Billy Joel

Note to Readers:  I didn’t give you the links for all the songs I’m writing about tonight.  They’re easily searchable and playable.  But here’s an idea.  If you have one of those devices, an Amazon Echo, an Echo dot, or some other such AI device that responds to your voice commands, tell it to play those songs for you while I write about them.  It will enhance your Dave in the Shack experience.

I heard Billy Joel in concert Saturday night at Wrigley Field.  It was my first Wrigley concert. Paul McCartney was there not long ago.  It’s clearly more than a baseball field these days.  They put a huge stage up in center field covering the old scoreboard. We sat near home plate.  Billy looked small up there.  You knew it was him, though he looked about three inches high, but then his presence was confirmed by huge screens above him showing him in detail, then band members, occasionally the crowd, or images from album covers, or photographs of various scenes, all at least 20 feet tall.  It was impressive.  Technology made up for the cavernous size of the venue.  They closed the bleachers, but put seats on the outfield grass.  I’d guess as many or more attended than a ball game.  And at the prices they charged for seats, I think both Billy and the Ricketts family made a fair amount of money.

What shocked me were Billy Joel’s opening words to the crowd.  He kibitzed about Chicago, the bugs that are attracted to the stage lights (he had both a fly swatter and bug spray), did some trash talking about Elton John, and then confessed this about the songs we were about to hear

“I’ve got nothing new.”

The audience roared.  New stuff?  The crowd could have cared less.  They wanted the old stuff.  They wanted what Billy Joel was, what he represents, not the 68 year old white guy with a shaved head on stage.  They yearned for Billy Joel the singer songwriter, he of solid lyrics, great arrangements, strong voice.  That voice from our past that produces the feeling we got when we first heard him, when both he and we were young.

Not that it was a uniformly old crowd.  I expected to be in the norm at nearly 66, and I was wrong.  People of all ages paid that ticket price for the experience.  A couple in their forties were there with their perhaps 12 year old son.  Both he and his parents recognized the songs and knew the lyrics.  Billy Joel apparently has staying power.  Intergenerational appeal.

With a prolific artist like Billy Joel, who had so many hits over so many years, no one gets all the songs they want.  There’s just too many.  Obviously he didn’t take requests, though he did do an interesting thing.   Sitting at the piano talking into the mike he would suggest two songs and then play the one that drew the most audience response.

“Do you want to hear The Ballad of Billy the Kid from the Piano Man album?  Or Vienna from The Stranger?”

Although I screamed for the Ballad of Billy the Kid we, the ballpark we, picked Vienna.  That’s the way it goes.  Majority rules, the crowd spoke, a choice was made, the losing song was never mentioned again.

Billy Joel played 28 songs.  You can get set lists  on the internet instantly now.  I liked them all and knew the lyrics of most.  It’s amazing what we have in our heads and how the music and the lyrics come back to us.  I found myself hoping for songs I treasured but feared wouldn’t be played.  They weren’t.  Travellin’ Prayer was one, from the Piano Man album, which came out in 1973.

I bought Piano Man when I was teaching at Ottawa High School.  I was 22.  I had nice speakers and a good turntable.  Travellin' Prayer was the first song on Side One.  I was hooked immediately. 

It’s  musically a simple song  starting with a snare drum, adding bass guitar, Billy’s spare piano, a banjo, then a honky tonk piano bridge joined by an electric guitar, fading out with a Jew’s harp of all things.  In 1973 the Eagles were around the corner, and country was seeping into rock.  The banjo fit right in.  Other songs on the album had steel guitar in the background. 

But it was the lyrics.  It’s always the lyrics for me I think in songs that have them.  The music enhances the words, but the words carry the day.  I immediately liked the way Billy Joel wrote about women.  Travellin’ Prayer is his wish, his request to God, for one woman in particular.  Everybody had that woman (or man), at least one, when they were 22.  Someone else, out there somewhere, alone maybe but at least gone from you.  Here’s the highlights, paraphrased:

Hey Lord, take a look all around tonight and find where my baby is gonna be

Hey Lord, would you look out for her tonight cause she is far across the sea

Hey Lord, would you look out for her tonight, make sure that she’s gonna be all right

and things are gonna be all right with me.

Hey Lord, would you look out for her tonight

             and make sure that all her dreams are sweet.

Hey Lord, would you guide her along the road and make them softer for her feet

Until she’s home and here with me.

Oh, don’t you give her too much rain and try to keep her away from pain

Because my baby hates to cry.

Said now, this song seem strange is just because I don’t know how to pray.

Oh, won’t you give her peace of mind, and if you ever find the time

Won’t you tell her I miss her every day. 

That was Billy Joel’s first album on Columbia.  It broke big in sales and made Billy Joel nationally known, on his way to being an international star.  He had made an album earlier, Cold Spring Harbor, on the Family Productions label in 1971 that sold better in Australia and Japan than it ever did in the states. There was a single though that snuck out of that album which was beautifully written.  He didn’t play that either Saturday night.  It’s “She’s Got a Way.”  When songwriters captures emotion, their work stands out.  Billy had a knack for that, not only in the words he wrote but in the way he delivered them, and it became apparent in that early song.

                She’s got a way about her

                I don’t know what it is.

                But I know that I can’t live without her.

                She’s got a smile that heals me,

                I don’t know why it is.

                But I have to laugh when she reveals me.

                She’s got a light around her.

                And everywhere she goes,

                A million dreams of love surround her

I only have three Billy Joel albums on vinyl, and none in any other format.  I missed a couple while I was travelling, and soon after I got back to the states and assembled cash once more I bought “The Stranger.”  That’s where you find Vienna, a plea to his lover (I assume) to slow down and enjoy life.  The more famous songs on that album are the title track, and the songs from the New York neighborhood, all of which he played at Wrigley: “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, Movin’ Out, Just the Way You Are, Only the Good Die Young.”  It was riddled with hits, and probably cemented Billy Joel’s fame.  Musically the songs were funkier, more hip, compared to Piano Man.  It was 1977 after all.

His lyrics from arguably the best track on the album, “She’s Always a Woman” came as a surprise to me.  They represented some kind of change.  Either Billy was hanging out with different women, or he was looking at women in a different way.  The music is spare: piano, flute, guitar, but the woman he refers to is not perfectly portrayed as the woman he seeks protection for in “Travellin’ Prayer” or angelic as his subject in “She’s Got a Way.” Read this carefully.

                She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes

                She can ruin your faith with her casual lies

                And she only reveals what she wants you to see

                She hides like a child but she’s always a woman to me.

                She can lead you to love, she can take you or leave you

                She can ask for the truth but she’ll never believe you

                And she’ll take what you give her as long as it’s free

                Yeah she steals like a thief but she’s always a woman to me.

                Oh she takes care of herself, she can wait if she wants

                She’s ahead of her time

                Oh, and she never gives out and she never gives in

                She just changes her mind

                But she brings out the best and the worst you can be

                Blame it all on yourself cause she’s always a woman to me

                She is frequently kind and she’s suddenly cruel

                She can do as she pleases, she’s nobody’s fool

                But she can’t be convicted, she’s earned her degree

                And the most she will do is throw shadows at you

                But she’s always a woman to me.

That woman has power.  She’s not dependent on men.  She seems to know what she wants and is ready to take it.  You get the idea that the song writer, and Billy Joel wrote all these songs, learned to respect her and not take her for granted.  I think something changed in Billy Joel’s outlook that allowed him to find the words to describe this woman.  And I think what changed was that he grew as a man and was able to see women differently.  He may have loved her, but you get the idea it wasn’t totally up to him.  After all, “she can lead you to love” but she can also “take you or leave you.”  I don’t care to dig into Billy Joel’s life to try to determine who that woman might have been, but I know it was a departure.  I took notice.

The Stranger in 1977, 52nd Street in 1978, and Glass Houses in 1980 (which I also have) were Billy Joel’s best selling albums.  He recorded thirteen studio albums of fresh new material, his last being Fantasies and Delusions in 2001.  After that it was live albums, greatest hits, compilations, videos.  Primarily the same songs packaged in different ways.  Thirteen albums spanning 30 years.  None of the songs he played at Wrigley from that body of work could have been less than sixteen years old.  And we didn’t care.  We wanted more.  Concerts, like careers, only last so long.  Fortunately, you don’t have to be contemporary to be credible.  His songs sounded as fresh and true as any new song you will hear tomorrow.  Talent lives on.

I’ve already written too much but I can’t stop without sharing this little anthem off Billy Joel’s first album.  Not his most famous, probably not his best, but as a guy who occasionally blows off steam, I treasure its message.  I think Billy and I are kindred souls in fact, if he has indeed lived out this song. Read and remember.  You may need to use this logic some morning.  It’s from the song “Ain’t No Crime.”   And yes, a woman is involved.

You got to open your eyes in the morning

Nine o’clock coming without any warning

And you gotta get ready to go

You say you went out late last evenin’

You did a lot of drinkin’

Come home stinkin’

And you went and fell asleep on the floor

Ain’t no crime

Say everybody gets that way sometime

Ain’t no crime

You know it’s good to get it on to get a load off your mind

Oh no, it ain’t no crime

And then your lady comes and find you asleepin’

Starts in to weepin’ bout the hours you been keepin’

And you better get your ass out the door

 Well now you tell me you love somebody

And you’ll love ‘em forever

You may love ‘em forever

But you won’t like ‘em all of the time

Well now you tell me you need someone for the rest of your life

You might have somebody

But you won’t want ‘em everyday

Ain’t no crime

Say ev’rybody gets that way sometimes

Ain’t no crime

Well it’s just human nature happens all the time

Oh no it ain’t no crime

And just as surely as the wind keep blowin’

The grass keep growin’

You got to keep goin’

And the Lord have mercy on your soul

Thanks for reading all the way to the end.  Billy would be pleased.