The Billy Joel album that improved his songs: “It just rocked a lot more”
Songs have never been meant to stay as museum pieces until the end of time. The greatest thrill that any artist can get is hearing their material come to life onstage or be reinterpreted by another artist, but Billy Joel knew that a lot of his early albums deserved to get a much better recording than what he ended up with.
Then again, anyone working in the music industry is going to need to learn to work with what they have. There’s no way for anyone to have the same kind of music at their disposal that The Beatles did in their prime, and while Joel did have the right kind of chops to pull off a great tune when he wanted to, it was always going to be down to the producer he was working with when bringing any of his records to life. Which probably explains why many of his greatest works sound totally different.
The Stranger has that same allure that comes from any great New York record, and listening to 52nd Street feels like stepping into some seedy jazz club right in the middle of Manhattan. But whereas those records are better at creating a mood, Joel was finding his footing when ‘Piano Man’ hit it big, and many of the greatest moments of his early career did get passed by before anyone knew who he was.
Although Cold Spring Harbor already had the sad fate of being sped up in post, albums like Streetlife Serenader and Turnstiles never managed to hit the same way with audiences outside of the singles. ‘New York State of Mind’ was a fantastic song, but even if that one was a deep cut at the time, a lot of people were starting to wonder whether the dude was a one-hit wonder when nothing made the same impact as ‘Piano Man’.
Once he found his footing with songs like ‘Just The Way You Are’ and ‘Big Shot’, though, Joel wasn’t willing to let his songs be forgotten. So when he went out on tour again for the album Songs in the Attic, he wasn’t about to give people songs like ‘Big Shot’ with a crowd in the background. He had a handle on the material, so he figured he would breathe new life into his older material.
When talking about the record later, Joel said that the whole album improved most of his back catalogue, saying, “We had been doing the older stuff with the band, not the session players. It just rocked a lot more. I said, ‘This is a good opportunity to do the older stuff that I never really liked the way it was recorded. Let’s do it the way we want to do it.’ They weren’t hit singles. This was just album tracks that I wanted to present to people in the right context.”
And considering Joel’s opinion on his early material, a lot of the tunes take on a new life with the new players. ‘She’s Got A Way’ sounds a lot better without his voice being pitched up too high for his voice, and hearing a song like ‘Miami 2017’ is a lot more impactful when there’s a crowd in the background and a lot more punch to the drums half the time.
Because when looking at Joel’s career, he was far from the balladeer that most people took him for whenever he played his tunes. He had the potential to be an all-star frontman when he needed to, but all he needed was the right incentive, and Songs in the Attic was his moment to right some of the musical wrongs of the past.
