The “hard-edged” album Billy Joel called the most fun
Billy Joel was never going to be described as heavy by any member of the rock and roll faithful.
He had made his career out of making the greatest tunes that anyone has ever written, but when you look at his track record, there are more than a few times when he almost got crushed by all of the ballads that he put on his records. That wasn’t always going to fly with the typical rock and roll audience, so the only thing Joel could do was try to change with the times when he made a new record.
And that kind of change didn’t always mean making another piano-based tune, either. Every single one of his albums was a new adventure, and no matter how many snobs claim that he just repeats the same kind of songs every single time he makes a new album, what really makes his tunes work is because of how versatile they are. ‘Miami 2017’ was nothing like ‘Piano Man’, nor was ‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’ anything like ‘And So It Goes’, and that was because he knew exactly what he was doing.
He didn’t like the idea of repeating himself every time he made a record, and by the time that The Stranger wrapped up, 52nd Street was the first kind of jazzy album that he ever got to make. There were so many songs from the record that had their roots deep in the jazz tradition, like ‘Zanzibar’, but when you’re playing in some of the biggest venues that the world has ever seen, it’s not that easy to play those kinds of tunes all that well.
You have to remember that Joel had been working to play Madison Square Garden, and after graduating to that kind of arena, he didn’t need to play the same poppy stuff anymore. He needed the music that sounded good in arenas, and if he was going to win over the rock audience, Glass Houses was his way of working with a much nastier palette than everything else in his catalogue.
The punk scene was alive and well around this time, and while the record wasn’t exactly as new wave as what you would have heard out of Devo, Joel isn’t half bad at making more heavy rock and roll. This is still a Billy Joel, so naturally there are still going to be a lot more pretty melodies on tunes like ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’, but the guitars on the record really take centre stage, whether that’s the pulse of ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me’ or ‘Close to the Borderline’ with its Stonesy riff.
Joel has said time and time again that he considered a lot of his records to be work, but that was never the case with this record, saying, “Ballads didn’t fly that well in arenas, so I started to write more hard-edged songs, more guitar-based songs. It was fun to do. Probably the most fun album I’ve ever made. The band loved playing it. The audience loved the material that was on it, and we were on a roll.”
Working with that kind of mentality did eventually give Joel some blowback from critics calling him a trendchaser, but isn’t that what any rock star is supposed to do? Not every musician can be AC/DC and make the same kickass record over and over again, and had Joel not made this record, he probably wouldn’t have been able to make the more refined sounds that turned up on The Nylon Curtain a few years later.
So when looking at Glass Houses, it was all about him evolving as an artist. He didn’t want to be a one-trick pony, and every single time he performed these songs, you could sense that he was trying to tap into something greater. He had spent his entire life trying to sound like Ray Charles, and this was the first time that he tried his hand at trying to be Mick Jagger. It wasn’t easy, but the fact that he pulled it off is what really knocked people back.
