The album Billy Joel wanted nothing to do with: “They’re not my idea”
Every album an artist releases needs to contain some part of their heart and soul. It might not be the one packed with the most hits or sold the most copies, but anyone who has given it their all in the studio to make the best record they can will usually have at least a handful of good tunes to show for it. But Billy Joel knew the difference between albums made with passion and those made for money.
Throughout Joel’s career, though, it wasn’t clear if he was going to be a flash in the pan for his first few records. ‘Piano Man’ was a tune that had seen some major airplay, but since Streetlife Serenader and Turnstiles didn’t have any bonafide hits in their runtimes, things were looking fairly dire by the time he made The Stranger. No matter how many times songs like ‘Travelin’ Prayer’ or ‘New York State of Mind’ resonated with audiences, they weren’t showing it when it came time to buy the record.
Once tunes like ‘Only The Good Die Young’ and ‘Just The Way You Are’ began climbing the charts, though, the money machine knew that Joel was worth more than his studio records. He could spit out some of the best music that he possibly could, but there were still ways for people to listen to records like Songs From the Attic for his live cuts and shuffle through his greatest hits on the thousands of compilation albums he made.
While many of these best-of collections can be seen as a cheap cash grab half the time, a lot of them actually work in Joel’s case. The bonus tracks that he added to his greatest hits record like ‘You’re Only Human’ are still great by his standards, and when listening to him in his home away from home at Madison Square Garden, it’s like watching the musical equivalent of a family reunion whenever he plays.
Then again, there’s a difference between the kind of record that an artist wants to make and something that was put together for money. Even though there was a lot of great stuff to work with throughout Joel’s solo career, there was only one real live album that he approved of, Songs in the Attic, which was partly because he took the records he made on Cold Spring Harbor and giving them a better home on a record with half-decent sound quality.
When it came to all of the later-period live records and compilations, the ‘Piano Man’ said that he would be perfectly fine if they hadn’t been released at all, saying, “I still don’t own my recordings. People wonder why there’ve been so many Billy Joel live albums and compilations. They’re not my idea. The record company owns all these recordings and can package them any way they want. As far as I’m concerned, I did 12 studio albums. The live crap and all these compilations — they don’t mean anything.”
Still, that’s a bit of a harsh criticism to put on everything that they have released since then. There was still money to be made even if Joel limited himself to a touring act, and part of the reason why an album like 12 Gardens works so well is hearing the crowd participate. They might not best the original versions of those songs in his mind, but hearing him play the tunes in what is essentially his backyard makes the whole show feel like a personal event we’re being invited into.
And while a lot of the greatest hits albums might be seen as cheap cashgrabs, they do a half-decent job at getting people acclimatised to all of the greatest moments of his career. Are they all necessary? No, but hearing someone get into Joel through a later compilation album shouldn’t hold any less merit than someone who got into The Beatles by checking out 1 at the turn of the century.
