10. “Zanzibar”
Billy Joel worked in 1978 with producer Phil Ramone on his LP “52nd Street”When a small part of a song came to mind. “I just had this word”, Joel told Joel in 2013 to the magazine Rolling Stone. “‘Na na na na na na na na na, zanzibar ‘. And Phil listened to my piano part. He said, ‘Yes, I can imagine this bar!’ And I said, ‘Which bar?’ He says: “It’s a sports bar, isn’t it?” I said, “This is a great idea!” I will write a song about a pub stool in a sports bar that turns on the waitress. ”
The song was never released as a single. And rarely played live. But in 2006 Joel took him to his setlist and since then he has been found there. The trumpet solo is given great applause every time. It is now just as part of the show as the “New York State of Mind” saxophone solo.
9. “Stiletto”
After the big breakthrough with The Stranger In 1977 Joel decided to take a different direction with his follow -up album. 52nd streetnamed after the street in Midtown Manhattan, which used to be full of jazz clubs, is a jazzy album full of wind players.
The second page begins with “Stiletto”, the story of a man who is fond of a poisonous woman whose tip shoes look like knives. “You were cut into the face,” sings Joel. ‘You were left behind for bleeding. You want to run away, but you know that you will stay. ” He played it countless times in the 1980s.
8. “And so it goes “
Christie Brinkley is mentioned as an inspiration for “Uptown Girl”. But he actually wrote the song about Elle Macpherson. They were briefly together in the early 1980s when she was just 19 years old. When the relationship broke, she inspired him to the much darker “and so it goes”. The sad ballad only appeared in 1989 when she was the last title Storm Front was. It is a real tragedy. But it is difficult to feel sorry for a man who mourns the separation of Elle Macpherson when he comforted himself with Christie Brinkley.
The song was the sixth and last single of Storm Front. He reached 37th of the Hot 100. One could argue that it is therefore not a deep cut. But today he is really only known to the Billy Joel supporters. Joel has often said that this is one of his best songs. He occasionally appears in his live show.
7. “Laura”
The first page of the album published in 1982 The Nylon Curtain is so packed with hits (“Allentown”, “Pressure” and “Goodnight Saigon”) that “Laura” is often overlooked. Joel says that the extremely bitter song was not inspired by a single person. “Let’s put it that way,” he said in 1996.
“It’s not about a specific person, like a lover. It’s about the one person who knows how to get you on the palm. It can be someone from the family. It can be a lover, a wife, a husband, a child. I am sure that everyone I am talking about. It was this one person in my life who knew how to put me on the palm.” He never played the song until 2006. And only four more times since then.
6. “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)”
When Billy Joel returned to New York City in 1976 after a stay in Los Angeles, he found a city in full decay. Crime had risen sharply. There were homeless people everywhere. There was a general feeling of growing chaos.
It was not difficult to imagine that the city would literally be in ruins by 2017. This vision inspired him to write the almost science fiction-like song “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)”. The narrator describes many years after the demise over a strange time. The mafia dominates Mexico. The survivors from New York live in Florida. Only one handful can remember an era in which the lights on Broadway still shone.
The song was part of Gymnastics and was not published as a single. But it was really well received on stage. Joel basically sent the song to retirement in the 1980s. But in the 1990s it experienced a big comeback. And in the 2000s he started playing it all the time. It has recently opened most of his shows in Madison Square Garden.
5. “All for Leyna”
Billy Joel started with the publication of Glass Houses very strong in March 1980 in the 1980s. After his experiments with jazz on the 52nd street He returned with singles such as “You May Be Right” and his anti-news outbreak “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”.
The first page ends with “All for Leyna”, the history of a failure who falls in love with a girl named Leyna after a one-night stand. “I fail at school,” he sings. “I lose my friends, bring my family around the mind. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to sleep. I just want to be leyn again.”
He played the song a few times when it came out. In 2006, the rotation came back into the rotation after a very long break. It is still a rarity, even though he played it this summer in the Wrigley Field, Fenway Park and at the Bonnaroo.
4. “Until the Night”
Five years before he released an entire album that reminded of the music he loved as a teenager, Billy Joel took this song for the Righteous Brothers 52nd Street. Two years later, Righteous Brother Bill Medley published his own version of the song. Nowadays it is a real rarity at Billy Joel concerts.
3. “Captain Jack”
Billy Joel is not a big fan of “Captain Jack”. But the song from 1973 played a major role in the design of his career. He played the sad song in April 1972 at a studio concert at the radio station WMMR in Philadelphia, for his debut album Cold Spring Harbor to promote.
The song was not available in stores at the time. But the audience fell in love with it. And asked the broadcaster to play the live version again and again. This attracted Clive Davis’s attention, who signed Joel at Columbia and his breakthrough album “Piano Man” published. He never had to sign with another label.
In the early 1980s he took it out of his setlist. But in Philadelphia he always played to thank the city that had changed his life. In recent years it has only been played a few more times. “Trist, dreary, dreary”, he said that New Yorker. “It just goes on. I was fed up. It is not well aged. It was degraded to ‘private Jack’.”
2. “Vienna “
Billy Joel’s father Howard left his family in 1957 and moved to Vienna. Billy thought he was dead for many years. But they got in touch again when he toured Europe in the 1970s. When they walked through the streets of Vienna, they met a very old woman who swept the streets.
“I said, ‘Dad, it is somehow sad that this poor old woman has to do this kind of work,” he said in 2008. “He said:’ No, she has a job. She feels useful. She has a place in our society. ‘ I realized that they do not throw away old people.
The realization that life in Vienna was very different inspired this song. It opens the second page of The Strangeralthough it is known to many people today because it is in the film 13 going on 30 from Jennifer Garner from 2004. It was a live rarity until about 2006. Then he started playing it regularly.
1. “Summer, Highland Falls”
Billy Joel was more than just a little depressed when he returned to New York in 1976. He incorporated all his sadness into the texts of “Summer, Highland Falls”. “The text is about manic depression,” he said in 2010 to Howard Stern. “And I wanted the music to reflect that. In general, I’m sometimes up, sometimes down. I don’t think I’m manic-depressive. I only know that a mood does not last for the rest of my life.”
It is one of the outstanding titles Gymnastics from 1976. But Joel was dissatisfied with the sound of his albums before working with Phil Ramone the following year. The definitive version of “Summer, Highland Falls” can be found on the live album Songs in the Attic from 1981. Joel has repeatedly described this song as one of the best titles he has ever written.