Why Billy Joel will always hate his debut album
Imagine the scene: you’ve finally, after years of striving, made your first album. You’ve achieved what so many dream of, managed what so many never can. Riding high, you invite all your friends to come and hear it, you hit play…and you hate it. That was Billy Joel‘s experience.
In November 1971, Joel truly thought things were finally coming together. He thought he’d finally achieved what he’d been wanting to for years now, or even for as long as he’d been playing piano. But when the reality actually hit, it was different.
He’d been working at it for years, though. After starting to learn to play his instrument when he was only four, he’d been honing these skills for decades even. He was so devoted to making that passion work that he fully rejected education, telling his family, “To hell with it. If I’m not going to Columbia University, I’m going to Columbia Records, and you don’t need a high school diploma over there.”
With that devoted dedication, he kept working at it, trying to find a place for himself when the music world was enamoured with the guitar and didn’t really know what to do with a piano man. He took the classic path of playing in a whole bunch of smaller bands, as well as writing songs for others, before landing at what seemed like the inevitable outcome – a solo career.
It was somewhat of an accident. Joel was still trying to be a songwriter, but he got the advice to put his best foot forward. “The advice I got from people in the music business was, ‘Well, if you want people to hear your songs, make an album’,” Joel recalled in a YouTube video, “And then you go out on the road and you do shows, and you promote your album.”
It seemed odd to him as he said, “I thought, ‘This is a strange way to be a songwriter’”, but really, he’d just been offered a cheat code for truly launching his solo career.
So he made an album, and the result was Cold Spring Harbour, his 1971 debut. He worked on it for a good while until he was happy with it and proud of the songs and his performances, making sure it was all a good reflection of his talent. Then, when it was ready, he decided to celebrate. “So, I’m gonna have this big party, right, and all my friends come over and this is my first album and we’re gonna have this listening party,” he said – and that’s when the problem hit.
There in a room with all his loved ones, Joel hit play. “My friends are listening going … ‘Why do you sound like a girl?’” he recalled as the realisation hit that something had gone very wrong. In the process of putting the album onto records, the studio tapes were transferred at a higher speed, meaning that the tempo was slightly higher, affecting the pitch as a result. “I took the thing and I threw it like a Frisbee,” he said.
It was fixed, luckily. But even still, the album flopped. With the tainting of that first experience, and the simple fact that the record didn’t sell, Joel’s opinion on the release never truly lightened.
