Vienna billy joel album full#

Vienna billy joel album full#

Some years earlier, with his second band The Hassles, he headlined the opening of a branch of Choc full a ’Nuts in Paramus New Jersey. His early records bombed and he put in his time (and then some) on the piano bar circuit including the Bill Martin piano bar in Wiltshire LA. He grew up the poorest kid on the block in Levittown, Hicksville, Long Island.

Not that Joel doesn’t know something of the struggle. That marks modern success more than a billion streams, does it not? Up until recently, a helicopter would land in his garden in upstate New York – one Saturday evening each month - and fly him to Madison Square Gardens, where he would play to a sell-out crowd for a cool $1m. So that’s where the man focuses his attention and his unique talents. Recordings are ten a cent (well, less actually) but live performances by Billy Joel are as rare as rocking horse shit. Why add to it with stuff that is just not quite as good?Ĭontrast this with Joel’s live career, where he enjoys all the accolades and commercial success of a rare precious commodity - which is exactly what he is: “people just keep coming to see me” as he says himself. But his 70s and 80s catalogue stands up to just about anything else in pop’s history. His 12th and last studio album was 1993’s River Of Dreams which was well received critically and commercially. Joel has made his best work already and enjoyed enormous success with most of it. Billy, in the words of one of your own songs, You May Be Right. Again, contrast this with Sir Elton John, who is well-known for being immersed in the new music scene and a prolific collector of new music, and advocate for new artists.īilly Joel has seen the murky world of modern music and doesn’t like it one bit.

I don’t know who’s emerging, or submerging”. When asked about which new artists he admired from today’s music scene by Billboard in 2019, Joel replied “I don’t have a fucking clue. Billy Joel’s take on new music extends to all music in general - he doesn’t bother to keep up. But was Springsteen’s Western Stars album timeless like his earlier catalogue though? Or was it simply a diversion, largely lost in the constant flow of new music made by millions of others. It received pretty good reviews and allowed Bruce to express himself anew. Bruce is clearly compelled to whereas Billy is not. Has he got the right attitude? Take a contemporary, Springsteen for example - he makes new records. On the subject of his songwriting, Joel told Vulture online magazine: “I couldn’t be as good as I wanted and that was driving me crazy.

Billy Joel isn’t going to make any new music.