![]() At one point he turned to us and asked us nicely to listen to him rather than talking over him. The lights were on and the audience was seating itself while he played. Nobody was there to see Joel sitting at the piano and singing. He was touring in support of Piano Man, released four days earlier. I saw Billy Joel on Novemay Massey Hall in Toronto. That had to suffice until Nirvana broke, and I found out about punk and indie/college rock.Īnyhoo, this is supposed to be about Billy Joel, so I’ll end on this: I really like “A Matter Of Trust” off The Bridge, one of the few great songs on that album. They were still “rock” enough to get played on AOR but different enough to be interesting. This all put into sharper relief when a song by Jane’s Addiction or The Cult came on the radio. My local AOR station still played current music (it wasn’t ’70s rock 24/7 yet), but that was split between The Second Coming of Boomer Rock like I listed, or hair metal. Looking back, radio and MTV were pretty dire. Neither the Dylan or Wilson album were played much (if at all) but I heard lots of Storm Front, But Seriously, The End of The Innocence, and the others on my list. I was 13-15 from ’88 to ’90, and heavily listened to AOR radio here in the US and watched MTV. And if the only point of reference you have is that, you’d think that Oh Mercy and the s/t Brian Wilson were significant in the pop world sense as well. ![]() I think a lot of what we now think as “big deal” albums in that era really weren’t, at least outside of magazines/critical consensus. As you’ll notice, it omits some of Joel’s very best-known songs – ‘Piano Man’ outstays its welcome at 5:40, the best moment of ‘Just The Way You Are’ is Phil Woods’ lovely sax solo, while the Frankie Valli pastiche ‘Uptown Girl’ narrowly missed the cut. All ten of these songs are drawn from his prime era between 19. This list presents a mixture of hits, forgotten singles, and deep cuts the songs that have held up the best for me. ![]() I’ve been a fan of Joel’s since my early teens. Joel stopped recording new material after 1993’s River of Dreams, but has remained a popular live act. Even 1973’s signature song ‘Piano Man’ didn’t mark a career upturn, and Joel remained obscure until 1977’s mega-seller The Stranger. Thereafter, he spent years playing in unsuccessful bands like the Echoes, The Hassles, and Attila – the latter duo releasing an infamous album in 1970 where Joel played heavy metal on a Hammond organ. He played piano on the Shangri-Las’ ‘Remember (Walking in the Sand)’ in 1964 as a teenager – although it’s unclear whether he appeared on a demo or on the finished version. ![]() Despite his talent, it took Billy Joel a long time to find success. ![]()
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