Thursday, April 17, 2003 2:20 AM (6 years ago)

otm

Not a Billy Joel fan, but v. sorry to read the story about his daughter. Hope she gets the help she needs.

As Brutt said, Songs in the Attic is excellent, as are Turnstiles, parts of The Stranger, and some singles after that..the rest is mindbendingly bad

also, the production and Phil Woods solo on Just the Way You Are (obviously the sentiment and lyrics are cringeworthy) are great

I don't think the sentiment is cringeworthy.

yeah songs in the attic is really great

Moving Out is a massive tune.

nylon curtain is my jam

"Pressure" is a truly awesome song.

"Rosalinda's Eyes" is my favourite, that outro with the drums and percussion just fading out into reverb is classic.

Glass Houses is great start to finish. I will fight all comers who say otherwise.

Also Y on "Pressure" and I'll even stan for "Allentown" if I'm in a good mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNfT3ExqXLo

Go nuts:

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/all_of_billy_joels_greatest_hits_played_at_once/

thx u

Hey, I don't hear "Allentown" or "My Life" in there. WTF

lol BRAD LANER

I love the part where John Cale's organ rises in a beautiful swell over "TOO BUSY SUCKIN ON A DING DONG"

I like we got a slight repeating motif with the "ack-ack-ack-ack/you oughta know by now" bit. Had to turn it off when it got down to just "Captain Jack" and "Piano Man" though.

"goodnight saigon" would have helped solve the problem of the "capt jack"-only ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqY6mXULzpw

Funny how the worst 4 fucking lines from 'Piano Man' still manage to come through.

I heard about this piano throwing incident back in the 80s, but I heard that it was because this Russian crowd was sitting quietly and listening to his performance (as was the cultural norm) instead of going crazy and screaming (which is what they do in the US). He thought they didn't like him, so in frustration he threw his piano. But it seems that in this video, he flipped out because of... the lighting?

“Remember, this was the Soviet Union in 1987, and they’d never had a major rock concert before. There was a film crew filming a documentary, and they turned very bright lights on the audience. The audience was having a good time until they turned the lights on. They froze; they turned paranoid. There was a lot of anxiety they are we being looked at? And whenever they turned the lights on, anyone who was overreacting was being pulled out of the audience by a security guard. I wasn’t yelling at the audience was yelling at the film crew. So I threw the piano, and that got their attention. Then they stopped lighting the audience, and everybody started rocking out.”

http://siberianlight.net/billy-joels-historic-soviet-concert-tour/

Never ever heard about this before. You can see his point mind.

I just discovered this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScIWg0iOxUw

People call this the worst album ever? Come on... It may not all be incredible, but it's mostly credible and gets points for heaviness without guitars and pretty early for such nonsense. And it shits all over "Uptown Girl."

I knew about Attila, but only now learned the band broke up after Joel ran off with the other-guy-in-Attila's wife

Friend showed me this - Billy Joel did a Q&A at Vanderbilt & some kid asked to accompany him on New York State Of Mind

Half of me is like uggggh nonnono secondhand embarrassment but the other half of me is, well, okay this is kinda cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p04TYk4j0zQ

okay fine tbh all I could think was IT SOUNDS BETTER WHEN BILLY PLAYS IT
I'm a jerk