Billy Joel's Greatest Hits - Volume III: A Quick Review

I got to admit it...I almost didn't buy this album.

When "Billy Joel Greatest Hits: Volume III" was released in 1997, I wasn't sure if I wanted to purchase it. I hadn't bought many of Joel's post-"An Innocent Man" albums (although a few good friends had given me "The Bridge," "Kohcept," and the "Greatest Hits: Vols. I & II" as presents); I'd heard the quality of the songs had veered from great to good to mediocre, and because I was building up my classical music CD collection, I wasn't about to spend my limited music-buying bucks on albums that would disappoint me. So when I read a review in my local newspaper that stated, in short, that Volume III wasn't exactly the most fitting "adieu" to pop/rock recording by "the Piano Man," I said to myself, "Nah, I better not waste my money on this CD; let's get Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields' Amadeus soundtrack instead."

This I did, but about a year later, I was trying to find something worth getting with a $50 gift certificate at one of my favorite brick-and-mortar stores when I spied the Limited Edition 4-disc Billy Joel Greatest Hits Collection. My Volumes I & II CDs were getting worn out from repeated playing, and they needed replacement anyway, so I figured, "What the heck, I'll get a good bargain if I replace two discs with four."

When I got home, I decided to not listen to Discs 1 and 2 first but went for Disc 3, which of course was Volume III, the so-called "runt of the litter." I knew, just by looking at the play list, that I'd like the first five tracks; I had those songs in my cassettes of "An Innocent Man" and "The Bridge," after all. It was the other 12 songs that were, at the time, musica incognita.

To my surprise, I was totally blown away by the songs that I almost missed out on because of that "professional" music critic's review. I found myself moved to the verge of tears by Joel's end-of-the-Cold War anthem "Leningrad," which tells the parallel life stories of Viktor, a Russian circus clown born in 1944 and Joel, born in suburbia five years later. With its opening piano chords reminiscent of a Russian military march and its haunting lyrics, "Leningrad" is a very personal statement about Joel's personal peace with a citizen of what was once the "evil empire." ("He made my daughter laugh/then we embraced; we never knew what friends we had/Till we came to Leningrad.")

Although there are many songs that I loved right from the git-go ("We Didn't Start the Fire," "The Downeaster Alexa," and the Gospel-tinged "The River of Dreams"), three are particular favorites of mine.

"And So It Goes" is a bittersweet song about a love affair that is star-crossed, doomed, and that Joel knows it is not going to last. It is, like some of his best melancholy songs, restrained and accompanied only by Joel's keyboards, and the lyrics ("So I would choose to be with you/that's if the choice were mine to make...") speak volumes to men and women who have gone through the heartbreak of loving someone yet knowing the other person is moving on.

Joel's "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)" started out as a purely classical piece in the style of Edvard Grieg, but acquired lyrics during the period when the songwriter/singer's marriage to Christie Brinkley was coming to an end during the creation of "The River of Dreams" album. It is a song similar to "And So It Goes" both in tone and performance, but the words are a promise to his daughter Alexa that "no matter where you go, no matter where you are" Joel will never be too far away. It is breathtakingly beautiful, and I sometimes wish Joel had included the solo piano version in his "Fantasies and Delusions" album of classical piano pieces.

Finally, there's Joel's inspired cover of Bob Dylan's "To Make You Feel My Love," in which the singer takes his voice and imitates Dylan's rough-edged tone to good effect. (One thing I had not known about Billy: he's a great mimic. He can sound like a Beatle in a cover of "A Hard Day's Night" or Dylan in "The Times They Are A' Changing.") I have often listened to this song thinking about loves of the past, thinking how I, too, would do all I could to "make [them] feel my love."

I eventually ended up not only embracing Disc 3 of that boxed set, but I also later bought this original release version. Aside from the packaging and the disc's labeling, they are one and the same. For budgetary reasons, of course, the boxed set is a better buy (you get 4 discs in one nice package, plus a booklet of photos, bio and lyrics), but it's often hard to find -- even on Amazon -- so if you don't have many of Joel's albums, I recommend this edition along with Vols. I and II. It's not the most comprehensive Greatest Hits collection ever...quite a few favorites of mine were left out ("Honesty," "Rosalinda's Eyes")... but it still gives long-time fans (or new ones) a pretty good retrospective of Joel's long musical career.