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Piano Man – Billy Joel

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About This Episode

In 1973, Billy Joel released his breakthrough album introducing the world to his signature style of storytelling. More than an album, it’s an intimate journey through the lives of everyday people and experiences the artist himself personally knew and lived. In this Backtrack, we explore the raw, poetic narratives and musical genius of Billy Joel’s Piano Man.

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Show Notes

Transcript

Jon Welcome back to the GenX Grown Up Podcast. Listener to this, the backtrack edition of the GenX Grown Up Podcast. I’m John. Joining me as always, of course, is George. Hey, man.
George Hey, how’s it going, guys?
Jon Not a show without Mo. Hey, Mo.
Mo Hey, how’s it going?
Jon In 1973, Billy Joel realized his breakthrough album introducing the world to his signature style of storytelling. More than an album, it’s an intimate journey through the lives of everyday people and experiences the artist himself personally knew and lived.
Jon In this backtrack, we explore the raw poetic narratives and musical genius of Billy Joel’s Piano Man.
Mo 73.
Jon Yes, what is that?
Mo I know, he said the wrong word. He so he said the wrong word.
Jon What’d I say?
George Yeah. You said realized instead of released both Mo and I caught it at the same time.
Jon but
Jon Oh, oh yeah I did. I’m just gonna do that as a pickup and I’ll put it back in.
George Yep.
Jon Thank you. Yeah. I’d have been doing this next Tuesday if you didn’t tell me. ah Three, two. In 1973, Billy Joel released his breakthrough album introducing the world to his signature style of storytelling.
Jon Good, thank you. 73, blah, blah, bla blah. So is that what, 50? 50 years now, 51 years or something?
Mo 51.
Jon Wow.
George Yep.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Okay.
Mo Yeah.
Jon But it was, I guess that’s why it was always present in my life growing up. This album was never not a thing because by the time I was aware of music, this album was out there.
Mo Yeah.
Jon So people tend to enjoy our musical backtracks. And so we picked a classic for this one. You’re gonna enjoy that. Before we get into that, it’s time for some fourth listener email. Now, normally I say, look, the three of us are on the show. If anyone else listens, that’s our fourth listener. But the fourth listener this time is one of us. It’s Moe. George, remember when Moe was out on vacation and we had Kat on the show?
George One of the greatest days of my life. Yes, sir. I remember that fondly.
Jon but
Jon Ouch.
Mo That’s why I love you George Yeah, this is kind of weird but go for it
Jon So Mo, gosh, it’s gonna be a rough episode. ro Mo drafted an email to us as the fourth listener, since he wasn’t on the show that episode. And here is what Mo had to say. Mo, just take a knee. We don’t need you for this part.
Jon subject line is halloween and mo says oh i just don’t read this anyway here we go hello there first off i want to thank cat for filling in for me she was awesome and so was the episode cat was awesome for sure since i couldn’t be there i thought i’d share one of my halloween experiences growing up in new york city right they just said yep okay
George OK.
George Yeah, I just said OK.
Jon Okay, growing up in New York City, I had an advantage of living in a group of three apartment buildings. One 16 stories, one 14 stories, and one 22 stories. Damn, though. Figure about six to 10 apartments per floor, and you have a ton of candy opportunities. I would have had to go 17 miles to get that many doors.
George Right.
Jon Oh, my older brothers would take me around in my plastic suit with the crappy mask that came with it for percentage of the take. ah So they were, they were skimming off the top. I get you.
Mo Oh yeah, big time.
Jon But I could literally fill a pillowcase and would sometimes come home to dump some off and keep going.
George Mm.
Jon It was kind of an economic indicator. Good years would be huge halls and bad years. It would be much less, but it was always a fun time. One more thing I want to thank Kat for putting up with George and making sure that he, let me finish, make sure that he feels special.
Mo Oh John. John.
Jon I know it’s a thankless job and I’m glad that you were there to help out John with keeping George from indulging in his worst tendencies.
Mo she
Jon Oh, oh, oh, by the way, John, if you happen to read this on air, make sure to leave that last part out. I don’t want George to feel bad. Oh no, sorry. Sorry, Mo.
Mo but Thanks John.
George Yeah, because I wouldn’t have seen the email at all.
Mo Thanks. I really appreciate that man.
George I would have only heard it in the podcast reading.
Jon Okay, pretend that last part wasn’t there.
Mo Yeah, we didn’t do that. We can cut that out, right?
Jon ah Yeah, you’re right, you we’ll edit it out on Tuesday.
George Yeah, you’re going to edit it out of my memory? What the… How are you going to do that?
Jon i I don’t have that look directly into the flashy light.
George There’s going to be a whole bunch of shit said in this episode, ladies and gentlemen.
Jon ah
George Yo, it’s strap in.
Jon oh Mo winds it up after that part with saying again, thank you, Kat and George, you are awesome as usual, Mo.
George Yeah. Thank you, George. Fuck off.
Jon yeah but That feels a little disingenuous now that we have heard the rest of that email.
Mo Well, you should now you understand it.
Jon Yeah, now it makes sense, yeah. You were awesome as usual, George, except for that part where you have your worst tendencies.
George oh
Mo Good job, George.
George Hey, John, that’s like telling everybody to eat a shit sandwich and enjoy the bread, isn’t it, sir?
Jon Okay, yes.
Jon Enjoy the bread, right? I hope you like that part, the other part. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play, right? Well, if that’s an indicator of how this episode is going to go, it should be a good one.
Jon All right, well, Mo, I guess, thank you for your email. I might’ve caused ripples, but it’s my fault, not yours. Fourth listener, if you would like your email featured on the show, and I’ll proofread it first, unlike Mo’s, it’s super easy. Just hit us up at podcast at gendexgaroneup.com. or Read every single one of them. Most of them eventually make it to the show. All right, well, if that is any indicator of how this episode is going to go, it should be a blast. So stick around, we get back. We’re jumping into Billy Joel’s Piano Man.
Jon It’s time to pull a stool up to the piano and listen to and go through Piano Man by Billy Joel.
George oh god it’s gonna be one of those oh now you’re with me mr letter writer
Mo Oh my god. Yeah, I’m with you, George.
Jon Oh, it’s gonna be one of those.
Mo It’s like, oh god.
Mo Sometimes I am. like I gotta keep you guessing, man.
Jon So, he’s a real fair weather friend.
Mo Keep you on your toes.
Jon It depends on, yeah, it depends. It’s hard to believe, but Billy Joel wasn’t always the superstar that we know him as today. Piano Man is just the second studio album by Billy Joel, released as Mo, you mentioned, November 14th, 1973 on Columbia Records.
George Hmm.
Jon This album seems like it, I alluded to earlier, I said it just was kind of is omnipresent in our lives because and none of us were thinking about what pop music was until 74 or five, I assure you.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Oh, yeah, for sure. and And the other thing is like it’s you hear about people say the Beatles were overnight sensation and Billy Joel was a overnight sensation. No, they weren’t.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo None of them were, you know, you know, the Beatles were eight years touring and getting their act together.
Jon Right.
George Right.
Mo And Billy Joel, this like this was even his first album. um His first album didn’t do really well. Like it just.
George Cold Spring Harbor.
Mo Yeah, it just did not do well at all.
George Yeah.
Jon Yep.
George But it had some great songs.
Mo Oh, it has some amazing songs. He actually re-released them later because they were so good.
George Mm hmm.
Mo um But he had some, he was with a group called Family Productions. I guess they were like a smaller publishing group or recording studio.
George Oh, the publishing group.
Jon Oh.
George I thought you when you said he was with a group, I thought you were talking about Attila, the duo that he had before he went solo.
Mo Oh, no, no, no.
Mo And, um, but it was, uh, but there was a ton of like legal difficulties. Matter of fact, that’s why he held off on doing a second album for so long because Columbia had to like help him legally get out of his contract that he had with family productions.
George Mm hmm.
Mo And he had moved to Los Angeles at that point. And he was actually a lounge singer, um, which is hilarious. Think about it.
George Yeah.
Mo You know, people actually heard Billy Joel playing, you know, is George frozen?
George I’m still here, but I got this time a timeout driver, so just the video.
Jon Yeah, you’re good. Yeah. Well, you’re here, nothing’s crashed.
Mo Okay, so keep going.
Jon So you see if it fixes, it fixes.
Mo Okay, okay. he So um yeah, he’s actually a lounge singer and he went under the name of Billy Martin.
Jon Yeah, we’re
George Yeah.
Mo No relation to the Yankee manager. ah That’s his middle name because he didn’t want anyone to associate him with the album when it finally came out. So
Jon Oh.
Mo He hunkered down, got the album done. And let me tell you, this album, I think just pretty much established him as a serious you know musical artist. Overall, it did number it got to like number 27 on the Billboard 200, which is respectable, especially for a, I would say first album, but you know second album, I guess.
Mo It was certified gold in 1975. And the horrible part is, to show you how good Columbia was, um he received a whole 8,000 in royalties.
Jon $8,000?
Mo You know, in royalties for the whole album, which in today is like 45,000, which is still nothing. You know, considering so many hits came out of that.
Jon He’s got to still be he’s got to still be pulling in money today on it, right? Or that was was that just time to publish. I don’t know how that works exactly.
George Now, now, so he stopped pulling any money from the album itself.
Mo Yeah, it depends on the contract.
George What he pulls money on now is re releases, concert tours, uh, putting the songs on compilation, greatest hit albums, that kind of stuff.
Jon Hmm.
Jon OK, OK, yeah.
Mo Yeah. You know, he didn’t sign a good contract.
George But even those are subject to like, whatever the contracts were for those albums or those tours or whatever it was.
Jon Hmm.
George I mean, most musicians do not make any money at all from albums. They mostly make it in tours.
Mo Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s kind of a shame, but yeah.
Jon Yeah, yeah. Would it would it stink if you wrote the album Piano Man, you made it your eight grand and never saw another penny of that and it became you know, a cornerstone of pop music that have been terrible.
Jon Well, it’s just fortunate that he had a touring career to do that with and it is he took off.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo And his career kept going. So, you know, he did really well.
Jon No.
George you know One thing that we haven’t really done that often with these musical podcasts, backtracks, is talk about the other people who contributed to the album in a significant way, mainly the musicians that were in the studio doing the recording or the back backing vocal singers, ah the producers and everything.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George So if you guys don’t mind, I just wanted to run real quick through a list and I’ll try to
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah, yeah, credit where credits do.
Mo Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
George highlight a couple of people with some interesting things. So first off, ah Michael Omartian, I don’t know how to say it, but he played ah the accordion and he also did a lot of the arrangements on the songs for almost the entire album, all but track number five.
George um Then you’ve got ah Jimmy Haskell who did the arrangement for track number five. He’s interesting because he worked with some really top-notch people.
George He worked with Elvis, Neil Diamond, Crosby, Steeles and Nash, Steely Dan, ah Simon and Garfunkel.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon Okay.
George This guy worked with the best of the best. So getting him on track five, which if I remember right, that is ballad, I think is track number five.
Jon That’s right.
Mo Yeah, valid Billy kid.
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George So we’ll talk about that one quite a bit. That’s a, that’s a super popular song from this album. Um, you’ve also got, um, what the, somebody clicked all the things.
George So it, it moved all the way up the list and I lost track of where I was at.
Mo I. I.
Jon Oh, I just clicked off two.
George The, the Trello card, somebody checked them all off. And so it, it, it scrolled my list, but didn’t scroll my card. So anyway.
Mo That’s
Jon Okay, I only checked off the first two, the album credits and the Michael one.
George All right.
Mo cool.
Jon Go ahead, you check them off as as you’re doing them if you want.
George Okay.
Jon Okay, I don’t mess you up.
George Uh, let’s see. Okay.
Mo ah
George Now they had three guys on guitar, ah Richard Bennett, Larry Carlton, and ah Dean Park. So a lot of these guys were Grammy winners in their own right.
Jon Okay.
George They did a lot of different stuff. um Again, Richard Bennett also worked with Neil Diamond. I guess Neil Diamond and Billy Joel share some kind of musical DNA lineage or something through some of these ah guys who worked in the studio.
George Um, but then we get to some of the stuff that I love the most. Eric Weisberg and Fred Hellbrunn both played banjo on this album.
George And you don’t associate the banjo with Billy Joel very much, but Eric Weisberg in particular has a banjo pedigree in that he performed the dueling banjo song that was featured in the movie Deliverance.
Jon Yeah, you hear it though in this album.
Jon but little out out there
Mo Which is a serious, I mean, that’s a crazy amount of banjo music in that though.
George Right, which basically makes ah Billy Joel a one Kevin Bacon step away from being molested by Appalachian hillbillies, which I find funny.
Jon Does that work with music? Okay. If you say so.
George i I’m, you know, it’s movie music. We’re transitioning all kinds of things here.
Jon Okay.
Mo Yeah, we’ll do it.
George ah Wilton Felder, Emery Gordy, they both played bass guitar on there.
Mo Let’s just go with it.
George Ron Tut, Rice Clark played drums on so um the different tracks. Billy Armstrong, he played the violin is how it’s listed on one site, but another site listed as the fiddle.
George And you’ll understand why that’s important when we’re listening to some of these tracks later on, because it’s not a goddamn violin at that point.
Jon No, I know why.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yep.
George Uh, then you had some backing vocals performed by the Creamers and Susan Stewart and company. So that’s Laura Creamer, Mark Kramer and Susan Stewart. They did a tremendous job because there’s a song in this, uh, in this album that almost sounds like there’s a full fucking choir behind him.
Mo Yeah.
George And it’s really just these three people. Plus, you know, I’m sure some of the other studio musicians might’ve contributed a little bit, but they didn’t get listed on the track.
Mo oh sure
George Um, One of the last ones to mention is ah Michael Stewart. He was the producer on this album.
Jon Okay.
George And I think we’ll all agree that ah if it weren’t for him, we might not have got such a polished album for a sophomore effort when you think about it.
George I mean, most sophomore albums are the worst album from an artist, but here Billy Joel had like his seminal breakthrough album, as John talked about in the intro with his second offering.
Mo Oh sure.
Jon Yeah.
Jon yeah And it was all those people contributed to an album that was incredibly well received.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, um Rolling Stone used that, you know, the piano man represented like a new seriousness and flexibility, their quotes for Billy Joel. And I think it was where they just saw you just saw so much potential in this album for what he’s is going to be, I think was part of it, because you can just see it was a whole wide range of music and songs and different styles. And it just shows how flexible he is and just how much talent this man actually has.
Jon Yeah.
Mo um You know after the review billboard say that it showed that you know He’s this is a quote has a fine shot at establishing himself as consistent quality am artist With large-scale songs and dynamic performing range, which is the am m part cracked me up, you know ah But it means that but they saw talent right?
Jon Yeah. Here’s a phone shot.
Mo They recognized that this guy wasn’t like just some random person playing piano, you know He had some you know, some serious skills
Jon And like you guys, I’ve probably spent the last week or so re-listening to this album to get accustomed to it. And the main thing I don’t like about this album is the creepy cover art, this super uncanny valley photo of a young Billy Joel. And I looked it up because it’s not a photo, it’s actually an illustration. It’s a painting done by this guy named Bill Imhoff, who apparently was known for doing a lot of illustrations on album covers and other stuff apparently and this is like his thing like on the album cover like Billy Joel’s eyes are not quite facing in the same direction and there it’s super close up and on one of the yeah it’s very flat and on the back of it if you flip it ah invert some albums have white with black print
Mo Right.
Mo It almost seems flat, almost.
Jon And it’s like the hairs on his head are like weird and stringy. Like maybe he laid real hair on the album. It’s really creepy looking, and but I guess I can forgive it since it’s such a good album, but it does strike me as I wish it was something nicer.
George I remember the first time I saw this album cover, it was after I’d saw the first Phil Collins, no jacket required album cover.
Jon Mm hmm.
George And they reminded me so much of each other, but they’re a decade apart in release.
Mo Lv8.
Jon Sure.
George And I’m sure that they had no relation. Like I’m sure whoever did Phil Collins record, didn’t look back at this Billy Joel when he go, that’s the vibe we’re going for.
Mo Mm hmm.
George But God damn, they’re both kind of creepy and spooky.
Jon e
Mo Yeah, I agree.
Jon Yep. Yep. Okay. So we’ve laid out the groundwork. Now we get back. We’re going to drop the needle on side one and walk through all five tracks. So stick around. We’ll be right back.
Jon Okay. All right. Well, let’s start with track number one, which you could maybe mistake this. I did when I first pushed play, is this a country album? But a lot of great, a lot of those artists we talked about a second ago, this is Travel and Prayer.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Okay, I’ll pick up this and then you guys jump with everyone.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Now Travel Prayer peaked at number 77 on the Hot 100 list. Again, not bad for that sophomore outing to get the first track on the Hot 100.
Jon Anybody?
George That was the most abrupt stop in the history of this podcast.
Mo I know. I thought you were still going.
Jon Well, listen, the the the last three times you said you trailed on too long, so I tried to stop it there.
George You did. you would I’m reading my words and that’s it.
Jon Okay.
Mo There’s a happy medium in there.
George I’m done.
Jon Okay. You’re like, did John freeze? Okay. All right. Let me try one more time then I’ll find a middle ground. All right. Three, two, so travel and prayer peaked at number 77 on the hot 100 list, uh, which not bad for the first song on a sophomore album, as you said, and, and the, the, the country feels are so heavy with this one.
Mo Yeah, I like this as a first song because it was just like upbeat. You know, it was just it was just a good song to listen to like as a first song on an album. I thought it was like a good choice because also kids, you know, they were very careful about the order of songs on an album because you really had no choice.
Jon Mm hmm. Yeah.
Mo You usually played them in that order. So you’re having a good lead in song.
George Yep.
Mo I think was important on this.
George Yeah, I agree. it It feels very fast, very fun.
Mo Mm hmm.
George Banjos and fiddles. We get banjos and fiddles in a Billy Joel song.
Jon Yeah.
Mo There you go.
George I love that. They’re not violins. They’re fiddles. I mean, he has some other songs that you could say have violins, but this one has fiddles.
Jon yeah
George I think my favorite part of the song though, is the epilogue with just him and the country band playing. And they even have a mouth harp in there, which we,
Mo Yeah. waing waing Wang, Wang, Wang.
Jon bow mouth barrrow bow bell
George really need more mouth harp in songs today. we We don’t have enough mouth harp, I think.
Mo More cowbells.
Jon but It’s a lost art truly, yeah. the yeah The backing band, who I’m sure are some of the guys you mentioned, they’re known as the Sons of the Pioneers. They were known for performing with, wait for it, Roy Rogers, among other people, fits right in.
Mo Oh, wow.
George Yes, absolutely.
Jon Yeah, and I looked up, ah Billy Joe wrote this song as a prayer of protection for a friend who is preparing to embark on a trip to Europe.
Mo Oh.
Jon So, you know, you’re off to traveling, here’s a prayer of protection for you.
George okay
Jon ah And like, sure, that fits, I guess, if you listen to it that way.
George i mean Yeah, the lyrics, you talk there’s a lyric in there where it says, protect this person as they’re coming home to me.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm hmm.
George I mean, it’s, it makes perfect sense. And it’s, it’s just such a fun upbeat.
Mo Mm hmm.
George As Mo said, you need something sometimes just to kick you a little bit in the goose and get the album going.
Mo Yeah.
George And I can imagine listening to this album for the first time,
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon Yeah, it’s fun.
George You know, if you were like, I wasn’t, I was alive when this album came out, but I was too.
Jon Right.
George So it’s not like I get daddy, mommy, go buy me, Billy.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George Don’t know. But I would imagine that if I was a fan of music at that time and I heard this album, this song would make me absolutely want to listen to the next song after that, which then you get the song.
Mo yeah Yeah. Hmm.
Jon Which is very, very, very different.
Mo And I mean, and this next song, okay, this is a song that everybody knows, probably one of his most famous songs ever, it’s Piano Man.
Mo So it’s the title track of the album, which I mean, so somebody recognized pretty quickly, I think that this was going to be a big hit.
Jon Yeah.
Mo um And it’s kind of like we mentioned earlier that when he was between albums, he worked as like a lounge singer. And it’s kind of like a fictionized retelling, although some of the people in the song were based on real people, which was interesting, I thought, you know, like the guy who wants to be a novelist, he said there was a guy at the bar who wrote every day, you know, sit at the bar and write, you know, it all so.
George mm hmm.
George Sure.
Jon Yep.
Jon Mm hmm. The real estate novelist, right?
Mo Yep. And the waitress was actually his wife.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo She worked there with him.
Jon That’s right.
Mo So, so he said something he made up for musical, but you know, some of them were actually real people. And I think this was one of the ones that really helped him with his, I just love it. Cause it sets a place like I could picture sitting in this place, you know, just by the way he’s saying.
Jon I can’t I can too. Certainly. Yeah, it’s there’s like a yeah there’s a melancholy to this song.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It’s not a real upbeat song. This is a guy who’s just grinding out playing on the piano, which is I guess what Billy Joel was doing at the time that he wrote this when he was working in the bar.
Mo yeah
Jon It’s interesting for as a musician. This is a and three four waltz time. which is unusual for pop songs. It’s got that do don’t don’t do don’t don’t like you could waltz to it.
Jon It’s that three, four time signature.
Mo Oh, huh. Interesting.
Jon And yeah, and i I never realized that until you know, just think of most pop songs are in four, four time, like everything you’ve heard, but this one isn’t. And that’s why it has that sing song kind of like, you know, breathing feel to it as it goes through.
George So for me, I’ve got two notes about this song running through my head. Number one, the wife that he talks about, you know, that was the waitress in the bar, she was the former girlfriend of his bandmate from Attila that he stole.
Mo Yeah.
Mo yeah
George And that’s what broke up the band, which is fun.
Mo Yeah.
George Uh, Billy Joel has had an interesting history with the ladies, shall we say. Uh, but also he doesn’t like this song.
Mo Is that weird?
George And it’s not because he plays it every night as his encore, which he does, but he doesn’t like the song because he has said in multiple interviews, he feels like it’s not a very good or well-written song.
Jon that crazy?
Mo Yeah.
George He feels like it’s more of a limerick than a song.
Jon Wow.
George da and da and da
Mo Interesting.
Jon Mm hmm.
George but and and up but That’s how he feels about this song.
Jon It is, yeah.
George And I’ve seen him say it multiple times in like, when he goes on things like the daily show or, you know, late night David Letterman kind of stuff, when he’s on those shows and they ask him about piano man, cause they’re always going to, he just simply isn’t a fan of the song as much as the rest of the human race is.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon Hmm. Yeah.
Mo Yeah, and I was actually surprised that this only hit 25 on the Billboard Hot 100. I was surprised.
George Yeah.
Mo I thought it was under my head. I guess I always imagined it was like a number one hit.
Jon number one hit. That’s what I’m thinking. Yeah.
George It’s just like Bruce Springsteen born in the USA.
Mo Yeah.
George The man never had a number one hit. You’d think piano man has got to be number one for Billy.
Mo Exactly.
Jon Right. Mm hmm.
George And you’re like, that never made a number one. It feels like we should start a campaign to get this song moved into number one. However, that would happen these days. I don’t know if it has to play a billion times on Spotify to get that or something, but it’s a damn shame.
Jon But it’s got to show up in stranger things and it’ll get take off just like Kate Bush did.
Mo Yeah, really.
George Right. Yeah.
Jon That’s what it’s going to take. I also have to shout out Piano Man as as far as I know, being the only Billy Joel song that got its own Weird Al Yankovic parody.
Mo Oh.
George Okay.
Jon Ode to a superhero. He said, Sling us a web.
George Yeah.
Jon You’re the Spider-Man.
Mo Oh, my God.
Jon It was all about it was basically the story of the first Spider-Man movie.
George Right.
Mo Oh, that’s horrible. But but again, like, you know, it’s it’s one thing he does in his album, it’s like every song is almost like a different style.
Jon We’re awesome.
Mo And the next song is even yet another kind of style of music, it seems.
Jon Mm hmm. Kind of.
George Yeah. I, I think the next song after re-listening to this whole album, which I hadn’t done probably in 30 years that I listened to the album in order, um, to prepare for this, the next song ain’t no crime may end up being my favorite.
Mo Yeah, me too.
Mo Okay, I can see that.
Mo Yeah, that’s fine. So I’d be like, no, I agree with you, George. I can see why this could be your favorite. It’s a great song.
George I think the reason why it’s my favorite song is because It has a sassy blues type of feel to it. It’s almost as though he was planning the River of Dreams album, which River of Dreams is one of my favorite songs of Billy Joel’s collection.
Jon Hmm.
George It’s almost like he was planning that song 30 years in advance or however long it was between those two albums, because there’s this just this sassy blues, like,
George like ah like a like a down-home southern gospel kind of feel to this but it not like in a sad way it’s not that kind of blues but just like the it ain’t no crime for me to do whatever the hell I want kind of feel I love this song
Mo Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.
Jon ah
Jon There’s an indignation to it, isn’t there? It’s I jotted down. It’s very much like a rock soul hybrid, like I can feel like ah a soul in a spirit to it. And I really so many of the songs on here, maybe all of them, and not all of them, most of them, they have a theme that I’m almost certain sprang out of and backed up by many interviews, sprang out of his own struggles and life experience and thing.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I mean, all artists do that to some degree, but he has said that this album is pretty much autobiographical for him or people he knew or people that he was was working or experienced, you know,
Jon spent time with.
Mo Right.
Jon The theme is like, you’re never gonna live up to expectations. Whatever it comes to, love, life, career, you’re never gonna live up. It’s okay. Forgive yourself. What does he say? Ain’t no crime to be human or something.
Jon Stay out late and have a good time.
George Right.
Jon It’s like, there you go. That’s it. You hold yourself to too high a standard. Just relax and enjoy life. You’re never gonna be all that you wanted to be. And that’s okay.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Okay, and if nobody has anything else, I have an easy way into the next one. Great, that’s great.
Mo ah you Okay, go for it.
Jon Yeah, I do.
Jon And I think that’s equally true, not only of this song, but of the next one on the album, which was written to his wife, the one that he stole from a former bandmate, Elizabeth, it was written for his wife, and it’s called You’re My Home.
George and
Jon Let me get to my notes here, yeah.
Jon Three two.
Jon Doesn’t this sound like John Denver almost?
Mo oh be big time
Jon It’s like take me home country roads.
George Yeah.
Jon It could segue into it really easily. It has such like a ah light pop country song to it. And I really like that.
George Yeah. I, the note that I made for myself when I was re-listening to it was I could see this in a 70s feel good movie during the travel montage.
Mo yeah
George like something like a like maybe the bad news bears breaking training when they go to Houston and they got to play in the big game.
Jon Sure. Yeah.
Mo Oh, big time.
George I could see this like as the kids are bouncing around in the van and this song playing somehow. I don’t know why it just evoked that. like You were talking earlier mo about how Piano Man puts an image into your mind.
Mo Mm hmm.
George That’s what this song did for me.
Jon Mm hmm.
George John Denver is is exactly what I said to you when we were talking before we started recording.
Jon Yep.
George So we all had the same kind of idea. I it’s just such a sweet, like, I don’t know, innocent and pure song, I guess.
Mo Yeah.
Jon and It’s a little naive, even it’s just kind of like, Oh, I love you so much.
George Yeah, which.
Jon you know but And he’s younger.
Mo Yeah, he’s young.
Jon It makes sense.
Mo yeah He’s young.
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah, I mean, it contrasts greatly with the last song on the album, which we’ll talk about on side two.
Jon Yeah, right.
George But yeah, this is like the opposite of that.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah. And you know, it’s one of these, every time I hear about these musicians who say, Oh, I wrote this song for somebody.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo That always annoys me a little bit because I don’t have like a 10th of this talent to be able to do something like this. And it’s probably a lot cheaper than buying something. But you know, I wrote you this amazing song that’s going to be recorded.
Mo I mean, how do you top that?
Jon mo I don’t know if you knew this already, but that is exactly the deal. I said it was for his wife, Elizabeth.
Mo Hmm.
Jon He bought it he wrote it for her as a Valentine’s Day present because he couldn’t afford chocolate or flowers.
Mo Oh, jeez.
Jon And the last little note that I made, I didn’t know this. This was the B side of the Piano Man single. You’re My Home was what you’d get on the flip side of that 45.
George Oh. Wow.
Mo Oh, okay.
Jon A 45 Kids is another kind of record.
Mo for Exactly. yeah I was like, okay, forget it’s for you at home.
Jon Okay, I won’t go into all that. that’s but
Mo but It’s a smaller record.
Jon Yes.
Jon I guess the last one.
Mo So going yeah, so we’re up to the last song on side a of the album um And this is like actually one of my favorite songs. It’s the ballad of Billy the kid I Just really I don’t know something about this. I just really like this song because it’s The thing with Billy Joel is that you he’s one of the few, I say few, but he’s one of the people, you hear his songs, you actually are listening to the lyrics.
Mo like You’re you’re like processing them, like you’re trying to understand them.
Jon You should be. Yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo like And you don’t do that for everybody. Sometimes you know lyrics don’t make any sense at all and you’re okay with it. But this one, as long as you don’t care about historical accuracy, is a really great story.
Jon Right.
Mo ah
George You know, it was funny to me. The thing I think I love the most about the song is the harmonica at the start of it, because while Billy Joel is obviously most famously known for the piano, he plays the harmonica a hell of a lot on a lot of his different songs.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm hmm.
George You know, he he does the piano and the harmonica at the same time, you know, where’s the little neck strap thing. But you talk about you know how he has all this. I saw an interview with him probably 20, 25 years ago when he was promoting Stormfront, which um had the Downeaster Alexa song on it, which is a song about you know fishing and the hard times that the Northeastern fishing people are going through and stuff at that time.
George And the the interviewer asked him some innocuous question about that song and he said, well, I just simply have the ability to make my voice sound like a bunch of different walks of life. And that’s what I like to write about and sing.
Mo i Okay.
Jon Well, it goes back to most thing about having too much damn talent. Yeah, I guess so.
George Yeah. But he does. If you listen to his entire history, we’re talking about piano man here. Think about all the like pressure.
Mo Yeah.
George That’s hard rock kind of driving thing compared to ballad ability, the kid, which has got the country that ramps up and everything.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George He, he always is able to tailor his voice and his song to a walk of life to an every man like Allentown, like steel worker.
Jon Mm hmm.
George Everything he does is that way.
Jon Yeah, huh. Yeah, I like the clip-clop intro of this one. It’s another one that could be mistaken for country.
George Mm hmm.
Jon But unlike the first one, this kind of starts with a dong, dong, dong. Like I could see somebody w ride an old, you know, knock-kneed horse down the trail, but then it turns into a pop song.
George Right.
Jon And as Mo was saying, Billy the Kid wasn’t from West Virginia. He didn’t rob banks and he wasn’t hanged.
Mo yeah
Jon When asked about this, Billy Joel said, it’s not meant to be a story, but more of an experiment in setting a tone like the soundtrack to a movie or something.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon It was just, I like the idea of Billy the Kid. I’m writing my own mythology to him. And this is what it came up with. And it turns out to be, I mean, one of the highlights on the album for me.
George I honestly, I always thought there was a duality in the title of the song. Cause Billy the kid, the country, Western folk hero, anti-hero guy, but Billy Joel, the kid, right?
Jon Billy Joel.
Mo Mmhmm.
George He was young. This was only his second ah solo album.
Mo Hell yeah!
Jon Oh yeah. Mm hmm.
George And I thought, did he ever have a fantasy of robbing banks?
Mo Huh.
George Cause I know he didn’t come from West Virginia, but maybe he just was like, you know, it might be fun to rob a bank and go on a crime spree. I don’t know. He just, That young Billy Joel, I could see him doing some crazy shit like that.
Jon Maybe. I don’t think he ever pulled the trigger because if he couldn’t afford flowers for his wife and had to write a song, he probably wasn’t robbing banks.
George No, no. Yeah.
Jon So he probably never went through with it.
George I’m good. 543. Ladies and gentlemen, time to flip the album because our needle has just popped in the air and we want to jump over to side two of Piano Man.
George With that, we’re going to go with track number six. I can’t believe that they can only get 10 songs on a goddamn album back then, but apparently that was the limitation of the medium.
Mo Yeah.
George This one comes to us. It hit number 80 on the Hot 100. It’s worst comes to worst.
Jon Cool.
George Right? Three, two, the first note that I wrote when I re listened to the song was this feels like it’s a Latin song when it starts to me.
Jon Yep.
George Like it’s got some kind of like scraping kind of sound there at the beginning that just feels like I’m going to hear Rob Thomas and you know, Santana start playing a guitar or something.
Mo Mm.
Mo yeah
Jon ah
George when I hear this song, but it’s it’s just an another interesting lyrical and musical choice for an album that is so diverse. I mean, we’ve got country, we’ve got ballads. Now we get this Latin feel thing to me. It’s it’s just really weird that they put all these songs together, but they all work.
Jon I kind of, when I made notes, I was thinking kind of a funk sound that I heard in there, but also the the Latin is not off, because I also noted that the syncopated feeling, everything is kind of on the upbeat for a syncopated thing.
George OK.
Mo little bit
George Mmhmm.
Jon This track, Worst Comes to Worst, was the follow-up single to Piano Man. So Piano Man was the first release off this album, and then was Worst Comes to Worst. and it’s i like I like digging into the story of these these tracks.
Jon I think probably that’s how I choose the ones I like the most is the story. And you said, Mo, these have stories, you listen to the lyrics, you hear it.
Mo little bit.
Jon And this is more of, I think we were talking in the break, a lot of these are about traveling. And this is about this singer who has an uncertain future on the open road, but he’s determined to persevere.
Jon And Billy Joel said in several things that this whole album, but especially this track, is very autobiographical. It’s how he felt on the road, you know putting in the time making his bones, trying to become a professional musician.
Mo Yeah. And one thing I might know I saw in this was that I wrote in this was that it seems like intro to almost all these songs was almost like he was like not trying to hide. Like he he started like, OK, this is going to be a country influenced song.
George Mm hmm.
Mo This is going to be this kind of song is going to be that kind of.
George Yeah.
Jon ah Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Mo And they will start like almost pure of that before it kind of morphs into the whole orchestra and all the other instruments kind of coming in and making it his own song, which I thought was just interesting.
Jon Hmm.
Jon Nothing else on this one I can get a move on.
George Hmm.
Jon Okay.
Mo Hmm.
Jon All right.
Jon You know, we had talked earlier about the second track piano man also the title track of the album and how kind of melancholy it is and sad. For me, it holds not a candle to this next track.
Mo this is
Jon Stop in Nevada.
Jon Okay. Three, two.
Jon Yeah. There is something about the complexity of the story being told in this track. First, it’s kind of blue grassy again. You were talking about these intros, Mo, very country sounding a little bit.
George Mm hmm.
Mo Yeah.
Jon This is effectively This is the lyrical and musical equivalent to a Dear John letter. There’s the end of a relationship. This woman has left the man. you know It tells this story and it’s a complex story about how they tried to make it work and they couldn’t and it’s all over and she’s moving on and headed out to California. And as depressing as it is, I found it also very evocative. For me, it told one of the best stories here that I could really, I could read between the lines and see these people almost in my mind.
George I just want to point something out because you made a really bold statement with this song.
Jon Okay.
George You said piano man doesn’t hold a candle to stop in Nevada. Am I understanding?
Jon In terms of sadness, it’s sadness, not quality.
George in turn. Okay.
Mo okay
George Because I wasn’t sure really where you’re, cause I’m like, wow, because stop in Nevada is a song that I would argue probably nobody realizes is a Billy Joel song.
George Unless they hear him singing it compared to piano man being arguably his most popular song ever. And not that popularity makes a song great or not great. Um, but I did enjoy the song, but,
George It was my least favorite of the album.
Mo Okay.
Jon Really, OK.
Mo Yeah, mine too.
George It’s not that I don’t like it.
Mo Mine too.
George It’s just was my least favorite of the album. I like all the songs.
Jon Hmm.
George This one was just number 10 out of 10 for me.
Mo Yeah, I agree. It was the same with me.
Jon Hmm.
Mo And I think it was more mostly because of just the tone of the song. It was just sort of like to me is almost like droning a little bit. You know, like it wasn’t as upbeat as the rest of them.
George Yeah. Felt a little plain Jane to me.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Right.
Mo And again, not not a bad song. I mean, you know, compared what you’re, you know, radiant against it.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo You know, how do you compare that? But for me, it was just I didn’t like this as far as the rest of the album.
Jon Yeah, to your point, I agree. Musically, it is not as dynamic and interesting as Piano Man, not by a country mile.
George Right.
Jon but It’s just, yeah, for me, it’s the emotion and the picture it paints. Yeah, that’s fair.
George Well and I think for you this song does the same thing that hit one of his later songs, Lullaby, does for me.
Jon Okay.
George So Lullaby is extremely plain. It’s literally just his voice and a piano.
Jon Mm hmm.
George But lullabies emotional content is one of my favorite Billy Joel songs of all time.
Jon Hmm.
George It’s the one I love to sing when I’m by myself and don’t care what anybody else hears.
Mo yeah
George I get that same thing that you’re feeling with this stop in Nevada song.
Jon Yeah.
George It’s, it’s not a bad song. It just didn’t hit that with me, but I can see it did with you.
Jon Understandable. Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Mo and Jump to the next one.
Jon Sure.
Mo Okay.
Mo Yeah. And actually the next song is also another relationship song, I guess you call it, you know, you put them back to back and that song is if I only had the words to tell you.
Jon Yup, it is. Yup.
Mo Five, four, three. So, you know, this is another song, like someone’s trying to find the right words to tell their, you know, their significant other, their lover, whatever. um This one, my only note was I just love this one line when he says like, when the simple lines have all been taken and the radio repeats them every day.
Mo You know, it’s like someone’s trying to find the right words to say, but everything they come up with has been said already so that they can’t come up with anything original.
George Hmm.
Mo I just thought it was like just a neat lyric that he had in the song.
Jon I’ll give you that one lyric, but I didn’t like the song at all.
George Oh, wow.
Jon And again, it’s not the musicality. i It’s almost diametrically opposed to the depth of the previous track, Stop in Nevada. This one is so shallow.
Mo It is.
Jon It’s the guy standing in the Walgreens looking for a card for his wife because he can’t say, I love you. I’m going to go find a card that says the words that I can’t, I’m not man enough to just man up and tell your lady how you feel.
Jon It just feels so, so oh just soft.
George See, i think i I think people come at these songs from their own personal backgrounds and experiences, and so they have different reactions to them.
Jon ah Yeah, not for me.
Mo Oh, sure.
Jon Sure. sure
George Because to me, while you’re saying, man up and go tell your mom, to me, I’m like, this guy is tormented in such a strong way that he can’t figure out how to tell her the person that he cares the most about what he really wants to say.
George To me, that’s tragic. And I identify with that because I know many times in my younger life when I had that girl that I was infatuated with across the classroom or something like that, I just didn’t know what to say to her because it felt like anything I said was going to come out stupid.
Mo Yeah.
George And that’s what this song said to me. Now, also, arguably to me, this song feels like the most classic Billy Joel song of any of the others on the album, including Piano Man.
Jon Hmm.
Mo Yeah.
George It just feels Billy Joel to me. Maybe even a little bit more than Piano Man, even though that’s his, you know, Magnum Opus, really.
Jon I like it better if you don’t listen to the words, I’ll say that.
Mo What they also had to keep in my head as I was listening to this is that Billy Joel was young when he wrote these songs. I mean, you know, so I could see like, you know, when I was in my early 20s, you know, I didn’t know shit.
George Oh, sure.
Jon Shows here.
Mo I mean, come on, you know, and I probably and I.
Jon Mm-hmm. None of us did.
Mo was struggling to figure out how to tell people the right things or not feel like an idiot. So that’s why it’s like as an older personality or someone you know like we all are, um maybe it does seem a little like, you know, come on, you can do it. But when I was in my 20s, I probably when I heard the song, I was probably like, you know, he understands me, man.
George Right, exactly.
Jon well Look, when I was 20.
George Like, I think John must have never had any problems telling a woman how he felt, apparently, and Moe and I were like everyone else at that age.
Jon Just tell her.
Jon No, it was, it was not that it was easier than that. I just didn’t have a girlfriend. So it didn’t, I didn’t need to never came up. It wasn’t an issue.
George Okay, fair enough.
Jon Not a problem. And by the time I had a girlfriend, I knew that’s right running around.
George Just you and your Halloween Hulk shirt, I guess you were happy.
Jon That’s right. It’s all it took. So let’s transition. We’re on, I can’t believe we’re up to the next to last track on the album.
Mo Yeah.
Jon And this is one that, man, they stacked this album. Well, this makes a great penultimate track for an album. I think it’s really well chosen somewhere along the line.
Jon I just want to hear it again, right quick. Make sure it’s the one I’m thinking of.
George I was going to say in the future, you should play the songs when we’re about to talk about them.
Jon Yeah.
George Not at the start, I think.
Mo Yeah.
Jon What do you mean when we’re about to talk?
George Like what you’re doing right now is what we should do for each song.
Jon Oh, Oh, a little more lead in.
George I think no, no, no, exactly.
Jon You mean like that?
Mo No, just for us, so it’s a little more fresher in our heads.
George Cause you played these songs all for us before we started.
Jon oh Oh, you mean play them right here instead of in the break.
George Yeah.
Jon Okay. You’re saying like ah make it a break here.
George Yeah.
Jon I see. Yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon Okay. Yeah. We can do both too. That way we can have content and we can bring it here that we have it for both.
George Sure.
Jon So anyway, but yes, it’s that. So, okay. We’re coming back after the lead in three, two,
Jon What are we gonna say? Here it is. Three, two. So this again, Billy Joel didn’t tell me this, but as he’s talked about all the album, some autobiographical stuff in here, this is another one that I enjoy because I can see the story and I can relate. He’s discussing the pleasures of all the fine things in wife. you know and discussing the pleasures of all the fine things in life.
Jon You know, fancy wine and cigarettes and how they’ll come back around and haunt you and bite you in the ass if you overindulge in them or you have these vices.
George yeah Maybe this was, he wrote this one right after he broke up with that woman that he was married to.
Jon Maybe so.
George I don’t know.
Jon She was headed to Nevada and he was having cigarettes and wine, right?
George Maybe.
Mo Yeah.
Jon and So I have more, I’ll jump in here.
Mo Okay.
Jon ah ah That’s okay, that’s fine.
Mo Yeah. Keep going.
George Yeah, I didn’t have much for this one.
Jon It transitions then after the the drink and the smoke and everything. Then he gets into ah how lust and ambition in the second verse and how those vices will come back around.
Jon And so maybe that’s the next relationship after the chick heading to Nevada. And I love this line, the fun falls through and the rent comes due.
George a
Jon That’s a gotta pay the piper right there.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It’s like, oh, you had your fun. Now it’s time to deal with the repercussions.
Mo Yeah, and this is another one. In my 20s, I think this song totally made a lot more sense. Like you said, you think you’re invincible when you’re that age, right? You’re late teens, early 20s, you think life goes on forever, you’ll deal with it tomorrow, that kind of thing.
George Sure.
Jon Mm hmm. Sure.
Mo And then it’s about that same time when you realize that’s not always the case and you got to, like you said, pay the bills, you got to be responsible. So like I said, this seems like a song written for that early 20s kind of guy kind of song.
Jon I don’t feel that it’s that young, like I feel could it it could work anytime. It’s certainly learning a lesson that you should have learned earlier in life. but it always applies. you know Whatever, if you overindulge, if you overdo, you’re eventually gonna have to deal with it.
Mo Yeah.
Jon So I like the theme. it’s Maybe it’s in the middle. It’s middle age. It’s not the either end. So I do enjoy it.
George Well, if you want to talk about songs that talk about indulgence and bad stuff, this next song, the last song on the album has an incredibly controversial history, as well as the lyrics.
Jon Oh, yep.
George It’s Captain Jack.
George Three, two.
Jon Cool.
George Mo. I know you put a note in here.
Mo Yeah.
George I want you to read it because I know the same thing, but you put the note in.
Mo Oh.
George So I want you to read it because the stuff I want to talk about in this song, I don’t know if I should talk about it here or in our next segment because this song has a lot.
Mo Oh, good yeah yeah. Save something. Yeah, so the note I had for this one was that this was the first time he played on TV was he played this song on Don Kirchner’s rock concert in 1974.
Jon Yeah.
George Mm hmm.
Mo So it was his first television appearance and this is the song he played.
Jon Do you think they heard it in advance and approved it?
George Yeah, he played. No, no, no, no. So he played this and two other songs. He did three songs on the show that day and he had to change the masturbation lyric to la, la, la.
Jon OK.
Jon but
George So they absolutely didn’t approve it. It’s kind of like that thing with the doors from that movie that Val Kilmer did, where they tell him to change the hire song and he doesn’t want to do it.
Mo Oh, light my fire.
Jon Oh.
George They, they got Billy Joel to change that because, you know, he’s still young in this at this point. He still doesn’t want to buck the system because he needs to make money. And as we found out, you know, he’d make shit on some of these songs that we found out earlier.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Jon If you drink it in case you’re not familiar with the song, we’ve been kind of talking around it. It talks about a drug dealer and how he can help you out.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Joel said this song is based on a real person, a drug dealer. but I’m sorry. Is that something you’re going to talk about later?
George That’s all the shit I was going to be talking about later.
Jon OK, I’ll leave that part out. That’s fine. That’s fine. I’ll leave out the bass in a real person. No problem. Yep. We’re also going to talk about how Joel defends it as an anti-drug song.
George ah That part I wasn’t, no.
Jon Okay. I’ll do that. I’ll do that part.
Mo Go there, yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah. So, okay. I won’t do that part. The previous one. the Now, according, and it’s all about doing drugs of some form or fashion and Captain Jack is gonna get you high tonight.
George Mm hmm.
Jon And you said it’s much controversy. A lot of people gave him a hard time about it. According to Billy Joel, this is an anti-drug song because it talks about spending your life doing that rather than doing other things is kind of the, the the what’s implied though not explicitly said.
George Yes.
George Yeah, he talks about the characters from the point of view of the narrator being losers, but people just here get you high tonight and all the stuff and they automatically think it’s, they just don’t look at something, especially
Mo Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Jon Right.
George when they want to find a way to take a song down or an album down or an artist down, they just look at the surface and they make an assumption really quick and they they just go after it. It’s kind of like ah Kevin Smith talks about how the Catholic people jumped all over his case about dogma or chasing Amy with the gay themes and everything.
George you know He was, no, the things I’m talking about, I’m showing the dumb people to highlight the good and you’re not getting it.
Jon Yeah. yeah
Jon Right.
Mo Sorry. So, yeah, and I mean, we talked about the words of but musically, that’s why I really love about the song though, because it starts kind of like slow, but it’s like a full, you know, it’s like, you know, your heart’s pumping at the end of this song, you know, and that’s why I really love about it.
George Mm hmm.
George Just like Billy the Kid, right?
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Yeah, yeah, it is.
George Very much like the ballad of Billy the Kid. It’s a similar thing. Interesting enough. And we’re going to talk a lot more about this song and Billy the Kid in the next segment.
Jon Yep.
George But ah he he took this song out of his live performance rotation, which is funny because this song
Jon Spoiler alert.
George was widely popular as a live version because of a recording he did when he was promoting a different album and tour that this song hadn’t been released yet on this album because it was promoting his first album, what was ah Cold Spring Harbor.
George So this song was most popular as a live version, but he didn’t play it in live concerts throughout the eighties or nineties. Didn’t bring it back until 2008 when he started doing the live at Shea stadium concerts.
Mo Really?
Mo Wow.
Jon Well, now he has the cache to do what he wants at that point.
Mo Yes, true.
Jon And maybe by now people understand what the song is about.
George Sure.
Jon And they’re not looking to ban him anymore. Cause he’s a superstar. So now you have the latitude.
George Well in Yeah, there’s a lot more tolerances now that are different and change.
Jon Yeah.
George We talk about that all the time, our genics experience, right? It’s stuff that was felt about one way. You know, we did the Dukes of Hazzard episode. We all love Dukes of Hazzard when we were kids, but now we’re like, uh, maybe, maybe we shouldn’t have been so, such big fans of that rebel flag on top of that orange car.
Jon See it in a different light. Yep. Yeah.
George but I love that billy joel is back to a place now where the longest song on this album clocking in at seven minutes and fifteen seconds.
Mo Yeah.
George Can be something that’s a staple of his money earning live concerts in. If you haven’t seen that Live at Chase Stadium concert series, he did two concerts and they put it on a DVD and they combined everything because he had different guest artists come in and sing songs with him over the two nights.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Oh. Mm hmm.
George It’s something to behold. And this Captain Jack song was a tremendous fan. Like they just went nuts over the song and I i do too.
Jon Hmm. Well, if you have been paying attention, fourth listener, you could probably divine which of these tracks on this album are our favorites. So stick around, we get back from the break. We’re going to each champion our favorite track from this album, Billy Joel’s Piano Man, and tell you why. Stick around.
Mo It was really tough to pick a track.
George Hmm.
Mo to to to say like, this is my favorite song.
Jon Mm-hmm. I get that.
Mo But you know after listening to the album about 10, 20 times over the last week doing this is coming up, um the one I could probably just keep listening to over and over again was the ballad ability to kid.
Jon okay
Mo And I think for me, it was like, I just love the fact that you’re hearing a story.
George Hmm.
Mo it I mean, it feels like a story. And the the way it kind of starts off a little slow and then picks up so like a grand song. And for me, the thing that really kind of puts the whole song together is actually the last dance, which he says it’s not about himself, but kind of feels like it is where he says, you know, we’re a boy with a six pack in his hand, you know, ah trying to make himself a legend, you know, north and south of the Rio Grande um or east and west of you you Rio Grande.
George Right. Yeah.
Mo But, you know, to me, it’s just it is a song that’s like very typical Billy Joel, like and amazing lyrics. You pay attention to the lyrics, and it just tells a story and puts you in a place.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo like I feel like I know this person. like I feel like I kind of like was watching, like George said earlier, like almost like a trailer or a soundtrack to a film.
George Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of great balladeers in the musical history of the United States, but Billy Joel may be one of the tops.
George like Who writes more evocative image generating songs than Billy Joel?
Jon Mm hmm. Yeah.
George I mean, consistently over album after album after album,
Mo Yeah.
Jon That’s it. That’s it. It’s it’s one thing to ah fluke.
Mo Yes. Yes.
Jon It’s another thing to just repeat it over and over effectively and differently each time.
George Right.
Mo Yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah. Different. Not the same stuff. Yeah.
George Yeah. And I mean, I know this is his second album. I love Cold Spring Harbor, which was his first album, but has a lot of great tracks on it. But this album, Piano Man, is where he really comes into that.
George I’m going to make you see shit in your head just from listening to my voice.
Jon Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Good pick, Mo.
Mo Yeah, I thought so.
Jon George, how about you? you what Is there a track, a single one you can choose to champion as your favorite or?
George I mean, if nobody’s picked up on it yet, it’s Captain Jack without a fucking question.
Jon There’s no no wrong answers. OK, yeah.
Mo That that was a good that was was a close second.
George I love Captain Jack. Yeah, it’s great. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I mean, I i love Ain’t No Crime. And listening to it again, like I said, that may be my favorite track, but you just can’t go wrong with Captain Jack unless you know you’re a suburban youth in Long Island, New York, and you’re looking to score heroin, apparently.
Jon Mm hmm.
George ah so Billy Joel he wrote this song while he was sitting in an apartment and he was looking out at some projects a ghetto across the street and he kept seeing these suburban teenagers driving in to go score heroin and he kept thinking to himself what the fuck is so wrong with your life that you got to go get heroin in the projects in order to make yourself feel better And that’s where he was trying to write the song from, because he was like, you’re such a fucking loser.
George But people heard this song and all they heard was Captain Jack will get you high tonight. I know when I was younger, I was like, is Captain Jack related to Captain Morgan? What the fuck is going on here?
Jon or Captain Kangaroo.
George Captain, yeah, I didn’t know what Captain was going on. oh But I think this song, even though it’s got almost an upbeat melody in some places.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon Yeah.
George It’s really fucking horrible.
Jon Sure.
George It just, if you just sit there and if you didn’t hear any music and you just said the words, you’re like, holy shit.
Jon Yeah, it’s dark.
Mo Yeah.
George I mean, it’s just bad. And he talks about, you know, like I’ve, there’s some interviews where he’s talking about, you know, so many ah friends were shoveled and put under the long Island dirt because of heroin that if chemistry didn’t kill him, Vietnam did.
Jon Yeah.
George And.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon yeah
George I know that one of his other really popular songs is Goodnight Saigon, the one where it basically brings out you know military and first responders.
Mo With the helicopters, yeah.
George and Yeah, the he the one with the helicopters in it. um Those two songs are kind of… They’re kind of like a book of misery when you put those two songs together and you don’t get the second one I think without Captain Jack.
Jon yeah
George Captain Jack was the start of him talking about these horrible things that happened and then Goodnight Saigon was kind of neat. because He grew up in his 20s Mo, like you said, during the Vietnam horrible economy era that we, that this country was going through.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Yeah, Cold War.
George And he grew up in New York, dirt fucking poor, like we said, right? I mean, what making shit from the record companies that were raping every artist they could at this time, ah just a beautiful fucking song to make you feel so shitty.
Mo Mm hmm.
George John, I don’t know if you’ve got anything to top that, but I think we all kind of know what track you’re going to champion here.
Jon Mm hmm. Yeah. You probably, I don’t and’t know if it’s a matter of topping one way or the other.
Mo pyramid. Oh.
Jon It’s another not a feel good song though. It’s it’s definitely stopping Nevada as I ah just to expand on what I said earlier about it and the reason it stands out. And and when for me, when I hear, when I think champion a track, John, what you champion a track off this album, but for me it means you can just, you just have time to listen to one, which one are you going to go to?
Jon It’s this one. It’s stopping Nevada for me. And it’s because It even tells two stories. Now you only hear the story from the side of the singer. He’s the one who’s been left. But there also is this story of hope for his wife or girlfriend or whoever who left him. And there’s this one lyric that I want to call out that I think just really illustrates that. And he says, she doesn’t know what’s coming, but she’s sure of what she’s leaving behind.
Jon And she left a little letter and says, she’s going to make a stop in Nevada. Goodbye, goodbye.
George Mm.
Jon So look, he’s a known commodity. They tried to make it work. It didn’t. She left a Dear John letter, got in the car and took off, but told him, here’s where I’m going. You have to worry about me. I’m safe.
Jon So she’s starting a new life. She has washed her hands of him and is moving on. So yeah it’s it’s this dichotomy of two people. One has been left behind and is dealing with that.
Jon The other was the one that did the leaving and is on an upward trajectory. Her life is improving.
Mo Right.
Jon She’s made her life better. And so it’s that storytelling that the more I think about it, it’s two stories that you get to think about and imagine in your mind. as sad as it is that, you know, you’ve been left. For me, stopping Nevada is just the one that if I couldn’t listen to one, it’s that one because it makes it keeps me thinking about it after the track is over. You know, I’m on into the next song and I’m still thinking about I wonder where she’s going after Nevada, you know, what what’s she going to do in California when she gets there? So I think just really, it does it for me.
Jon That’s mine. Another not feel good like Captain Jack, but it’s also real.
George Hmm.
Jon It’s very real. Something that’s really happens to real people.
Mo Yeah.
Mo You know, it’s funny because, you know, whenever you do these ah kind of backtracks about albums, you know, we listen to the whole album, right? we Several times, you know, and I just feel almost I feel bad for kids today that don’t have that experience of listening to albums, you know, because like there are songs I forgotten about on this album that I’m hearing it now.
Jon Mm hmm.
George Right.
George Yeah.
Jon Oh, yeah, we go. Yeah.
Jon Sure.
Mo And I’m like, oh, my God, and you know, I got start playing this album again, not the song. I got to play this album over and over again.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo You know, and it’s just, I guess it’s just a shame, you know, that, you know, an artist has to get their hits.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Everybody knows, but they have so much other good music probably that no one’s going to care about or listen to.
Jon And when an album is well put together, like we were just talking about how somewhere along the line was a great next to last song, when it’s structured well, an album will take you on a journey, not just in one song.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Now, there are outliers that maybe that doesn’t quite fit, and you can feel that. The fact you can feel it tells you this album is doing a pretty good job if you can tell a song feels out of place. I don’t think there are any necessarily here.
Jon There are a couple of outliers, but not off the ah beaten path. ah But that album experience, it’s kind of a lost start. It’s too bad, you’re right, Mo.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Billy Joel’s Piano Man. This was requested, I think. Was somebody requested it? I don’t know, I won’t say that, I don’t remember.
Mo It was 50 years ago.
Jon yeah If they did, I did i didn’ i didn’t know it, so. Yeah, that’s fine. Billy Joel’s Piano Man. That’s a walk through both sides of the album. I hope you guys enjoyed this backtrack, fourth listener.
Jon I hope you enjoyed this. We get good feedback on these. And most importantly, we get good responses in emails. So fourth listener, hit us up at podcast at genxgrownup.com. If you have a thought about Piano Man, or you disagree on one of these tracks, or my favorite is the worst year or whatever, we love to hear the feedback. And speaking of our fourth listeners, I want to thank a couple of new supporters who hit us up on Patreon and join us. Look, you know we do this show for free and give it out. but Some people choose to support us and help make this happen.
Jon They go over to patreon dot.com slash Gen X growing up. And I wanna welcome Matthew B, brand new who joined us. He went over and clicked a couple of things and set up a recurring contribution.
Jon And Paul D is another one of those amazing people that was on one tier and just gave us an upgrade to the next tier. He said, I like you guys even more than when I first signed up.
Mo ah that’s cool
Jon there He’s continues to get something out of our productions. So Matthew, Paul, thank you both of you. and all of our patrons that support us. Again, if you’d like to join them for as little as a dollar a month, just head over to patreon dot.com slash Gen X grown up.
Jon We would love your support. We need your support. And we’re grateful when you do. That is going to wrap it up for this backtrack edition of the Gen X grown up podcast.
Mo Oh, that’s cool.
Jon Don’t worry, we’ll be back in two weeks with another one. And next week is a standard edition of our show. Until then, I am John George. Thank you so much for being here.
George Yes, sir.
Jon Mo, you know, I appreciate you.
Mo Always fun then.
Jon Fourth listener, it’s you though. We all appreciate most of all. We can’t wait to talk to you again next time. but Bye
George See you guys.
Mo Take care, everybody.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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