Billy Joel on how Otis Redding made the “most exciting records I ever heard”
From the moment that he started making music, Billy Joel wasn’t exactly known to be the most dangerous musician in the world.
His meagre attempt at being a hard rock star was always going to fall flat on its face, and while his later hits might not be the most high-energy songs of all time, there’s pretty much nothing that he made throughout his discography that could be any more perfect than it is. He had that keen ear for when a song has reached its final form, but there were many performers who could take any tune to places that he could have never dreamed of.
Then again, Joel had grown up listening to some of the biggest names in rock and roll alter the course of history every other month. Bob Dylan and The Beatles may have hit the ground running when the Summer of Love began, but there was also everyone from The Doors to the beginnings of Led Zeppelin to even Procol Harum knocking down the doors for what rock and roll could do on tunes like ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’.
But ‘The Piano Man’ had a far more eclectic taste than the average rock and roll fan. There was a day that went by that he didn’t love hearing bands like Led Zeppelin, but he wasn’t afraid to wear his other influences on his sleeve. One day he would be making a standard rock and roll, the next he would be throwing in a little bit of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and by the end of the week, he would have written a tune that the best classical musicians would have been proud to have come up with.
If you were looking for pure musical power, though, you would need to go to the world of R&B. Ray Charles had already shown everyone what the perfect vocal tone was supposed to sound like, and even if Sam Cooke went in a different direction, you could feel the sense of vocal control in every single line that he sang on tunes like ‘You Send Me’. They were two sides of the same coin in many respects, but Otis Redding took both of their styles and put them under one roof.
The British invasion kids like Steve Winwood had been trying to embrace their inner Ray Charles, but Redding’s songs always kept things interesting from the moment the music started. ‘Respect’ may have been taken over by Aretha Franklin when she made her version, but everything from ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ to ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’ could paint the perfect picture of whatever he was singing about.
Not all of them needed the most complex chords of all time, but Joel had to admit that Redding’s records always kept him coming back every time he heard them, saying, “It was a rough and raspy voice, and he really got down and dirty when you dug into the lyrics. He had these vocal riffs that were really fun to play [and] fun to listen to. Just a dynamic performer. I don’t even know if a lot of younger people know who Otis Redding is, but he made some of the most exciting records I ever heard.”
That’s not to say that Joel didn’t have a few exciting records of his own when he dug into that raspy register. He may have been looking to emulate Mick Jagger on ‘Big Shot’, but whenever he dropped into that lower vocal tone when he worked on pieces of The Stranger or 52nd Street, you’d swear that he was able to mimic any singer that he heard back in the day.
But that was always how Joel approached all of his songs. He didn’t think of himself as the greatest singer in the world, but his career is the best example of someone imitating his heroes until he turned into a great singer. Emulating people like Redding and Charles wasn’t going to hurt his chances of being a rock and roll star, but even if he wasn’t the grittiest voice, you could still pick out any one of his songs the moment he opened his mouth.
