billy joel

She’s Always a Woman
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She’s Always a Woman

For song 29:365 I’m posting my performance of one of my favourite songs of all time, Billy Joel’s She’s Always A Woman. First released in 1977 as a double A-side with Just the Way You Are. Fyfe Dangerfield, lead singer of the band The Guillemots, recorded a version of the song in 2010 for a John Lewis advertising campaign, and his version reached #7 in the UK charts. Billy’s recording was rereleased around the same time and reached #29. A travesty, if you ask me!

I’ve seen Billy Joel perform this song live many times and it’s always one of the highlights of the concert with cigarette lighters (or, more recently, phones…) held high as the crowd sings every word in unison.

I hope you enjoy my version. As ever, there’s more Billy Joel on the site, and if it’s your first time here you can find out why I’m posting a song every day here.

Just The Way You Are
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Just The Way You Are

Song 15:365 is a live recording from 2010 when I played Billy Joel’s Just The Way You Are with my Apple colleague, saxophonist Joe Moretti, at an Apple event on a boat in the Thames. I actually rerecorded a solo version in 2015 on my birthday as one of my favourite songs, but I hope you enjoy this live recording with Joe on sax.

There are lots more of my versions of Billy Joel songs on the site, and if it’s your first time here you can find out why I’m posting a song every day here.

New York State of Mind
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New York State of Mind

Continuing my retrospective posting of 2010 piano songs, here’s my version of Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind. This has always been one of my favourite songs to play. It originally appeared on the 1976 Turnstiles album, and was never a hit in its own right, but took on something of a new meaning when Billy performed it at the Concert for New York City in October 2001 in honour of those affected by the events of 9/11.

There is lots more Billy Joel in my collection. If it’s your first time on the site, find out more about the 365 Songs project or see all of my December songs here.

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
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Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

Over the past twelve months I’ve been playing a song every day and posting it to this blog. I’ve tried to include most musical styles, playing everything from the children’s TV theme tunes to operatic arias and a healthy selection of 1980s pop classics, totalling over 24 hours of music. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing something on the piano most days, but at times it has been challenging, especially since I’ve been travelling a lot in 2015 and a 10-day trip meant recording 11 or 12 tunes while I should have been packing! I’ll not be repeating the challenge in 2016, not least because combined with my 2010 piano tunes, I’ve now recorded over 730 songs in total, and I think that’s enough for now!

When I started wondering about which song to finish this year with, there was only really one option: Billy Joel’s 1977 masterpiece Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. This is a song which I’ve loved for many, many years. I’ve seen Billy perform it three times in Glasgow, once in Birmingham and once in the Hammersmith Apollo. I imagine that a highlight of 2016 will be Scenes at the Wembley concert in September.

Music critic Scott Floman gave a very apt description of Scenes in Goldmine magazine: it’s an “epic multi-sectioned masterpiece which starts as a slow smoky ballad, builds up to a jaunty piano rocker with a New Orleans flavor that also shows off Joel’s knack for telling stories and creating rhymes, before finally returning to smoky ballad territory again.” And where exactly is the eponymous Italian Restaurant? It is apparently Fontana di Trevi, just across from Carnegie Hall where Billy Joel ate during a series of 1977 concerts. Indeed, the line “A bottle of white, a bottle of red, perhaps a bottle of rosé instead?” was actually spoken to Billy by a waiter at Fontana di Trevi! Oh to see that napkin…

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant isn’t really the kind of piece you can just play on the piano, so I’ve done a full arrangement including bass, guitar, accordion, strings, horns and percussion. I’ve used a brilliantly programmed drum track from a midi file online – I’ve tried to identify who arranged this track but haven’t been able to. However everything else is me, including the dodgy keyboard sax – sorry Joe Moretti!

I hope you enjoy this piece, and I hope you’ve enjoyed my 365songs this year. Happy 2016 to everyone who has listened!

There is, of course, a bit more Billy Joel in my collection and some of my 2010 songs are on this album. If it’s your first time on the site, find out more about the 365 Songs project or see all of my December songs here.

https://soundcloud.com/mark-pentleton/scenes-from-an-italian

Vienna
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Vienna

Billy Joel’s 1977 masterpiece Vienna was an unassuming song from The Stranger album which ended up being the B-side for She’s Always A Woman. However, Billy Joel has ranked it as one of his two favourite songs, along with the wonderful Summer Highland Falls (which I played way back in January). For Billy, Vienna represents “the rest of his life”. In 2008 he explained that his father moved to Vienna from Germany after the war. Vienna was a crossroads, half way between western Europe and the Eastern bloc, and was a place where there was a different attitude to older people:

So I go to visit my father in Vienna, I’m walking around this town and I see this old lady. She must have been about 90 years old and she is sweeping the street. I say to my father, “What’s this nice old lady doing sweeping the street?” He says, “She’s got a job, she feels useful, she’s happy, she’s making the street clean, she’s not put out to pasture.” We treat old people in this country pretty badly. We put them in rest homes, we kinda kick them under the rug and make believe they don’t exist. They [the people in Vienna] don’t feel like that. In a lot of these older places in the world, they value their older people and their older people feel they can still be a part of the community and I thought, “This is a terrific idea – that old people are useful – and that means I don’t have to worry so much about getting old because I can still have a use in this world in my old age.” I thought, “Vienna waits for you…”

So Vienna waits for you, and I think my friend Scott has waited for Vienna for 283 days since I started doing my 365Songs challenge this year. Happy birthday, Scott – I’ve even got the accordion out for this one!

There’s more Billy Joel here, and if it’s your first time on the site, find out why I’m playing one song a day for the whole of 2015 or listen to my October songs here.

https://soundcloud.com/mark-pentleton/vienna/s-sSK4o

Allentown
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Allentown

Today I’m playing the classic Billy Joel song, Allentown dating from 1982 and from the album The Nylon Curtain. The song focuses on the resolve of the people affected by the downturn in manufacturing, specifically on blue-collar workers in the town of Allentown, Pennsylvania, following the closure of the Bethlehem Steel plant. Despite some controversy over the stereotypical characters portrayed in the lyrics, Billy Joel was given the keys to the city by the mayor of Allentown, who described the song as “a gritty song about a gritty city”.

There’s more Billy Joel here, and to hear more October songs, click here. If it’s your first time on the site, find out more about why I’m trying to record a piano tune every day here.

https://soundcloud.com/mark-pentleton/allentown

My Life
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My Life

When I looked back at my list of the 500+ songs I’ve played in my two years of 365 Songs I was amazed to see that I’ve not yet played Billy Joel’s all-time classic My Life. So, that’s today’s song. Featured on the 1978 album 52nd Street and later released as a single, this is one of the most well-known Billy Joel songs ever released. My favourite memory of the song My Life is when Billy played Glasgow in a solo concert back in the 90s. He started the familiar left hand piano octave quavers introduction, let the excitement develop in the arena and then started playing Scotland The Brave with his right hand. Needless to say the crowd went wild and joined in all the more enthusiastically as the song itself began. Wonderful memories!

There’s more Billy Joel here, and to hear more July songs, click here. If it’s your first time on the site, find out more about why I’m trying to record a piano tune every day here.

https://soundcloud.com/mark-pentleton/my-life

Lullabye
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Lullabye

Today’s song is Billy Joel’s Lullabye which has an interesting story. The melody was originally written as a Gregorian Chant-style prelude for the song River of Dreams featuring lyrics in Latin about a man who had lost his faith. When he heard the final recording, Joel didn’t like it, and instead used the melody with lyrics inspired by his young daughter Alexa Ray.

There’s more Billy Joel here, and to hear more July songs, click here. If it’s your first time on the site, find out more about why I’m trying to record a piano tune every day here.

https://soundcloud.com/mark-pentleton/lullabye

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