“Busted”: Billy Joel dismisses the one album that had nothing to say
Some of the greatest songwriters are interested in more than writing a silly love song. The whole point of the written word is to try to find something greater than yourself within those few words, and everyone from Bob Dylan to Joni Mitchell have found ways to paint masterpieces that don’t fit in the confined structures of pop music. And while Billy Joel was never afraid to toy with his sound every now and again, he could admit when some albums didn’t have as much substance as they should have.
Then again, it’s easier to look at Joel’s work now rather than when he was first coming out with albums. For a while, he had felt like the American equivalent of Elton John with ‘Piano Man’, but since things didn’t truly pick up for him until The Stranger, the beginning of his career tends to get forgotten far too often when talking about the greatest records he ever made.
Although it’s not necessarily the coolest music for anyone to be listening to, it’s easy to see pieces of his history when listening to albums like Cold Spring Harbor. Despite Joel not caring for the mix on his debut, a track like ‘She’s Got A Way’ is a direct precursor to every one of the fine love songs he would write later. He had a lot of work to do, but in that one song, there are traces of everything from ‘Just The Way You Are’ to ‘And So It Goes’ to even ‘Lullabye’ off of River of Dreams.
But while his debut sunk without a trace, Piano Man at least gave him one song to hang his hat on for the rest of his career. Despite not getting the same draw on the radio as many of his later hits, it was to get his foot in the door, and so began Joel’s long-running tension when it came to the music industry. Because the minute he got to Streetlife Serenade, he was more burnt out than he had ever been.
While Joel does get the opportunity to stretch himself out a bit more on tunes like ‘Root Beer Rag’, ‘The Entertainer’ says the most about his career at that point. He had felt like a hamster on a wheel for the majority of his early years, and that one song sounded like it was being played but someone half his age, feeling bitter about the kind of roller coaster ride that every label puts their talent through.
“I owed the record company new music. And [one] review said I had nothing to say. I go, ‘Busted. You got me.’”
Billy Joel
It was certainly interesting, but the reason why Joel talked about the industry was that he didn’t have anything else to write about, saying, “I was completely bereft of new ideas at the time, but I wrote that album because I owed the record company new music. And [one] review said I had nothing to say. I go, ‘Busted. You got me.’” Then again, Joel might be hinting at something much broader in the music industry.
Despite many people liking the idea of hearing drama on a record, hearing an artist complain about the industry is usually the moment they run out of ideas. George Harrison was certainly not at the top of his game when writing tunes aimed at his label on Somewhere in England, and when a band like Metallica started complaining about their higher-ups on St Anger, people who didn’t already have issues with the sound of the album were bound to be a little bit pissed off.
Then again, this was all a part of the learning process for Joel. He was still understanding what it took to be an entertainer in the music industry, and while it wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be in many respects, Streetlife Serenade is a nice window into the pianist’s state of mind before he really started taking off.
