#3: Billy Joel - Streetlife Serenade
Billy Joel - Streetlife Serenade
Released: October 11, 1974
Musicians:
Billy Joel - vocals, keyboards, Moog, arrangements
William “Smitty” Smith - organ
Richard Bennett - guitar
Gary Dalton - guitar
Mike Deasy - guitar
Don Evans - guitar
Al Hertzberg - guitar
Art Munson - guitar
Raj Rathor - guitar
Michael Stewart - guitar, arrangements
Tom Whitehorse - banjo, pedal steel guitar
Wilton Felder - bass guitar
Emory Gordy Jr. - bass guitar
Larry Knechtel - bass guitar
Ron Tutt - drums
Joe Clayton - congas, percussion
“You heard my latest record. It’s been on the radio. It took me years to write it. They were the best years of my life.”
In fact…they were not the best years of Billy’s life. Billy was 2 albums off from the absolute mega hit of The Stranger. If he’s being self-referential in this lyric, he’s gotta be referring to the hit single from his last album, Piano Man. It wasn’t the absolute classic (or annoyance) we know today. But it was enough of a hit for the record company to send him on a huge tour (opening for the Beach Boys at one point.) So if it IS indeed piano man he’s referring to, this would be during the time immediately after his first album, Cold Spring Harbor. This album was quite a bit of a failure. Especially since the label had pressed the record at the wrong speed and all the songs made him sound like he sucked helium. A copy of those is worth quite a bit of scratch nowadays. I’m lucky enough to have a copy…albeit with severe damage to the back cover…so I was able to afford it.
Music and lyrics by Billy Joel
Track listing:
One Side
Streetlife Serenader
Los Angelenos
The Great Suburban Showdown
Root Beer Rag
Roberta
Another Side
The Entertainer
Last of the Big Time Spenders
Weekend Song
Souvenir
The Mexican Connection
So he refers to the time here as a the “best years of [his] life.” I guess you can understand if you think about the fact that he tried to commit suicide after his first band, Atilla, put out an absolute failure of an album. (I managed to grab a copy on vinyl…it’s not great.) His girlfriend also left him at this point. He’s gone on record saying, “I just figured the world didn’t need another failed musician.” Talk about emo, eh? So he goes to drink bleach. Looks in his mother’s cabinet and finds bleach. It has the skull and crossbones on it. He sees furniture polish and thinks, “that’ll taste better.” …I don’t know why I agree with that thought, but I do. So he drinks it…goes to bed and as he puts it, just “ends up farting furniture polish for a couple of days and polishes my mother’s chairs.” But the thing that struck me and continues to to this day; when he awake he thought, “Oh great…I couldn’t even do this right.”
That…idea of failing at failure is something that haunts me to this day. I am bipolar and before I was diagnosed, I felt as close to suicide as I’d ever like to come. I came very close once but couldn’t…I believe because I never really wanted to. But at the time…I had that same thought: “Oh great…I couldn’t even do this right.”
Billy Joel is an international superstar. But for Long Island he’s a hero. Being from Long Island and thinking Billy Joel is a hero is akin saying New York pizza is the best. It’s both right, and cliche as all hell. Of course there are people who (both to JUST be contrarian and legitimately) don’t like him. And that’s fine…but we’re talking majority here. There’s a reason for this. No matter how rich he got…no matter how much of a star he got…his roots to this island remain. And his stories and lyrics evoke the kind of bullshit we, on the island, are privy to.
Most people when I mention that i’m from Long Island…think the Hamptons. I saw it a lot when I was fortunate enough to be on tour with the 20th Anniversary Tour of Rent. I’d say home is Long Island…and you can see the thought process in their eyes. “oh…he’s got MONEY.” But anybody from Long Island knows…that’s just certain parts. …ya know…like every other place in the world. And Billy was a part of that club that understood this. Even with his record deals…he never lost that edge.
“You either date a rich girl from the north shore, or a cool girl from the south shore.” - Billy
I’m smack in the middle of Long Island. I can honestly say not a single girl I ever dated…lived north of me. …and they were all certainly cool in their own way. Even the ones I parted with in bad ways (and there were a few…as with anybody). They all were certainly cool and (for the most part) had their heads on the ground. I didn’t do this to model the quote. It just…happened. The rich girls from the north…some are nice and cool and whatnot…but not for me. You know your shit, Billy.
Now as I stated in my initial post for this blog…I have no plan for what any of this is about. Just whatever each album sparks in my mind. Given this was the first album by Billy Joel…my thoughts on him and the mirroring to my life as a whole came through first. As I get to more of his albums…more’ll come through I’m sure. But…now I’ve hit side B. And that really brings to mind something else. So here’s a major gear shift.
When I was just a lad in elementary school, one of my friends was a neighbor down the block. We were having a little playdate, as kids do, and at one point his mother, Debbie, asked if we wanted some Dunkin’ Donuts. Me, being the fat kid I was and him, being the diabetic he was, both said absolutely yes. So we hop in the car. Now…at that point my knowledge of music consisted of what played on the radio in my mom, my dad, and my aunt’s cars. My dad had three cassettes.
Barbra Streisand’s Back to Broadway
a bootlegged copy of the Hair movie soundtrack
Barbra Streisand’s The Broadway Album
My mom would listen to the radio and had one cassette:
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
More on that at some point.
My Aunt, at the time, lived in Pennsylvania with my grandparents. Occasionally, she would take me on the 3 hour car trip to go visit the grandparents in Valley Forge. I loved it there, legitimately. My Aunt was (is) great, my grandparents were great. The house was cool. My grandpa had a riding mower I got to ride with him. It was good times all around. While on the drive…she had Billy Joel’s Storm Front. This was my first real experience with Billy. When I get to that album I’ll really go into it. But it lit the fire.
My dad’s car ended up being the fuel to the obsession. When he wasn’t blasting Babs, he’d be on CBS-FM 101.1. Which basically plays the same things over and over and over and over again. Billy Joel was a non-stop staple. Mostly tracks from The Stranger. Occasionally Piano Man, Uptown Girl. It’s not very varied. I loved every second of it, however.
Anywho…on the trip to the land of the donut, Debbie throws on The Entertainer. She knew I was a fan. Dunkin Donuts is about a 1 minute drive. So we pull in and the song is still going. She refuses to let us out of the car until it finishes. She specifically points out two lyrics to me.
“If you’re gonna have a hit, ya gotta make it fit…so they cut it down to 3:05.”
“You’ll be shoved in the back, in the discount rack like another can of beans.”
I loved the rhyme of hit and fit. It was honestly the first time I really paid attention to the lyric of a pop record. The second lyric hit me as funny cause he said “beans.” …I was an odd child.
The obsession with Billy Joel was beginning to hit its heights. I would ask my dad constantly to take me to Sam Goody to get new Billy Joel cassettes. I would go to the library and take them out and basically destroy the cassettes before returning them. However…I never had a copy of Streetlife Serenade. The library didn’t have it and none of the music stores carried it in cassette. Only CD. And I didn’t have a CD player yet. Then I saw the CD of “Greatest Hits Vol 1 and 2.” I looked at the tracklist and there’s “The Entertainer!” I quickly ran to the cassette section and there it was! I quickly take it out. When I get home I throw it on. …but…wait…THE ENTERTAINER ISN’T ON IT! WHAT?! WHY!? …gotta make it fit, I guess.
One afternoon, the failure still fresh in my head, the phone in my house rings. My dad picks up. I’m just hanging around in the kitchen. (Ya know…fat kid.) My dad says, “hold on one second.” He puts the phone’s receiver against his chest. “Matty…do you want to see Billy Joel?” My eyes bug. I say “yes” timidly and excitedly. He goes back to the phone and says thank you and finishes up the conversation. My mom comes in the room. My dad explains that Debbie had two tickets to a Billy concert at Nassau Coliseum that she couldn’t use and would I want them. And that was that…my dad and I were going to see the man live.
Up until that day, I couldn’t stop listening. I was brushing up on my knowledge so I could scream along with all the songs as soon as the first note is played. That’s what you do at concerts, right? That’s how you show you’re the ultimate fan.
Concert day. I’m ready. We sit in our seats. Section 337, row J. I was behind the stage technically…but I didn’t care. The lights dimmed. Everyone was screaming. The smell of beer, hot dogs and sweet smoke in the air. The lights come up on the keyboard of the piano and two hands wildly playing the opening passage of Angry Young Man. I’ve never seen hands move that fast. They’re blurry. The band bursts in with them…and everyone goes nuts. It was that moment that I knew I needed to do that.
After the concert was over…we stopped at the merch booth. I had to get a shirt. And then…I saw a bunch of CDs. There it was. A copy of Streetlife Serenade. On CD. Suddenly I just knew this was it. I had to have it. I had to do a little wheelin’ and dealin’ to get my dad to buy it. I believe it was some kind of yard work or something of that nature. My dad didn’t understand why I wanted a CD when I couldn’t play it…but alas, I agreed to the work and it was mine.
I loved to take the CD out and look at the shine on the back. I was super careful not to get a single fingerprint on it. I reread the booklet more times than I could possibly remember. My dad would see me looking at it and laugh. Kids are weird. Or maybe I just was. Either way…It took about 5 months from then to get a CD player. I had got a tiny boom box for my birthday. Along with a couple of CDs. My parents were always super attentive to me. Something I can never get angsty about. They knew what I liked and what I wanted. I opened the CDs…cause I love opening new things…but the first album was only gonna be Streetlife.
The sounds of 70s pop/rock pervade my ears. “Streetlife Serenader” he sings this nasal melody that repeats over and over. But I’m fascinated by the piano. It’s flowing. It’s beautiful…and then drums kick in and throw it into overdrive. At the time I’d only been listening to the radio and cassettes. The compressed loudness of compact discs was like heroine to my ears. I felt like I was in the studio. The next track, “Los Angelenos” is badass. It’s hard rock. (as far as I knew.) And it mentions reefer. I had no idea what it was…but my brain immediately recognized it as something taboo. “Root Beer Rag”…would be the next musical milestone I absolutely have to conquer…after “Angry Young Man” of course. I’m blasting through the album….and then…the acoustic guitar starts strumming. That moog synth…yes! There it was. “The Entertainer”. I took in every second. The beauty of it. The clever lyrics. I didn’t understand HOW brilliant it was…but I knew it was something. The song remained a staple in any mix I ever made. It basically served as a reminder. A warning to be cautious of the dangers of the music business.
Listening now…this album sounds like he hasn’t found his complete footing yet. There’s moments of his later brilliance trying to come through. “Los Angelenos” sounds like something that would feel at home on Glass Houses. “Root Beer Rag” and “The Mexican Connection” are certainly cool, but do indeed feel like the fillers that he admits they were. This album was a bit of a white whale when I was young, especially given that I owned it for months without being able to play it. Nowadays…it sounds like a bit of a hit and miss Billy album. But for me it still FEELS rare and unique. Nostalgia really paints over everything.
When Debbie passed away, I was sitting on my couch watching TV. I was in my 20s. Her son was/is one of my best friends and suddenly I see him calling on my cell. Very few of my friends (read: none) ever call unless it’s important. So I picked up. His voice was shaky.
“Hey.”
“Hey man, what’s up? “
“I just wanted you to know my mom died. “
“Oh my god.”
“I just…wanted to make sure you knew.”
“I’m so…sorry.”
“Yeah…I just wanted you to know. I’ll…talk to you later.”
I hung up and was in stunned silence. She was the reason I ended up at that concert. Which means she was the reason I saw Billy play Angry Young Man. Which is is the reason I play piano. Which is responsible for my entire career. Debbie was a pretty constant person in my life. Given my closeness with her son…I would see her at shows I worked on in theater quite a bit. And she ended up, whether she knew or not, providing a profound impact. There was one show I was conducting and playing keys for and afterwards…she came up to me and said “the real show was down here,” pointing to the pit I was in. I knew of Billy. I lived on Long Island…it’s impossible to not know him. But without Debbie…I doubt my obsession would have really taken off and hit that peak. Maybe without that concert I wouldn’t have had that spark to play to piano. Maybe I would’ve found the spark to be a baseball player. I WAS on a t-ball team after all. (I shudder at that thought…) I owe her a great deal of thanks for that. Thank you, Debbie.