BILLY JOEL: AN INNOCENT MAN (1983)
1) Easy Money; 2) An Innocent
Man; 3) The Longest Time; 4) This Night; 5) Tell Her About It; 6) Uptown Girl;
7) Careless Talk; 8) Christie Lee; 9) Leave A Tender Moment; 10) Keeping The
Faith.
Once again, you gotta give it to Billy — in an
era when New Wave, electrofunk, synth-pop, and glam metal were all the rage, going
out there to record an entire album of tributes to late 1950s / early 1960s
pop, rock, and R&B and making it
chart, as well as yield a whole bunch of big hit singles, is a genuine
accomplishment if there ever was one. In retrospect, An Innocent Man does not particularly stand out from the general
streak of Billy's change-face-records, but in its historic context, it probably
holds the record as «least expected thing for Billy to have done at the given
moment». This already makes it worth hearing, at least once.
The album, as Billy admits himself, was
triggered to life by his divorce from his first wife, which allowed him
(finally!) to date hot young Cosmopolitan chicks like Elle Macpherson and
Christie Brinkley (whom he finally married two years later) and «feel like a
teenager all over again». As a result of this, the seriousness and pessimism of
the previous two albums are cast to the wind, and we are invited to a
retro-styled rock'n'roll party, where one by one, Mr. Joel impersonates a long
series of his idols — R&B entertainers, soul belters, doo-wop crooners,
rock'n'rollers, Motown stars, you name it. There is no attempt to veil,
conceal, or modernize these influences: on the contrary, the album openly
bills itself as a tribute, and should be regarded as such, so there is really
no sense in criticism like «this song is a blatant Wilson Pickett rip-off, how
can it be good?». The real questions are — (a) how close do these imitations
come to recreating the right spirit? and (b) is there any reason to listen to
them instead of the real stuff?
Question (a), I think, should rather be
answered in the positive. There is no doubting the professionalism of Billy
Joel, or of Phil Ramone who agreed to go along with the idea and adapted his
production to all the old-time values. There is no doubting, either, the
sincerity and adoration that went into this project — Joel really truly loves
this music (and why shouldn't he?), and, more arguably but still quite likely,
understands its spiritual essence. Throw in his hook-crafting potential, and
voilà, all the required ingredients are there. ʽEasy Moneyʼ bangs the ground
with typically Pickettish ferociousness, ʽChristie Leeʼ pounds the piano with
typically Little Richardish abandon, ʽCareless Talkʼ steals and remixes all the
right vocal inclinations from Sam Cooke, ʽTell Her About Itʼ is pulsating with
all the right catchy-excited romanticism of Motown girl groups, and so on. An Innocent Man succeeds not only on
the surface, but deeper as well — with the understandable reservation that
most of the songs and styles imitated here by Billy were never that deep
themselves, to begin with.
The second question is trickier. There are even
some major Billy Joel fans out there who do not think much of the album, since
to them, «this is not the real Billy», and one might even feel offended to
have ʽGoodnight Saigonʼ immediately followed up by such a light-hearted
pastiche as ʽTell Her About Itʼ. But we are not really discussing this from the
point of view of major Billy Joel fans — as far as I am concerned, I have no
idea of what exactly is «the real
Billy Joel»: for all I know, «the real Billy Joel» could mostly be about
wanting to bed hot Cosmopolitan models, so let us just steer clear of the issue
for safety reasons. The real concern is whether you could, for instance,
intersperse these songs with ʽMustang Sallyʼ, ʽCupidʼ, ʽYou Can't Hurry Loveʼ,
ʽSecond That Emotionʼ, etc., and not feel a «cringing» moment whenever a Joel
song comes along on the setlist. Or, even worse, a «boring» moment.
My own answer is that I do not. Or, rather,
that I think these songs are typically as good as the stuff they are imitating,
with one major exception: Billy moves uncomfortably close to «blackface mode»
when he is openly imitating the vocal styles of great singers — it is a little
ridiculous to hear him try out the vocal attack of Pickett on ʽEasy Moneyʼ, or
Sam Cooke's modulation routine on ʽCareless Talkʼ, or go ahead and bawl like
Little Richard on ʽChristie Leeʼ. He is a good singer, and he does a fairly
decent job with these approximations, but «doing impersonations» is not really
quite the same as «paying tribute».
Other than that, I like the results — the
brass-punctured fast Motown sweep of ʽTell Her About Itʼ, the Four Season-ish vocal
harmony-drenched pop punch of ʽUptown Girlsʼ, the R&B gallop of ʽEasy
Moneyʼ (although I thought that, after The Doors had already exploited that
rhythm on ʽThe Changelingʼ, there would be little reason for white performers
to try it on for size again), and even the soft, echoey Drifters-like style of
the title track. I am much less enamored of ʽThe Longest Timeʼ, which sounds as
silly and corny as most of the doo-wop that it imitates, and of ʽThis Nightʼ,
which sounds like it belongs on Zappa's parodic Cruising With Ruben & The Jets, but I think Little Anthony
himself must have been in awe of the melody.
I think that, in the end, it all depends on the
level of worship. If you think of all these old tunes as light, friendly
entertainment for the simple senses, Billy's copycat imitations, stylistically
matching the originals but with sufficient melodic divergencies so as not to
count as «stolen items», are equally light, friendly entertainment for the
simple senses (more or less the job that
Billy Joel, the Artist, was born into this world to carry out). If you put them
on a higher pedestal — for instance, as proud expressions of the liberated
Afro-American spirit — in that case An
Innocent Man might seem misguided and even offensive. If bashing Billy Joel
for all the sins of the world is on your agenda, this is a great and innovative
way of performing the task. But it really isn't on mine, so I'll just say this:
An Innocent Man is nice, harmless
fun, and if you take it in the overall context of commercial 1983, it is extraordinarily nice, harmless fun.
So I give it a nice, harmless thumbs up,
at least until I can think of a way to prove that ʽYou Can't Hurry Loveʼ boasts
a more sophisticated and groundbreaking style of composition than ʽTell Her
About Itʼ. For the moment, all I can say is that I prefer Diana Ross as a
singer to Billy Joel, but that would be a lame excuse.
Check "An Innocent Man" (CD) on Amazon
Check "An Innocent Man" (MP3) on Amazon
"Once again, you gotta give it to Billy — in an era when New Wave, electrofunk, synth-pop, and glam metal were all the rage, going out there to record an entire album of tributes to late 1950s / early 1960s pop, rock, and R&B and making it chart, as well as yield a whole bunch of big hit singles, is a genuine accomplishment if there ever was one. "
ReplyDeleteI think you misunderstand, much of Billy's audience consisted of women, and women didn't care so much for the hippie music or hard rock. The music that was most fondly remembered in the 80's was stuff like the Righteous Brothers and the Supremes, slow or fast dance music that would be played in clubs and at proms. If you watch anything mainstream from the 80's, like talk shows or comedy series, and anything with a large female audience, this was the only music that mattered.
I don't think this album is as big of a risk as you seem to think it is, and the music itself has none of the resonance of the best of Motown. I listened to Baby Love for about two days in a row during a period of relationship issues and Unchained Melody never fails to touch me, I doubt Joel's music would be capable of this.
It may have been popular with a segment of the female audience but it wasn't popular enough to chart. The hit songs of the period were decidedly different from this sort of music. Also, Billy's female audience really came around *because* of this album.
ReplyDelete"bawl like Little Richard"
ReplyDeleteSince Ian Gillan did this in the early 70's (Speed King, Lucille - especially the 1972 Copenhagen version - and two bonus tracks from Fireball) this is risky business for anyone.
This is safe, nostalgic, polished, and market researched Adult Contemporary. I'm very surprised at George for not making the connection between this and Phil Collins' Supremes cover, released at the same time. In fact, the real career parallels that should be drawn are between Billy Joel and Phil Collins, not Joel and Elton John.
ReplyDeleteI would say Elton John is the more apt comparison. Joel and John are both pianists first and foremost, and they can both write melodies. Collins is a drummer and technological innovator - for better or worse (worse), the studio sound he developed in early 80s with Hugh Padgham was innovative, which can't be said for John or Joel at any point in their careers - and cannot write melodies.
Delete'Adult Contemporary' was hardly even a format at that time. These songs were written and recorded very quickly on a whim. As for the Collins comparison, Joel wrote a bunch of timeless pop tunes as opposed to massacring an classic.
DeleteBilly Joel and Phil Collins have little, to no, parallels. Billy & Elton are clearly more comparable.
ReplyDelete