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

(also feel like said rookie mistake is probably made by a LOT of people trying to cover this song.)

"When am I gonna take control, get a hold of my emotions? STOP LIGHTING THE AUDIENCE!
Why does it always seem to hit me in the middle of the ni-i-ight? STOP IT!
You told me there's a number I can always dial for assistance. LET ME DO MY SHOW FOR CHRISSAKE!"

what in god's name is this and why i have never heard of it? the terribleness of these covers is kind of a given, and puffin, alfred and doctor c all very otm. but what strikes me is that billy seems to have tried really hard to make something of maybe i'm amazed while appearing to have tossed off live and let die with no thought whatsoever with the three minutes of studio time he had left using a bar band that had just wandered into the studio hoping to score some drum heads or maybe an autograph. live and let die is the one he should have spent his time on. he could've covered that circa turnstiles and totally made it work.

totally. also.... why does he have two songs on a tribute album? that's kinda weird, right? scanning the tracklisting it looks like Heart does as well but i don't think anybody else does. i do like the idea of Wanda Jackson covering Run Devil Run so maybe i should dig into this a little more.

hard to find Macca fans innit

tell that to the Airborne Toxic Event and Peter Bjorn and John!

(it's actually a very star-studded lineup, but the majority of the acts are ones whose fans likely don't need a huge amount of prodding to buy a paul mccartney album. maybe that was the idea tho --- overload on boomer classic rock artists and NPR fare to draw out latent/potential macca fans who've just never made the leap. but then again: Smokey Robinson doing "So Bad"? that sounds... " So Good !"

https://img.discogs.com/RzHSUPbezNxaKIyytqMZ53ziOu0=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6749265-1425831796-4827.jpeg.jpg

Continuing in the same vein: in 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame organized a two-night concert at Madison Square Garden with many Hall of Famers performing a mix of their own golden greats and those of other inductees. Apparently this event led to the Metallica/Lou Reed album Lulu but that doesn't concern us right now. As you would expect, Time-Life stepped in to market this boomer fantasy scenario as a 2-DVD package as well as a 4-CD box set with staggeringly bad cover art, so I counted Billy's contributions when I made my original spreadsheet of all his released material.

In this case, Billy did not get his own set, but gamely jumped in as one of a spree of acts supporting Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. In this capacity he was preceded by Sam Moore of Sam & Dave, Tom Morello of RATM, John Fogerty of CCR, girl-group legend Darlene Love, and Tom Morello again for some reason. At the end of the set, all of these luminaries rejoined Bruce and the gang onstage, plus Jackson Browne (who was in some of the other sets that night) and J. Geils's frontman Peter Wolf (who was waiting for this one shot) to do "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher)." Billy's short tenure with the E Street Band involved versions of "You May Be Right" and "Only The Good Die Young," but these did not make it to the CD set. Instead, I give you a combination that seems somehow inevitable though I'm not sure it was ever asked for: Billy and Bruce trading verses on "New York State of Mind" and.... "Born to Run."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZq5hy2RsvM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2BvmL2MMJ8

And what the hey, here's that "Higher and Higher." Obviously this is a 'party' performance that's more about the vocalists and everybody having a good time, but Billy's piano is pretty prominent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tWOiipIsG4

lol tough crowd for that one huh

oh god that version of ny state of mind. exactly as awful as i remembered. i can hardly think of a pop song less suited for springsteen's voice. wouldn't have minded hearing him have a go at "say goodbye to hollywood." as for billy's verse on "born to run," is he kind of sort of trying to do a springsteen imitation on a couple of lines but then he's not sure if he should be trying that? also, is it too much to ask a pop star to memorize a single verse of a song they're guesting on? i do like bruce's intro: "the bridge and tunnel summit meeting!"

agreed that Billy sounds terrible on Born to Run. probably is trying to do a Bruce impression, we know what a pastiche artist he is, but it's a challenge and maybe one he coulda met (better anyway) back in the 70s.

NY State of Mind is interesting cause both guys are, I think, trying to do their version of Ray Charles. which is something Billy was pretty decent at back in the day, but which is maybe less of a reach for Bruce? the "bridge and tunnel" thing is funny cause i don't usually think of the song as being from the POV of Long Island (versus say Captain Jack, which btw i imagine Bruce could tear up). makes it feel a lot more touristy. "you know... chinatown, the rivers, New York!"

ha, otm with that bridge and tunnel observation. makes NY State of Mind feel a lot dorkier to look at it that way. But maybe it just unveils the already latent dorkiness therein

i remember my best college buddy having a similar beef with PJ Harvey's "Good Fortune" when it was (briefly) in constant MTV2 rotation, with its shoutouts to Little Italy and Chinatown.

listened to Turnstiles last night and man, Veg OTM upthread about how much it adds to have the real main genuine Billy Joel band here. even when the songwriting/lyrics aren't quite to peak Joel, it's a blast listening to them make music together. total studio pro sound but still fairly rough and ready. the outro to "James" (a fairly weak song imho --- the bridge disappears from my brain seconds after it's done) actually has this fascinatingly odd bass/keyboard interaction, as Joel wanders into the Middle Ages while Stegmeyer keeps things bopping along. and then right after that, you're in the intense bar-band-prog of "Angry Young Man"'s instrumental sections. Which are bonkers!!!! Like I'm not gonna mistake them for Yes; they're too restrained and locked-in-tight, and not as skilled or ambitious.... but it's pretty cool! And then they give "Miami 2017" this jolt of "Runnin' on Empty" intensity --- not quite enough to overcome that dead weird echo on Joel's voice (the live version is another story) but without that, if the whole song was like the first verse, it'd be a drab 1970s "Love Theme From..." movie soundtrack ballad. Maybe he always would have said "and now it needs to rock, but this is the band that actually makes that happen.

also never noticed the yelled studio chatter or ad libs at the end of "Say Goodbye to Hollywood." what is that?

one worry: if i'm giving the band credit for what works, do i also have to give them some of the blame for the ""reggae"" arrangement on "All You Wanna Do Is Dance"?

Yes

so many people to blame for that song and that arrangement. billy. his band. america. the 1970s. eric clapton. the rolling stones. possibly gerald ford.

fantastic post, dr. c. they were a good band.

Billy Joel aboard his private jet during the U.S. leg of his 1978 world tour pic.twitter.com/PmrpRMJOqV

— Barney Hurley (@barneyhurley1) April 28, 2021

wowww

He looks like a... big shot

workin too hard can give you a heart attackackackack

Looks like the perfect place to try heroin for the first time.

So you put your feet up
On the airplane seat
You've got your shades on
And your hat is sweet
But Captain Jack will get ya high tonight

so, way upthread i tried in vain to make sense of the chronology of "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant," wherein Brenda and Eddie start dating in the time of "the greasers" but do not get married until "the summer of '75," after which things break up astonishingly quickly. like what the hell. SO: new hot theory: billy first tried to write it with brenda and eddie still goin' steady in the summer of *65* --- iow they are married for ten years before they've "had it already" --- and just couldn't find the padding syllable to make it scan right. by the time of "keeping the faith" he was willing to just go CHEV UH RO LAY but here at least his gumption failed him on "summer of six uh tee five."

that's my theory and i'm stickin' to it

Maybe by "the greasers" he meant Sha Na Na.

Billy tried to warn us about Greased Lightning, but no one listened.

Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies
And the king and the queen of the original off-Broadway production of Grease

You mean Brender

That's all I heard about Brenda Rinetti
Though I believe she went on to some small film roles
Before transitioning to production design

can’t tell if people are making up BJ lyrics now

Billy is large; he contains multitudes

the intense bar-band-prog of "Angry Young Man"'s instrumental sections

Perfect description!

Happy Birthday to Billy Joel who turns 72 years young today pic.twitter.com/i06IwGKxMX

— Barney Hurley (@barneyhurley1) May 8, 2021

His birthday is tomorrow.

Barney does get his facts wrong from time to time…

What is BJ trying to do in the vocal of "Uptown Girl?" He sings it in this strained artificial voice at the top of his register and really overpronounces his r's and while this makes no sense at all I feel like he sounds like Neil Young?

I just figured he was going for Frankie Valli... right?

yep, Four Seasons all the way

The whole album is homage to different artists - the Wiki page mentions which ones: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Innocent_Man

BJ: “I need a title for my new album full of bubble gum pop songs about serious topics like economic depression in middle America and the horrific legacy of the vietnam war.”
Phil Ramone: “Hmm…”
BJ: “I’m thinking…’Shower Curtain.’”
PR: “Ok…”
BJ: “Or maybe ‘Nylon Curtain’”
PR: “Better”

The closing song, "Where's The Orchestra?", is about a man who goes to see a live play expecting a musical, only to realize that it's a regular stage show; according to Joel, this is a metaphor for life.

yeah i never really "got" the Nylon Curtain title. like it's a pun on "Iron Curtain" but what does it signify? like, everyday consumer goods? it's not like the album's "about" that altho maybe if you really squint you could get there. is it in reference to women's hosiery specifically? that would work with an Adult Album About Relationships Or Divorce Or Something (see "Imperial Bedroom"), but not so much Vietnam and Allentown. shower curtains present the same problem. maybe he should have just called it Bored In The USA.

Hey hey!: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/billy-joel-the-stranger/

Across seven and a half minutes, Joel tells the superbly ordinary tale of Brenda and Eddie, high school sweethearts turned divorcées reuniting for dinner.

Oh boy. Here we go again with this one.

and here we are waving Brent DiCrescenzo goodbye

a good writeup, btw!

re: YMP's long post way upthread on first vs third-person singer-songwriter modes re: "Piano Man":

(...) No one asks Levon Helm whether he was actually present during the Civil War. But if he sang a song about being in a band or losing a woman, we'd naturally assume he was Speaking From the Heart.

All of that is a really long and completely pointless introduction to my thoughts about "Piano Man."

The song would be okay in third person (like "Angry Young Man" is).

But in my view it's untenable in first person because it's so self-flattering. "I, the artist, float above this human misery. And by the way everyone loves me because I make them so happy. And, further, I am so awesome that people are surprised that I am doing this instead of being the global superstar I was clearly meant to be."

Which might be true, but it is so douchey to say out loud that I cannot stand to hear it said, and I will change the radio station when this song comes on, despite it being the signature song of an artist I generally either love or tolerate.

I really like the argument, but trying to hear it in my head as "And they sit at the bar, and put bread in his jar," I'm not sure it works as a song. Slides into the late-60s hippie-influenced "I've noticed this regular, everyday person, doing their job --- oh how very fascinating" school of songwriting. Maybe second-person would work? "There's an old man sitting next to you..." Like a dungeon master setting the scene. "The manager gives you a smile."

yeah i never really "got" the Nylon Curtain title. like it's a pun on "Iron Curtain" but what does it signify? like, everyday consumer goods?

For me I always read it as "Nylon" signifying, yeah, general 70s US suburban life, and "Nylon Curtain" meaning, hey, that life which is presented as an aspirational dream feels in certain ways like an oppressive regime in which real communication is dangerous and difficult

As for YMP's post, I think a certain amount of direct "damn aren't I great" is part of BJ's vibe, always has been, can't really be unwound from the rest of the vibe, we all have friends who are kind of like this and I accept it from him as I do from those friends

nylon curtain just makes me think of shower curtains :/