Billy Joel: The Stranger - 1977
Taking much of the New York-themed atmosphere from the previous Turnstiles, this was a wonderful collection of New York Italian and also very clear Long Island-inspired piano-led rock songs, with organ, saxophone and drums to the fore. You feel you are at a table with a red check tablecloth and waiting for your pasta arrabbiata.
This image, of course, is helped no end by the album’s centrepiece, the magnificent story-telling narrative song Scenes From An Italian Restaurant with its Long Island characters Brenda & Eddie and many musical mood swings. From piano balladry to rocking saxophone and back again. Marvellous. Joel’s A Day In The Life. It also has that extended, street poetry cinematic drama of Bruce Springsteen's Jungleland.
Those New York-greater New York references abound in much of this album - either directly as in Long Island's Sullivan Street neighbourhood or in it’s characters - Antony, Mama Leone, Mr. Cacciatore, Brenda & Eddie, Virginia. Even Joel’s whistling at the beginning and end of the title track and the end of the album (a repeated coda to the album) is like the whistling of a waiter clearing the tables after lunch. Somehow I see this as a “New York in daytime album” as opposed to an evening one. Maybe that’s just how I visualise it. Lunch time in Little Italy, or maybe in a quiet Long Island local trattoria. Thinking about, it, maybe the latter. While Turnstiles had been a New York album, this can be seen very much as a suburban one from the Island.
Other highlights are the vibrant, evocative opener Movin' Out (Antony's Song), based around Antony's Long Island neighbourhood and his dreams of getting away for a more exciting life, The Stranger, the thoroughly beautiful Vienna, written after a visit to Austria, and the celebratory rock 'n' roll of Only The Good Die Young. Joel had an ability throughout his career of changing the atmosphere from song to song yet still retaining an over-riding feel to an album. The Catholic guilt and ebullient lust of Only The Good Die Young is followed by the tender sensitivity of She's Always A Woman, for example.The standard chart-friendly romance of Just The Way You Are (covered successfully by Barry White) is not out of place (although Joel always thought it was - he never really liked the song, apparently), neither is the beautiful, yearning She's Always A Woman. However, Get It Right The First Time seems a little superfluous, slightly lacking the sheer chutzpah of all that preceded it.
This slight dip in quality at the album's end is continued on the final track, which is a strange inclusion, an old track from 1971 called Everybody Has A Dream. There was no real need for this one in my opinion. It sits a bit oddly with the others, although it is redeemed by the piano and whistling reprise of The Stranger at the end. It is quite strange with this album, though, in that because I am so familiar with it, and it is so good, that I find I can't write so much about it. I have written almost as much about The Nylon Curtain, for example, yet that is a vastly inferior album, for me.
The live material on CD 2 of the deluxe edition is excellent, both in sound and musical quality. The album is remastered perfectly too. Highly recommended. Amazingly, Columbia Records would have dropped Joel had this album not sold. They needn't have worried. It sold by the bucketful.
