“Symphonic scope”: The song Billy Joel considered his ‘A Day in the Life’
Billy Joel isn’t usually viewed as a particularly political musician. Which is actually quite strange, when you think about it: not only does much of his discography include deeply embedded sociopolitical contexts, but he also grew up during a time of intense unrest, a realisation that would later fuel the beginnings of one of his most well-known political jabs of all time; ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’.
To claim Joel as anything but a political musician would be to ignore significant aspects of his appeal: though not a traditional protest-type artist or musical activist in the way many others, like Joan Baez, are, Joel doesn’t shy away from the more difficult topics, especially if he feels close to them on a personal level. For instance, the first seed for ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ happened in the studio, speaking to a 21-year-old friend of Sean Ono Lennon.
The friend had joked about Joel growing up in the 1950s, a time when (he thought) nothing of note happened politically. “Everybody knows that nothing happened in the ’50s,” he’d said, which Joel challenged by asking him how he’d not heard of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis. This conversation sparked the beginnings of what would become one of the biggest political anthems in history, taking on a life of its own outside of Joel’s discography and one cited by many as the ultimate symbol of the cycle of conflict.
Like many, Joel was also impacted by the Vietnam War. While countless musicians used their platform to air their grievances, like The Beatles, Joel sought to spotlight his friends who served, writing the song from snippets of conversations with veterans to build around what it must have been like deep in battle. “I wanted to do that for my friends who did go to ‘Nam,” Joel said in 2014, discussing ‘Goodnight Saigon’.
Adding: “A lot of them came back from being in country and really had a hard time getting over it, and still to this day I think a lot of them are having a hard time. They were never really welcomed back, and whether you agreed with the war or not, these guys really took it on the chin. They went over there and they served, and they never really got their due.”
Although a different kind of song you might expect from Joel, though one with just as many intricate considerations he’s always had, like the sort of cinematic feel that gives it this broader sense of grandeur, it follows in the footsteps of another anthem about generational disillusionment; The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’. Joel knew ‘Goodnight Saigon’ needed to evoke a similar atmosphere, the kind that set the scene for all those who fought for their lives.
Discussing how he pulled this off during a Sirius XM interview, he said he knew the song had to have the same “treatment” as ‘A Day in the Life’, and that meant giving it a sense of “theatre” and “symphonic scope”. When it went into the chorus, Joel made sure it exploded in a more commanding, melodic way, before reverting “back to this very plain, wide-open music”, or, essentially, what the Fab Four did on ‘A Day in the Life’.
Suppose that also proves just how far off it is to assume Joel has never been political, or had political interests, or even felt impacted enough by the climate to let it bleed into his own music. Even from observing how others do it, Joel let it thread into his own artistic vision, bringing stories to life even if they’re not his own. Those subtle contexts are what make his music politically relevant.
