River of Dreams

Although it isn’t cool to say this, many of you know that I’m a Billy Joel fan. I’m not talking about a “piano man” casual fan. I’m basically a super fan. I know every song. I know every track on every album. I have the tracklists and dates of release memorized. Billy Joel has been such an influence on my songwriting that I spent a solid year in high school trying to be him. As bad as that sounds, it wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as the year I spent pretending I was Peter Gabriel, even though he is way cooler than Billy Joel. I guess that’s the thing. I’m not cool. I never was cool and I’m never going to be cool. So in that way I relate to Billy Joel. I value melody over hard-hitting songs. I play piano. I wear a coat and tie when I play shows. But I no longer try to imitate Joel. It took me a long time, but I think I’ve found my own groove as a songwriter. I figured out that I’d never be Billy Joel and that I didn’t really want to anymore. Despite my undying love for the man’s work, there are definitely some sore spots in his catalog (my opinion.) For the longest time I strongly disliked River of Dreams, his final album. He’d been in a tailspin since releasing his 1982 masterpiece The Nylon Curtain. Starting with An Innocent Man, each album seemed less inspired. I still liked many of the songs on these last four albums, but none of them seemed to work as full albums to me. There were skip tracks now, where from 1971 to 1983 there were no skip tracks. Sometimes I am wrong though… sometimes I change my mind. I like to give albums multiple chances. If I didn’t like it in high school, maybe there was something that I didn’t quite understand yet. Maybe I didn’t give it the attention it deserved. So about two weeks ago I decided to give River of Dreams another go. I couldn’t believe my ears, but I was loving it. It was like listening to a brand new album. It wasn’t the same uninspired sendoff I remembered. There was something that hooked me. A lot of it was melodic. The harmonized guitars on Blonde Over Blue sound an awful lot like my weird guitar tone. The piano and synthesizer hook in 2000 Years. The repetitive, but perfectly self-aware Famous Last Words. Some of it was lyrical. The cynical No Man’s Land or the hopeful 2000 Years. The incredibly sad Lullabye or once-thought corny, but now moving All About Soul. There was now such a plethora of emotion on this album that I used to discount as an aging artist’s “all washed up” album. I guess maybe it’s that I’ve grown up a little bit. I’m no longer the “Angry Young Man” I used to be. I understand now that this was an intentional last album. Billy Joel had had it with the industry and so he made one last album for himself and for the truly dedicated fans. He said his goodbye to the recording industry with “These are the last words I have to say.” And I couldn’t have more respect for the guy. He pulled a Seinfeld and got out of the game when he wanted to. He never released a bad album, only a few skip tracks. That’s not only respectable, but it’s a model career.