On Friday I was lucky enough to see Billy Joel for the second time. The last time I saw him, it was a part of his 12-night run at Madison Square Garden—which involved some really sketchy counting as to how it was a 12-night run, but that’s neither here nor there. The last time I saw him, I was 11, and whatever Billy Joel songs I had heard were force-fed to me by my parents.
This time, there was no force-feeding. Eight years later, Billy Joel’s music had become as much a part of the fabric of what I listen to as anyone else.
Few people know the intricacies of Joel’s catalog. Furthermore, he has not released an album of non-classical music since 1993, claiming that he’s written every song he can. Despite this, Joel has one of the deepest discographies and demands to be taken seriously, though critics have nary been that kind.
His first album, Cold Spring Harbor, has a number of great songs, but it is his second release, Piano Man, that made Joel a household name. Three of these songs—“Piano Man,” “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” and “Captain Jack”—are at any given point in time my favorite song, not just from Joel, but anyone.
Before I continue, some of you who know me may ask yourself: “You like Phish, how can you possibly like Billy Joel?!?” Without digressing this column into a rant about how people can like multiple different genres of music, I like Billy Joel for the same reason that he doesn’t play nearly as well outside of the tri-state area.
Joel’s incredibly specific lyrics to towns on Long Island, locations in New York City and everything else that has no meaning to someone who was not born in Oyster Bay, Long Island or has not walked the streets of New York City, is the reason why I like him so much. The fact that when I’ve been away from home for weeks or months, I can put on “New York State of Mind” and feel as if I am not away from home.
“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” which I will break down in two parts, is a masterpiece beyond anything almost anyone else has ever written. Springsteen has “Jungleland”—Joel has “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.”
Both have the best, most well-placed saxophone solos in popular music. Both are incredibly long—not that song length is indicative of quality—but in this case, whether it is the ballad of Brenda and Eddie, the klezmer section that precedes it or the smooth piano ballad section that comes before that, this song is a tri-partite masterpiece.
Furthermore, when Joel played the opening piano notes of the song, I have never seen 20,000 people collectively share a moment with the performer on stage like that—where an already incredibly appreciative crowd lept out of their seats to croon the nearly eight-minute song. When one goes to see Pearl Jam, fans hang on every one of Vedder’s words, preempting them ever so slightly just to show they know them all. But this is a totally different ballgame, as this song shook the crowd into a frenzy, the person in front of me dancing as if the opening notes of “Bertha” just rang out, despite the fact that this is not a particularly dance-friendly tune.
Billy Joel will never be regarded as one of the greatest musicians ever. Billy Joel is not a household name outside of a tiny hamlet of the country, one that holds millions of people, and expats littered across the country. To those people, Joel is their voice. He speaks their language. He may be an alcoholic who can’t drive and has been divorced more times than anyone ever should, but he is a storyteller, one who tells stories that are unmistakably from New York.
Last year, I wrote a column objectively calling Bob Seger the greatest musician ever. While Seger is an American icon and is the voice of a part of the country in which I am merely a tourist, Joel speaks my language. As often as I try to blend in as a Midwesterner myself, as the coda of “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” rings out, I know the boy from Oyster Bay, Long Island with a six-pack in his hand better than I know the all-American heroes from Seger’s songs.
Joel may never get the respect from critics he thinks he deserves, but to me and the 20,000 people who packed the Garden and will continue to pack “The World’s Most Famous Arena” once a month for the foreseeable future, Joel is subjectively the greatest musician around.
Think Brian has it all wrong? Let him know who's your greatest musician ever at weidy@wisc.edu.
