“I would have been flushed”: Billy Joel on the album that saved his career
In the grand scheme of rock and roll history, Billy Joel has the kind of songbook that feels like it’s always existed. Even if not every song is a winner, it’s commonly accepted that his more sophisticated takes on rock and roll music be put on the same level as other seasoned songwriters like Elton John or Jeff Lynne from around the same time. In reality, though, Joel was floundering throughout his first years on the charts, and this was the album that brought him back from the brink.
Listening back to Joel’s music, what makes him so acceptable today is the same reason why he never stood out in the first place. His songwriting was always a cut above the rest, but if no one was listening close enough, some of them tended to blend into the scenery after a while compared to the dangerousness of Led Zeppelin or the progressive tendencies of Yes.
While Joel admitted that Cold Spring Harbor was far from his best foot forward, Piano Man at least put him in the same conversation with the songwriters of his day, but that would only last for so long. With each subsequent album, people didn’t see the magic that much, and even when making albums like Turnstiles and turning in fantastic music like ‘New York State of Mind,’ many people couldn’t be asked to care.
Joel was never the kind of person who could sit down and deliver a stunner right out of the gate, but with his back against the wall, all signs pointed him towards brilliance on The Stranger. Compared to all of Joel’s previous records with a few classic songs, there are hardly any duds on this record, having the same energy on ‘Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)’ and sustaining itself all the way to the end on ‘Everybody Has a Dream’.
There are even some strange detours that made him stand out amongst the other pop artists of the day. Led Zeppelin had been making drawn-out epics, but hearing Joel blend together three completely different songs together for ‘Scenes from An Italian Restaurant’ is the kind of brilliance that hadn’t been equalled since The Beatles had done it on the back end of Abbey Road.
Looking back, Joel credited the album with helping him regain his footing as an artist, saying, “Had it not been a successful album, the label probably would have dropped me. You have to remember that this was my fifth album without a major hit. ‘Piano Man’ was a turntable hit, but it didn’t really sell. I was going along doing my thing, but now that I look back on it, it was a really important album because I would have been flushed.”
Since Joel got those hits on his own terms, though, that gave him free rein to do what he wanted on the next few albums as well. 52nd Street didn’t stray too far from the usual path, but bringing in bits and pieces of jazz before eventually working in new wave on Glass Houses and then going full pop-star on An Innocent Man was the kind of career jumps he couldn’t have done if he compromised with the album.
So, in retrospect, The Stranger wasn’t just a great album but also the creative golden ticket for Joel. Had he gone along with what the label wanted, who knows whether he would have lasted for years to come or flamed out by taking the advice of some “industry executive” who claimed to know everything?
