Billy Joel: Live At Shea Stadium

BILLY JOEL: LIVE AT SHEA STADIUM (2011)

1) Prelude/Angry Young Man; 2) My Life; 3) Summer, Highland Falls; 4) Everybody Loves You Now; 5) Zanzibar; 6) New York State Of Mind; 7) Allentown; 8) The Ballad Of Billy The Kid; 9) She's Always A Woman; 10) Goodnight Saigon; 11) Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway); 12) Shameless; 13) This Is The Time; 14) Keeping The Faith; 15) Captain Jack; 16) Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel); 17) River Of Dreams/A Hard Day's Night; 18) We Didn't Start The Fire; 19) You May Be Right; 20) Scenes From An Italian Restaurant; 21) Only The Good Die Young; 22) I Saw Her Standing There; 23) Take Me Out To The Ballgame; 24) Piano Man; 25) Let It Be.

In 2008, they decided to tear down Shea Stadium, and three guesses who was selected to play the venue's last couple of shows... nay, not even Sir Paul McCartney, although he does make a guest appearance. Up to date, Live At Shea Stadium has been Billy's last live album, and with at least two others under his belt from the new millennium (the previous one was 12 Gardens Live, once again from Madison Square), it will really be sort of pathetic if he tries out yet another one, what with the setlist generally repeating itself over and over.

At the very least, this is a tighter, better controlled affair than the half-drunk slop of The Millen­nium Concert, but there are disadvantages to this as well — everything is a bit too strict this time, and the songs are played the way Billy's live audience at the stadium wants to hear them, not the way a skeptically minded live album listener would. Tight band, good singer (adapting the songs to his ever-lower range and not trying to pull any weird stuff like the «constipation blues» coda of ʽNew York State Of Mindʼ on Millennium), what else?

Well, a few guest stars couldn't hurt, and this is where the CD edition makes some bad choices: the first CD features singing duets with Tony Bennett (appropriate for ʽNew York State Of Mindʼ, perhaps, but multiplying the song's cheese factor by two) and Garth Brooks (on ʽShamelessʼ, which was never even that good a song to begin with), as well as new generation guitar hero John Mayer adding bland blues-pop licks to ʽThis Is The Timeʼ. With these three guys close together in the setlist, it's like he had to have a special «quota on bad taste» to fulfill, and this is a little sad considering that Steve Tyler and Roger Daltrey were also among the invited guests on those nights, singing, respectively, ʽWalk This Wayʼ and ʽMy Generationʼ — even if they were out of vocal shape, I'd rather have a hoarse Daltrey than a perfectly well-calibrated Garth Brooks.

At the end of the show, Sir Paul McCartney is being dragged out by the breeches to sing ʽI Saw Her Standing Thereʼ and ʽLet It Beʼ — how come it was Paul McCartney as a guest of Billy Joel and not vice versa is still a mystery to me, but then, why should Paul McCartney ever consider adding Billy Joel as a guest? These are decent performances, anyway, except that Billy's guitarist is so stiff that he can't even grasp the art of spiritually igniting the solos on these songs. Oh, and there is another stiff Beatles moment when Billy inserts ʽA Hard Day's Nightʼ in the middle of ʽRiver Of Dreamsʼ where it has no reason to belong.

Stage banter is kept to a minimum this time, if you don't mind Billy giving the people a little bit of mundane advice every now and then — for instance, at the end of the show: "drive safe, not like me, and don't take any shit from anybody!" Whatever you say, O Great Champion of the People — 50,000 fans have presumably never taken any shit from anybody ever since (whether they all still drive safe, though, is an unresolved issue). The setlist does include a few relative «rarities» from the old days, like ʽEverybody Loves You Nowʼ, but not a lot, and you'd do much better with Songs From The Attic for those purposes.

The one classic moment worth experiencing here is when the band launches, without announce­ment, into the rock drive of ʽI Saw Her Standing Thereʼ, and then... "ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Sir Paul McCartney!" and the whole stadium explodes in a way that no Tony Bennett or Garth Brooks could ever have dreamt of — no Billy Joel, for that matter, either. I am not saying that «Paul stole the show»: he's not that long on the stage, and Paul's own band would have performed the songs in a livelier manner than Billy's — but the roar over the tribunes cer­tainly brings on analogies with the Beatles' classic performances in 1965-66 at the same location.

Is it symbolic that they brought in Billy to draw the curtains on one of the most famous land­marks of 20th century pop art (especially if you also add sports to pop art)? Probably not, but it is still curious how the man is constantly used to close the door on something, be it the old millen­nium or simply fifty years of baseball and rock'n'roll. The irony is that Billy Joel does not really belong in the new millennium — where «intellectual» styles of music have long since advanced to unreachable (for him) heights, and «popular» styles of music have mostly sunk to unthinkable (for him) lows. These are good old-fashioned simplistic family values celebrated here, from the good old boys of ʽGoodnight Saigonʼ to the unemployed factory workers of ʽAllentownʼ, sung to old-fashioned chords and with old-fashioned words, and as corny as those songs used to be in the 1970s and 1980s, now there is a certain «relic from the past» aura around them that might, for a few moments, make even a veteran Billy Joel hater come to terms with the man and his values. (Even if it only takes Sir Paul McCartney a few seconds to show who's really timeless here.)

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Billy Joel: Fantasies & Delusions

BILLY JOEL: FANTASIES & DELUSIONS (2001)

1) Opus 3. Reverie (Villa D'Este); 2) Opus 2. Waltz # 1 (Nunley's Carousel); 3) Opus 7. Aria (Grand Canal); 4) Opus 6. Invention In C Minor; 5) Opus 1. Soliloquy (On A Separation); 6) Opus 8. Suite For Piano (Star-Crossed); 7) Opus 5. Waltz # 2 (Steinway Hall); 8) Opus 9. Waltz # 3 (For Lola); 9) Opus 4. Fantasy (Film Noir); 10) Opus 10. Air (Dublinesque).

Try and make a hit record out of this. Seven years into doing nothing much of anything, Billy finally decided that it was time to branch out. If Paul McCartney can do this — and Paul McCart­ney hasn't even been much of a «piano man» anytime in his life — why not Billy Joel? Going classical should be a natural thing for an artist who'd already explored so many different roads (in fact, he'd already experimented with the classical format a long time ago — remember ʽNocturneʼ from his solo debut?); and if you are a piano player by trade, it is only natural that you should begin diligently and humbly, with a set of piano pieces rather than anything as bombastic and pretentious as an oratorio (eat that, Sir Paul).

As a champion of the simple folks, Billy does not set his sights particularly high or cast his net particularly wide. This is certainly not «modern classical», nor does it show any influences of old-school innovators like Debussy, nor does it attempt to cover too much technically challenging ground — although even the way those pieces were written, Billy did not dare play them himself, and passed this honor to his friend, Richard Hyung-ki Joo, a British-Korean pianist specializing in shows that combine classical music with comedy. Not that there is any attempt at comedy on Fantasies & Delusions (unless you think that Billy Joel going classical is in itself sufficient rea­son for comedy). There is simply an attempt to write a bunch of waltzes, ballads, scherzos, and nocturnes (no mazurkas detected, though), largely in the style of Chopin — the best combination of exquisiteness with accessibility imaginable — with maybe just a little bit of Liszt and Rach­maninoff thrown in for good measure. Oh, and just one brief quasi-Bach piece (ʽInvention In C Minorʼ), over in just a minute.

Now, how could I ever rate this? I do not review classical music, unless bits of it happen to be incorporated into progressive rock albums, since any music that is properly «composed», that is, put down in sheetnote form (Tin Pan Alley notwithstanding), requires a very different writing approach, and from that point of view, Billy Joel is no exception. It is the easiest thing in the world to say that Chopin rules and Billy Joel sucks (and it is highly probable that it would be true), but you'd need to say why, and this requires serious musicological analysis that I would not be capable of providing.

On a layman level, I would just say this. The pieces sound «accomplished» — I think they would have earned a reasonably high score on any music school graduation test. The general rules of mid-19th century music making are adhered to fairly well; at the very least, it's not as if Billy were occasionally hopping into Broadway territory or anything. (Well, maybe once or twice he does, but then, it's always possible to count that as artistic license). He understands Chopin and the other romantics — that much, I think, we can all admit. Whether he can replicate them, how­ever, not to mention add something of his own to this replication, is a different matter.

In the case of Chopin, at least, Chopin's best piano pieces are extremely catchy, even for the untrained ear — we all recognize the waltz in C sharp minor well enough even without being able to identify the piece — due to wondrously well worked out and strategically repeated main themes. The most surprising element about Billy's exercises, however, is that «catchiness» does not even begin to enter the picture — and this coming from one of pop music's greatest master of sheer «hookery»! The pieces sound «nice», but the themes lack individuality and character, never take any musical risks, and, overall, simply consist of playing various scales in different tempos and at different volumes. Some of the pieces are more dynamic than others, but certainly not enough to generate «drama». Enough, perhaps, to be used for a soundtrack to a quiet evening in a local (Italian?) restaurant. Hardly more than that.

Which begs for the question: why? In interviews, Billy himself has admitted that it was just an experiment, nothing too serious or ambitious about it, and that he himself was surprised that it managed to sell more than a few copies. Nothing too surprising, I'd say, considering the huge army of Joel fanaticists who'd probably buy anything associated with the man, even if he decided to sing Wagner arias to an accompaniment of Jew's harp and washboard. (On second thought, I'd definitely buy that, too). But what would be the posterior use of this product? If it managed to fulfill an educational purpose — for instance, increase the interest of at least a small chunk of these buyers in classic romantic piano pieces — more power to Billy. More likely, however, it just prompted some of these buyers to rave about how «Billy's towering genius allows him to create highbrow music along with the best of 'em!», a reaction that Billy himself would explicitly distance himself from (but secretly might enjoy).

Consequently, upon deliberating, even though I do not actively «hate» what I have heard, I still give the record a thumbs down. It is humble and vain at the same time: humble, since the chosen musical style is devoid of formal bombast, and vain, since, want it or not, it triggers comparison with the «academic greats», and, consequently, still has a bit of that «I want to be the greatest sorcerer in all the world» spirit to it. Of course, this is ironically reflected in the album's title — and the compositions are more «delusions» than «fantasies» by definition. Nobody needs to hear this, really; nor are the late Artur Rubinstein or Vladimir Horowitz shaking in their graves at the glorious Steinway sound coming from under the fingers of Mr. Joo here. Oh, and, to add injury to insult, this whole damn thing runs for seventy-five minutes — which is more than all of Chopin's Etudes put together, so, in a highly improbable situation where you might be tempted... just do yourself a favor and do not fall for bland facsimiles. Or at least consult your local musicologist.

PS. I especially like how exquisitely they labeled all of Billy's compositions as opera, and then shuffled them around so that the track listing looks like a genuine recital. Yes, ladies and gentle­men, Waltz No. 2 was chronologically written after ʽFantasyʼ, not right after Waltz No. 1, and we have to reflect that, or else we will be disrespectful to the composer with our inaccurate listing. Even if the entire catalog is not too likely to be expanded in the future... then again, just recast all of his previous compositions as Lieder and you have yourself a friggin' Schubert in the works.

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Billy Joel: 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert

BILLY JOEL: 2000 YEARS: THE MILLENNIUM CONCERT (2000)

1) Beethoven's Ninth; 2) Big Shot; 3) Movin' Out; 4) Summer Highland Falls; 5) The Ballad Of Billy The Kid; 6) Don't Ask Me Why; 7) New York State Of Mind; 8) I've Loved These Days; 9) My Life; 10) Allentown; 11) Prelude / Angry Young Man; 12) Only The Good Die Young; 13) I Go To Extremes; 14) Goodnight Saigon; 15) We Didn't Start The Fire; 16) Big Man On Mulberry Street; 17) 2000 Years; 18) Auld Lang Syne; 19) River Of Dreams; 20) Scenes From An Italian Restaurant; 21) Dance To The Music; 22) Honky Tonk Women; 23) It's Still Rock And Roll To Me; 24) You May Be Right; 25) This Night.

While River Of Dreams was slowly running dry into oblivion, Billy Joel was not doing much of anything — divorcing his next wife, putting on a little weight, growing himself a bit of a wise old man beard, losing some hair off the top of his head for compensation, and collecting enough ro­yalties to eventually become an institution. And who but a whole institution should have had the honor of welcoming in the new millennium at Madison Square Garden, NYC? It's been a long, hard, excruciating road all the way from JC to BJ, but here we are at last. At the center of the Uni­verse is Earth, and at the center of the Earth is New York City, and at the center of New York City stands Madison Square Garden, and in the center of Madison Square Garden sits Billy Joel, playing his piano and telling us that science and poetry rule in the new world to come, and what an amazing future there will be.

Naturally, it would not have been in line with Billy's usual modesty to appropriate this entire important mission all to himself, and the stage at MSG that night was shared by multiple guests, reflecting large, notorious parts of musical history. As you can see from the track listing, we also have here The Rolling Stones (brilliantly impersonated by Billy Joel on ʽHonky Tonk Womenʼ), Sly & The Family Stone (with Billy Joel subtly sitting in for the band on ʽDance To The Musicʼ), Robert Burns (impressively recreated by Billy Joel with a couple verses from ʽAuld Lang Syneʼ), and no less than Ludwig van Beethoven himself (I am not sure if Billy Joel himself is playing all the orchestra parts and singing all the choral parts on the intro sections of the 9th Symphony, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if he were). A little extra research on the cuts that did not make it onto the 2-CD edition shows that Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin were there on that night, too, transforming the already unforgettable event into a completely supernatural phan­tasmagoria, but the No. 1 Recording Company in Heaven, for selfish reasons, would not release them from their Doomsday contract, so their contributions had to be scrapped from the official album. You can, however, ascertain their presence through various bootleg versions (beware, though, as they do not bear God's official seal of approval).

Needless to say, it would have been very surprising if all that star presence and the grandiosity of the occasion itself did not go just a teensy-weensy bit over Billy's head. And, as a matter of fact, it's a good thing they do, because The Millennium Concert can be quite hilarious in places. It is not up to me to guess the amounts of alcohol consumed prior to the show (and no matter what the amount, I would never blame the man for needing a little stimulation to overcome the nerves), but Billy's banter with the audience should probably be taken as a hint. «First of all, I wanna thank all of you for paying those ridiculously expensive ticket prices... I don't know who bought those $999 jobs, I might have gone for that if Hendrix came back, you know?.. How many people here are rich?... [boo boo boo]... Oh, so you paid, like, those scalper prices? Well, I'm sorry...» Allow me to refrain from further comments.

Oh yes, the music. Well, Billy's voice has deepened a little, which probably empowers him to do more of that «rock and roll stuff», or to sing some of the older tunes in a more hard-rock manner (the opening ʽBig Shotʼ, for instance), but every once in a while, champagne literally or figura­tively goes to his head, and he turns a certain song into an over-drawn, over-sung showpiece of the drunk variety — ʽNew York State Of Mindʼ was never a subtle masterpiece to begin with, but here it is turned into a screamfest, and then culminates in a grossly overdone coda where the man literally sounds as if he is taking a really painful dump, suffering from a serious constipation problem. Is that a typical thing for New Yorkers? Hopefully not. Does that mean that a «New York state of mind» is really just a bowel problem? Not a nice thing to suggest when you're sitting at the center of the Universe, surrounded by rich New Yorkers who'd just bought a bunch of $999 tickets for scalper prices.

Questions, questions, questions. Why does ʽDon't Ask Me Whyʼ become ʽDon't Axe Me Whyʼ? It's not as if we were in the deep South or anything. Why does ʽMy Lifeʼ open up with a bass-heavy, quasi-hard-rock introduction, when the song itself has nothing to do with this stylistics? Why is there only one song from Billy's pre-1976 period? (Apparently, ʽSouvenirʼ and ʽPiano Manʼ were cut from the final release, but that does not eliminate the question). And, most impor­tantly, did Billy really write ʽ2000 Yearsʼ seven years before the show with the secret goal of performing that particular song right before the clock struck twelve and the date changed to 2000? (And even more importantly, was he aware that only 1999 years had passed up to that point and, strictly speaking, we were still living in the old millennium?).

But questions aside, the show itself wasn't too bad. Even the «guest spots» were done professio­nally enough to carry their «symbolic» value, regardless of the general stiffness with which the band launches into Sly & The Family Stone's funky groove, or of the fact that Billy's guitar play­er for the evening, Tommy Byrnes, does not seem to get which particular licks make the guitar solo on ʽHonky Tonk Womenʼ into more than just another guitar solo. The setlist, or what of it made onto the album, is hardly problematic, predictably skewed in favor of classic hits, but what else are you expected to play before people who bought tickets for scalper prices? Play it wrong and they just might want to scalp you on their way out. The important thing is that the audience does seem to feel like they're getting their money's worth, and Billy sounds so drunk that he seems to believe he is having himself a good time as well, so everybody's happy, and the con­jured benevolent spirits were just enough in quantity to help us overcome the Y2K problem, and — get this — Billy Joel actually remembers all the lyrics to ʽWe Didn't Start The Fireʼ in the correct order even under intoxication, which might just be the major Herculean feat of the past 2000 years. How do you get to Madison Square Garden on the eve of the new millennium? Prac­tice... your history trivia.  

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Billy Joel: River Of Dreams

BILLY JOEL: RIVER OF DREAMS (1993)

1) No Man's Land; 2) The Great Wall Of China; 3) Blonde Over Blue; 4) A Minor Variation; 5) Shades Of Grey; 6) All About Soul; 7) Lullabye; 8) The River Of Dreams; 9) Two Thousand Years; 10) Famous Last Words.

Regardless of how one feels in general about Billy Joel, you must give the man his due: ʽFamous Last Wordsʼ, closing out this album, may not be particularly famous, but, up to date at least, they have really been «last». "That's the story of my life", the man tells us, "now it's time to put the book away", and, against all the predictably sneering «yeah rights», River Of Dreams remains the very last album of original pop compositions recorded by Billy Joel, the quintessential Some­times Thinking Man's Artist of his generation. He gave his word, and he kept it. How often does that happen with public figures in general, let alone corny pop stars?

Even more curious is the fact that River Of Dreams has earned quite a shaky reputation, when it is actually not half-bad. Where Billy's previous two albums showed plenty of rot, as the man naturally drifted towards mushy adult contemporary and dumb «muscular pop-rockers», River Of Dreams actually sounds as if the man were trying to pull himself up, one last time. Like he did in the early 1980s, Billy goes against the grain and delivers a well-produced nostalgic album (California folk-rock veteran Danny Kortchmar comes on board as one of several co-producers) — not nostalgic enough to make us think it was really made in the Seventies, of course, but not at all in line with the mainstream pop values of 1993, either.

The word of the day is «stylistic diversity»: as a final gesture, Billy decided to revisit most of the styles that he used to excel in, and even throw in a couple new ones — the «dark horse of the family», this time around, is ʽShades Of Greyʼ, an unconcealed tribute to Cream (its opening and recurring «bap-pa pa-doo-wap-pas» are lifted directly from ʽSweet Wineʼ) that remains as Billy's one and only open foray into the area of blues-based psychedelic pop. It is not a great song, but it is catchy, a little bizarre, and features Leslie West of Mountain fame (the closest facsimile Billy could find of Cream's Clapton guitar) on a couple of colorfully scorching guitar solos.

Psychedelic notes are also apparent on ʽThe Great Wall Of Chinaʼ, whose floating strings sound like a cross between true Far Eastern sounds and the orchestral parts of ʽI Am The Walrusʼ — and form a nice contrast with the minimalistic «crunch chords» of the verses — and, to a lesser extent, in the darkly romantic falsetto of the chorus to ʽBlonde Over Blueʼ, although, in general, that song is more in the vein of the «midnight uptempo balladry» of Bryan Ferry or some other decadent crooner. Perhaps Billy does not quite have the vocal chops to do the song the way it de­serves to be done, but at least he wrote it with good intentions.

Other than that, we got us our basic angry power-rock (ʽNo Man's Landʼ), some brass-adorned blues-rock (ʽA Minor Variationʼ), some working man soul-rock (ʽAll About Soulʼ), a solo piano ballad (ʽLullabyeʼ), a light choral spiritual (title track), a bombastic power ballad (ʽ2000 Yearsʼ), and those ʽFamous Last Wordsʼ that might just as well have been written by Danny Kortchmar himself, so much do they sound like a friendly early 1970s folk-rocker. Not too bad for a swan song, I'd say — even if, of course, the individual merits of all these tunes are quite different from each other: my own tastes push the indignation level ever higher when it comes to bombast, then bring it down together with the volume level, but with a selection like that, no two people will probably get to completely agree on the highlights and lowlights.

Lyrically, it's all the same old shit — some love stuff, some attempts at introspection, and lots and lots and lots of social criticism, this time, as Billy grows older, with a noticeable «grass was greener» angle to some of the songs, particularly ʽNo Man's Landʼ. All I'd like to say is that I really love the line about "give us this day our daily discount outlet merchandise", which might just be the single best line ever penned by Billy Joel, the Daily Discount Man's Artist. Say what you will, Roger Waters can only dream about writing a line like that, can he?

That said, apart from the final track, the album does not properly feel like a swan song or musical testament; you'd have to cobble that impression together out of its stylistic diversity (an all-out binge for the big final!), its nostalgic components, maybe even out of its front sleeve painting (Christie Brinkley repaid her husband for ʽThat's Not Her Styleʼ by painting him almost in the guise of a Christian martyr — which did not prevent the latter-day saint and the mystery woman from separating one year later). But, contrary to rumors spread by reviewers who probably did not even listen properly to the songs, River Of Dreams was hardly a dishonorable way to go out of the songwriting business. As far as my own judgement goes, it was at least a definite improve­ment over Storm Front, to the extent that Billy would be justified to claim that he went out of the business not because his songwriting gift had run out, but before his songwriting gift would have run out. Consequently, I (a) give the album a thumbs up and (b) sincerely hope that Billy continues to keep his word and releases no more pop albums in the future. Just keep on touring those stadiums until they tear 'em all down, Mr. Joel!

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Billy Joel: Storm Front

BILLY JOEL: STORM FRONT (1989)

1) That's Not Her Style; 2) We Didn't Start The Fire; 3) The Downeaster "Alexa"; 4) I Go To Extremes; 5) Shame­less; 6) Storm Front; 7) Leningrad; 8) State Of Grace; 9) When In Rome; 10) And So It Goes.

It is really a huge consolation that Billy sat out most of the Eighties in the lap of Phil Ramone. But as the last year of the decade swung around and everybody felt it was time for another shot of artistic expression, Billy suddenly decided to modernize. He fired much, if not most, of his regu­lar band, put together a huge crowd of session musicians, and exchanged Phil for Mick Jones of Foreigner fame in the producer seat. Whee! Granted, it could have been much worse, but fortu­nately, Phil Collins was not available at the time.

The result is an album that, in genre terms, stands somewhere on the intersection of «arena rock» and «barroom rock». (Maybe think of a barroom converted to a mini-arena, or vice versa). Gone altogether are the old-timey jazzy and vaudevillian stylizations, replaced by steady 4/4 beats, macho blues-rock guitar chords, and singalong choruses. Loud drums, bombastic synthesizers, and singing verging on the point of shouting also become the norm of the day as Billy tries to «make himself look big» by having everything puffed up around him; the only catch is, Billy himself is not what you'd call a «big guy» at all, and that translates, way too often, to a rather ri­diculous effect (the title track is an obvious example).

Worst of all, to paraphrase the man himself, «that's not his style» — this sudden desire to make music in the style of Foreigner goes against Billy's natural melodic skills, and, most importantly, why should he want to imitate this music? It takes little effort to churn out a bunch of simplistic arena-rockers; but unless they happen to be accidentally adorned with genius vocal hooks or master riffs, they are usually worthless — and Billy has had very little experience with «master riffs». Vocal hooks are better handled, to some extent, but the playing and production style leaves little place for subtlety.

It does not help, either, that the album begins with one of the corniest numbers the man ever had the gall to come up with — ʽThat's Not Her Styleʼ is a misguided lyrical defense of his then-cur­rent wife Christie Brinkley ("some people think that she's one of those mink-coated ladies..."), listing all the popular accusations with such precision and detail ("gave the pilot somethin' extra for a perfect ride"  — really?) and doing it in such a moronic singing tone that the only thing it manages to convince us of is that that is her style very much indeed (but maybe that's exactly the way it was intended to be... irony?).

I have sort of mixed feelings for the album's grand slam number. Some might say that ʽWe Didn't Start The Fireʼ only went to #1 because all the teenagers of America started buying it as a handy shortcut replacement for textbooks on modern history. Others might object that it has got one of the catchiest choruses in Billy Joel history, which helps overlook the crappy-sounding keyboards and the musical monotonousness. I would classify it as one of those harmless «novelty» numbers that quickly run out of fun potential — along the lines of the Beatles' ʽAll Together Nowʼ (al­though the latter at least had a far more tasteful musical arrangement, but then it wasn't put to­gether in 1989, either). There is some serious incongruency between the song's nursery-rhyme aura and the «seriousness» of the message, however — "we didn't light it but we tried to fight it" does not say much about how they were fighting and what they were fighting — was it Belgians in the Congo, Ben Hur, or hula hoops?.. Silly old Billy, always getting himself in some kind of fix with his «moral lessons».

The rest of the songs fluctuate between the already mentioned uninspiring/uninspired arena-rockers (title track; ʽState Of Graceʼ), cartoonishly soulful adult contemporary ballads (ʽLenin­gradʼ, a souvenir from Billy's Russian trip that might have healed a few simple psychological traumas back then, but now comes across as one of those oddball artistic children of Perestroika — "the Russians love their children too" and all that stuff), and a couple attempts at «art pop» songs, marred by production excesses and superfluous pomposity (ʽThe Downeaster Alexaʼ, which must have increased Billy's popularity with baymen worldwide, but sounds fairly crass and manipulative otherwise).

Some fans have praised the closing number, ʽAnd So It Goesʼ, as the best song on the album and maybe even an all-time classic — too much praise, I'd say, for a number whose melodic potential is completely exhausted in the first twenty five seconds (possibly in the first five seconds, as I am quite sure any professional musicologist would be able to predict the next twenty). Those few bars of solo piano are indeed quite nice, and at least the entire coda sounds refreshingly simple and unadorned next to the glossy production of the original.

But if anything, it is a glaring example of what is altogether wrong with the entire album: horrendously lazy songwriting. In the past, Billy had always used his ideas sparingly, distributing interesting chord changes and vocal modulations between songs in a miserly manner, but Storm Front is the first album where you really begin to wonder whether he has reached the bottom of the barrel. Of course, no talent lasts forever, yet it still seems odd — Billy had shown so much discipline in not allowing himself to «burn out» over two decades of music-making that the qua­lity dropdown of Storm Front is surprising. Perhaps we should blame it all on Christie Brinkley. You know — Christie Brinkley, Mick Jones, crappy drums and synth tones, Leningrad, miss my Dad, rock is just a passing fad, we didn't jump the shark, no we didn't jump it, we just tried to hump it... sorry, what I really meant to say was just a thumbs down.

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Billy Joel: Kontsert

BILLY JOEL: KONTSERT (1987)

1) Odoya; 2) Angry Young Man; 3) Honesty; 4) Goodnight Saigon; 5) Stiletto; 6) Big Man On Mulberry Street; 7) Baby Grand; 8) An Innocent Man; 9) Allentown; 10) A Matter Of Trust; 11) Only The Good Die Young; 12) Some­times A Fantasy; 13) Uptown Girl; 14) Big Shot; 15) Back In The USSR; 16) The Times They Are A-Changin'.

It is really lovable how Amazon, and quite a few other websites (and maybe even book sources, too), announce this album as Kohuept, a word that sounds like a rather gross mix of Greek, Aztecan, and Klingon, but in reality, merely a consequence of one's inability to correctly trans­literate the word concert in its Cyrillic orthography. (First prize in this competition certainly goes to Paul McCartney's Choba B CCCP = Snova V SSSR, a.k.a. "Back In USSR" in Russian, but it seems to be Billy's regular fate to always remain the second runner-up next to Paul in everything he does. Even if «Kohuept» came first, in terms of sheer chronology).

Anyway, Billy took to the stage in Leningrad in the summer of 1987, with the Perestroika already in full swing but the Communist system still rigidly enforced, so I suppose that not a lot of people were even aware of the show taking place (certainly not myself, being 11 years old at the time and not having the least idea of who Billy Joel was in the first place — ah, the happy years...). Getting Western artists to perform in Russia was still a mind-boggling task, since everything had to be approved by Party officials responsible for culture policies; but then, the Party had already given the green light to Elton John nearly a whole decade ago, and if Elton was considered «clean» enough for innocent Soviet youth, I suppose there was no reason to be particularly sus­picious of Billy Joel. (Merely two years later, in 1989, we'd already have Black Sabbath in the country, but 1987 was still pretty much iron-curtainish for everybody).

Funny retro-bits keep cropping up throughout the show — for instance, the way it opens with a one-minute choral piece delivered by a Georgian folk ensemble (ʽOdoyaʼ), probably as a wel­come sign of Soviet international brotherhood, as well as a subtle reminder that all music stems from The People, rather than individualistic capitalist entrepreneurs; or the presence of a stiff, dorky-sounding, but perfectly professional interpreter, translating Billy's banter for the Russian audience (a practice that evaporated with the transition to capitalist economics, when it became necessary to pay these people money for their work); or the relative lack of excitement from the same audience after many tracks — since it was still common practice for Soviet audiences to sit quietly and politely at concerts, or you'd be in serious trouble with security. And, of course, there was no way in hell Billy could not do a cover of ʽBack In USSRʼ, especially since some of the Party officials present probably had difficulty distinguishing him from Paul in the first place, whereas the real music lovers present must have been hungry for anybody coming out there and doing ʽBack In The USSRʼ for them in real time. Could have been Uriah Heep.

How was the show itself? Decent. Leaning a bit too heavily on The Bridge material, perhaps, but this is understandable — a promotion tour is a promotion tour, let alone the fact that there was not much chance Soviet buyers could rush to any musical store in 1987 and get themselves a fresh copy of Billy's latest. ʽA Matter Of Trustʼ still sucks, ʽMulberry Streetʼ is still okay, and ʽBaby Grandʼ, deprived of its biggest attraction (Ray Charles), is now quite boring. The rest of the set­list is more or less evenly spread between all of Billy's career moments since 1976 (no early stuff at all), and the songs are performed with care and professionalism, but add nothing important to the original versions. The best thing I can say is that there are almost no clunkers on the list, but also no surprises — mostly just the hits.

At the end of the show, Billy trots back on stage with an acoustic guitar and plays us ʽThe Times They Are A-Changin'ʼ: a sensible gesture, since they were, but probably less appreciated than he could surmise, since Dylan's popularity in the USSR was largely restricted to a small intellectual circle (language barrier and all). And that pretty much sums it up: the entire Kontsert, from the very moment of its release, was more of a symbolic gesture than a really-necessary live album from a man who certainly shouldn't rank among the great live artists of his generation (and, to be honest, never ever strived for that kind of ranking). In the end, it makes much better sense to watch the video version of this stuff, if only for culturological reasons; without the picture, it's just another average Billy Joel show.

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Billy Joel: The Bridge

BILLY JOEL: THE BRIDGE (1986)

1) Running On Ice; 2) This Is The Time; 3) A Matter Of Trust; 4) Modern Woman; 5) Baby Grand; 6) Big Man On Mulberry Street; 7) Temptation; 8) Code Of Silence; 9) Getting Closer.

Once again, a pound of respect to be handed over to Billy Joel for recording a very-much-not-1986 album in 1986. With the dark star rising for the absolute majority of «rock veterans» that year, Billy Joel, of all people, could be expected to participate in the championship as a major contender. But while The Bridge does indeed show a significant drop-off in quality, lucky for Billy, by that time he had so much solidified in his «retro» mentality that a full embrace of all the trappings of 1986 was out of the question.

Yes, we do have some plastic synthesizers, some electronic drums, a bit of power ballad atmo­spherics, even a couple of Rambo-style pop metal riffs, but at the heart of it all we still have the same old Broadway show — a big ball of vaudeville and jazz-pop and old time balladry, lightly seasoned with some production elements that do land the album in the 1980s, but do not disqua­lify it as a victim of the 1980s. On an important sidenote, The Bridge marks the last time Billy worked with Phil Ramone, and it is clear that Phil was as adverse to submitting to those global suffocating trends as his regular client.

The opening number of the record is rather oddball, though: ʽRunning On Iceʼ is an unmistakable tribute to Sting and The Police circa 1979-80 (yes, even when Mr. Joel is emulating modern acts, he still can't help being a little retro with it!), with Liberty DeVitto impersonating Stewart Cope­land and Billy himself adopting Sting's vocal modulation. The fussy, syncopated-paranoid verses could really be mistaken for a forgotten Police outtake — it is only when we get around to the happier-sounding ska chorus that a certain «it's really Billy» feeling starts creeping in, because The Police would never choose an ʽOb-La-Di Ob-La-Daʼ chord sequence for the hook. Still, as a homage, ʽRunning On Iceʼ is a great showcase for Billy's chameleonesque abilities, and in the overall context of the album, it probably packs more fun than any other number here.

After that deceptive opening, though, The Bridge slowly starts creaking and collapsing. The songs are not particularly awful, they are simply not too well written. Somehow, over those three years that separate the intentionally hook-laden Innocent Man from Joel's next public statement, the emphasis has shifted from «instrumental hook» to «soulful vocal expression», and too many of these songs focus on «Billy the passionate singer» rather than «Billy the creator of interesting piano and guitar melodic lines». Consequently, in order to like The Bridge, you have to really like Billy Joel as an artistic personality and a sensitive soul. And that can be tough.

The double faux-punch of ʽThis Is The Timeʼ and ʽA Matter Of Trustʼ, in particular, seems tre­mendously anticlimactic after the opening number. The former is an adult contemporary ballad with a Diane Warren-worthy chorus and probably the most dated production values on the entire album; the latter is one of those «steroid-muscular» pop songs, pinned to a boringly distorted pop-metal riff, that everybody was trying at the time, hoping to become Springsteen (including Springsteen himself) — in fact, Billy's epic-hero 1-2-3-4 count-off at the beginning is already enough to curdle fresh milk.

Eventually, as the artist begins going backwards in time, the atmosphere gets more tolerable. Stuff like ʽBaby Grandʼ, a soul duet with Ray Charles himself, and the big-band style ʽBig Man On Mulberry Streetʼ, is completely free of cringeworthy moments — the latter may be more at­mosphere than melody, and the former may be way longer than its basic theme requires (actually, the basic theme probably requires some instrumental improvised parts, but Billy imprudently saved all of them up for the live shows), but stylistically, I'd say they are both beyond reproach, and, together with ʽRunning On Iceʼ, are the only songs on here worth remembering. The rest is a mixed bag of rootsiness, poppiness, and schmaltz that ranges from blandly forgettable (ʽGetting Closerʼ; ʽCode Of Silenceʼ, with wasted backing vocals from Cyndi Lauper) to overcooked in the vocal department (ʽTemptationʼ, with a bit too much heart on that sleeve, as if he were offering a little bit of it to every person in the arena).

Still, simply in recognition of the fact that this is, truly and verily, a 1986 Billy Joel album that sucks nowhere near as bad as a 1986 Billy Joel album could have sucked in a logically structured parallel world — I refrain from a thumbs down. The Bridge is well worth owning by any legit fan of Billy's, and well worth hearing at least once for anyone who is merely «tolerant» of the man. It is almost an objective fact that The Bridge marks the beginning of the slide, but we do have to admit that it was a slide like no other slide: unlike so many of his peers, Billy seems de­railed not so much by the changing standards in recording and production, as he is by finally overrating himself as a «soul serenader».

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Billy Joel: An Innocent Man

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.

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Billy Joel: The Nylon Curtain

BILLY JOEL: THE NYLON CURTAIN (1982)

1) Allentown; 2) Laura; 3) Pressure; 4) Goodnight Saigon; 5) She's Right On Time; 6) A Room Of Our Own; 7) Surprises; 8) Scandinavian Skies; 9) Where's The Orchestra?

In Billy's own words, this is the material he is most proud of, and that would be reason enough to get scared. A concept album about the lives and fortunes of baby boomers at the start of the Reagan era — a conscious decision to push into Springsteen territory, made by a man whose lyrical ta­lents, emotional insights, and sense of music-to-lyrics adequacy have no hopes of ever coming close to Bruce's (regardless of how one actually feels about Bruce). Just a couple extra wrong steps here, and The Nylon Curtain could easily turn into Billy's worst embarrassment.

Funny, but it isn't. Knowing full well his musical preferences and his strong and weak sides, it is not to Springsteen that Billy turns for inspiration, but rather to the same old crowds: the Beatles, Elton John, Jeff Lynne, and various other late Sixties' / early Seventies' artists. Almost every single melody here is deeply rooted in one influence or another, leaving pretty limited space for creativity — but when the influences are that good, and the digesting is carried on with sufficient intelligence and craft, and, most importantly, when this retro vibe prevents the artist from getting swallowed and assimilated by all that new Eighties stuff that he wouldn't be able to conquer any­way, what sense would there be in complaining?

To tell the truth, unless you really sit down with the lyrics sheet, you might not even get a sense of how «self-important» the album claims to be. A song like ʽAllentownʼ, with its honest, but not particularly poetic portrait of out-of-work blue-collar workers in a depressed community, has garnered much discussion, mostly concentrating on the song's words — has Billy been able to paint a proper picture of these people's lives? is he being respectful or insulting?... But musically, the song is just a somewhat routine, inoffensive acoustic rocker, mildly catchy, with a vocal part that is strangely buried in the mix as if the singer were a bit shy of his own voice (this kind of mixing is a common thing, for instance, on George Harrison's solo records). It isn't better or worse than dozens, if not hundreds, of similar songs. And its symbolic factory whistle at the be­ginning, as well as its symbolic industrial clanging at the end, are just tacked on for information's sake — there is nothing in the music that would suggest a connection with disillusioned, despai­ring workers. Inadequate? If you bother to check the lyrics, for sure. If you don't, ʽAllentownʼ is not about blue-collar suffering. It's about tapping your feet and strumming your air guitar.

Or let us take another of the album's most famous tracks, the Vietnam epic ʽGoodnight Saigonʼ. Would you really be willing to participate in a discussion of how precisely Billy has managed to convey the lives, feelings, and memories of the veterans? Honestly? Chirping crickets and heli­copters aside, this is a cozy acoustic ballad with a rather clumsy power chorus («and here is something for our friends in the arena to get wild to», Billy probably thought as he threw in the "and we would all go down together" bit), one that would have fit in much better with memories of your troubled, but innocent childhood rather than the living hell of Vietnam. Which is, really, just the way I hear it in my head — there is no more genuine Vietnam in ʽGoodnight Saigonʼ than could be found in, say, ʽOb-La-Di Ob-La-Daʼ. Which, as far as I am concerned, does not prevent ʽGoodnight Saigonʼ from being a pleasant song (if you only take out the «gung-ho chorus»).

Or take ʽPressureʼ — with a title like that, you'd expect the song to be about the hardships and tension of everyday life in the modern age, and lyrically, it is, but musically, it is completely dominated by a synthesizer riff with a ridiculously sterile tone (this is probably the most «mo­dern» Billy got on this album for 1982's standards) and a chord structure that sort of walks the line between nursery rhyme and football field chant. (Maybe that's what all the Peter Pan and Sesame Street references are all about?). Overall, the song is a little weird, a little funny, definite­ly catchy (in a good way? in a bad way? still trying to tell), but «serious», no.

And then there's all the rest, where you just gotta sit back and admire, or despise, or take into neutral consideration Billy's chameleonesque nature. ʽLauraʼ sounds almost precisely like Jeff Lynne and ELO circa 1972-73, vocals, harmonies, guitars, strings, tempos, dynamics, the works. ʽA Room Of Our Ownʼ picks up the rhythmics of the Beatles' ʽShe's A Womanʼ and adds a few extra layers for some extra fun. ʽScandinavian Skiesʼ, with its drawn-out, «floating» sound elici­ted from all the instruments and vocals, aims for light, happy-but-ominous psychedelia. And in the not-so-big finale, ʽWhere's The Orchestra?ʼ suddenly remembers about the artist's vaudevil­lian roots and jumps to self-irony — arguably the album's best lyrical moment is the opening to this particular song: "Where's the orchestra? Wasn't this supposed to be a musical?" Well... you said it, Mr. Joel. You really said it.

I like this album — not a lot, just a normal, regular like, you know. The certified Billy Joel hater will hate it for being too pretentious — I don't really manage to hear that pretentiousness. I would never understand a blue-collar worker who'd want to make ʽAllentownʼ his personal sacred an­them, or a Vietnam veteran who would shed tears to ʽGoodnight Saigonʼ, or, for that matter, a girl called Laura who'd go on to say that the song ʽLauraʼ really nails all her troubles. But I wouldn't mind playing The Nylon Curtain some more, every once in a while: it is diverse, sufficiently creative, reasonably memorable, almost free of annoying moments, and if you take it in its his­torical context, it sounds amazingly good for a 1982 album recorded by a «veteran». In fact, it sounds fairly timeless — an even bigger thanks to Phil Ramone here, who was able to safeguard Joel from the easy pitfalls of the new decade — and I see no reason whatsoever to deprive the al­bum of its well-deserved, if a little tepid, thumbs up. Nice stuff. Nothing too serious. Except, maybe, that he says the word "fucking" once, but I sincerely hope this isolated fact will not suffice to turn your whole world upside down.

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Billy Joel: Songs In The Attic

BILLY JOEL: SONGS IN THE ATTIC (1981)

1) Miami 2017 (I've Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway); 2) Summer, Highland Falls; 3) Streetlife Serenader; 4) Los Angelinos; 5) She's Got A Way; 6) Everybody Loves You Now; 7) Say Goodbye To Hollywood; 8) Captain Jack; 9) You're My Home; 10) The Ballad Of Billy The Kid; 11) I've Loved These Days.

What is the more ethical choice — put out a live album of your greatest and best-known hits, or put out a live album of your obscurities from the vaults (or «from the attic», to be more precise)? Maybe the most ethical choice would be not to put out a live album at all. Concentrating on hits is too redundant and predictable, whereas concentrating on the rarities is pretentiously vain — isn't there a reason that they were obscure in the first place? shouldn't one just give people what they want? isn't there a sort of «look-at-me-how-great-I-am» mentality issue here?... and so on.

In the case of Billy Joel, whom I certainly do not consider a «great» artist, this dilemma is even more pronounced. But I am happy to say that the concept behind Songs In The Attic — getting his «new» audiences, turned on to him since the success of The Stranger, to get better acquain­ted with the man's past — is pretty darn classily executed, by means of two things: (a) a thought­ful, meticulous selection of material that manages to avoid most of the lows and focus on all the highs; (b) a relative reinvention of many of these songs; formally — to better fit Billy's format of playing with his more or less permanently assembled band, in reality — to try to improve on the original production and arrangement flaws wherever possible.

The reinventions are never too radical, though; they are mostly done in the spirit of «virtual re­mastering», which is quite impressive considering that these are actual live recordings. Billy's singing, in particular, has never been better: he pays full attention to getting all the harmonies right, and does not spare his voice any trouble — even turning it into a snappy roar at the climac­tic moments of some of the tracks (ʽCaptain Jackʼ). Meanwhile, the backing band bravely takes it upon itself to compensate for the lack of overdubs, with David Brown's thick electric guitar tone replacing string arrangements (ʽThe Ballad Of Billy The Kidʼ); or, sometimes, it actually makes the arrangements denser than they used to be (ʽEverybody Loves You Nowʼ now has a frantic acoustic strum pushing it forward, in addition to Billy's flashy piano rolls).

As for the setlist, well, it did not manage to shift my original disappointed feelings for ʽShe's Got A Wayʼ (a song that feels as melodically unfinished to me as ever), but, apart from that, it is a fairly representative and solid selection from Billy's pre-mass popularity years, very evenly dis­tributed between his first four solo albums (the only thing that's lacking is an ass-kicking organ grind from Attila — I mean, would it have hurt the man to throw in a ʽCalifornia Flashʼ every once in a while, just for some good plain fun?). To keep the concept stable, he keeps away from all the pre-Stranger hits (ʽPiano Manʼ, ʽThe Entertainerʼ) and popular tunes such as ʽNew York State Of Mindʼ, and it helps, since Billy's hits always tended to be selected from either his most repetitive or his corniest strata of material.

Some fans almost literally swear by Songs In The Attic, convinced that it is the album to succes­fully prove that Billy Joel is «The Artist», or, at least, that the album managed to breathe a wholly new strain of life into the old songs. I would not go that far: the essence of the songs always re­mains the same, no matter how many extra piercing guitar solos David Brown prefers to add to the new ʽCaptain Jackʼ. But if you only have room for two or three Billy Joel albums in your col­lection, it goes without saying that Songs In The Attic would be a good substitute for the entire 1971-76 period — with mostly the best selections, and each performance either fully matching the power of the original or slightly improving upon it, what you get here is a comprehensive overview of the man's formative years, recorded in pristine sound quality.

Oh, and, just in case you didn't know it, the audiences did go wild over the old songs; sometimes, it has to do with Billy's choice of location (at least one show was recorded in NYC, so every time he mentions Brooklyn or any other such place on ʽMiami 2017ʼ, the crowds go nuts), but usually, they just love him regardless of which East Coast city he is playing in. And, for the record, there is a shitload of different locations from which the selections (recorded in June/July 1980) were made, but the Westernmost we ever get was Milwaukee (Wisconsin) and St. Paul (Minnesota). (Not that Billy never played California since relocating back to NYC, but perhaps the crowds were slightly less enthusiastic back there — especially if he ever tried to play ʽLos Angelenosʼ to any of them).

Anyway, the popular reaction shows that at least the people who actually went to see Billy play live were already well familiar with his back story. But this did not prevent Songs From The Attic from still going triple platinum and reaching an impressive (for a live album) No. 8 on the charts — and while that might be pushing it a bit too far, it certainly agrees well with my own thumbs up on the issue.

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Billy Joel: Glass Houses

BILLY JOEL: GLASS HOUSES (1980)

1) You May Be Right; 2) Sometimes A Fantasy; 3) Don't Ask Me Why; 4) It's Still Rock And Roll To Me; 5) All For Leyna; 6) I Don't Want To Be Alone; 7) Sleeping With The Television On; 8) C'Etait Toi; 9) Close To The Border­line; 10) Through The Long Night.

Another step in the right direction. This album is usually tagged as Billy's «hard rock record» — not simply for harboring more distorted guitar-driven pop rockers than usual, but for a general toughening-up of the attitude. Oh look out there, he's really gonna crash that glass house on the album sleeve, isn't he? He did crash it, didn't he? We all heard the breaking glass at the beginning of ʽYou May Be Rightʼ, and we all saw the resulting hole on the back sleeve photo. What an angry young man! What a punk, eh?

In reality, there is at best one or two «socially relevant» tracks here, and that is very, very good news. The «toughness» helps as long as it keeps Billy away from one too many lounge jazz bal­lads, but Billy Joel as a public agitator, particularly in the age of punk and New Wave, would not be a good idea at all. What Glass Houses really is is a good old-fashioned pop rock record, reaso­nably well written, almost completely free of ambitions/pretentions (maybe even more so than 52nd Street), and containing exactly one corny tune with sickening potential — ʽYou Were The Oneʼ, an attempt to imitate the sentimental vibe of the French pop scene (even including some actual singing in French, with a fairly bad accent, as one can guess). But it's all right, too. A Billy Joel album without a single bad Billy Joel song would be too much of a mindshaker.

ʽYou May Be Rightʼ is really just an old-fashioned pub rocker, walking an assured line between cockiness and catchiness, putting back the rock'n'roll ecstasy in its guitar and saxophone solos, and, most fun of all, setting it to an electric folk-rock rhythm pattern that recalls the Beatles circa 1965-66. ʽSometimes A Fantasyʼ follows it up with echoey guitar and vocals that either pay tri­bute to the man's rockabilly idols, or show that he has been paying attention to New Wave, after all; on second thought, it does sound more like the Cars than Gene Vincent. But attention or no attention, "it's still rock'n'roll to me", the man says on the album's most anthemic track. Three minutes of brisk guitar trot that slightly recalls the Shadows — and proclaims that the more it changes, the more it rests the same. Cool sax solo, nice bounce, and only a slight touch of self-righteousness at that.

The album also contains what might possibly be Billy's finest ever stab at being Paul McCartney — the bouncy (sorry for that word again, but Glass Houses really keeps up this non-stop bounce for almost unreasonable periods of time!), yes, the bouncy acoustic pop song ʽDon't Ask Me Whyʼ, which could have easily fit on... on... well, I'm not exactly sure on what particular Mc­Cartney album it would fit best of all (Flaming Pie?), but it's got all the right McCartney moves. All it needs is a Paul-style falsetto to complete the picture, but Billy no like falsetto. Oh, and the Latin piano interlude in the middle is a little out of place, too. Still, excellent try.

Everything else is all right, I guess. There really isn't a lot one could write about songs like ʽAll For Leynaʼ (power-piano-pop with a mildly desperate edge), or ʽSleeping With The Television Onʼ (Elton strikes again on the verses, but the "all night long, all night long" chorus is a bit too bland and smooth even for Elton's mid-1970s standards), or the album closer ʽThrough The Long Nightʼ whose intent is to finally put you to sleep with the aid of suitably lullabyish vocal har­monies. Not a lot, but they are all decent, adequate compositions, well produced, as usual, by Phil Ramone and mostly concentrating on thinly disguised stories of relationships.

Thus, another thumbs up here: nothing truly stands out in particular (other than ʽC'Etait Toiʼ, in a bad way), but the album still forms an integral part of Billy's winning streak, particularly now that the man has learned the secret to true success — with his strong, but limited talents, the less important he sounds, the better it is. The best thing about Glass Houses is that he never really threw that stone, you know. He never even planned to. What, did you think Billy Joel capable of something as stupid as that? He's just doing it all for Leyna.

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