“Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Willa Cather (1873-1947), My Antonia (1918)
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
This Day in Rock ‘n’ Roll History (NY-Inspired Billy Joel Scores With ‘Turnstiles’)
May 19, 1976—Though Billy Joel did not achieve the chart-topping LP that executives desired on his fourth studio album, he staked out the sound that paved the way for later success—and created what many feel was a high-water mark in his career as a singer-songwriter—with Turnstiles.
A week or so ago, The New York Times created a hornet’s nest with a list of the 30 greatest living songwriters that some (like critic Ted Gioia) derided as methodologically suspect. Predictably, even more readers complained that their choices didn’t make the roundup, with Joel among the most glaring omissions.
(See
this podcast with the Times critics debating this egregious
exclusion and others, in a manner that YouTube respondents variously assailed as “smug,” “insufferable,”
“oblivious,” and “unbelievable.”)
I know
that the Piano Man’s output has, for some reason, not always won critical
acclaim. You can count me among his longtime fans. It’s not just that his concerts have
been electrifying, but his recordings display to the utmost his skills as a
lyricist and musician. Turnstiles is a prime example.
This album
also represented his attempt to wrest creative control of his material in the
most decisive fashion. His label, Columbia Records, suggested that he work with
James William Guercio. This producer, manager, and songwriter, through such
acts as Chicago, Blood, Sweat and Tears and the Buckinghams, was at the time an
influential proponent of jazz rock—or, as I noted in this prior blog post,
“brass rock,” characterized by a driving horn section.
At the Caribou
Ranch recording studio in Colorado, Guercio was exerting tighter control over
his productions. In Joel’s case, the producer pushed for studio musicians,
including from Elton John’s backup band.
After
listening to these sessions, Joel decided that, though this studio hires might
have benefited the English superstar, it wasn’t what he wanted. He
called the sessions off, and pressed his case with Columbia for a backup group of
his own to work on his next album.
To make
doubly sure that he got what he wanted, Joel took over the producer’s chores as
well. That turned out to be a mixed blessing. He may have come closer to the
sound he wanted, but, as he recalled in a 2009 Billboard interview, “I’m
not a producer. I’m a good partnering producer when I work with somebody like
Phil Ramone or Mick Jones; I have a lot of ideas. But I don’t know technically
always what I should be going for.”
The real
benefit came from the comfort level he felt from working with what became the
“Billy Joel Band”: bassist Doug Stegmeyer, drummer Liberty DeVitto, guitarists Russell
Javors and Howie Emerson, and saxophonist Richie Cannata. It was like what
another up-and-coming Columbia artist, Bruce Springsteen, had wanted and
gotten, with the now-legendary E Street Band.
Because he
permanently parted ways with those backup musicians a couple of decades later,
Joel didn’t achieve the longevity and camaraderie that The Boss gained with his
“Band of Brothers.” But for the time they played together, there was a drive
and cohesion to his sound.
Equally
important for Joel, after three years of feeling lost in
Los Angeles, the longtime Long Island resident moved back east. The title of
this new collection, Turnstiles, was a celebration of that decision.
(Incidentally,
the cover of the album was shot in an actual abandoned subway station. The
assorted non-Joel figures in the photograph were meant to suggest people
associated with different songs, so the teenaged girl with the headphones, for instance, represents “All You Wanna Do Is Dance.”)
Joel’s
move back home also was something of an act of defiance against anti-New York
sentiment in the nation. The singer-songwriter decided it was time for a change
when he saw the notorious 1975 New York Daily News headline at the height
of the bankruptcy crisis: “Ford To City: Drop Dead.”
On vinyl,
Joel reacted with a dystopian piece of science fiction, "Miami 2017 (Seen
the Lights Go Out on Broadway)." After 9/11, it became an unexpected
anthem of resilience for the metropolis. Now, we are almost a decade after the
future that he imagined.
If "Miami
2017” seemed tailor-made for arena rock, “New York State of Mind” felt more
like its natural setting was a small jazz club. Indeed, it has become something
of a pop standard, covered by the likes of Tony Bennett, Carmen McRae, Mel
Torme, Barbara Streisand, Shirley Bassey, and Diane Schuur with Stan Getz.
I embraced
two other songs because in some ways they reminded me of the work of two
cultural figures I was just beginning to enjoy.
With
backup singers, castanets, strings, and especially an opening drumbeat
reminiscent of “Be My Baby,” “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” was Joel’s tribute to “Wall
of Sound” producer Phil Spector and then-wife Ronnie. (In fact, the latter
released her own estimable cover version a year later, noting in interviews
that she identified with the song’s theme of a break from California following
her divorce.)
The other
cultural figure I thought of was F. Scott Fitzgerald, on “I’ve Loved These
Days.” So many of the images and themes evoked here—spending beyond one’s
means, pearls, caviar, foreign cars, champagne, and cocaine—could have been
drawn from the pages and life of the author of “The Great Gatsby.”
One other tune
deserves special attention, as Joel would return to its main concern later in
his career: “Summer, Highland Falls.” Named for the upstate New York town where
Joel stayed upon his return from the West Coast, the song functioned as an
emotional taking stock and recalibration.
He has
been frank in admitting that lines like “It’s either sadness or euphoria”
recognized the manic depression with which he has battled through much of his
life, even at the height of his success—a condition he explored later in “I Go
to Extremes” and “You’re Only Human (Second Wind)”.
Though the
album only peaked at #122 on the U.S. Billboard chart on its release, songs
from Turnstiles helped solidify his growing acclaim as a top-notch live
performer, as exemplified from several from the LP being included on his
first live collection, Songs in the Attic (1981). Eventually it reached
platinum status.
Joel did not produce another LP until 1993 with River of Dreams. Like Turnstiles, that marked a watershed of sorts, as it turned out to be his last collection of original pop tunes.
His concert partner Elton John admonished him
to sit down and write some more, but if Joel felt his creative well had run
dry, it’s hard to take issue with his decision to take this turn in his career.
It would only have invited more critical derision than he’d experienced
already.
Quote of the Day (William Butler Yeats, on ‘The Innocent and the Beautiful’)
Have no enemy but time.”—Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet-playwright William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz,” originally published in 1927, reprinted in The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, edited by Richard Finneran (1989)
Monday, May 18, 2026
Quote of the Day (Ring Lardner, on Baseball)
"Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be either a pitch or a person, stealing is legal, and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or the ball.”—American sportswriter, short-story writer, and playwright Ring Lardner (1885-1933), Lardner on Baseball (2003)
Sunday, May 17, 2026
This Day in Baseball History (Death of Harmon Killebrew, Unassuming But Feared Slugger)
May 17, 2011— Harmon Killebrew, as eager-to-please a personality as ever to step onto a baseball diamond, yet so feared for his home run prowess that he earned the nickname “Killer”—died at age 74 of esophageal cancer at his Scottsdale, AZ home.
For most of two decades, it was Killebrew’s misfortune to play—first in Washington, DC, then in Minnesota—for owner Calvin Griffith, who low-balled him at salary time.
After he retired, misfortune often took a more dire financial
form: car dealership and car leasing firms whose failure ultimately, despite his
healthy sums from sports memorabilia appearances, pushed him towards bankruptcy
in 1993.
Killebrew
was honest enough to admit feeling stressed by all of this, but he soldiered
on, demonstrating why he was liked and respected not just by fellow baseball
players but by sportswriters, who finally elected him to Cooperstown, after
three missed tries, in 1984.
Though
nothing like the versatile “five-tool player” (hitting for average, hitting for
power, speed, arm strength, fielding ability) held up as the beau ideal of
everyday players, Killebrew possessed one skill in abundance: slugging home
runs.
The 573
round-trippers he amassed at the end of his 22-season career ranked fifth at
the time of his retirement. Even that statistic doesn’t indicate the frequency,
consistency and force with which he punished the ball.
Starting with the Washington Senators, then moving when the team became the Minnesota Twins before closing out his career after one season with the Kanas City Royals, Killebrew recorded eight 40-home run seasons and 44 multiple home run games. He led the AL in home runs six times, walks four times and RBI three times.
Named to 13 All-Star teams, he was selected Most Valuable Player
for the American League in 1969, when he led the Twins to the American League
West Division championship.
Ossie Bluege, the farm system director who scouted and signed him for the Washington Senators, observed: "He hit line drives that put the opposition in jeopardy. And I don't mean infielders, I mean outfielders."
Griffith took note of these tape-measure homers: “He would hit the ball so blooming high in the sky, they were like a rocket ship going up in the air.”
That bat was what kept Killebrew in the lineup game after game, year after year, despite a glove that most observers of the game thought was suspect. But in his defense, he never spent enough time at one position to master it.
According to Mark Armour’s post shortly after Killebrew’s death, “he was repeatedly shifted
between three defensive positions throughout his career, getting 44% of his
starts at first base, 33% at third base, and 22% in left field.”
Off the field, Killebrew’s benevolence sprang from a belief that “The most important reason that we're here on Earth is to love and help one another.” To that end, he became involved in several charitable activities, including:
*helping
to establish, in Sun Valley, ID, the Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament (named
after a Twins teammate who died of leukemia);
*creating
the Harmon Killebrew Signature Classic Golf Tournament to benefit the American
Red Cross; and,
*starting
the Harmon Killebrew Foundation, a fund-raising charity.
Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Francis de Sales, on the Need to ‘Keep a Calm, Restful Spirit’)
“Anxiety arises from an unregulated desire to be delivered from any pressing evil, or to obtain some hoped-for good.…Therefore, whensoever you urgently desire to be delivered from any evil, or to attain some good thing, strive above all else to keep a calm, restful spirit, steady your judgement and will, and then go quietly and easily after your object, taking all fitting means to attain thereto. By easily, I do not mean carelessly, but without eagerness, disquietude, or anxiety.” —St. Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church (1567-1622), Introduction to the Devout Life (1609)
Saturday, May 16, 2026
Quote of the Day (Zadie Smith, on Exclusivity and ‘The Life of the Few’)
“Don't let your fellow humans be alien to you, and as you get older and perhaps a little less open than you are now, don’t assume that exclusive always and everywhere means better. It may only mean lonelier. There will always be folks hard selling you the life of the few: the private schools, private planes, private islands, private life. They are trying to convince you that hell is other people. Don't believe it. We are far more frequently each other's shelter and correction, the antidote to solipsism, and so many windows on this world.” — Novelist-essayist Zadie Smith, Commencement Speech at the New School, New York, May 23, 2014
This week, we are reading the comments of some university
commencement speakers, and it will continue like this for several days or so.
But Ms. Smith’s reminder from a dozen years ago bears
keeping in mind, perhaps now more than ever. Barriers of class, ethnicity,
race, religion, and politics should not be as rigid as physical structures in
blocking access to each other.
The image accompanying this post, of Zadie Smith announcing
the five 2010 National Book Critics Circle finalists in fiction, was taken on
Jan. 22, 2011, by David Shankbone.






