The 1982 album Billy Joel felt like he died to create: “The recording that I’m most proud of”
The process of making any great song never came easily to Billy Joel.
He was willing to put in the work every single time he walked into the studio, but there were only so many times that he could look at the piano when he had no inspiration before it started looking like a monster with white and black teeth and was trying to tear his mind apart. But even if Joel was weary by the time that he got done with some of his favourite records, he was always proud to have made it to the other side in one piece.
Because as much as ‘The Piano Man’ wanted to play his heart out every single time he performed, it took a lot out of him when the rest of the world wasn’t hearing what he could do on record. Piano Man had the one single before sinking without a trace, but even after winning some high praise from some of the biggest names in the industry, there was always something holding him back from being considered cool by the mainstream.
He could do a lot of different things across his catalogue, but there wasn’t much that endeared him to the crowd that was more interested in punk and new wave at the time. He was being looked at as derivative and too sophisticated for what rock and roll was supposed to be, but Joel wasn’t about to apologise for that. He spent years trying to make the best songs he could, and he wasn’t about to unlearn everything that he ever did just because some critics wanted him to start switching up his styles a little more often.
Glass Houses was probably the closest he ever came to compromising his sound on a record, but if that still didn’t get him the respect he deserved, Joel figured he’d go all out for the next one. He wanted to make a record that could stand alongside some of the greatest albums of all time, and while The Nylon Curtain didn’t exactly have the same kind of classic status that Sgt Peppers might have had, Joel wanted to shoot for the biggest targets that he could when making tunes like ‘Pressure’.
You can definitely hear that kind of craftsmanship on tunes like ‘Pressure’ and especially the tearjerker ‘Goodnight Saigon’, but it wasn’t exactly an easy record to make. Brian Wilson never said Pet Sounds was easy, nor did the Fab Four say it was a walk in the park to make Sgt Peppers, and when Joel came up for air, he felt like he left a bit of himself in between the grooves of the record.
It was a fantastic piece of work, but Joel knew that he had exhausted himself too much when making the album, saying, “It was a labour. It was a labour of love, but it was exhausting. I think by the end of making this album, I had felt like I almost died. It was just a great deal of work. And I consider this maybe my best recorded effort. It’s essentially the recording that I’m most proud of.” But even if he made a masterpiece, the fact that he spent so much time exhausting is probably why the next records sounded the way they did.
An Innocent Man is going for a much different vibe than The Nylon Curtain, but considering all of the work that he put into it, it was about time Joel had some fun. He was happily married and trying his best to pay tribute to his idols, and while the last album was him recreating Sgt Peppers, the next record was a smorgasbord of everything that made him tick musically, from ripping off Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to going full-on acapella on ‘For the Longest Time’.
It’s sad that we don’t hear too many new tunes from Joel nowadays, but the fact that he put himself through hell trying to get this record made is probably one of the reasons why he turns away from going back into the studio. He likes to have written songs that stand the test of time, but he had his say on the pop charts and didn’t feel the need to trouble them ever again.
