The Random iTunes Fairy has been peeking in on the weekday conversation, as she is wont to do.
Just the other day I proposed a theme week on Billy Joel songs that would make good fodder for a Netflix anthology show. And she serves up ‘Half a Mile Away,’ a very strong candidate. With street smart characters like Little Geo and Angelina circling our restless narrator, this song could make for a great little New York-set character sketch.
Yesterday I covered the seventh studio album by Elton John, one of the great piano rockers of our time. Today I’ll focus on the sophomore album by another of them, Billy Joel.
Piano Man was inspired by John’s Tumbleweed Connection, in its use of Western themes and country-fueled character sketches (including a literal ‘Ballad of Billy the Kid’). The album’s classic title track offers up a bar full of memorable characters, enough to stock a decent NetFlix series.
Billy Joel’s compilation of live performances, Songs in the Attic, is my third favorite album released in 1981. It might have cracked the top two but I subtracted a few points because it’s a greatest hits collection of sorts.
Joel was riding a commercial high after the releases of The Stranger, 52nd Street and Glass Houses, and saw an opportunity to introduce his new fans to the music he had recorded prior to breaking into the mainstream. Rather than release the original recordings, which were performed with session musicians, he preferred to put them in new context with the backing of his talented touring band.
Here’s a great song from Billy Joel’s debut album, 1971’s Cold Spring Harbor. A live version was later released on the 1981 compilation album Songs in the Attic.
‘Everybody Loves You Now’ is a bitter serenade to a woman who hit it big and, in the narrator’s eyes, turned her back on the neighborhood (“you ain’t got the time to go to Cold Spring Harbor no more”).
A few weeks after Billy Joel won the Montauk Madness competition, the Randon iTunes Fairy has served up a song aimed at making all of us regret that outcome.
Billy Joel has written and recorded dozens of excellent songs and a handful of real stinkers. ‘This is the Time,’ from 1986’s otherwise fine album The Bridge, might be the stinkiest.
Meet Me In Montauk 