Billy Joel C/D?

WTF? Have you ever heard Elvis Costello?

Joel's addiction to WINE is also a bit sad. I mean, Christie won't even let him near the kids.

And that song "River Of Dreams"?

>quiver<

i've own all those "great" records he's made and really really tried to like him. really. i tried. i failed.

Maybe BJ can help me out here:

I must be looking for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross

indeed.

I have a soft spot in my heart for "Pressure," "It's Still Rock n' Roll...," and the ultimate (wait for it)...

..."It's My Life." How can a guy who's song was used as the theme for "Bosom Buddies" be a dud?

I wish I had it. W!nterb3rg has like two copies, the bastard.

Ask Joey Scarbury.

hey d!390, we could always ask ol' W. if we could burn a copy...

Agree 100%. Hate Costello w/ a passion. He makes my skin crawl.

Naming your greatest hits collection, which was only ever released as a single package, Greatest Hits, Vols. 1 & 2 - Classic or Dud?

Lonesome, lonesome men always inspire devotion, silly.

Mr.Diamond will be glad to know that since the first message of his that caught my attention was him posting several of his album covers in the smuggest covers ever thread, my mental image of him is Elvis Costello.

Until fairly recently, I took a pretty hard line against Billy Joel, but I have to admit that I like some of his songs. I also hate an awful lot of them, certainly more of them than I like. I find his persona a big problem much of the time. I don't trust him, and I'm certainly not interested in his advice. Most of his talen is wasted. "Just the Way You Are" and "Honesty" are two other songs I like. Maybe because I heard it shortly before I transformed into an adolescent music snob, but I think I wouldn't mind hearing 52nd Street occasionally, or at least maybe half of it. I wouldn't want to defend it, but I kind of like "She's Always a Woman."

But the songs that annoy me, annoy me overwhelmingly and unequivocally.

Good Billy Joel songs: "Allentown"

Good Cure songs: all of them except "Push", "A Thousand Hours", "Closedown", "Return" and "Mint Car"

Anyway, yes, the song about the high school sweethearts is Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, which is a great song for the bizarre oopmah music middle bit about his sweet romantic teenage nights. The fast part is reminiscent of certain Ben Folds songs, take as you will.

The best Billy Joel song is Only The Good Die Young.

Strange but true!

See now, I consider this song to be full of threatening spite and anger. A perfect example of why Joel really rubs me the wrong way. On the surface is this snappin' beat, but closer examination reveals a real sinister meanness.

I mean look at these lyrics:

"The demon in your mind will rape you in your bed at night?"
"The moon is red and bleeding?"
"All the evil seem to live forever?"
"Only the good die young?"

waitaminit, that's iron maiden... here we go:

"don't let me wait"
"locked you away"
"Only the good die young"
"I run with a dangerous crowd"
"Only the good die young"
"You didn't count on me"
"they say there's a heaven"
"Some say it's better but I say it ain't"
"The sinners are much more fun"
"Don't let me wait"

I mean, it's this threat, really, couched in this kind of Greaser back-story vernacular. Liek West Side Story, on via some long-island wino. Like "Uptown Girl," which for me is the most henious of his songs.

Obviously, I have little bit of a complex with this. And I'm intentionally going over the top. But even "Always A Woman" makes me uncomfortable now, that stereotypically "fragile" song about women "changing their minds," gives me the chills just thinking about it.

I'd have to call Dud on BJ, with the possible exception of "Say Goodbye To Hollywood."

Three times now "Uptown Girl" has come up on my weekly walking-on-bus-or-at-computer-lab mixtape within five minutes of being on this thread. The power!

Five hours was a little long, and the second part was not as interesting as the first, but they got some fantastic interviews, not least of all Billy at the piano. there's many small moments where he played something to make a point and it made me smile

Ned: in the doc, doesn't Elizabeth say she warned Billy not to hire Frank when they split up? I remember there being something like that, but it's a small mention

doesn't Elizabeth say she warned Billy not to hire Frank when they split up

she does, and i think that's all she needed to say. she's there to talk about billy when she was part of his life, and to walk away as fast as possible when she realizes she can't fix him and he isn't going to fix himself. before the doc, she literally hadn't said a word about him in public in more than 40 years. when she left, she left. i think the fact he agreed to participate in the doc is the single most interesting thing about it, and the reason why it works. and i think her one warning about her brother tells us pretty much everything we need to know about that part of the story from her. she wasn't there when the fuckery happened.

And here we are waving Lizzie and Billy goodbye

the Randy Newman bio

written by one of those unnamed critics who most definitely got under young billy's skin. (and one of the worst rock critics, imho, to work at a major american newspaper in the classic rock era.)

The wife tells me I’m not jewish enough to get Billy Joel. Who am I to say if she’s right, the only Joel I fuck with is “For The Longest Time.”

i think the fact he agreed to participate in the doc is the single most interesting thing about it, and the reason why it works.

obviously i meant the fact *she* agreed to participate! (though also obviously, the fact *he* agreed was kind of important too!)

I am grateful for this thread because I'm curious about the bio but absolutely not, in any universe, ever, "watch a biography of Billy Joel for five hours" serious

It's pretty entertaining even if you are only casually interested in Joel. I was actually interested to learn some of the more recent history. I guess I had just completely forgot that he had done all that touring with Elton John. And then it seemed like after the classical album he was just done with his pop stuff. But then the Sandy Benefit happened, he decided he liked playing those old songs after all, and then the long-standing series at MSG came out of that, which gave him a nice 2nd (3rd? 4th?) act and cemented his universally beloved elder statesman status. I thought it was actually Mellencamp who had the most biting words about the critics who panned Billy back in the day, but perhaps the most damning evidence of their cluelessness is the fact that they liked him better as his music got worse. His late-period albums got respectable notices in the major rock-crit bastions.