The most powerful group singers, according to Billy Joel
In a perfect world, chances are that Billy Joel would have never been singing all of his tunes.
His voice defines nearly everything that he touched, but when you listen to him in interviews, it’s not a big secret that he wasn’t as big a fan of his own voice whenever he got up to sing. He always felt that he was better off imitating all of his favourite records, but even if he could do a passable Joe Cocker impression and put that Ray Charles gravel in his voice, there were some singers that were off limits for him to take on.
Granted, vocals haven’t always been a priority in rock and roll. Chuck Berry never claimed to have the best voice in the world, and yet he’s one of the founding fathers of the genre, and considering how so many people worship at the altar of Bob Dylan, not everyone is claiming that they wish they could have his sandpaper voice. It was all about how you used it, and Joel could always twist his vocal cords to suit the song.
He may have had a rocky start when Cold Spring Harbor ended up sounding like it was sped up, but Joel was more than happy to keep trucking on to Piano Man. There was nothing flashy about the way that he sang, but it was always sincere on every tune, whether it was the hapless lover on ‘Just The Way You Are’ or turning ‘Big Shot’ into one of the best sounding Rolling Stones that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards never made.
But even if he had a great sense of pitch, rock and roll was about more than hitting every single note perfectly. The biggest names of the genre were those that could put a lot more power into their delivery, and looking at Joel, no one was expecting him to sing with as much gravitas as Robert Plant or Steve Winwood. He knew his place as a singer-songwriter, but he did have a keen ear for where the greatest singers were getting their talent from.
Sure, a lot of people would see the blues artists like Howlin’ Wolf as ground zero for that gravelly voice, but the R&B world was another matter entirely. Everyone from Motown needed to know how to sing backwards and forwards when they first started, and even if everyone from Stevie Wonder to Smokey Robinson showed everyone what soulful music could be, Joel remembered being transfixed when he heard The Righteous Brothers’ iconic take on ‘Unchained Melody’.
Joel’s true love was the piano, but hearing Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield singing was as perfect as he could have hoped for from two powerhouses, saying, “This took a real understanding of how to sing. I can’t think of any two singers who performed that kind of music with that much power. I even wrote a song on 52nd Street based on the Righteous Brothers’ style called ‘Until the Night’. I attempted to vocalise like both Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield. I failed, but I learned how to stretch my vocal reach.”
Then again, Joel might be selling himself a little bit short there. No one was ever going to be able to match the phrasing that Medley and Hatfield had back in the day, but there was a lot more power behind what he was doing than what he had been singing before. All the drama was there, and for someone who tried their best to emulate Ray Charles, having the gall to take a swing at this kind of song took a lot of guts.
But the real lesson that Joel learned is the one that every other singer had to end up learning the hard way. Most people can try their best to match their idols, but even with all of the vocal training that money can buy, there are a few vocalists who are born with a musical gene that stretches far beyond everyone else.
