Billy Joel's Street Song
Streetlife Serenade by Billy Joel
The year is 1974. You are a 25-year-old Long Island kid with an attitude. You played in local and regional bands and have cut two solo albums. You even managed to sneak a hit out of the last one. Not a big hit, mind you, but #25 on a Billboard chart dominated that week by the pappy Seasons In The Sun and the novelty The Streak.
You know you are better than that, but you can't crack the top 20.
Worse, you have dumped your best song ideas into the album, and none of the other songs get traction on the charts. Cutting an album probably is not in your best interests now - time to tour, rejuvenate, get some more musical ideas.
Now is definitely not the time for a concept album.
Oh, and let's complicate matters. You play piano and want to be a rock star. For the last four years, this other guy, this Elton John, has racked up hit after hit because he wants to be a pop star, is flamboyant and Eltonmaina is sweeping both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, it was his song Bennie and the Jets that kept your quietly tormented Piano Man down on the charts during the spring. Seems that AM radio wasn't too keen on two singer-songwriters who played piano.
Now is definitely not the time for a concept album.
You have no way of knowing then that Piano Man is destined to be one of the songs that survives and defines the 1970s. And how could you even fathom that the album, which did not even go gold when it had a hit, would reach that milestone two years later? This Elton John character is cranking out gold like he was a Johannesburg mine. They should have called him Elton Midas. And you know what the worst part was? Your name showed up next to his on any alphabetized list. Joel, John. It was just like being seated next to the kid you hated back in junior high in Hicksville, Long Island.
Now is definitely not the time for a concept album, but if you insist.
And that is what Billy Joel did in mid 1974. He did not have a lot of pull, but the muted reaction to Piano Man gave him enough credibility to put together an album describing America as he saw it in the early 1970s. The suburbs were booming, the war was over in Vietnam and this kind of dance music was starting to creep into the charts. Rock The Boat indeed! Billy Joel, the self-professed Angry Young Man, would sit down and write about America.
The notion that this is a concept album is not unique to me. Both The All Music Guide and Rolling Stone reach that conclusion in their reviews of the album. What I have tried to do in this review is describe the songs, the artists performing them, and - something new for me - tried to fit them into the concept that the professional critics already defined. Several comments were posted and I've received some email stating that this wasn't a concept album. Maybe it wasn't, but that is how the critics defined the album, and I am using that as my base.
Things To Know About The Album
Joel managed to chart one song in the Top 40, the acerbic The Entertainer, but the rest of the album (and its follow-up two years later was savaged by critics).
The album was out for six years before it finally reached gold and another 17 before it reached platinum. This is an album for fans.
Billy Joel's band is still nowhere in evidence. No Liberty DeVito. No Doug Stegmeyer. No Richie Canatta sax. They all show up later. There are some good folks playing here, though, and musicianship is certainly not the reason that the album didn't break out. Drummer Ron Tutt had recently been on the road with Elvis and was doing a ton of session work for Top 40 acts. Guitarist Mike Deasey (that would be him playing on The Monkees songs) was also highly regarded at the time. But we are really left with Billy Joel and a handful of folks who had done some great work others. One other artist to look for on this album is bassist Wilton Felder. He is known primarily as a sax player now, but played bass for The Four Tops and Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On.
Dropping The Needle - Cut by Cut
Streetlife Serenader - An interesting vocal marks the album's opening cut. Billy Joel dips deep into his register and doesn't go this low again until Until The Night from 1977's The Stranger. Maybe it took him that long to recover. The vocalist's line unfortunately climbs an octave or two, leaving Joel with a guttural baritone and then forced to climb a vocal Stairmaster to reach a very poor falsetto. The piano work is the hook here, a sweet tinkling an octave higher than you might expect.
Where it fits in the concept: Defines Joel as a "child of Eisenhower" who is willing to document the world now, from a street corner if he must.
Los Angelenos - A peppy pop tune featuring some nice bass work from Felder. Joel is in a comfortable vocal range, and he's taking dead aim at the California lifestyle that in review after review, he told us he hated. Hate is sometimes good for a musician - any passion is. This is actually one of the overlooked songs in his entire catalog.
Where it fits in the concept: If the big earthquake hit LA tomorrow, Joel is not shedding a tear. Despite the fact that "no one ever has to feel like a refugee," Joel bemoans the vapid qualities he sees in southern California.
Great Suburban Showdown - Elvis Costello holds nothing on Joel when it comes to bitterness on this cut. Each line is a razor stripping into Joel's own suburban upbringing and the inevitable trip home during holidays. There's a lovely little patch of 1970s-style synth work here from Joel that will undoubtedly evoke memories of the early days. Of all the cuts here, this is probably one of the closest to the lyric, timbre and tone that Joel would use throughout his career. There's a trace of the western tinge that first showed on The Ballad of Billy The Kid from the Piano Man album, as well as the forced tenor Joel used throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s.
Where it fits in the concept: - Ow. This song strikes home. "Mom and Dad, me and you - and the outdoor barbeque. I think I'm gonna hide out in my room". If that lyric does not do it, try this one - "Sit around with the folks, tell the same old tired jokes. Bored to death on Sunday afternoon".
Root Beer Rag - An instrumental, this song is actually a tremendous piece. The piano is difficult to play well - trust me, I've tried - but the addition of the synths and some percussion really make this song swing. It is actually a very short cut, clocking in at under three minutes and is a concert showstopper.
Where it fits in the concept - America went rag crazy in 1974 with Marvin Hamlisch's recording of Joplin's (Scott, not Janis) The Entertainer. Being featured in a hit movie certainly helped. Here i's a bit of trivia: As Piano Man was fighting its way into the Top 40, not only was Elton John there, but so was Hamlisch's song - which actually peaked at #3. What is interesting here - and Joel addresses it again later in his own song called The Entertainer -- is the placement. Following The Great Suburban Showdown, Joel takes us to mainstream America - and music that his grandparents would fondly remember.
Roberta - I always heard this song as a self-esteem issue, but a sharp reader pointed out that the song is really about prostitution. After going back through the song on album and sheet music, I have got to agree. I still believe this is more filler, but I understand it in an entirely new context now. Think of an understated (if that song can be more understated) She's Got A Way from Cold Spring Harbor to capture the mood here.
Where it fits in the concept: Based on my new understanding of the lyrics, I have not really slotted this one well. I guess one could say that the singer's desire for the prositute who only views him as a customer is a remark on the "there ain't no free lunch" mentality that was defining the Me Decade in the 1970s.
The Entertainer - A nice complexity to the rhythm makes you overlook the dated synthesizer sounds. This is not ELP, heck; it's not even ELO, but more like Mike Post with lyrics. And speaking of lyrics, this is Joel-bile, that place he gets to every so often when he just sneers contemptuously at his subject. Here, the subject is what it takes to make a hit record. Eric Carmen did a similar turn later on in Overnight Sensation (Hit Record), but Joel was there first. In a fit of either pique or inspiration, he named his song the same as Hamlisch's rag, which had kept Piano Man down low on the charts. This song ended up charting at #34 and was Joel's last single to make the Top 40 for three years. The critics absolutely destroyed this song - and with good reason in some cases - but I have always enjoyed it in context of the whole album. That said, I do not think I have listened to it as a standalone cut in years.
Where it fits in the concept: - Railing against the homogenization of music was something one expected from Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix. Even John Lennon. But Billy Joel? Yet, that's what he's doing here. He sings of A&R men, "so they cut it down to three oh five (3:05)" with such distaste that one almost flinches. But popular music has been derivative since Edison invented that phonograph thing. When someone hits with a sound, everyone tries to duplicate it. Sorry, but I don't have sympathy for Joel. Besides, his admitted ode to Frankie Valli, Uptown Girl, released in 1983, went on to push its album multi-platinum and was a gold single. See, everyone does it.
The Last of the Big Time Spenders - Fit neatly into this album is a little bluesy love song that also frequently gets overlooked. Joel does a nice job on keyboards here, and I really enjoy the groove that Ron Tutt and Wilton Felder lay down. There is a ton of room for an expressive keyboard here and Joel makes the most of it - not with flash, but with melody. Now to work (again) on the vocal registers.
Where it fits in the concept - The whole song speaks to love being able to conquer everything. The spender here is actually poor, but is spending all his time on his love. It is not as innocent as it sounds; the music sweeps the innocence away and makes it more tryst-like, but it certainly is Joel's anti-wealth message. Fit against the backdrop of The Entertainer, the message becomes pretty clear. "I'm not going to make a hit record the way you want and I'll still have this great relationship any way".
Weekend Song - In his last several albums, Billy Joel has come out from behind his piano to strum some guitar chords and be a rock star. Or at least, that's what it looks like to me. Here, he leads the studio musicians on a honky-tonk romp that sounds like it was a blast to record. More importantly, he reverts to singing naturally and sounds like a hopped-up Ray Charles here. Again, there is a very tight groove and guitarist Deasey has a wonderful turn on this song. This is quite possibly the best song on the album.
Where it fits in the concept: Lyrically, of course. It's Billy Joel for pity's sake! This is a tune about the working-class man. "It's keeping me alive, doin' 9 to 5, and I ain't got nothing to show". Our Angry Young Man knows there can be pleasures in the world that are unrelated to success and since he can't have musical success on his terms, he is willing to go punch a clock. Fat chance. Two albums later, he was sweeping the Grammys and the charts with The Stranger. But it is a nice pretense and slots well on this side of the album.
Souvenir - By now, Billy Joel's understated ballads that cap his albums are legendary. Through The Long Night and Where's The Orchestra are similar songs on future albums that end the album with the equivalent of an Author's Note. This technically is not the last song, but it is the last with lyrics. A gentle piano, nice arrangements underneath and a vocal that strains with meaning as opposed to simply trying to hit the F he shouldn't be anywhere near. And call me a nitpicker, but while I enjoy this song, I detest the final chord repeated at the end when he has already resolved the progression.
Where it fits in the concept: Look hard, America. You're collecting souvenirs "that slowly fade away". A nicer way of introducing the same theme that George Carlin does in his classic "Stuff" comedy routine. Live for now - material possessions are not the ones that matter the most.
The Mexican Connection - Would you like a side dish of salsa with your entrée, Sir? This starts as a pleasant little follow-me tune between Deasey and Joel before exploding into some south of the border formulaic sounds.
Where it fits in the concept: I still have no clue. Maybe a reader will.
The Bottom Line, Skips and All
This was not the time for a concept album. Maybe you've read that somewhere. I also think the entire album was rushed to capitalize on Piano Man. Sometimes a band can pull that off (Simon & Garfunkel, for example, returned to the studio when Sounds of Silence became an unexpected hit. So did Foreigner when they recorded Double Vision). Here, however, the songs are not as strong as this incredibly talented pop songwriter - certainly our Carmichael, if not our Gershwin - is capable of mustering.
Billy Joel remains one of my favorite songwriters, and I do enjoy some of the songs on this album, so I'm giving it two out of five stars. I suspect someone who doesn't know Joel's work beyond the hits would not rate it as highly. I also suspect the Billy Joel uberfans will scream that this album is full of buried treasure. I think there is a pretty good half-album or EP here, but trying to flesh out the concept and come up with nine new songs was apparently too arduous a task.
Those looking for "unknown" Billy Joel would be better off with Turnstiles or the album cuts on the much later The Nylon Curtain.
