Album Review: 'The Stranger'
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and show ourselves
When everyone has gone - Billy Joel, The Stranger
When Columbia Records (now part of Sony Music) first released Billy Joel's fifth album, I was 14 years old and still having to cope with the aftermath of my first serious breakup, the stresses of what was then called junior high, and my mom's decision to sell our house and move to the condominium where we still live. To my teenager's world-view, all of these "issues" seemed to loom over my life like an army of avenging demons, and I was lost in a fugue of sadness, anger, and confusion.
I mention this seemingly irrelevant bit of autobiographical detail because at the time my older sister Vicky was on a pop music kick, and though she had moved out of the house, she had not, thank the Force, taken the family's huge Zenith stereo cabinet, which had a turntable for LP records, an AM-FM radio receiver, and a state of the art (for 1977) eight-track tape deck. She had also temporarily left her small collection of eight-track tapes until, Vicky said, she'd replaced the tape player with one of her own.
At the time, I only owned two LP albums I could call my own - one of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, and one featuring the two Russian Capriccios (Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien and Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol). Both were very nice albums, but I could only stand to listen to them only so many times, if you get my meaning.
Now, when I get sad I tend to turn to music and movies to provide some modicum of escape and emotional comfort, but I was getting bored with the two albums I owned, so I did the following:
1. Listened to the radio a lot
2. Listened to some of my sister's eight-track tapes
As luck would have it, both options exposed me to Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are (track 3), the Piano Man's famous (some might say infamous ode to unconditional love:
I wouldn't leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I'll take the bad times
I'll take you just the way you are
At the time, I absolutely hated that song. I was in such a funk over having broken up with my girlfriend Kerri that I was not in a very receptive mood for such a heart-on-a-sleeve composition. It was played so much on the radio that I basically stopped turning the stereo's AM-FM component on, and I'd hit the "change program" button when the last notes of The Stranger (track 2) faded out.
This odd love/hate thing I had for love songs and, for a time, Billy Joel eased off when my sister bought her own stereo equipment and retrieved most of her eight-tracks; she left me Joel's 52nd Street because I had become attached to the songs Honesty and My Life. By this time, I had gotten into the whole Star Wars and junior high things, and I forgot that the album The Stranger even existed.
Almost 30 years later, The Stranger is considered by many of Joel's fans to be one of his best ever. Not only is the Song of the Year-winning Just the Way You Are one of his most popular compositions - it's still performed at weddings and other romantic settings - but more than half of the tracks are considered to be among his Greatest Hits, including Movin' Out (Anthony's Song), The Stranger, Scenes From an Italian Restaurant, Only the Good Die Young, and She's Always a Woman.
The Songs:
Like many of Billy Joel's single-disc albums, The Stranger consists of a few songs (nine in all), most of which are, as I said before, among his greatest hits. Of these nine, I was acquainted with all but the last two (Get It Right the First Time, Everybody Has a Dream).
Movin' Out (Anthony's Song): One of Billy's "story songs" and the title song of his 21st Century Broadway revue (choreographed by Twyla Tharp), describes the somewhat claustrophobic life of a young man named Anthony and his attempts to become independent from his dead end job and his domineering Italian-American mom:
Anthony works in the grocery store
Savin' his pennies for someday
Mama Leone left a note on the door,
She said,
"Sonny, move out to the country."
Workin' too hard can give me
A heart attack
You oughta know by now
Who needs a house out in Hackensack?
Is that what you get with your money?
It seems such a waste of time
If that's what it's all about
If that's movin' up then I'm movin' out.
The song is fairly upbeat and features a jazzy-rock mix of keyboards, saxophones, and a nice backbeat that blends neatly with Joel's vocals. I really like the melody and the somewhat sardonic tone of the lyrics, and the motorcycle sound effects at the end are sort of cool.
The Stranger: When I first heard this in Joel's Greatest Hits: Volumes 1 and 2, I was taken off guard by the wistful whistling-and-piano vamp at the beginning that gives way to the more uptempo pop stylings of "the main song." Essentially, this is a rumination about how most of us have multi-faceted personalities, which Joel calls "the masks of the stranger":
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on
The style of The Stranger is a jazz-rock fusion (at least to me), with lots of brass, a steady backbeat by drummer Liberty Devito, and a catchy hook that features Joel hitting a nearly falsetto high note when he sings:
Don't be afraid to try again
Everone goes south
Every now and then
You've done it, why can't someone else?
You should know by now
You've been there yourself
Just the Way You Are: Perhaps the best known song from this album, it's the one song Joel doesn't like to sing anymore in live concerts. Nevertheless, it's still pretty popular, particularly at weddings, in part because it has a wonderful melody and an amazing bridge, but mostly because it is so sentimental:
I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you.
I said I love you and that's forever
And this I promise from the heart
I could not love you any better
I love you just the way you are.
The instrumental background, which seems to be done on a synthesizer or electronic piano, goes well with the lyrics, and the sax solo after the third verse has a New York jazz-club feel to it.
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant: This song-within-a-song actually started with the middle part, a.k.a. "The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie." This is the all-too-common story of high school sweethearts who get married after graduation, only to find themselves over their heads:
Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies
and the king and the queen of the prom
Riding around with the car top
down and the radio on
Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the
Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want
more than that out of life
Because this is a pretty peppy and fast-paced ballad, it's somewhat challenging to both the singer and the listener. But what makes the song interesting is that the prelude and coda (Bottle of white, bottle of red...) that bookend it were added afterwards rather than having been intentionally composed in its final form.
After he finished the ballad part and performed it once, Billy felt it needed something more, so he wrote a prelude/prologue with a more wistful melody, with an energetic transition to the Ballad of Brenda and Eddie, making the song a reunion of two high school buddies at, of course, an Italian restaurant.
Vienna: Perhaps this is one of Billy's most underrated songs, but this is a truly awesome song about the need to take time and smell the roses and not get caught up in a "hurry-hurry" lifestyle just to keep up with the Joneses or the in-crowd:
Slow down you crazy child
You're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart tell me why
You are still so afraid?
Where's the fire, what's the hurry about?
You better cool it off before you burn it out
You got so much to do and only
So many hours in a day
This song's intro is played in a style reminiscent of the Central European music heard in The Third Man, and the pace of the main melody is more or less in accord to the song's mellow "slow down" message.
Only the Good Die Young: This song is one of Joel's most rebellious, irreverent, and sacrilegious pieces ever, with its protagonist/narrator trying to convince a virginal Catholic girl (named, natch, Virginia) to "give it up" to him, chiding her for her goody-goody two shoes world view and telling her that only the good die young. As a result, it's the most rock-n-roll piece of the album, with a fast paced piano introduction giving way to guitars and drums backing a gruff-and-defiant Billy on vocals.
They say there's a heaven for those who will wait
Some say it's better but I say it ain't
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
Sinners are much more fun...
And only the good die young
She's Always a Woman: If a screenwriter and director were ever so desperate to make a movie about my life, they'll need to get permission to include this Joel song as part of the soundtrack when they get to the part when I was in college and fell deeply in love with a beautiful classmate in my psychology class. It was my freshman year, and I was still so shy around women, particularly gorgeous women, that I often debated the issue of "do I tell her, or do I keep it to myself?" for so long that by the time I'd "go for it," the semester would be over or she'd already be dating, be a lesbian, or married.
In the case of my psych class "sweetie," the semester ended before I got the gumption to tell her anything. I did try to bolster my courage by listening to She's Always a Woman. Like most of my truly favorite songs, it grabbed me with its simple "vamp" and bittersweet opening verse (She can kill with a smile / She can wound with her eyes / She can ruin your faith with her casual lies / And she only reveals what she wants you to see / She hides like a child / But she's always a woman to me).
I tend to like this song because it is a simple aaba song sung along to Billy playing the piano, with little or no embellishment whatsoever. It's a somewhat melancholic, almost sad melody, with lyrics suggesting the power women have over us lovestruck guys.
Oh, she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh, and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind
She will promise you more
Than the Garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you
And laugh while you're bleedin'
But she'll bring out the best
And the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself
Cause she's always a woman to me
Get It Right the First Time:
I don't believe in first impressions
For just this once I hope that looks don't deceive
I ain't got time for true confessions
I've got to make the move right now
Got to meet that girl somehow
Even though I agree with the lyrics of the song, I'm not too keen on this track. Maybe it's too fast-paced for my taste, but it sounds like it was simply a throwaway effort done as filler to make the album a bit longer than 30 minutes.
Everybody Has a Dream: This one is okay, I guess. It's a slow tempo song with pop-jazzy stylings and romantic lyrics:
While in these days of quiet desperation
As I wander through the world in which I live
I search everywhere for some new inspiration
But it's more than cold reality can give
If I need a cause for celebration
Or a comfort I can use to ease my mind
I rely on my imagination
And I dream of an imaginary time
I know that everybody has a dream
Everybody has a dream
And this is my dream, my own
Just to be at home
And to be all alone...with you
Interestingly enough, this track ends with a reprise of the whistling and piano intro to The Stranger, as a sort of thematic coda that serves to end the album on a thematically consistent note.
It's nice enough, I suppose, for a bit of slow-dancing or even the start of a romantic evening, but it's not a song I'd listen to on a regular basis.
While An Innocent Man is, I think, a better album, The Stranger is still very good and definitely worth listening to.
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