#BillyJoel

Billy Joel, ‘Turn The Lights Back On,’ His First New Song In 17 Years – A Welcome Return To Recording

~ Kenneth Corsini ~ 9 Comments

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“Did I wait too long to turn the lights back on?” – Billy Joel, “Turn The Lights Back On”

“No, you didn’t.” – BourbonAndVinyl.net

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be writing about a new Billy Joel song in 2024. I’ve been doing this blog for a while now and I’ve never posted about Billy Joel. Of course Joel has been relatively silent since 1993. I’m a big fan of Billy Joel’s and have been since college. I was actually kind of into Joel when I was in junior high/high school – it was hard not to be into Joel in the late 70s/early 80s. But it wasn’t until I was in college and I met future roommate and life long friend Drew that I jumped in on Billy in earnest. When we met, Drew was a Who/Billy Joel guy and I was a Stones/Springsteen guy. Naturally, as happens in college, we cross pollinated musical interests. I’ve been a fan ever since. I never thought we’d hear anything new from Joel again, as he’d retired from songwriting and recording, but on February 1st he dropped “Turn The Lights Back On,” billed as his first song in 17 years.

The headlines all say it’s been 17 years but for me at least, it’s been longer. In 2007 he released a song “All Of My Life,” which I never heard until this week. In fact, I’d never even heard of the song until this week. It was a string drenched, Sinatra-torch style song. It’s nice, but it’s no “Big Shot.” The only place you can find “All Of My Life” is on YouTube on a grainy video. He did sort of release another song in 2007, “Christmas In Fallujah,” a song he wrote but he let some kid, Cass Dillon (who was dating his daughter), sing the song. Does that really count? You can also find a live version of Joel singing the song and it’s worth hunting down. Billy wrote the song after getting countless letters from the troops, which is kind of awesome when you think about it.

So like most of you, Billy Joel’s last batch of original songs was on his 1993 album River Of Dreams. The last song on that album was “Lost For Words.” In light of his walking away from writing/recording, some folks saw that as symbolic… perhaps Billy had run out of things to say. In the 30 years that he’s been away from doing original music he’s of course toured incessantly and has even done a continuous “residency” of playing venerable Madison Square Garden every month. Billy has claimed in the intervening years that he’s continued to compose songs but he just “didn’t write them down.”

I’m not sure why Billy dropped out of the game. He had a string of great albums from 1973’s Piano Man through 1989’s Storm Front. I don’t think any of us were terribly thrilled with River Of Dreams in 1993 but by that point he was allowed to have an off album. I was dating a woman who owned that disc and I tried listening to it… I did like “All About Soul.” And for the record I hated all that Innocent Man stuff. Let’s leave the “Uptown Girl” uptown if you will… Apparently disappointed with River Of Dreams Joel just decided to take his considerably large song book on the road for the rest of his career. I’ve always wondered if Joel’s issues with booze (and car crashes) stemmed from the fact that he’d gone idle in terms of songwriting and recording. Idle hands… as they say.

I don’t know what inspired him to sit down and write/record again but goddamm I’m glad he did. He co wrote “Turn The Lights Back On,” which surprised me… most of his songs read, “Written by Billy Joel.” But after 30 years maybe he needed some gutter guards to keep the ball moving down the lane. I’ve been pulling up the video for the “teaser” for the song for a while now and “Turn Up The Lights,” in the teaser at least, reminded me of “And So It Goes” a beautiful piano ballad from Storm Front. Now that I’ve heard the whole thing it gives me more of a Nylon Curtain vibe. In the video for the teaser, Joel turns the page on a note book from “Lost For Words,” to a new page with “Turn The Lights Back On” which really brings it all home for me.

The track is a piano ballad with some big drums – one can only hope that is Joel’s longtime drummer Liberty DeVitto banging away. There are strings and crescendos. It’s told from the viewpoint of a lover who’s been away a while. He’s asking if it’s too late to turn the lights back on and start again. Obviously it’s a metaphor for his songwriting career. I love the way Billy plays piano but can we just pause for a second and comment on how superb his voice sounds. Perhaps the constant touring has made his voice stronger as opposed to say… Elton who sounds… well, bad. Anyway, “Turn The Lights Back On” may be criticized for sounding like a tentative return from Joel, but after 30 years he’s allowed to sound tenative… I mean, that’s kind of the vibe of the whole thing. It’s a, “Hey, I haven’t done anything in 3 decades, do you guys dig this?” And for the record, I don’t think it does sound tentative. I really like the song. Here’s a lyric video:

I hope this means Joel has an album’s worth of material on the way for us. Or it could be another 17 years before we hear anything… although that might be a miracle of modern science at his age. Billy has always been a great songwriter, performer, piano player and the dude can rock. He can go from the sensitive ballad to the ballsy rocker all on one side of an album. The Stones waited 18 years, Peter Gabriel waited 21 years… why can’t Joel wait 31 years between albums? It’s never too late Billy, turn those lights back on, fire up the piano and let’s rock n roll… And let’s remember when an artist breaks his silence after 31 years, it’s a big deal.

To quote Billy… “Don’t take any shit from anybody.” I really like this song and I’ve certainly got my fingers crossed on a new album!

Cheers.

How The Biggest Bands In the World Reacted Musically to Punk Rock in the 70s

~ Kenneth Corsini ~ 33 Comments

Punk.jpg*Image from the internet and probably copyrighted

I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking a lot about that whole Grunge era in the 90s lately. I think the whole Grunge thing was the last musical movement that I actually got caught up in. On my first date with the Rock Chick, back in my swashbuckling bachelor days, we actually talked about music and she said, “I hate that Kurt Cobain destroyed everything that came before him.” That was sadly a very true statement. When Cobain came along – and lets face it, it wasn’t just him, there was an army of bands who came with him & Nirvana, like Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, the Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden (to name a few of my favorites) – he laid waste to everything that came prior.

The Rock Chick went on to say that day, “I liked some of those hard rock, hair-metal bands like Motley Crue, Van Halen and Cinderella. You just don’t hear that kind of music any more.” Talk about love at first conversation. This was our first date! My heart throbbed, but enough of that mushy stuff. It wasn’t only those “hair bands” who bit the dust in the wake of Grunge, everybody went down. Billy Joel crawled off to write symphonies. Bruce Springsteen decided he was John Steinbeck with a guitar. Grunge shook rock and roll to its foundation. Grunge was rock and roll stripped of its artifice, more primal and visceral in nature. Gone were drum machines and synths… enter guitar, drums and a whole lot of angst. No hair spray or frankly, bathing needed.  The Rock Chick, ever adaptable, did morph into a huge “alternative” rock fan, the offspring of Grunge if you will. One door closes, another opens as the saying goes.

Of course, this isn’t the first musical wave to rise up and challenge the established order. Punk rock, which one could describe as the pierced, demented grandfather of Grunge, was just as primal and visceral, if not way more so. Both punk and Grunge, to my uneducated ears at least, seem to strip away layers of polish that had accumulated on rock and roll and get it back to that four or five guys (or gals) in a garage bashing out tunes kinda vibe. Punk, rather than express the angst of Grunge, had more of a social protest angle to it. Punk bands, especially out of England were protesting the economic and social conditions they found themselves in and it challenged the somewhat complacent rock establishment. There was an almost nihilistic bent to it that made it dangerous. Of course, I was really, really late getting on the punk bandwagon…

Here in the middle of America, we didn’t hear a lot of punk music on the radio… Not even American punk from New York like the Ramones made it on the radio here. I can remember in the late/mid-70s sitting on the couch at the house one Sunday night and my dad was watching 60 Minutes. They did a segment on the English punk movement. They showed a bunch of young kids, a little older than I was, with safety pins piercing their nose or cheeks. They had Mohawk hair cuts and wore a lot of leather. They were all slamming violently into each other on the dance floor, not unlike a rugby scrum. My father, whose sensibilities on everything are firmly rooted in the 50s, looked over at my brother and I with a look that I now realize can only be described as… fear. I felt that he had the strong urge to jump up and cover my brother’s ears and perhaps backhand me… Looking at me, in his mind’s eye, he probably saw my hair morphing into a Mohawk… a safety pin springing magically out of my cheek. He knew how drawn I was to rebellion.

For my part, I was just as terrified. The 60 Minutes crew shot the live footage at the punk concert – a Sex Pistols’ show – and didn’t do anything to mix the sound. It sounded like harsh, frightening noise with a crazed singer screaming at people. They didn’t play any studio stuff. The old farts on that show just marveled at Johnny Rotten singing “God Save the Queen.” They actually had subtitles to highlight what I’m sure they considered subversive lyrics. This was a sign of the coming apocalypse… To me, it just sounded awful. I need a little melody. It took me years – like 20 years – to finally buy a Clash album. It was a revelation. I quickly picked up the Ramones and the Stooges. Those are some of my favorite punk rock bands. At last, I finally picked up Never Mind the Bollocks, from the once scary (to me) Sex Pistols only about 10 years ago and it’s awesome. Very simple, straight forward guitar rock. As Lou Reed said, “One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.” But as my friend Doug told me once, “Every punk rocker knows Lou Reed is an asshole.”

Punk rockers challenged the established rock acts that were already ensconced on the top of the world, the Rock Stars. Rock n roll had gotten bloated. There were Art Rock bands doing 15-minute, multi suite tracks like Rush or Yes, that almost had more in common with classical music than rock and roll. There were strings and overly polished production. Rock had gotten fat and comfortable. Along came punk to shake things up, and thank God it did. Instead of destroying everything that came before it like Grunge, a curious thing happened… the established rock bands, for lack of a better word, absorbed the energy and vibe. Although I’ll admit some of the artists ignored punk: Dylan had found Jesus, Bowie was over in Berlin doing his thing, Steely Dan’s jazz-influenced bubble never burst and hard rockers like Black Sabbath and AC/DC didn’t change a thing. But so many rockers were influenced by punk.

I’ve compiled the following list of some of my favorite band/artist reactions to the punk movement. At the time I’d have hardly known the stylistic change in music came from punk rock, but you live and learn.

  1. Queen, News Of The World – Queen was just coming off two albums of long, complicated music (A Day At the Races, Night On the Town) and were already considering a shift to shorter, more stripped down tracks. While recording News, the Sex Pistols were in the next studio… Freddie Mercury ran into Sid Vicious (who he had been calling Sid Ferocious) and Sid asked, “Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses yet?” Queen, and Freddie especially had been the target of the punk’s ire, and he replied, “We’re doing our best, dear.” Queen went into the studio and delivered a stylistically adventurous LP with tighter, shorter tracks. Sure, “It’s Late” was six and a half minutes long, but what a guitar riff. The crowning glory was Freddie and Brian May’s double-single response to the punks – “We Will Rock You” (their statement of purpose) and “We Are the Champions” (Freddie’s fuck you to them). The lyrics, “no time for losers, ’cause we are the champions” were pretty clear.
  2. The Rolling Stones, Some Girls – The Stones totally absorbed the punk ethos on this album. Of course on tracks like “Miss You” they also absorbed the disco thing too. Mick always picked up on what was now, and Keith keeps them centered and connected to their roots. Songs like “Lies,” and especially “Shattered” were stripped down with rocking guitar. No strings, no fat, just awesome. On “Respectable,” they even mocked the punk’s criticism, “Well now we’re respected in society, We don’t worry about the things that we used to be.”
  3. The Who, Who Are You – No one was more disturbed by the punk’s criticism than Pete Townshend, who saw a lot of the early Who in the punks. Who Are You was seen as a return to form for them, with loud guitars and bombastic drums. Townshend’s title track was directly addressed to the punks, “who the fuck are you?”
  4. Pete Townshend, Empty Glass – So obsessed with the punks was Pete, he continued to write songs about them on his first “proper” solo album. “Rough Boys” sounds like he wants to be friends with them. On “Jools and Jim” he complains, “they don’t give a shit Keith Moon is dead.” From his interviews lately, it sounds like Pete doesn’t care either…
  5. Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps – Nobody dug the punks as much as Neil Young did. The punks seemed to wake Neil from the torpor he was under at the time. The first half of this album was acoustic but the second half is a bunch of blistering guitar workouts. He revamped a heavily bootlegged “Sedan Delivery” and speeded it up so it was very punk. Both the opening and closing, variations of the same song, “Hey Hey, My My” were addressed to Johnny Rotten.
  6. Iggy Pop, New Values – Iggy’s first band, the Stooges was highly influential on the punks… not as much as the Ramones as I understand it but even now hard rock guys from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Guns N Roses cite Raw Power as an influence. I didn’t hear it until a few years ago and yes its great. I wouldn’t have understood it at 13. With all that adulation how could Iggy not jump on the punk bandwagon and release this album, collaborating with old Stooge, James Williamson and Scott Thurston who believe it or not ended up in the Heartbreakers. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em Iggy.
  7. Bruce Springsteen, Darkness On the Edge of Town – Springsteen had been locked in a legal battle with his first manager since Born To Run. He was already pissed off so the punk ethos probably fit the songs he was writing. If you listen to The Promise, the box set for Darkness, many of the tunes sound like the natural progression from Born To Run, but Springsteen opted to only include dark, guitar-centric tracks here. Sonically it’s miles away from his breakthrough album and remains one of my favorites… well, it remains amongst almost every Springsteen fan’s favorites.
  8. Billy Joel, Glass Houses – Like Springsteen, Joel coopted the punk energy and took a stylistic left turn from his previous album, the E-Street-ish 52nd Street. Punchy, guitar-driven tracks like “You May Be Right” and “Sleeping With the Televison On” dominate the album. Like Iggy, if you can’t beat them, absorb them!
  9. Fleetwood Mac, Tusk – Lindsey Buckingham was so afraid of repeating himself after Rumors, and so enamored with the “fuck it” attitude of the punks he decided to take Fleetwood Mac in a totally different direction. I love Tusk, although it was seen as a failure at the time. I’m sure the band struggled as Stevie was delivering songs like “Sara” and Christine McVie with “Over and Over” and Lindsey countering with the punky “It’s Not That Funny,” or “What Makes You Think You’re the One.” Buckingham took a lot of liberties with the record and it makes it all the more interesting.
  10. Paul McCartney & Wings, Back To the Egg – McCartney is the most confounding entry here. I really liked Back To the Egg, McCartney’s attempt at doing more upbeat rock and roll again. I think he really wanted to absorb some of that punk energy but he just couldn’t commit to it through an entire album. I thought “Old Siam Sir” was rocking. But Macca just can’t help himself, he’s gotta go with soft, gauzy ballads like “Arrow Through Me.” I look at this one as a lost opportunity. But hey, it’s McCartney, he can do what he wants.

As I sit here, only 1/3 of the way through the annual “Dry January” I can’t help but think I need a little punk energy to get me going… If you feel that way during the doldrums of winter, put one of these albums on and see where it takes you.

Cheers!