He Is The Entertainer

I've written before about my complicated relationship with Billy Joel, who meant a lot to me when I was very young, but whom I rejected along with most everything associated with Long Island as I got older and worked a little too hard to be cool.

The time to scratch that itch for real came about this week when I finally cashed in the birthright of millions of my neighbors and saw the man perform a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. There was something more satisfying to having "won" our tickets by bidding on them at a PTA auction for our son's school; it felt good to contribute but as it turned out, the seats were donated from the "band friends & family" pool and so we learned as we entered we had excellent seats in the lower bowl, very close to the stage.

Until now I'd only seen him riding his bike around Huntington and getting ice cream with Christie Brinkley at Baskin Robbins while they were still secretly dating 40 years ago.

 

Billy is front and center with a grand piano on a rotating platform. His seven-member band of course is top-notch; we'd seen Mark Rivera (sax, tambornie, vocals etc) lead the "Breakfast w/ the Beatles" band before. The guitar player, Mike DelGuidice, was an excellent singer who did some Zeppelin snippets (Kashmir, Rock n Roll).

We got a kick out of all the dressed-up Long Island Moms in attendance. 

Just like the outstanding SONGS IN THE ATTIC, recorded on the same stage 38 years before, he opened with a stirring "Miami 2017" and we were off. 

Billy was in good spirits and good voice, mentioning he'd just turned 69 ("I used to like that number."). My brother, who used to work at the Garden tells a story of watching Billy rehearse a show as part of his Elton John tour years back only to get so drunk during the course of the day he couldn't go on that night, but Billy is apparently clean and sober now and whatever he was drinking came out of a mug. He dedicated "Don't Ask Me Why" to a little girl in the audience I guess was a granddaughter seated near us. The first half of the show was what he called "fielder's choice," letting the crowd choose which of two songs off various albums they would perform. I won with "Vienna" (over "Just the Way You Are," thank the lord, and with "Zanzibar," (over "Stilletto"), but lost big time with "She's Got A Way" (over "Everybody Loves You Now"). I cheered for "Root Beer Rag" over "The Entertainer" but the latter was performed and turned out to be one of the better selections on the night.

It's Fleet Week here, and so as "Goodnight Saigon" starts a dozen uniformed sailors come out on stage and sing the chorus arm in arm. It was cheesy but the audience loved it and learned the True Meaning of Memorial Day. That's as political as Billy dares to be. I would have liked him to rip Trump a new one and challenge his fans in a new verse or two of "We Didn't Start the Fire" but Billy hasn't bothered. Twenty-five years without a new pop album!

I mentioned this to my friend Edward who in no time had penned a clever suggestion:

Mike Pence, Manafort, kneeling players ruin the sport

Sean Spicer, Kelly Ann, the truth about crowd size

Health care, got no plan, gotta do a Muslim ban!

Fox News, Hannity, parrot all my lies

Ronny Jackson says "Great shape!" Mueller, find the pee-pee tape

US Nazis, they're so fine, Putin is a friend of mine

Fuck our allies from the West, Mexico don't send the best!

Sheriff Joe gets a pardon! DAUGHTER GIVES ME SUCH A HARD-ON!

We didn't start the fire!

Obama lit it! O, Fake News, admit it!

We didn't start the fire!

There was no collusion! It was a spies intrusion!

Give it a shot, Billy. If I can change, you can change!

The hard bargain of the Billy Joel MSG phenomenon played out as he totally went "back wall" with "Stop in Nevada" off PIANO MAN and folks went flying to the men's room and hardly any remaining audience members even applauded. I thought, do you need to hear "New York State of Mind" again? Me, I got up and peed for "Italian Restaurant" -- another chestnut beaten into banality for me by way too many classic-rock radio spins.

I enjoyed the three-sax chorus in "Movin' Out" and the brass was activated again for "Half A Mile Away," which Joel described as a "fukuka" song the band had never before performed live. I could barely believe that was true; in my Southside Johnny-influenced youth that was one of my favorites. "I Go To Extremes" on the other hand came out after I'd already decided Billy Joel was the uncoolest guy ever and would never listen to him again on purpose, but everyone including me enjoyed that one quite a bit. 

After a while I feel into a spell thinking how much of Billy's Winning Streak material was just ripped off stylistically from others, performing the one he ripped off from the Cars ("Sometimes A Fantasy") and the one nicked from Graceland-era Paul Simon ("Middle of the Night"). Billy to his credit never considered being "derivative" a criticism. I guess we all have a idea of what Billy Joel ought to be (for me the post-singer-songwriter, pre-superstar TURNSTILES is the ideal) but he is what he is. There was just no way to stop him from playing Side A of his Greatest Hits at the encore.

He is The Entertainer. 

Setlist

Miami 2017

Pressure

Don't Ask Me Why

Vienna

Zanzibar 

She's Got a Way 

The Entertainer 

Allentown

Goodnight Saigon

Movin' Out 

(Followed by 'Kashmir' (Led Zeppelin) snippet)

Stop in Nevada

New York State of Mind

Half a Mile Away

She's Always a Woman

I Go to Extremes 

My Life

Sometimes a Fantasy

The River of Dreams

Nessun dorma

Scenes From an Italian Restaurant

Piano Man

Encore:

We Didn't Start the Fire

Uptown Girl

It's Still Rock and Roll to Me

Big Shot

You May Be Right

(with "Rock and Roll" (Led Zeppelin) snippet)

It All Depends Upon Your Appetite

Fred Schruers' new Billy Joel book had origins as ghostwritten memoirs, but was recrafted into a bio when the subject pulled out with cold feet. The result is something of a mess that resembles Joel's own career: There's some good stuff early on, then a whole lot of nothing, plenty of bombast and lots of applause.

Much of the early stuff, unfortunately, is marred by comments from a distance of 40 years: Important moments in Joel's career don't happen, they're reflected upon. Although Schruers endeavors to plumb a range of sources in addition to his own conversations with Joel, as in an autobiography it's Joel's own quotes and time-mellowed perspective that carry the narrative. That voice can be witty and perceptive but isn't necessarily objective or in the moment, leaving a book that will confirm fans' best impressions and leave nonbelievers to wonder what more there could be.

To those of us who came of age on Long Island as THE STRANGER exploded, Billy Joel is something of a birthright. But there are things I didn't know. His family fled a successful business in Nuremberg with the rise of Nazism. Joel's father Howard, himself a gifted musician, was left conflicted and bitter following World War II and would return to Europe alone when his family was still young, leaving Billy to bring himself up, countering a geeky piano habit with boxing lessons. Supposedly telling his Mom he preferred to matriculate at Columbia Records over Columbia University, Joel dropped out of high school so as to pursue life with a procession of local bar bands including The Echoes, The Hassles and a ridiculous heavy-metal duo, Attila.

In one of many unusual and troubled relationships Joel would forge, he hooked up with and later married the then-wife of Jon Small, his housemate and drummer in the Hassles and Attila. In addition to becoming the muse of "Just the Way You Are" among many other songs Elizabeth Weber would take over managing Billy's career after a solo debut album, COLD SPRING HARBOR flopped.

With the support of influential Philly radio station WMMR (which also championed Springsteen) Billy (like Bruce), was signed to Columbia Records. He relocated to the singer-songwriter capital of California, worked in a piano bar, and honed a backlog of songs into the PIANO MAN album.

Joel's songs were frequently inspired by interpretations of actual events in his personal life, and Schruers' book spends an awful lot of time quoting lyrics as though to show it. Wife Elizabeth, who had big ambitions as Joel's manager, is the "waitress practicing politics" who succeeds Jon Troy, aka "John at the bar/ quick with a joke/light up your smoke" (Troy is also "Johnny" in the terrific "Say Goodbye to Hollywood"). This practice would continue throughout Joel's recording career, and tiring of revealing himself in such a way is about the only explanation offered -- or pursued --  for Joel's retirement from the pop game, now going strong at 20+ years.

Joel's career proceeded through a hasty, snotty PIANO MAN follow-up (STREETLIGHT SERENADE); rebounded behind the return to New York contemplated in TURNSTILES before hooking up with producer Phil Ramone for the careermaking STRANGER album of 1978. Stylistic and thematic experiments would continue as Joel moved from the jazz influence of 52nd STREET to the rock and new-wave GLASS HOUSES to the doo-wop, 50s pop and soul he explored in the Brinkley Era.

Joel straightforwardly confesses his stylistic promiscuity and doesn't apologize for crowd-pleasing but acknowledges being called "derivative" -- as a criticism, at least -- wounds him. Critic Robert Christgau might have described Joel more accurately as "knowing nothing but going for the pop jugular." I'm generally down with those who've forgiven him for being too popular, too Long Island and too uncool in the 80s and 90s but I still haven't gotten around to assessing STORM FRONT or RIVER OF DREAMS with any seriousness. Schruers offers a little insight into how Joel did all this -- unlike many contemporaries, he wrote melodies first, then the lyrics, and was careful in almost all his songs to include elements in a minor key with sad or doubtful lyrics to match, providing his songs with a depth of feeling that many others working the three-minute symphony circuit could not, even if it cost him cred as the rocker he sometimes thought he was.

Unfortunately, Schruers devotes nearly half his book to examining Joel's largely uninteresting post-pop career. There's a complex legal tangle between the record label, Joel, his business manager and their lawyers (Lesson: After splitting with wife, don't trust financial affairs to her slimy brother). Then there's the divorces, affairs and re-marriages, the car accidents, the rehab stints, the homes on the East End and North Shore, various falling-outs with Elton John, his boats, his custom motorcycles. (Note to all rock stars and biographers: I don't care about your friggin' boats). The last 100 pages are practically unbearable with Schruers going so far as to quote school-newspaper reviews and blog posts in an attempt to flesh out a portrait of Joel as a crusty mensch with a gift for pop songs, forgiveness for his enemies, and weaknesses for his daughter, attractive women, and alcohol. We get that. The whole "Last Play at Shea" thing figures prominently as well: As previously noted, I found Billy's claiming the Shea musical legacy for himself to be personally distasteful, but that appears to have been a strategy by a remorseless road manager.

For all the hard work that went into Schruers' book, there was little insight into Joel that wasn't more efficiently and entertainingly executed in the New York Times Magazine article I linked to here a few years back. Let's hope the next swing breaks some windows.

Between You, Me, and the Staten Island Ferry

One hell of an interview here. Great questions, great answers. Elton John is like a Mom, I'll bet.

That Won't Happen to Us

By 1986, I'd already given up on Billy Joel. From my point of view it'd been pretty much downhill since The Stranger became a phenomenon, although I always had a soft spot for the live record Songs In The Attic, which highlighted his pre-Stranger material in lively arrangements. But by '86, Billy in my opinion had already gone soft, dating a famous supermodel, clawing to the contemporary on the strength of duets with 80s phenomena like Cyndi Lauper and, somehow, Ray Charles. Years later I'd similarly hate Billy Joel for trying to claim Shea Stadium as a part of his legacy despite my strong suspicions that he and most of his fans including the Long Island ones, are Yankee fans. They would approve of Cyndi Lapuer duets and 'Uptown Girl.' It didn't require any imagination.

But the DIMT is all about reconsideration. I'd been formulating a piece in praise of the TURNSTILES album but recently while filling the tank at a Wawa in Bel Air, Maryland, Joel's 1986 single 'A Matter of Trust' blasted across the gas bar. My reaction was not unlike the passerby in the below video. I'm pumping gas in January, trying to stay warm, and... godamnit, I'm dancing. Damn you Billy Joel.