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

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.

"Falling of the Rain" is the first real miss for me. The piano riff would work better in a more energetic song, it doesn't quite come together

And "Turn Around"... so Eagles-y! (Before the Eagles I suppose). Agreed that it's cool seeing him try these different styles, even if they don't always land

Agreed re: wordiness vs impact on Falling of the Rain. Wonder why that is - maybe just how vague and generic the story feels from word to word. Maybe if he'd named the boy and girl Brenda and Eddie I'd be more invested but it does become a bit like a rainfall of words, just washing past my ears. Maybe he needed some more variety to the rhythm, pauses for things to land, I dunno. It's one of the better discoveries for me on this listen, though.

Yes I hear Eagles and Band in "Turn Around" but also, weirdly, John Denver.

With a dash of Allmans "Blue Sky"

John Denver. That's it exactly.

Knowing so little about the actual making of these albums, I keep wondering how much is Billy wanting to do X, versus Ripp pushing for X, or both. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" was released in April 1971, so I can easily imagine two people hoping for a hit that summer going "hey, let's try some of this too." But actually I'm not sure when Country Roads started climbing the charts... according to Wikipedia, it *also* had a bungled, distorted first pressing, with the difference that Denver's people fixed the mistake and kept promoting him.

I also wonder: did anyone ever try marketing Billy's songs through the A&R channels to other artists? I can picture another universe where The Carpenters have a hit with "She's Got A Way" or Three Dog Night pick up "Everybody Loves You Now" or something. Maybe more to the point in triangulating our subject's outlook on his career: I wonder what Billy thought of Newman and of Nilsson.

Yeah he seems like the type of dude the industry used to really push in that direction, like really talented musician and pop craftsman but not exactly a super marketable look and persona

Very 1971. I started listening to those Rhino Have a Nice Day 70s soft rock comps a while back, and this would fit in perfectly on one of those. Which is to say, kind of sweet, but basically anonymous.

^^ totally

Interesting 1978 Rolling Stone piece by Dave Marsh (who wasn't a fan, but to paraphrase Marsh, listening to Billy Joel is not having dinner with Billy Joel):
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/billy-joel-19781214

Like Turn Around much better than the last few. I wonder if our hero BJ was listening to Tumbleweed Connection from 1970? Not too many others doing piano ballads. Maybe Tapestry? That also came out in 1971. Anyway, I'm a sucker for pedal steel so good on Billy for having Sneaky Pete add a nice new element.

I think I like Turn Around, or maybe I just like the texture and sound of stuff like this. It's the kind of thing I'd expect to add to my AM Gold playlist after stumbling on it through Spotify radio, credited to some earnest-looking guy you never heard of - let's call him Joel Williams. Again, not super memorable lyrically. I really wonder whose idea the guitar part was; it was a very commercial sound at that date (c.f. George Harrison, "Teach Your Children" etc.) and I can imagine the song coming in the door as a "She's Got A Way" solo item.

You Look So Good To Me: another sonic turn! Billy dusts off his Hammond organ, ripped free from whatever amplification was beefing it up to Attila size, and lays down a jaunty, sunshiney little love song. Harmonica, too! Credit watch: This is another one with Denny Seiwell, session drummer and future short-flying Wing, in between Ram and Wild Life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMr5e60PX64

That, again, is a pitch correction by TheZestanor. The later remix is, to my ears, far too punchy and FM-ready, losing that slightly-hazy early 70s bubblegum sensibility. I cannot confirm that Joel ever performed this song live; if so he didn't do it much. Presumably, the arrangement's double-duty of piano and organ posed some difficulties, and certainly you're not going to schlep the organ around on tour if you're not using it for much...!

turn around - yup i hear the allman bros and elton things here, but more than anything i hear james taylor, in both musical and lyrical structure. he doesn't have the lyrical chops for that, not yet, not by a mile. but the music is, yeah, AM gold, and the change into the chorus is nice.

you look so good to me - i hear a really good idea for a song for exactly 12 seconds -- the organ intro and the "aah you look so good to me" melody -- followed by another 2 mins and 15 secs of trying to figure out what to do with that idea and not coming up with anything.

Sounds like Nilsson to me!

Interesting 1978 Rolling Stone piece by Dave Marsh

this is great (save for the parts where marsh tries to marshsplain what "rock" is).

i'm not so sure of marsh's assessment of the first hassles album ("something of an obscure classic"). i i don't think anybody ever actually thought that, not in 1971, not in 1978, not now. and i'm not so sure of billy's self assessment that "I'm one of the most self-contented, happiest people," but then again marsh doesn't seem to buy it either. and as a relatively early portrait of who exactly our billy is, it seems pretty spot-on.

The main hooks of "You Look So Good To Me" deserve a more focused and memorable song imo. As with "Turn Around," I like the sound - which suggests a mild and pleasant little sitcom theme - more than the song.

A Billy Joel song for a sitcom theme, ha! Not on my life!

Pleasant but inessential, now I can't help seeing freeze frame 70s opening sitcom montage playing against it

Boring song.

Tomorrow is Today, track eight on Cold Spring Harbor, takes us back to a man and his piano, before taking some surprise turns. Discogs defies Wiki and confirms that this was indeed released as a single sometime in 1972 (chopped down to 3:25, sometimes misspelled as "Tomorow," and backed, again, with "Everybody Loves You Now"). Evidently, it did not chart, and I can't actually find the single edit online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY1y2jLJjIU

Despite TheZestanor's scratchy source, I'd recommend listening to that pitch-corrected version first, then checking out the 1983 remix. The latter, by stripping out everything but Billy and the keys, does much better by the prettiness of the melody (which now seems to prefigure McCartney's "Warm and Beautiful") - but it's a very radical change and we're sort of in Let It Be... Naked territory. As a compromise, fans might again consider the 1972 Sigma Sound performance, which fills out the space in the arrangement in a different fashion while giving you a lot more clarity than the LP.

wow. I find this one quite beautiful.

A very lovely melody, sometimes feeling a little too upbeat on a set of genuinely quite personal lyrics that describe major depression - days that run together, nothing to look forward to in a tomorrow. Like "Second Wind" many years later, this is directly related to Joel's own attempted suicide in 1970; apparently, he's stated that the lyrics here are derived from his suicide note. With that in mind, for once I actually prefer the more stripped later arrangement to the orchestral overdubs, which seem totally indifferent to what the song is actually about and are just riding the sense that, hey, it's the end of the song, there should be a big swelling climax here. But even his live arrangement, which tries to make a rousing rocker out of it also feels kind of weird. Maybe this was his way of reclaiming the experience and conveying a sense of surviving it, having new hope?

The "oh my, goin' to the river" bridge, and its very affected vocal style are, er, a little much for me. Looking forward to him finding other ways of reaching for ~soul~ in his performances...

omg I got to 2:30 minute mark of that song mostly thinking eh unremarkable piano balladry which then abruptly veered into HOLY GOD STOP THAT NOW

2:35 certainly was a surprise

lmao this song is so much

yeah i def agree about the 2.30 min turn into NOPE

stripped back version is preferable for me

fucking hell....y'all

is that weird voice at 2:30...the origin of Axl Rose's low "where do we go now" or "gonna kick him on down the line-ay-ne" voice??????

definitely him trying to pull off a "blue-eyed soul" thing... so it goes back at least to mccartney on "i've got a feeling." or the blues as rendered by eric burdon or long john baldry or someone like that. or, obviously, directly to soul and/or blues records by black artists. but given the mccartney-isms we've observed elsewhere, my mind kinda goes that direction.

mccartney for sure. and he worshipped ray charles.

also similar to that voice he uses on It's All About Soul