Quote of the Day (Billy Joel, on Being ‘Realtor to the Stars’)

“I never went without a meal. I just didn’t have the money I was supposed to have. I know what poor is. When I was a kid, we didn’t have anything. There was a rumor that I filed for bankruptcy — that never happened, either. I owed Uncle Sam a couple of million bucks in income tax, and the money that I thought was there, wasn’t there. I had to sell a place in the city. I was building a house out here in the Hamptons, and I owned a place on Central Park West. I sold it to Sting. I was praying for a rock star. They don’t care what their accountant says. If they want something, they buy it. Then I sold the house that I was building to Seinfeld. I keep exchanging star homes. I bought Roy Scheider’s house. Mickey Drexler bought my old place in Martha’s Vineyard. I’m the Realtor to the stars.” —American rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter Billy Joel quoted by Andrew Goldman, “Billy Joel on Not Working, Not Giving Up Drinking and Not Caring What Elton John Says About Any of It,” The New York Times Sunday Magazine, May 26, 2013

I don’t have HBO Max, so I don’t have access to its new two-part documentary on Billy Joel, And So It Goes. But a close relative who saw Part I had excellent things to say about it.

Anyway, recently I came across an interview containing the quote above from the Piano Man. Maybe, in one way or another, he’ll discuss in the documentary his assorted financial messes that led him to his adventures in real estate. Above all, I hope he recovers quickly from his recent health scare, and that we’ll hear him play and sing again, in one form or another.

Quote of the Day (Billy Joel, on Why He Is Most Proud of ‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’)

“I’m proud I got away with it. That song [‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’] was made of fragments of other songs that I’d started and never finished but kept around. Then I stitched them together like the Beatles stitched together the suite on Abbey Road. The songs kind of worked together, but I didn’t know how I’d tie it all up. Then I thought of the idea of scenes from an Italian restaurant. There you go!” —Rock ‘n’ roller Billy Joel quoted in David Marchese, “The Legend: A Mini Master Class With Billy Joel,” New York, Aug. 6-19, 2018

Quote of the Day (Billy Joel, on Seeing Himself as ‘The Piano Player in the Band’)

“I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice. I happened to sing in tune, I hope, but I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.”-- Billy Joel, quoted in Ray Waddell, “Backstage With Billy Joel: The Billboard Cover Story Interview (Exclusive),” Billboard Magazine, January 31, 2014

Happy 70^th birthday to the Piano Man! And, for a bit more information from yours truly on Billy Joel, try this other blog post of mine from last year on his 1983 LP, An Innocent Man.

This Day in Pop Music History (Birth of Phil Ramone, Go-To Producer)

Jan. 5, 1934—Phil Ramone, who cut a wide and influential swath among jazz, pop and rock ‘n’ roll musicians in the second half of the 20^th century by producing records by Ray Charles, Stan Getz, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and especially Billy Joel, was born in South Africa.

In the last few days, I came across a lively Facebook discussion on the career of Ramone’s near-contemporary, Phil Spector. Although I disagreed with Spector’s many detractors on the quality of his records (though not about his insanity or lack of integrity), the comments did give me a frame of reference for assessing why a music figure who started out at almost the same time as the creator of the “Wall of Sound” could have turned out so differently.

Each producer initially got a toehold in the music industry through mastery of an instrument (Spector, the guitar; Ramone, more formally trained at the Juilliard School in New York on the piano and violin).

 

The two made their marks in the exact same year, 1958: Spector, as composer of “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” and Ramone as co-founder of A & R Recording with then- business partner Jack Arnold.

By the mid-Sixties, each had produced enormous hits for other artists: Spector, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” for the Righteous Brothers; Ramone, “The Girl From Ipanema” for Stan Getz.

By 1967, however, with his withdrawal from his label Philles Records after the commercial failure of “River Deep, Mountain High,” Spector’s best days were behind him. Ramone, however, was only getting started. Among the records he would produce over the next four decades were:

* A Happening in Central Park, Barbra Streisand;

* Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan;

* Still Crazy After All These Years, Paul Simon;

* Celebrate Me Home, Kenny Loggins;

* Double Fantasy, John and Yoko Lennon; 

* Duets, Frank Sinatra; 

* The Broadway cast album for Stephen Sondheim’s Passion; and

* Genius Loves Company, Ray Charles.  

Take a look at that list again. It not only presents a staggering variety of artists and styles, but also represents many of these musicians at the height of their powers.

This may be the key difference between Spector and Ramone; while the former sought to impose his sound on each artist, the latter consistently tried to help his musicians find theirs. Often, that meant waiting patiently for a moment that made a song special.

Nowhere might this have been more vividly illustrated than in the case of Billy Joel, whom Ramone produced for nearly a decade—and, not coincidentally, in the period when the Piano Man finally broke through to a wider public. 

To start with, Spector might have wanted to import his loose collection of musicians, the Wrecking Crew, into the studio to perform most of the instruments. But Ramone readily bought into Joel’s notion that he sounded better with his own band of backup musicians.

Then, in their first collaboration together, The Stranger, Joel, trying to imagine a key instrument for the title tune, began to whistle. Ramone told him that this was the instrument he wanted, and the singer’s whistle was kept on the recorded song.

Lack of grandiosity especially distinguished Ramone from Spector. "I like to joke with people, ‘I’m the guy on the back cover,'” Spector once said. "It’s not like in the movies where it says, ‘Steven Spielberg presents Abe Lincoln.’ What I do is kind of invisible.” 

Finally: in 2009, when Spector was found guilty of second-degree murder for killing actress Lana Clarkson at his mansion, several musicians said they were not at all surprised, given Spector’s instability and use of firearms. When Ramone died in 2013, tributes came pouring forth across the entire spectrum of artists who had worked with him—or wished they could have.

(Photo of Phil Ramone was taken at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony on June 18, 2009, by Ky1958.)

Flashback, August 1983: Billy Joel Scores Big With Throwback LP, ‘Innocent Man’

Released 35 years ago this month, at the midpoint (to date, anyway) of his recording career, BillyJoel’s An Innocent Man was more of a throwback than his other LPs. It didn’t riff off current events, as The Nylon Curtain’s “Allentown” had the prior year with its angry evocation of Rust Belt decline. It didn’t nod in the direction of the latest hip rock trend, as Glass Houses did toward New Wave. 

Instead, it harked back to the songs of the Long Island singer-songwriter’s childhood and youth in the last Fifties and early Sixties. The music of that earlier era had given him a means of escape from a sometimes miserable boyhood as the son of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and the product of a broken home. 

All of that might have been enough for the “angry young man” of the Seventies to enjoy the success now coming his way. But here was another one: After his 10-year-old marriage had concluded, he had fallen in love again with a supermodel.

If a guy can’t smile in the company of Christie Brinkley, he is wretched indeed.

An Innocent Man quickly shot up the Billboard charts, climbing as high as #4, then stayed in the upper stratum for “The Longest Time.” Much of that was due to its mother lode of singles—six of which made the Top 40, with three of those entering the Top 10. (One song from four years before was a stylistic precursor to this collection: “Until the Night,” his 52^nd Street evocation of Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound.”)

It was natural that the tune that launched this hit parade was “Uptown Girl,” released a month after the album’s release. The video of this Four Seasons homage had to feature Joel, one of the least photogenic male stars of the rock era, but it also made full use of his beloved. It may have been the most preposterous entertainment pairing since Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. (Actually, it was originally about Elle Macpherson, whom Joel had been dating just before this, but I guess he got his blond Sports Illustrated swimsuit supermodels mixed up.) 

The video features pretty simple choreography to accommodate its leads (presumably, Ms. Brinkley had learned a few more steps 30 years later when she played Roxie Hart in the musical revival of Chicago) and the final sequence is pure fantasy. (When was the last time you recall a wealthy young lady climbing onto a motorcycle and wrapping her arms around a grease monkey?) But it was as irresistible as an ice-cream cone for all that.

I didn’t have cable TV till the end of the Eighties, so the only times I saw videos from that era was when I was in a hotel while vacationing. (I was in Orlando, gearing up for the holidays, when I saw Hall and Oates’ bug-eyed video for “Jingle Bell Rock.”) I only knew most of the songs from An Innocent Man in the old-fashioned way: through my ears, not my eyes. On that basis, it became my most heavily played Billy Joel LP of the Eighties.)

The long run of the album wound down in September 1984 with the release of its last single, “Leave a Tender Moment Alone.” This may be my favorite song of the album, chiefly because it featured a performance by perhaps the world’s best harmonica player at the time, Toots Thielemans of Belgium.

My favorite Billy Joel albums were ones he recorded early in his career: Piano Man (1973) and Turnstiles (1976). But producer Phil Ramone was able to capture Joel when he was loosest and happiest in his relationship with Christie, so An Innocent Man continues to yield pleasure all these years later.

Song Lyric of the Day (Billy Joel, With Advice for Steve Harvey)

“If all it takes is inspiration

Then I might have just what it takes

If I don't make no bad mistakes and

I've gotta get it right the first time.”— Billy Joel, “Get It Right the First Time,” from his LP The Stranger (1977)

I’ve always said that the promotion of beautiful women is an ugly business, and it’s being proven all over again in the case of poor Steve Harvey.  Before, the genial comedian-Family Feud host must have thought that hosting the Miss Universe pageant would be a neat way to extend his “brand.”

Guess again. Harvey forgot the muted warning of Billy Joel that he could only show he had “just what it takes” if he didn’t make any “bad mistakes.”

But when Harvey read the wrong name—Miss Colombia—from his “reveal card,” all bets were off. The consequent catcalls made Harvey perhaps the most ridiculed emcee of a major TV event since David Letterman’s disastrous 1995 Academy Award appearance (“Oprah? Uma. Uma? Oprah”). (The fallout from the latter—including the talk-show host’s frequent inclusion among the worst emcees in Oscar history—are spelled out in this piece by Matthew Jacobs for the Huffington Post.)

Do you recall Letterman ever hosting the Oscars again? Neither do I. If Harvey doesn’t experience similar unforgiving treatment, it’ll be because pageant owner WME/IMG just inked a deal with him for at least three, maybe as many as six or seven, years, according to ETOline.

It doesn’t mean that WME/IMG didn’t roll their eyes at the follow-up, let alone Harvey's original screwup. Okay, they may have thought, Harvey made a mistake. But who hasn’t? And anyway, he corrected himself moments later. And he announced—right on the air!—that he would “take responsibility for this!” A standup guy, if you’ll pardon the pun.  

True, but only up to a point, because several consequences ensued almost immediately upon Harvey’s all-too-human error:

*Those moments provided the opportunity for Miss Colombia to wave and pose with the crown. It was also an opportunity for thousands of her countrymen to glory that the crown rested on her pretty head, rather than on their traditional continental rival, Miss Venezuela. (The latter has gone on to become Miss Universe seven times, versus twice for Miss Colombia.) On the social media, those precious moments were long enough for that image to be broadcast wherever guys feel their senses quicken at the sight of a pretty woman or wherever younger lissome lovelies dream of making a fortune off the fantasies of these guys. In other words, in every corner of the globe.

*Those moments made it all the harder for Miss Colombia to yield a crown that had been HERS! Oh, the anguish! Here was a prize that who knows how many contestants have worked years to achieve. The crying that audiences see invariably from winners comes from sweet relief. Except that in this case, nobody would have blamed Miss Colombia for crying twice—first from relief, then from rage that her emotions had been out there for all the world to see, all for nothing. (I mean, check out the image accompanying this post. There’s a temptation to think that this shot comes from the interview stage of the contest, where the contestants are asked their opinions on world events and other assorted matters. But from the look on Harvey's face, I’d say this is after the reveal card debacle. There's an overwhelming message in the expression on his face: You done hating me yet?)

*Those moments brought to the surface a phenomenon almost as eagerly awaited by a certain lowlife type of guy as the swimsuit competition: a catfight. In a move signaling a new form of cooperation within the European Union, Miss Germany disclosed in an interview that neither she nor the other contestants had wanted the eventual winner, Miss Philippines, to win. (Even the latter, on this YouTube clip, had a look on her face that seemed to say: You people sure about this now? Because I don’t like hand-me-down crowns! No, instead of closing ranks behind the latter, Miss Germany hailed her counterpart across the Rhine, Miss France, as the one who should have been The One. All that sweetness and light, that all-for-one spirit, was revealed to hide a collective ruthless competitive streak that Tonya Harding might have appreciated.

*Those moments served as only a prelude to another event that must have made the pageant organizers wonder if Harvey might be so impulsive as to be error-prone in almost any conceivable format. In a tweet sent out shortly after his mistake, Harvey apologized for any embarrassment caused to the two young ladies involved. But whatever points were added for sensitivity could only be subtracted for boneheadness, for Harvey referred to “Miss Philippians” and "Miss Columbia." Miss Philippians? I don’t recall any such person referred to in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians. Miss Columbia? I wasn't aware that the Ivy League institution had gotten into the beauty pageant business. Neither was anyone else, as Harvey had to immediately send out another tweet apologizing for the spelling mistakes in his first.

Get it right the first time? Heck, Harvey sounds like he might have trouble getting it right the second time. If the pageant organizers think so, too, there might not be a next time.