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Transcript23 lines
- [00:01]
Speaker A
You mentioned earlier Randy Newman. And when I think about this song, I mean, it's like if you're listening to this, like, God forbid you think about Randy Newman, because you'll instantly just be like, I have like seven minutes to wade through right now. When you think about a song like Song for the Dead, that's a song that I think a addresses this stuff in a way that is. It's very caustic. But I, I think that that is demanded and needed of this kind of material. I think a song like Born in the USA actually manages to thread the needle and be a. A pop song and actually also be as emotionally powerful as a song like Song for the Dead. When we're talking about songs about Vietnam and I feel like Good Night Saigon is basically like the most like, milquetoast middle of the road. Like, it's not bad, but is not even close.
- [01:11]
Speaker B
But that's, that's who he milquetoast middle of the road is who Billy Joel is, like, controlling for the fact that it is Billy Joel. And it's going to be him singing and it's going to be his emotional register and his style of music making. And it's not gonna be a caustic Randy Newman spare piano ballad. And it's not gonna be Born in the usa. It's also not gonna be clean cut kid. I think that it, you know, to see him actually willingly step up to the plate like this and actually try to make a statement about something that was, you know, like an actual political statement, you know, state what's the political statement. He avoids, you know, calling balls and strikes when it comes to any sort of, you know, actual political, you know, analysis here, as he probably should. A pop song is not the place for that. But it's more focused on the actual, you know, people who went through this shit. The same thing that Rambo did, you know, which came out right around this point in time. I just like, I think this was in American culture at this moment in time, you know, Apocalypse now in 1979, just a couple years before this.
- [02:20]
Speaker A
If you're comparing this to Apocalypse.
- [02:21]
Speaker B
Well, I'm not, but they're both focused on. Again, he's obviously not the Francis Ford Coppola of making records, but everyone, you know, the culture at large is struggling with this, is struggling with this topic at this moment in time in the 1980s. And rather than running away from it and feeling like, yeah, I'm just a pop songwriter, I'm just Brill building type of guy, I'm just Gonna write. You maybe write for the nine millionth time or whatever, he actually puts something on the line and goes for it here. And I think, again, understanding that it's Billy Joel and it's gonna be kind of schmaltzy and it's not gonna have the cleanest lyrics and it's not going to be the most inventive piece of music that's ever made. I think it works.
- [03:02]
Speaker C
I betcha. The average. Again, I'm just making up stats here, but I bet you the average Vietnam vet likes Good Night Saigon better than Born in the usa. That's what I'm putting out there.
- [03:16]
Speaker B
I would. I would tend to agree.
- [03:18]
Speaker A
Once again, you agree with this made up.
- [03:21]
Speaker C
Okay.
- [03:22]
Speaker B
Well, no, I just like, like, you know, he's. He's just. He's the lingua franca for people that. Because, like, no one was listening to these Bob Dylan records that were coming out at this moment in time or the Lou Reed record, like, you know, record people were listening. Music people, but like, just normal ass people. The men on the street, to use Bob Dylan's parlance, were just listening to whatever was on the radio and whatever was sold to them in the record store. Whatever was big. And like, I would guarantee you many more people, you know, reckoned with the Vietnam War to whatever extent they should have or could have or whatever, via.
- [03:58]
Speaker A
Billy Joel's Good Night Saigon.
- [04:01]
Speaker B
Yes, exactly.
- [04:03]
Speaker C
It's kind of like. And again, I'm probably making stuff up here, but I think there's a Vietnam memorial that's a whole bunch of names written on a stone, you know, in Washington, D.C. but there's also, like a bunch of statues of soldiers. Okay, And I think it was a compromise. Again, fact check me, please. But I think it was a compromise where, like, the artists wanted the names of the victims on the stone, but, like, the soldiers wanted, like, depictions of soldiers, you know, in statue form. And that's the thing here. You got Bruce, who's like an artist, you know, who's subversively singing about the pains of war and whatnot to a catchy Born in the usa, you know, and then there's Billy, who's doing more of a hard on your sleeve thing. But again, I think that hits a little bit, you know, in the same way that, you know, some people might like Rambo more than the Kubrick movie Full Metal Jacket. And also, can we just say, like, I love the acoustic guitar early on in the song. Like, it sounds really good. And he goes real quiet and slowly builds some of the lyrics. Clunky. Remember Charlie? Remember Baker? They left their childhood on every acre. Like, what are you talking about? But other moments, you know, they sent us Playboy, they gave us Bob Hope. I thought that was to the point. And not trying to be like, flourishy and whatnot. And then who was wrong, who was right, it didn't matter. In the thick of the fight again. I mean, it's very on the nose, but also, I'm not always opposed to that.
- [05:54]
Speaker B
Yeah, I mean, we don't want. Frankly, if Billy Joel is going to come out and start actually diagramming the politics of the Vietnam War, in his estimation, we're probably not going to like the conclusions that he's coming to. So I think the sort of not taking sides and just focusing on the micro, the small scale, you know, the emotional.
- [06:14]
Speaker A
This is not the micro, though. This is not the small scale. This is just like the war. It happened. People were fighting during the war and then they shot at us and then we said, we're going to get through this. It's like not micro at all. Like, he has more emotional intelligence in Piano Man Think talking about people in a bar than he shows even an ounce of on this song where it's just dumb. It's propaganda level. Just like.
- [06:43]
Speaker B
What is it propaganda for?
- [06:45]
Speaker A
Exactly. It's not even successful at that. It's just like, this really happened and we should just. You should think about it. It's like overblown sense importance. Importance full of pomp and circumstance and yet says nothing and doesn't even have the courage or the curiosity to. To say something specific about this conflict or the people in it. Whereas, like, a songic Born in the USA happens to have this devastating set of lyrics and lyrics that actually have remarkable specificity. Like the thing about the picture.
- [07:22]
Speaker C
He's got a picture of him in her arms. That's a great touch.
- [07:24]
Speaker A
They're still there. He's all gone.
- [07:26]
Speaker B
I feel like you're setting up a bit of a straw man here to be like, I don't think I get.
- [07:31]
Speaker C
Goosebumps sometimes hearing this song, honestly.
- [07:34]
Speaker B
Yeah, I think it's. I think it is effective. I don't think Matt, or I. Certainly not to speak for you, Matt, but I wouldn't say that this is as good as Bored in the USA or that Billy Joel is as great of an artist as Bruce Springsteen. But I think for Billy Joel, this is. This is about as much as you can expect.
- [07:50]
Speaker A
I'm holding Billy to a higher standard because I've seen him be better than this. He is capable of being a better writer than this. And on his most famous song, piano man, he gives a sense of the characters, of the place, of the people, of the internal life of these people. And this song is just. I want to write a song that's really big about this war, and it does that, but it's so big that it doesn't have what it needs to address this material.
- [08:20]
Speaker B
That's a fair critique today.