Panther's picks - Billy Joel: 52nd Street - 1978

 

Released in 1978, at the height of punk, following on from the phenomenal worldwide success of the previous year’s The Stranger, this was also a top seller. 

Joel’s mix of New York street tales against a piano and jazzy brass backing tapped in to the tastes of those for whom punk never happened. I was a punk in 1978, but I still liked this. It seemed to accrue all-round respect in the same way that Bruce Springsteen did. It certainly did for me and others, if not necessarily from the music media. Yes, Joel was known by some as a balladeer, but he could also rock, and he knew how to summon up the atmosphere of the city streets. New York is the ultimate city for such street romance and on this album Joel moves back from the Long Island vignettes of The Stranger firmly into the big city. The album is absolutely dripping with Big Apple ambience. Furthermore, while I felt in some ways The Stranger was a daytime album, this is very much one for after the cars have turned their headlights on (to paraphrase Joel in Until The Night). 

It was the lead-off single, the catchy, radio-friendly My Life that helped to popularise the album, but it was by no means the standout track. That honour, for me, lay with the Phil Spector meets Bruce Springsteen and The Righteous Brothers on the mighty Until The Night. It has a great atmosphere and a killer chorus, with a superb build up from the verses to those dramatic chorus parts. The bit where Joel sings "as the cars turn their headlights on.." always gives me a bit of a tingle. It is a bit of an overlooked Joel classic, rarely played in concert or on the radio. 

Also impressive are the Latin-flavoured groove of Rosalinda's Eyes (written by Joel for his mother) and the upbeat, soulful tones of Half A Mile Away and the atmospheric New York bar-room piano jazz of Zanzibar. The latter is just so evocative of New York after dark - street lights, car lights, bars, people. It also owes a pretty big legacy to Steely Dan circa Katy Lied and The Royal Scam. Joel's lyrics are not impenetrable and oblique, however, they concern waitresses, Muhammad Ali and his old man's car. It may sound Steely Dan-esque but it is proper working class everyday ambience enhanced by Joel's knack for a dramatic delivery. Check out that jazzy trumpet solo too. 

Stiletto is a suitably pointed little number, both lyrically and musically, with Joel having a pop at a prickly girlfriend backed by some loose jazzy piano breaks, while Honesty is just a typical Joel heartfelt but periodically dramatic ballad of the sort he always had in him and Big Shot sees Joel in New York Italian mode, putting down someone who has got above his-herself - “you got the Dom Perignon in your hand and the spoon up your nose”. Joel’s songs, while often thought to be just romantic, often betray a hard, street-wise edge. He often puts down the wealthy drug-addled indulgent culture. 

The jazzy, piano-driven 52nd Street is a short, almost half-song to finish off this assured album and leaves you wanting more, not that one's appetite hasn't been sated, however. This was the last of three truly excellent Joel albums, maybe his best three. They certainly nailed his reputation for years to come. His arena-filling popularity started here.