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

DON: Billy Joel was an East Coast guy we could get behind. Like us, he could Rock, but he also could be quite sensitive and even Political when the song demanded it. It's not an easy mix to achieve, but he nailed it time and time again.

GLENN: Locking down Christie Brinkley for as long as he did was something else we could get behind!

DON: Well, yeah.

he could Rock, but he also could be quite sensitive and even Political

Dunno why but I'm irrationally annoyed that "sensitive" isn't capitalized here.

For the stans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7pRf3TJVC8

Make that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypTaxS2awdA

the phenomenon of the 70's am gold/aor male singer songwriter emotional confessional is v interesting to me

like neil diamond suddenly being all you are the sun i am the moon

i've never seen either of the hassles records or attila out in the wild but if i do i'm snapping 'em up. super interesting joel curiosities for sure, but also from what i've skimmed they'd just be enjoyable no-name psych-rock background music for when you're in the mood for that kind of thing. to think, he could have been known as the Electric Organ Man.

I've got a Hassles "Best of" CD on Razor + Tie from the late '90s (Billy quashed EMI's plans for expanded editions of the two LPs a few years prior). It's not great, but also not bad. They had kind of a Poppier Rascals thing going on. Because they were on United Artists Records, they had access to some of Traffic's publishing demos, and they actually recorded and released a fine, lite Vanilla Fudge-esque version of "Coloured Rain" prior to the original's official appearance on these shores.

I also once came across a vinyl copy of (iirc) Hour of The Wolf (the second Hassles LP) at a used shop, but balked at the $20+ price tag (this was back when vinyl was cheap, natch). I seem to recall this place also had a Wind In The Willows LP (WITW being Debbie Harry's '60s band) for a similar price.

xpost ok that's how wormholes are created, that's just irresponsible

all of billy looks out of place there.

I guess they couldn't lug the electric organ out into the wilderness either.

Lovin' this shot though:

http://i.imgur.com/JbDHPgb.gif

Hour of The Wolf

title track prefigures most meat loaf and "thriller" by a decade or more. with a minute-plus drum solo in the middle. and with billy recapping a lifetime worth of piano lessons at various points along the way. in other words, the freakout at the end of "you can make me free" is amateur hour in comparison.

i've said this on other threads so y'all probably know this but: i actually saw the hassles. johnny small, their drummer (and attila's), lived two houses down from me. i was a kid, and he was in high school, so we weren't buddies or anything. but they went through a period where they rehearsed in the garage, and me and a bunch of neighborhood kids used to gather around in their driveway and watch. i'm pretty sure "a taste of honey" was in their setlist, and i knew that one already from the beatles. i'm not even totally sure that billy was in the band then, but he probably was.

i asked one of them for their autograph once and they scribbled "the hassles" on a piece of paper. i think i might still have that. also a business card with their photo. there's a remnant of a hassles bumper sticker on a door in my mom's house.

yeah, you know what, billy joel is on that photo on the business card, so he must have been in the band.

okay I am now more jealous of you, sorry fcc. that rules.

holy shit

okay I am now more jealous of you, sorry fcc

me too!

Meanwhile, our next track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik3kpLWHHqg

Why Judy Why - named for Joel's sister, and with not a single keyboard instrument in earshot. This is the 1983 remix, but in this case it really is just a remix, and an opportunity to fix the Chipmunk problem - I'm fine with it. But if the clarity does seem anachronistic or false, the pitch-corrected version is out there.

This was my favorite when I made my first pass at CSH the other night. Very "Yesterday"ish.

Listening for the hit maker he would become... not hearing it with this one. Don't even like his singing on this track.

haven't heard this one in a long time and hardly remembered it. i kinda like it. a sweet little ballad. feel like it could slip onto any number of later bj records as a side 2 album track if you played around with the arrangement and production. something about the melodic sensibility -- or maybe it's just that the "oh what a scene" bridge sounds like an early draft of the "oh she takes care of herself" bridge from "she's always a woman."

and yeah i hear the "yesterday" thing for sure. that sounds intentional. it's no "yesterday" though, obviously. i cringed at "a man my age is very young, so i'm told, why do i feel so old?" lyrically he's no cat stevens. or jim croce.

This is nice. The singing and melody sells the sentiment even if the lyrics aren't much (which has happened many times in his career). He has a real way with a melody, even this early on. I only listened to "You Can Make Me Free", "Everybody Wants You Now", and this song one time each but I can remember the melodies clearly

Yeah, I think this is a good one! Nice sentiment, though possibly that's colored by the knowledge that it's invoking a sister as trusted old friend... rather than painting a scene of this sad sack dude glomming onto the nearest female acquaintance with an eye on rebounding with her ("times have changed, I need more").

From what I turned up last night it doesn't seem to have had much of a presence in his live set, maybe because of the minimal and guitar-based arrangement. If you're Billy and you need to give the band a break and go "solo" for one tune, you'd stick with the piano and "She's Got A Way," I imagine.

"This is nice" is all I can write.

Would've sounded great on AM radio.

Pretty, unmemorable.

Only song of his with acoustic guitar? Feels like his Brill Building version of "Suzanne" -- with Judy the right name for the genre. Nice for sure.

Only song of his with acoustic guitar?

Huh? "Everybody Loves You Now," "Always a Woman," "Allentown"?

I think he means like a naked acoustic "Blackbird" type deal like this w/o piano etc

also I like this song, nice charming little tune w/a memorable hook

overall i find all this stuff pretty charming, i guess it's tentative and transitional in a way, he's not quite fully formed and he sounds so young...

Yeah, I usually brush past most of this record but I'm a lot more sympathetic to even the more middling material now that I'm taking it one at a time, and thinking about where I was at that age and the kind of songs I was trying to write as a hopeless keyboard singer-songwriter. It's neat.

After some more digging, it doesn't look like Billy himself plays the guitar on Why Judy Why, though I'm not sure who does. Makes sense I guess, that "Spanish" solo is not the kind of thing I'd imagine being in his guitar wheelhouse.

Yeah he can strum but doesn't pick

I think he means like a naked acoustic "Blackbird" type deal like this w/o piano etc

Yeah, that's what I meant -- piano-less, nylon-string picking.

This is a little early in the evening, but I won't be at the desktop for a bit so here's our next song, closing out side one of the debut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1mRRVhAukE&list=PLGsxlhKkg1xiWMIgCZtimqqMTlMTh_ynh&index=5

Falling of the Rain takes us back to the solo piano; lyrically, it's the first on the album to be mostly in the third-person, introducing us to a girl in a forest, a painter in a house, a fool on a hill (!), and the falling of the rain. The YouTube above is another kinda murky pitch-corrected version; the 1983 remix is considerably clearer and brighter, for better or worse.

The piano playing is nice but, you know, dorky as it is, I really cannot wait for Billy's sense of humour to kick in to his music.

I hear that, tho I'm still basically smiling at all these young man's songs. Again I'm reminded of my own halting efforts, where once I hit upon a combination of a string of memorable words fitting onto a memorable hook, it's like, okay! I've got a song, it's got a title, let's record this sucker! The downside is that the rest of the lyrics are a bit undercooked, but otoh, aside from track 2 they've all been three minutes or less, and the melodies and the playing are all pleasant at worst.

As for this song specifically I think it's really lovely but I suspect if I really lingered on the lyrics I'd be groaning. The premise - a looped-around story of a wasted life and missed opportunity? I think? - reminds me of Mark Lindsay's labored and bathetic "The Old Man At The Fair" from the same year - I think Billy's doing better than THAT at least.

also: the hooks tend to be of the form "catchy line ending each verse" rather than completely worked out choruses, which will definitely change on the next album...

someone please take billy's typewriter away from him and find him a lyricist, stat. does bernie taupin have any free time? i like where the piano playing is going though. slow those arpeggios down, look for some darker colors and maybe he'll come up with a "summer, highland falls" before too long.

I remember my slovenly, black trench coat wearing, Diet Coke drinking, Nintendo 64 playing college dorm neighbors playing the greatest hits cds all the damn time and that was enough to put me off BIlly forever.

Give him another go! At least so far, we're pretty far afield of the Greatest Hits, though slovenliness will probably become an issue sooner or later.

I tried, doc. Cold spring is so schmaltzy though.

Song's ok, but I want that riff for my ringtone. It even sounds like rain! Everyone will look to the skies when someone calls me.

xpost fair enough! I don't think I could say with a straight face that the schmaltz factor ever goes away, exactly, though it takes different forms perhaps.

buy the ticket take the ride

forget it jake its schmaltztown

v enjoyable song, there's macca not only in delivery but also the lyrical concept

this debut album is sounding a lot better than I remember Piano Man sounding

Those are some very Roy Bittan arpeggios on "Falling of the Rain," except I'm pretty sure Billy got there first. Was "the Professor" doing sessions before he joined up with Bruce?

I'm shocked no one invoked the name of Queen with "You Can Make Me Free." I mean that's "I Want to Break Free" before "I Want to Break Free," except Freddie always gives you a wink and a smile with the high drama and Billy always really means it. Which latter is kind of endearing if you give a fuck about Billy Joel, and grating if you don't.

Not sure it's that binary imo. Billy both means it and doesn't; one can find it endearing and grating in equal measure in different moods.

Some Joelian corn is earnest corn but some is homage, pastiche, goofery. Keeping the Faith, For the Longest Time, River of Dreams - did he mean all those things, or did he find it useful as an artist to appear as though he did? That 70s interview where he's talking about Billy the Kid indicates that he is aware that his job is to wear masks.

We all have a face that we hide away forever, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.

this is ok, not my fav

that one piano bit is SO "Jungleland" but yeah before that song existed

anyone else getting kind of a Styx vibe from this?

Side two of Cold Spring Harbor takes us in a country direction, with pedal steel guitar courtesy erstwhile Burrito Brother, Sneaky Pete Kleinow. It's Turn Around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3StsW-Gvwg

Again, that's an attempt at pitch-correcting the 1971 release - very welcome, since the 1983 remix in this case is a real hatchet job. Note new and pretty cheesy drum track, embarrassed synths ghosting in to try and add sweetening, and around thirty seconds cut out. Bleh! This 1972 live version maybe gives the best sense of what the song actually sounded like, though the non-Sneaky guitar part isn't exactly classic. I also note a very strong hint of Nilsson, starting at 2:44.

crap I'm behind!! i will catch up tonight <3

Why Judy Why - agree with the 'Yesterday' comparisons obv; also gives me an amateur Simon & Garfunkel vibe. The climbing notes or something? idk. Definitley feels like the phrasing is something he's trying out but it's a little out of his reach. His voice sounds so great though. pplains otm, this one has AM radio all over it. Or coming through a tiny speaker on a receptionist's desk in a dentist's office.
That 'ohhhhh' in 'ohhh what a scene' gives me a bit of 'Just Like a Woman'.

Falling of Rain - i enjoy the effort, the trying in this song but overall it's kind of forgettable somehow. very wordy but the words don't really make much of an impact. the piano riff is the best part.

Turn Around - country now! I love listening to him trying on all these different musical 'hats'. I'm with Dr Casino, the fun of listening to this album is getting to know him as a performer who doesn't quite yet know who he is, something about the innocent intensity is very endearing imo.
There's a bit of The Band about this one that I don't hate; but the arrangement is also a little bit too busy for the song that it is and for that it gives me a bit of Eagles as well, just noodling away on the steel guitar and throwing in random drum fills and hey lets just see what happens guys. AM radio gold though. tinny speakers ahoy.