In The Studio with Redbeard

Tag: Billy Joel

  • Billy Joel- Glass Houses

    Billy Joel- Glass Houses

    After back-to-back multi-million sellers The Stranger  and 52nd Street, Billy Joel could do no wrong…but that didn’t stop him from trying in March 1980 on Glass Houses. Billy ditched the grand piano that was his signature, stripped down the arrangements to bar band essentials of jangly guitar, bass, and drums, and wrote a new batch of catchy songs including “You May Be Right”, “Sometimes a Fantasy”, “Close to the Borderline”, “Don’t Ask Me Why”, and the album’s thematic centerpiece, “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”.

    Billy Joel took a big risk in March 1980 by following blockbusters The Stranger  and 52nd Street  with the surprisingly stripped down garage rock arrangements of Glass Houses.  But lest you get the wrong idea, it was the approach by Billy Joel that was lean, not the material. Some of his best songs are here, including the under-appreciated”All for Leyna” and the timeless “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”. In a rare conversation, Billy Joel and I sound like two guys outside sitting on the stoop recalling his favorite old Rolling Stones licks; seeing the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show; British Invasion bands that followed, garage rock, and the New York City punk scene that influenced his approach on the 1980 Glass Houses  album; how “play it again, Sam” is boring; New York baseball (he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan until they moved to L.A. in 1958, when he switched to the Yankees); Harley Sportsters; getting T-boned while riding said motorcycle and almost losing his hands; and why having your brother-in-law manage you only works in The Godfather movies. 
    It may not seem so risky from this vantage point, but singer/songwriter Billy Joel made a considerable gamble on the stripped-down guitar-bass-drums approach to many of the songs on his March 1980 album, Glass Houses. “There was a lot of pressure to make another The Stranger or Stranger 2  after I did 52nd Street. Frankly, I would have been bored with that,” explains Billy Joel in my classic rock interview. Find out why Glass Houses  has sold over ten million copies, stayed at #1 for six consecutive weeks, was the 4th-best seller for the entire year 1980, and won Billy Joel a Grammy Award for 1980 Album of the Year. And Joel’s current administration as the unofficial musical mayor of New York City shows no sign of term limits any time soon. -Redbeard

  • Billy Joel- You May Be Right-w/Elton John 7-94

    Billy Joel- You May Be Right-w/Elton John 7-94

    It was just the stuff of fantasy until July 1994 when suddenly there they were, “Face 2 Face” on one stage: Billy Joel, the honorary mayor without term limits of New York City, sharing the Meadowlands stage with the incomparable Elton John! Billy gives us the skinny (tie) on that song along with the #1-selling Grammy Album of the Year 1980, Glass Houses,  as my guest In the Studio  next week. – Redbeard

  • Billy Joel- New York State of Mind- San Francisco 6-75

    Billy Joel- New York State of Mind- San Francisco 6-75

    7/25/24 the unofficial mayor of New York City, Billy Joel,  concluded the unprecedented 150th show at Madison Square Garden, 104 in his monthly home stand. Mind-boggling, to be sure, yet the In the Studio archive contains impressive live performances from William Martin Joel and band from nearly fifty years ago.

    I have always marveled at what an excellent live band Billy Joel has led for almost a half century, and to bolster that contention, I present Exhibit “A” from a live performance of the then new song “New York State of Mind” in June, 1975 in San Francisco.This may be the earliest known live recording of the gem, but most certainly it would be one of the last performances where no one in the audience applauds during the piano intro in recognition! –Redbeard

  • Billy Joel- 52nd Street

    Billy Joel- 52nd Street

    Running the numbers on Billy Joel’s 1978 Grammy Award Album of the Year 52nd Street is breathtaking: his sixth studio album, and the first after the Piano Man’s breakthrough The Stranger; Joel’s first #1-seller, with over 7,000,000 sold just in the US; winner of two Grammy Awards; the #1 seller of the entire following year, 1979; and #354 on Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 Albums of All Time.

    William Martin Billy Joel has sold more albums in the U.S. than any pop/rock singer except for Elvis Presley. Superstar musicians in that rarefied league ( and many more only pretenders to it ) always surround themselves with gaggles of managers, “minders”, assistants, agents, and promoters , and the size of the entourage doubles when they’re on tour. So imagine my surprise when Billy Joel arrived for our scheduled interview at my Orlando hotel room door at the decidedly unhip hour of 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning – completely alone.

    Billy had played to a sold-out audience of 15,000 only 12 hours earlier, but now here he stood before me without security guard or tour manager, dressed in an old navy-blue t-shirt, matching shorts, and well-worn canvas deck shoes, just another schlep tourist whose kid wanted to meet a real celebrity. Like Mickey Mouse, for instance.

    What ensued was a delightful conversation with Billy Joel by two guys who had never met, from different parts of America, just shooting the breeze about mutual loves. Sure, we talked rock’n’roll, from Billy seeing the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show  to British Invasion bands that followed; garage rock, and the New York City punk scene that influenced his approach after the1978 52nd Street  album. But we also talked at length about baseball (he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan until they moved to L.A. in 1958, when he switched to the Yankees); about why he signed with Columbia Records, and in spite of revisionist history to the contrary, how 1973’s “Piano Man”  was only a turntable hit single  that never made any money for the long-suffering label until after The Stranger rewrote the record books almost five years later; and about his long creative collaboration with the late producer Phil Ramone. ( Billy Joel  with superstar producer Phil Ramone, right, who passed away in 2013)

    Find out how 52nd Street, containing “Big Shot”, “My Life”, “Stiletto”, ”Honesty”, ”Half a Mile Away”, and “Until the Night” sold over 7 million copies, stayed at #1 for eight consecutive weeks, and won Billy Joel a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978. – Redbeard

  • Aerosmith- Fever- Brussels 10-31-93

    Aerosmith- Fever- Brussels 10-31-93

    The only kind of “Fever” that’s actually good for anyone is the musical one that is symptomatic of the rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu. Aerosmith was running a high “Fever”, originally from the album Get a Grip earlier that year, on Halloween night in 1993 in Brussels here. –Redbeard 

  • Billy Joel- The Stranger

    Billy Joel- The Stranger

    Billy Joel is certainly no The Stranger to spectacular popularity, or the record books documenting same. OK, pop quiz: who is runner-up to Elvis Presley as the top album seller singer in America? It’s Billy Joel, the unofficial mayor of New York City who, unlike Zohran Mamdani, is not term-limited but holds that distinction for life. Rolling Stone magazine bestowed the ranking of #67 on The Stranger on its vaunted Top 500 Albums of All Time list.

    It’s not as if Billy Joel had not been a prolific recording singer/songwriter, or an infrequent touring musician prior to his fifth album The Stranger, released in Fall 1977. Joel had actually come to national attention as early as his second album Piano Man, when the title song became a mid-chart hit, and had pockets of popularity after releasing the deserving Turnstiles, containing the soon-to-be-standard “New York State of Mind”, in early 1976. But strangely, his album sales were in a decidedly negative trend after Piano Man. With a superb band and veteran producer Phil Ramone in his corner, Billy Joel’s The Stranger changed all of that, permanently. With the stories behind “Just the Way You Are”,”Movin’ Out”,”Only the Good Die Young”, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, and the title song, Billy Joel joins me In the Studio Superstar musicians in that rarefied league (and many more only pretenders to it ) almost always surround themselves with gaggles of managers, “minders”, assistants, agents, and promoters , and the size of the entourage doubles when they’re on tour. ( Billy Joel (L) with the late producer Phil Ramone )

    So imagine my surprise when Billy Joel arrived, like The Stranger  personified, for our scheduled interview at my Orlando hotel room door at the decidedly unhip hour of 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning – completely alone. Billy had played to a sold-out audience of 15,000 only 12 hours earlier, but now here he stood before me without security guard or tour manager, dressed in an old navy-blue t-shirt, matching shorts , and well-worn canvas deck shoes, just another schlep tourist whose kid wanted to meet a real celebrity. Like Mickey Mouse, for instance. What ensued was, for me, a delightful conversation, two guys who had never met, from different parts of America, just shooting the breeze about mutual loves. Sure, we talked rock’n’roll, from Billy Joel seeing the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show  to British Invasion bands that followed, garage rock , and the New York City punk scene that influenced his approach on the 1980 Glass Houses  album. But in this lively classic rock interview, we also talked at length about baseball (he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan until they moved to L.A. in 1958, when he switched to the Yankees); Harley Davidson Cafe Sportsters ; the motorcycle accident which almost cost Billy Joel his hands, his career, and his life ; and the break-up of his marriage to his former manager, even while her brother managed Joel’s career amidst claims of impropriety. The only thing Billy Joel claimed that he did not want to discuss that morning was his Fall 1977 blockbuster breakout The Stranger,  a bit of a change-up pitch for me since that monumental album ( it knocked the iconic Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water  out as the top-seller in Columbia Records long storied history) was one of the primary reasons I was there. But I wisely took the pitch rather than line driving it back at Joel, him  fiercely independent & a card-carrying contrarian, with me figuring that this engaging conversationalist  with the unpretentious attitude would be obliged to get around to discussing the 10 million-plus seller The Stranger  at some point. And as you hear in this classic rock interview, I was right.

    And you also get to hear from Billy Joel’s producer of The Stranger, the legendary Phil Ramone, with 34 Grammy nominations one of the most acclaimed technicians in music history, who sadly passed away in March 2013. Hear the entire Phil Ramone interview here. With the stories behind “Just the Way You Are”,”Movin’ Out”,”Only the Good Die Young”, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, and the title song, Billy Joel joins me In the Studio –Redbeard

  • Billy Joel- Only the Good Die Young reggae demo

    Billy Joel- Only the Good Die Young reggae demo

    Just for fun, check out this previously unreleased demo of Billy Joel leading his band through a playful reggae version of “Only the Good Die Young”, no doubt in tribute to the popularity  of Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1977 when Billy Joel’s The Stranger  was recorded. You can find it on the excellent My Lives  box set, but my remastering here sounds a lot better.- Redbeard

  • Billy Joel- Captain Jack- Long Island 7-81

    Billy Joel- Captain Jack- Long Island 7-81

    People that have not been in Billy Joel’s corner since the days of The Hassles and Cold Spring Harbor  and Piano Man,  the latter album released November 1973, truly cannot appreciate the depth of affection millions feel for this guy. But those lucky few who packed Spark’s Saloon to the rafters in Huntington out on Long Island  on a hot July night back in 1981 understood that it was a favorite son coming home to check in, throwing an anchor over the side of the battleship of superstardom that had set sail with him aboard four years earlier with The Stranger, to sing and play the song which had actually sealed his original Columbia Records recording deal, “Captain Jack”.  –Redbeard

  • Billy Joel- Billy the Kid- UConn 12-76

    Billy Joel- Billy the Kid- UConn 12-76

    “From a town known as Oyster Bay Long Island, Rode a boy with a six-pack in his hand…”

    As Billy Joel prepares to blow out the candles on seventy this week, it felt right to dust off something more akin to seventeen. There are moments in time when a photographer’s lens or a tape recorder’s microphones capture that magical moment just before history is made, and that’s what we have here: Billy Joel and his live band, even then aces all, poised on the launching pad of stardom mere months before The Stranger  would forever change his life and pop culture, playing a regional stronghold for Billy Joel, the University of Connecticut at New London just before Christmas break in 1976. Three years earlier I had discovered the brilliant songwriting on the album Piano Man  by playing on the radio not only the now-famous title song but also the heroin cautionary tale “Captain Jack” and the semi-autobiographical “Billy the Kid“, a very rare live version which we share here. –Redbeard 

  • Tommy Shaw- Girls With Guns- Dallas Ft. Worth 11-84

    Tommy Shaw- Girls With Guns- Dallas Ft. Worth 11-84

    When Tommy Shaw, just recently estranged then from arena-fillers Styx, brought his Girls With Guns  solo band to a Ft. Worth nightclub in an otherwise empty strip mall on a chilly Sunday November night in 1984, what I expected to see and hear, and what was actually offered up, were two completely different things, providing a real learning moment for me in my career. Standing in the dressing room surrounded by singer/ songwriter/ guitarist Shaw,  Billy Joel saxophonist Richie Cannata, and Paul McCartney and Wings drummer Steve Holley, I expected to hear these three veterans of playing “the big rooms” lament slogging back to the bars as if it was a minor league assignment. Boy, was I wrong.  What you will hear in this radio interview which Tommy Shaw did with me before the live performance later that night is how big-time professional musicians approach their craft regardless of whether it is a 20,000 seat arena or a nightclub in Ft. Worth. Shaw had just come off the Styx Kilroy Was Here  arena and stadium tour a year earlier, a rock musical which was probably ahead of its time by about fifteen years and most definitely not suited for the stadiums and sports arenas in which Styx had staged it. With his first solo album and tour, Tommy Shaw was hungry to reconnect with the fans on a level where every bead of sweat was counted, and every note played was accountable. You’ll hear “Girls With Guns”, “Come In and Explain”, a live “Man in the Wilderness” with Styx, “The Race is On” with Richie Cannata steaming on sax, and finally the In the Studio  acoustic version of Tommy Shaw’s “Crystal Ball” as performed live on my ROCK 103 radio show in Memphis in 1983. –Redbeard