WHEN THE SONG WAS DONE, JOEL TURNED TO THE AUDIENCE AND SAID, “AND THEN WE GOT DIVORCED”: It's critical reappraisal week for Billy Joel -- Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker, and David Brusie gives Glass Houses another listen in the AV Club. From the former:
[H]e had thirty-three Top Forty hits. That’s an awful lot—about twice as many as Springsteen, the Eagles, or Fleetwood Mac. Some were schmalz, others were novelties, but a crate of them are songs that have embedded themselves in the great American jukebox and aren’t going away anytime soon. If you hate them, fine. A lot of people, even some rock snobs, love them still. I’m tired of “Piano Man,” too, but “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” gets me every time. “Summer, Highland Falls” is for real. As for derivative, Joel won’t deny it; he loved the Beatles, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, and Smokey Robinson, so why not try to sound like them? At his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, in 1999, he was introduced by Ray Charles. Joel said, “I know I’ve been referred to as derivative. Well, I’m damn guilty. I’m derivative as hell.” He said that if the Hall of Fame disqualified candidates on the basis of being derivative, “there wouldn’t be any white people here.”
...“People, including myself, generally found him too glib and slick,” [Jon] Landau told me. There was also a bias against hits. “As time has gone by, we’ve been proved wrong,” Landau said. “He’s one of the most musically astute composers of that era.” He said that when Springsteen joined Joel onstage for an Obama fund-raising concert, in 2008, and played a bunch of Joel’s songs with Joel’s band, he came off and told Landau, “Those songs—they’re built like the Rock of Gibraltar. Until you play them, you don’t realize how well they play.”
