A Shout Out to Billy Joel

One of the best parts of having older siblings is you can raid their music collect. I discovered Pink Floyd, Crosby Stills and Nash and David Bowie from my brother, Ronnie, with his copies of Meddle, Deja Vu and Diamond Dogs, respectively. From my sister, Karen, who is closer in age to me, when I discovered Elton John's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, I was introduced to really great song writing for the first time. Those other albums had great lyrics, but Bernie Taupin's storytelling in Captain Fantastic just blew me away. Definitely, Elton's best. She had Stones albums, the Eagles, Rush and the Beatles among others. At that time, I saw them as their music, not mine. It wasn't until I discovered Billy Joel that I had my music. 

I know a lot of people don't care for his music. He is too light for the rockers; he plays a piano and not a guitar. He has all those pop hits. Yet the pop music fans seem to reject him as well. 52nd Street, probably his best album, did win the Best Album Grammy in 1980, but he is relatively ignored after that. In 1979, "Just the Way You Are" won for best song Grammy, but the album that it is on, The Stranger, has far better songs on it ("Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" and "Vienna" to name only two), didn't even get nominated. It is people like me, who fall somewhere in the between, that hold him in high esteem.

I have always loved the piano. Elton John, Keith Emerson, Leon Russel, Rick Wright (Pink Floyd), Rick Wakeman (Yes), Page McConnell (Phish), Ray Manzarek (The Doors) and Nicky Hopkins (session musician for the Stones) are a few of my favorites. So, it makes sense that I would be a fan of Joel, but he is also a great song writer and a decent singer with an appropriate amount of attitude. 

Saving up to buy an album was an achievement when I was 14.  They cost about $7.00 at the time and so I had to save up at least two weeks' allowance to buy one. Hence, it had to be a good one. The Stranger was one of the first I ever bought. "Movin' Out" and "Only the Good Die Young" was getting played on the radio. My mother hated "Only the Good Die Young." She was one of the Catholic ladies that wanted it removed from the radio because it "encouraged people to be bad," as if anyone ever needs encouragement to do that. I think it was the line "Catholic girls start much too late" that did it.  Perhaps it was the fact that it was forbidden fruit that I wanted it so badly. 

While waiting for his next albums to come out, 52nd Street, I remember buying his back catalog at bargain bins or used records stores. Before The Stranger, there was Piano Man, Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles. I have a foggy memory of biking home with one of them in a plastic bag in my left hand and my right hand on the bike handle. Kids! Right?

At some point in the early 1980's, I wrote a fan letter to Billy. The only fan letter I ever wrote; in it, I asked him if the next time he came to Providence, if he could play the song "Angry Younge Man." The Innocent Man tour in 1984 opened in Providence. I went with my friend Scott and my little sister, (I think I remember this right) and not only did he play the song, but he opened the show and the tour with it. It was phenomenal. It looked a little like this:

When 52nd Street eventually came out, I bought it in 8 track as opposed to album. I loved this album. While my friends started getting into early heavy metal (Judas Priest, Kiss, Van Halen etc.), I was getting into the piano and horns on "Zanzibar", "Half a Mile", "Rosalinda's Eyes" and "Stiletto". It was then that I realized that a lot of the best songs never get played on the radio. I loved the second half of this album (aka side 2) but none of these songs were ever hits. 

Like a good fan, I would buy his new albums as soon as they came out, before I had heard any of the songs. I loved Glass Houses and Nylon Curtain which was very Beatle-esque. Something happened in 1983. An Innocent Man, his 9th album, came out and I hated it. It was all candy pop, very little piano with a 1950's doo wop influence. I was so disappointed. I ended up liking the last song, "Keeping the Faith," but the rest the album I find unlistenable ... even now. 

In 1986, The Bridge, his 10th album, came out and I didn't like either. I thought I would get into it, eventually it was at least back to the style of his older albums, but it never happened. It had a few good songs, namely "Baby Grand" and "Big Man on Mulberry Street," but overall, it was very disappointing. The spell was broken. I couldn't get into the rest of his catalog. I don't know if he changed or if my taste had, probably both but I was done with him. I still love the stuff that I grew up with, but the newer stuff never did it for me. I realize that what I am calling "new" here, is about years old. These type of things happen when you get old. 

I recently saw the HBO documentary, "Billy Joel: And So It Goes." It made me really think about his career and how it influenced me. Last year, 2025, he was diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus causing problems with his hearing, vision and balance. So, don't expect to see his live anytime soon. 

His albums in ranking of my favorite to least:

1. 1) 52nd Street
2. 2) Turnstiles
3. 3) Nylon Curtain
4. 4) Glass Houses
5. 5) Piano Man
6. 6) Streetlife Serenade
7. 7) Songs in the Attic (live)
8. 8) The Bridge
9. 9) Cold Spring Harbor
10. 10) Kohuept (live)
11. 11) Stormfront
12. 12) River of Dreams
13. 13) An Innocent Man
14. 
    

My Generation

I have been unemployed for a few weeks now. Not a big deal we are getting by, but I do get a little frugal when the income gets cut down to one breadwinner. It is not difficult to do other than my addiction... that is, the buying of new music. It is hard to control myself when the iTunes store is so easy to use; it is really difficult to stop. Luckily, I discovered that the library in the town next to ours, Essex, has an incredible collection of CDs. Occasionally, I pack up my laptop and attached CD player and do some ripping of some decent music .... everything from The Clash, Buzzcocks and Television to Adele and Molly Tuttle. This really helps with my addiction, like a nicotine patch. One of the best finds so far is a three-disc compilation of The Who. I have always loved the song, My Generation, but it just started hitting how truly great a song this is. Now that I am in my 60's, it is like I am hearing a different song than what I heard in my teens. This is proof of its genius. 

They are so youthful and full of energy in this 1967 appearance on the Smothers Brothers:

It has really gotten me thinking about the idea of generations. 

Thinking takes me to strange places. Isaac Asmimov's Foundation trilogy takes place in the distant future when there is so much documented history that historians (called psycho-historians) can predict the future using sophisticated mathematical models. We are not there yet, but once I had heard Strauss and Howe's generational theory, it made me think that we are getting a lot closer to Asimov's world than ever. 

Every 80 years or so, America goes through a revolution, a major upheaval that changes everything. Something occurs that changes the basic way to do things in this country. 

Here are the upheavals:

• 1780's: the American Revolution
• 1860's: the American Civil War
• 1940's: World War II and the Great Depression
• 2020's: Trump's bullshit (someday we'll have an official name, until then I am sticking with this)

Smaller upheavals happen as well, I am not forgetting them, like the Civil Rights Movement, the stock market crash of 1890 or the 911 terrorist attacks, but the big ones seem to come every 80 years. Yes, what is happening now in the 2020's, could very well be as big as the other three.

Strauss and Howe generational theory says it is more specifically 85 to 88 years. Generations are defined as groups of people, of similar age, who have a shared experience based on what is going in their society. Within these 80-year periods we have four generational cycles. They label them "adaptive," "idealist," "reactive," and "civic" generations, in order. Major events change our lives, and perception differs based on how old we are when they happen. The 911 attacks shaped the lives of millennials in a way I will never understand as a Gen Xer. 

William Strauss and Neil Howe describe these archetypes that we still use today. If you were born from 1901 to 1924, you are often called the GI generation or the Greatest Generation. This is the civic generation from the previous cycle. Born in 1925 to 1942, the lesser-known Silent Generation, is the adaptive generation. The Baby Boomers, born from 1943 to 60, are the idealists. This group produced the civil rights movement and hippies. Gen Xers, born from 60 to 83, ("I'm talking about my generation") is the reactive generation with the Millennials, from 82 to 2000, being the civic generation. Hence, the Gen Zs are the new civic generation as the cycle continues. No doubt, you could rip some holes in these generalizations, but it is fascinating, nonetheless. 

My generation, Gen X, was originally called the 13's, because we were the 13th American generation. That name didn't catch on. The label Generation X has several origin stories but the coolest one comes from Billy Idol's first punk band by the same name. We are the last generation that has a collective social pop culture memory. What I mean by this, is that we all watched the same television shows at the same time because on-demand media didn't exist and we only had three television stations, mostly. We listened to the same music because there was rarely one or two radio station available to us. VCRs came out in my teens, DVDs in my 20's, DVRs in my 30's and on-line streaming in my 40's and 50's. GenXers had to watch what was on when it was on. Every American Gen Xers can recite the Preamble to the American Constitution. Why? Because we all watched Saturday morning cartoons and School House Rock came on several times on many commercial breaks. 

We had to watch the commercials too. There was no fast forward or skip ad functionalities on our remote controls, if we had a remote. You had to watch what was on or go outside. For a while, I was my family's remote control: "Mark, change it to channel 5. Bonanza is on." "Mark, adjust the antennae." etc.

Regardless of how it sounds, I like being old. If only I had the energy of my youth and the mindfulness that I have now, in my youthful body. That'd be ideal. Truly, whoever said that "Youth was wasted on the young" was onto something. Somethings, though, we should leave to the young. When I see an 81-year old Roger Daltrey singing, "I hope I die before I get old," I really wonder: Why does he still play this song?  

Pete Townshend, the song's writer, said in a 1989 interview with Good Morning America that the line "I hope I die before I get old," was talking about the rich. "Old" is more of a state of mind, representing the establishment. I buy it, I guess. He was in his 40's at the time said this. He was 19 or 20 when he wrote the song. He had to say something to justify singing a song about youth, but he was also very rich at the time, so I am not sure his answer holds up. Like all generations, his, mine and yours, will all, eventually, "fff...fade away!" Everything becomes old and passe. 

I am old man. Please excuse me, my mind wanders.