It all came down to fate when Billy Joel whistled his way to the top with his quintessential artistic accomplishment. 'The Stranger' made Joel a household name; but it was the decision to work with producer Phil Ramone that set the stage for the record's success. Joel remembers: "The band had been under the gun with other producers, having to prove themselves, and also, there were always studio players, who were good but who weren't me. Phil liked my guys right off the bat. He heard them play the songs and said, 'Don't play any different than you play on the road - be the rock-'n'-roll animals that you are.' We did songs in five takes instead of fifteen or twenty. He was one of the guys. We'd throw around ideas, kick the songs around, try them different ways and get them right. Sometimes we'd throw pizza at each other. That's how it was with Phil. He also has a great sense of what's right. I was originally going to do 'Only the Good Die Young' as a reggae song. Phil heard it and said, 'Try to play it as a shuffle.' It worked. He got us to try 'Just the Way You Are' as sort of a backward samba. That's the way the songs develop. It's a communal thing in the studio. It was inspiration! We created heat in the studio."
'The Stranger' went to thirty-six in the Netherlands; twenty-four in the UK; three in Japan; and two in Australia, New Zealand, and the US. It has earned the RIAA Diamond Album certification for selling more than ten million copies. At the time it became the biggest selling album in Columbia Records history. Joel admits: "I don't recall particularly feeling 'this is going to be the breakthrough. We were just happy with the album we were making at the time.... But now, in hindsight, I can see it was a real important album...I didn't necessarily set out to be a big worldwide, international super rock star kind of guy. I set out to make a living as a musician, and this is the way it happened...I didn't know this at the time, but had it not been a successful album, the label probably would have dropped me. 'Cause you have to remember, this was my fifth album without having had a major hit...'The Stranger' didn't make number one. It came out at the time of 'Saturday Night Fever'. How's that for luck? But it did pretty well, and I was playing the 20,000-seaters...The audiences got louder; that's about it. We always put on a good show, so that didn't change. People knew the songs, which was nice. And we were ready for it. A lot of groups have a big record but have no road experience. They have only one album's worth of material. They're on, they're off. And nobody's going to come back to see them again. We had four albums' worth of material and seven years' road muscle. We went to the coliseums and people thought they were going to hear 'Just the Way You Are' but we had rock 'n' roll from 'Captain Jack' to 'Piano Man' and 'Say Goodbye to Hollywood', stuff people had vaguely heard of before: 'Oh, so that was his song.' Audiences got their money's worth. They felt they got a bargain."
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Billy Joel received Grammy awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1978 for his song 'Just the Way You Are'. Joel says: "I had no idea there was such a big record. 'Just the Way You Are' became this monster...which is just a pure out-and-out love song." The song went to nineteen in the UK, six in Australia and New Zealand, three on the US pop chart, two in Canada, and number one on the US adult contemporary chart.
'Only the Good Die Young' was based on Virginia Callaghan, a girl that Joel had a crush on when he started playing in a band. It originally had a reggae sound until Ramone suggested they try a shuffle. It went to twenty-four in the US and nineteen in Canada. Joel recalls: "That song was released as a single back in 1977, I think. It was not really doing very well, just languishing in the charts. Then it was banned by a radio station in New Jersey at a Catholic university. The minute the kids found out it was banned, they ran out in droves and it became a huge hit. If you tell kids they can't have something, that's what they want. I don't understand the problem with the song. It's about a guy trying to seduce a girl but, at the end of the song, she's still chaste and pure and he hasn't got anything. So I never understood what the furor was about. But I did write a letter to the archdiocese who'd banned it, asking them to ban my next record...Jewish guilt is visceral it's in the stomach. Catholic guilt is in the belfry of the cerebrum, it's gothic and its got incense, bells tolling, and it has all to do with sin. I wanted to write a song about it, about a guy trying to seduce a Catholic girl. I don't know what all the fuss was about, because she stayed chaste. I remember taking it over to the drummer, Liberty. 'Well, it's true,' he said, 'but I don't know how people are going to respond to it!"
'She's Always A Woman' was written about Joel's first wife: "Some people said, 'Oh, he's a misogynist, look what he says about this woman. He wrote this song called She's Only a Woman.' Which always cracks me up every time I read that. To me, it's a very simple understandable lyric. 'She may be that to you, but she's this to me.'" The single went to twenty-nine in the UK, nineteen on the US pop chart, fifteen in the Netherlands, twelve in Canada, and number two on the US adult contemporary chart.
'Movin' Out (Anthony’s Song)' went to ninety-nine in Australia, forty on the US adult contemporary chart, thirty-five in the UK, thirty-one in New Zealand, seventeen on the US pop chart, and number eleven in Canada. Joel reveals: "In the song, there's the sound of a car peeling out. That was Doug Stegmeyer's car, who at the time had a '60s-era Corvette. He took his little tape machine in the car and hung the microphone out the rear end, and started burning rubber, screeching away from his house. At the end, we went on and on and on and they faded it out. We were just having too much fun playing, we couldn't stop! We'd look at Phil and he'd just go, 'Ah, just keep going, who knows how much of this we're going to use, just go with it.' The education of self-editing is a good process to learn."
'The Stranger'
full album:
All songs written and composed by Billy Joel.
Side one
1. "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" 3:30
2. "The Stranger" 5:10
3. "Just the Way You Are" 4:52
4. "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" 7:37
Side two
1. "Vienna" 3:34
2. "Only the Good Die Young" 3:55
3. "She's Always a Woman" 3:21
4. "Get It Right the First Time" 3:57
5. "Everybody Has a Dream/The Stranger (Reprise)" 6:38
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