Billy Joel Released a Seven-Hour, 155-Track Digital Playlist. These Are Our Ten Favorite Songs

The Hassles never found much traction outside of their native Long Island, and their live set was largely Top 40 hits by other artists of the day. But they did have a handful of originals that hinted at the budding brilliance of a young keyboardist/singer named William Martin Joel. Their best song is “Every Step I Take (Every Move I Make),” which sounds like a lost song by Vanilla Fudge or the Rascals. It’s a pure blast of 1967 blue-eyed-soul. The Hassles were inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame in June. It’s a shame that Joel wasn’t on hand for a long awaited reunion.

Throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, Billy Joel jumped from musical trend to musical trend like a one-man Spinal Tap. In 1969, he ditched the Hassles and formed the hard rock/psychedelic duo Attila with his longtime buddy Jon Small. They were an odd duo with Joel handling keyboard, bass lines, and vocals, while Small played the drums, but somehow Epic saw potential and gave them a record contract. Rock critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls their lone release “undoubtedly is the worst album released in the history of rock & roll — hell, the history of recorded music itself,” and Joel basically agrees whenever the subject comes up. But we can’t help but feel a little affection for “Holy Moses.” Who could have ever heard this ridiculous song and imagined the singer would come out with “She’s Got a Way” just one year later?

Joel’s 1971 debut LP Cold Spring Harbor was a complete fiasco. Producer Artie Ripp had almost no clue what he was doing, and a mastering error on initial pressings of the LP made Billy sound like a chipmunk. When it flopped, Joel famously took a gig at the Executive Room piano lounge under the name William Martin, and vanished into anonymity. But Cold Spring Harbor had stellar songs on it that popped onstage. This great rendition of “Everybody Loves You Now” from the 1975 Piano Man tour is proof of that. If the song sounded like this on the album, history might have unfolded very differently.

When Billy Joel and his touring band did a little show Philadelphia radio station WMMR, it just seemed like one stop on the grueling Cold Spring Harbor tour. But his set included the new song “Captain Jack,” and feedback was so strong from listeners that it went into heavy rotation on the local airwaves, attracting the attention of Columbia head Clive Davis. He signed Joel to the label in 1973. It’s one of the most pivotal moments of his career, and it’s all because of this seven-minute tune about a drug dealer, which he hadn’t even recorded yet. (Is “Captain Jack the best song in rock history to feature the world “masturbate?” We vote yes.)

Billy Joel spent many formative years in Los Angeles, and they inspired some of his most beloved songs, but he’s a New York guy at heart. He moved back to Long Island in 1975 and never looked back. The joy he felt upon returning was captured both in the hit “NewYork State of Mind,” and this overlooked gem, “Say Goodbye To Hollywood.” It’s a throwback that could have been recorded by the Ronettes, and Ronnie Spector even recorded it with the E Street Band in 1975. This wonderful rendition from a 1980 gig in Milwaukee appeared on Songs in the Attic.

There are 882 known live renditions of “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” and surely many more from concerts lost to history. One of the very first took place May 6, 1977, when the Turnstiles tour hit C.W. Post College in Greenvale, New York. The show was professionally taped, giving us this wonderful recording that proves the masterpiece was born fully-formed. “This is a brand new song,” he says. “This is a premiere, I guess. I’d like to dedicate it to Christiano’s restaurant.” (He later admitted it was actually inspired by the New York restaurant Fontana di Trevi.)

There were five hit singles off The Stranger. “Vienna” wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t even a single. And for a long, long time, only true Billy Joel aficionados recognized its brilliance. It’s unclear exactly what changed over the past couple of decades (maybe it’s prominent placement in 13 Going on 30 played a role), but it’s become one of his most beloved songs. He can’t get offstage without playing it. The version here is from a masterclass that Joel taught in Germany back in 1995 as his father and brother looked on. It’s just Joel and a piano. And it’s magnificent.

We’re calling out this song because it was a genuine hit that reached Number One on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chat in 1984, and was all over Top 40 radio. But for reasons that are hard to understand, it’s been almost completely erased from history. It didn’t appear on Joel’s Greatest Hits record, and there are only 16 known live performances, the last one taking place in 1994. This is a guy who last released a new pop album 32 years ago, tours all the time, had a monthly residency at MSG for a full decade, and couldn’t find four minutes to break out “Leave a Tender Moment Alone?” Thankfully, he found a place for it on this 155-song playlist. It’s fused together from three lives performances in 1984 – a decent percent of every known live take – and features jazz great Toots Thielemans on harmonica.

Joel infuriated his longtime bandmates by ditching them for studio pros when he cut 1993’s River of Dreams. But many of the songs were originally attempted with his own guys when they gathered at Long Island’s Shelter Island Studios before producer Danny Kortchmar entered the scene, and brought the album in a different direction. We can now hear the original “No Man’s Land, which is significantly less polished, and clearly not 100% done. But there’s great potential here. Hopefully they decide to release the rest of these sessions on a future River of Dreams box set, and we can fully assess whether or not Kortchmar made the right call.

If you’re tired of hearing this song, imagine how Billy Joel feels. He hasn’t been able to step off a stage without singing it in the past 52 years. There are 986 known live “Piano Man” performances, more than any song in his catalog by a mile, and the real number is possibly at least twice that. (Billy Joel fans aren’t like Deadheads. His live history hasn’t been painstakingly chronicled.) But there was a moment when it was a brand new tune that crackled with life. Billy Joel: And So It Goes wraps up with a private “Piano Man” performance from the day he signed to Columbia in 1973. He’s not joined by any members of his band, and he doesn’t even play harmonica, and it’s very clear why Columbia felt they had a major talent on their roster. (They’d also recently signed a Jersey kid named Bruce.) It would be four very difficult years before their bet on Billy Joel paid off, but they had the patience and foresight to stick with him. We’re very lucky they did.