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Transcript18 lines
- [00:00]
Alex
All you want to do is dance is like, yeah, this is low middle brow. Like, I don't think this. I really know what this song's about.
- [00:11]
Blake
It's just, you know, talking about music.
- [00:15]
Alex
But he's not really.
- [00:17]
Blake
He's talking about character a little bit. He's doing. He's doing it together, you know, the character and music. I do think that, like, music, you know, popular music is a major focus of his and something that he's, you know. Exactly. You see it on the Entertainer, you see it on Piano Man. I think you see it on this song. You're going to see it certainly down the line. It's still rock and roll to me, you know. I think you see it on say Goodbye to Hollywood as well, which is, you know, musically quoting Phil Spector. I think he's very conscious of the canon of pop music up until this point at least, and is interested in, I don't know, like, unpacking it or analyzing it is maybe not the right way to think about it, but at least, like pointing it, pointing at it, you know, and being like, hey, look at that. You know, that I'm part of that. I have. I have some sort of connection to that. And I think that this song is maybe not my favorite song on this record, but it sort of fits into that mini canon in. In the Billy Joel corpus.
- [01:23]
Alex
Well, he's thinking about that kind of stuff. What's that line here about the timing tomatoes being you wish tomatoes were cheaper?
- [01:32]
Blake
Well, yeah, I mean, that's the thing is, you know, the subject of this song is someone who's just sorta, you know, maybe a little hopelessly nostalgic, you know, asking questions about why. Why don't the Beatles get back together? Why aren't tomatoes as cheap as they used to be?
- [01:48]
Alex
These are the questions.
- [01:49]
Blake
These are the questions. Absolutely. There's. There is a, you know, an undercurrent of. Well, I guess. I don't know. I mean, it's like.
- [01:57]
Alex
To stay. It's like, kind of funny to, like, have basically is like a diss track type, like sort of like a cutting song that, like, just isn't really that. It's just kind of like slightly ribbing the person rather than being like, you know, usually a song is, like, written to kind of express an intense emotion about a character. And this one is definitely kind of just like written to sort of make slightly rude observations.
- [02:33]
Blake
It's a bit of a shrug of the shoulders. Yeah, I mean, I think Randy would be the strongest comparison point here. Like, you know, if he were writing this song about this character, he would have a very clear point of view and have some very cutting observations to make one way or another about this person. And in this case, it's. Yeah, I kind of, I was just gonna say, you know, there's an undercurrent of conservatism to this song. You know, when he says, you never heard the words of your favorite songs through a 3 inch speaker. You never messed around with dangerous drugs. You were all getting sick on beer and you didn't get any unless you went steady and made out for a year. Great little, you know, bit of Jolitry. I'm not gonna call it poetry, but jolitry. And so, I mean, there is, like, I was saying a degree of conservatism to that statement, but then I don't, I don't necessarily know his relationship to his subject in this song and whether he kind of aligns with that viewpoint or, you know, is pitted against it or is somewhere in between, it's, I think this is what we've come to. What I've come to see, certainly with Billy Joel is like, I don't have a good sense for who it is behind the piano. You know, he keeps himself personally sort of at a remove from me, at least up until this point. To me, I, I, I gotta, you know, I don't, I'm working at a disadvantager not knowing nearly as much about the man as you do.
- [03:59]
Alex
I mean, I don't, I guess you're right. I just don't know that he's so sure himself.
- [04:06]
Blake
Like, I think, and he might not be.
- [04:10]
Alex
I think he's writing types of songs that he sees people writing and he is going, like, I'm gonna write a type of song like that. And I think sometimes, of course, he like, has his own idea of like, what a type of song could be like. I mean, I'm not saying he's like, not. Of course he has like creative impulses that he acts on. I just don't know that he's always got the idea first. Like, I think sometimes he's got like the outline of a type of song and then fills it in with some stuff and plays well on it and that automatically because he's pretty good at the other, at the playing part, you know, and the arranging part puts it up a bit above the rabble. But I don't think that he writes, I don't get the sense that he writes from inspiration every time.
- [05:16]
Blake
Yeah, no. You know, like the way that Bob talks about songwriting you know, the song's always there, and I just. I just happened to pull it out of the air and put it down on paper. Like, that is not. That's not the sentence that I get about Billy Joel's songwriting process.
- [05:30]
Alex
No. With Bob, I think that maybe something that happens is more that. Like, when he doesn't have his own idea that he's really into, he just does something literally. Like, he basically directly rips off, like, copies. Just not copies. He just wants to have the experience of playing music that he actually is actively inspired by. Like, that's why we have triplicate and, you know, the folk. The what? You know, Good as I've been to you.
- [06:07]
Blake
Glass houses.
- [06:08]
Alex
No, I didn't. I was gonna say classic. But, you know, even stuff like. Yeah, like the. Any sort of blues stuff he does. Like that. How much Haley Love is playing Early Roman Kings. But I think Billy Joel is, like, slightly averse to just doing that. Like, which makes sense, because one of them is Bob Dylan, who I don't think has any reason. He. He knows he has no reason to prove himself. And he can feel very comfortable just sliding right into basically doing standard blues or standard, literal standard stuff. And Billy Joel, I think, is a little bit cautious about just doing that. Because if he just did that, I think he's thinking, I'm not, like, known as, like, a great artist. I can't just, like, fill time on a record with doing kind of generic, like, what he would think of as general. Like, sort of general, like, standard stuff. That's why I think we have always, like, some kind of twist. But I don't even. I think sometimes he could just chill and, like, do. I mean, he did it on the Root Beer Rag.
- [07:33]
Blake
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they do it for different reasons. You know, they're different artists. All of them are. And I think for Bob versus Billy, maybe the clearest, cleanest contrast you can draw. I can draw at least, is, like, look at the type of concerts they play. And, you know, obviously, we know that Billy has recently stepped away from the stage, per our conversation on the last episode. May he get better as soon as possible. But, you know, Bob Dylan, he's playing, like, ancient theaters in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, or whatever for 1500 people. And Billy Joel plays Madison Square Garden and football stadiums across the. You know, across the country. Bob plays music for himself. I think Billy plays it for the crowd. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, I think there's a place for both types of artists in the world. But it seems pretty clear to me, based on that approach to live performance, why the records end up, you know, sounding the way they do and turn out the way they do.