FIRE IN HIS BELLY
You think you know Billy Joel, but you don’t know Billy Joel. There’s an easy way to prove it: go to YouTube and search for ‘Attila’. You’ll hear a cacophonous late-sixties version of heavy metal led by over-amplified organ and see a picture of two longhairs in armour standing in an abattoir. One of them is the organist, and he’s Billy Joel.
Most musicians have a past they’d rather forget, and this is Joel’s. He went through a succession of cover bands and failed beat bands, then the terrible Attila, and all of it to show that he wasn’t made for his times. In truth, though, he wasn’t really made for any times, which is both a blessing and a curse for an artist. The songs that made his name — and , released in 1973 — were character sketches that might have been excerpts from a Broadway show. The big ballads that made him a, were equal-parts Sinatra-ready tributes to the Great American Songbook and seventies soft-rock schmaltz. With them came punchy little numbers, like , that veered into Springsteen epic territory, and the rock ’n’ roll and doo-wop pastiche of and . And that’s before we get to , which could have been the work of some eighties alternative-rock band contemporary of R.E.M.
