Glass Houses - A Billy Joel Podcast

Almost a decade after the breakout hit album The Stranger, the Billy Joel machine was showing some signs of wear. That strain was evident on his 1986 album The Bridge.    After a string of multi-platinum, chart-topping, and award-winning records, Billy was worn out and wanted to be home with his family instead of back in the studio.    Meanwhile, relationships were strained between his long-time b...

Here’s an interview with Richie Cannata. That’s it. No great fanfare, no big intro. We just had a blast talking with Billy Joel’s longtime sax, organ, flute, accordion, and piano player, and we’re sharing that conversation with you.    There’s a lot of great stuff here: Deep trivia about Billy Joel tracks and live performances, stories about the Lords of 52nd Street reunion and post-pandemic shows...

The Stranger made Billy Joel a superstar back in 1977. Three years later, his career really launched into overdrive.   In 1980, Billy was still reaping the benefits of two Grammy-Award winning albums. In March, he took his next step forward by releasing Glass Houses. That album would become a smash hit with a leaner sound that would propel him into the 80s.   And during the Glass Houses tour, Bill...

In the mid 80s, Billy Joel penned the lyric “After 1986 what else could be new?” If you were to judge that based on his 1989 hit “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” you’d think he meant it. But a closer look at that video and the others from the Storm Front album suggest otherwise.   For this episode we’re looking at Eye Of The Storm. Released in 1990, it’s a home video collection of the videos from the m...

We're back with another playlist episode this week. We have so much fun putting these together and sharing some of our favorite music with you all.   Michael is back with more of his favorites over the past several years. From 90s alternative to 2010s soul and singer/songwriters, these have been mainstays for Michael and we are excited to share them with you! Again, if you dig what you hear, we'd...

Twenty-seven years ago this month, two titans of pop music teamed up for a run of sold-out shows that would set the tone for tours to come.   We’re talking about the first Face to Face tour featuring Billy Joel and Elton John. In the summer of 1994, the two hit-making piano players shared the stage for a then-unprecedented run of twenty-one sold-out shows in the United States.   In hindsight, the...

By the end of the seventies, Billy Joel had found success with a formula that blended elements of pop, rock, and jazz around a singer-songwriter frame. And, he was about to turn all that on its side. The Live In Houston 1979 bootleg is proof of it.   The video features Billy and the Lords of 52nd Street at the Summit in Houston, TX on November 25th. Their sound has been streamlined since the frene...

An album’s first track has a lot to live up to. The song must engage the listener right away and get them excited for what’s to come. Sometimes, it’s the record’s lead single and hopefully the band’s next hit. Other times, it’s just the song most likely to get people excited. Or, it’s a little of both. In this episode, we’re giving our opinions on Billy’s best and worst album openers. We are ranki...

Usually, a late-career live album is a victory lap, an excuse to tour, or at worst, an excuse to make some extra cash. For Billy Joel, however, it was a sign that he was back on the scene.    Released on June 13, 2006, 12 Gardens Live is a two-disc set. It features performances from Billy’s groundbreaking run of a dozen shows at Madison Square Garden between January 23 and April 24 of that year.  ...

Pardon the pun, but for Billy Joel, 1988 was the calm before the storm.    Billy and the band had just come off an exhausting, groundbreaking two-year tour that saw them on four continents. And, they capped it all off with a historic run of six shows in the now-former USSR. Billy was the first pop act from the west to get this kind of access behind the iron curtain.    Behind the scenes, Billy was...

What changes when other piano players perform Billy Joel’s music? What elements shine through? What’s it like to be tasked with performing music written by one of the most popular recording artists of the 20th century?    This is the second installment of our two-part series where we talk with piano players who have been tasked with interpreting and performing Billy’s music. Previously, we spoke w...

Billy Joel is no stranger to awards shows and other accolades. Following 1977’s The Stranger, he’s won a handful of industry awards, was nominated for plenty more, and gave a few memorable — and in, one case, literally show stopping — performances.    And, when you’re tracking award show appearances over three decades, you also start noticing trends and changes within the industry and its major pl...

After 1993’s River of Dreams, fans waited and wondered if Billy Joel would ever release another pop album. The answer, as we know now, turned out to be no. But, nearly a decade after that release, we saw a new development for Billy’s music.    The first years of the new century saw three new releases that featured Billy Joel’s music, but without him playing on two of them. In 2001, Sony Music rele...

Billy Joel’s last album is a study in contrasts. It sounds like a new beginning, when it was really the end of an era. It alternated between gritty, angular rhythms and sweet, flowing melodies. It’s arguably one of his most divisive albums. Yet it earned him a handful of award nominations, a new generation of fans, 5 million in record sales in America alone, and a pair of songs that would become c...

Apart from the botched release of Cold Spring Harbor, 1971 was a surprisingly low-key year for Billy Joel. His teenage band collapsed a few years before. And the proto-metal power duo that rose from its ashes failed to gain any traction.    Broke, depressed, and aimless, Billy was ready to leave the music industry for good. And, he may have done just that, if his manager at the time didn’t come th...

It’s easy to overlook most of Billy Joel’s The Bridge Tour concert dates from 1986 and 1987. The shows, which spanned four continents, were in support of one of Billy’s arguably weakest albums.    Meanwhile, these dates are eclipsed by the handful of landmark shows he played in the USSR at the tail end of the tour.    But it turns out there’s enough going on to warrant a closer look. Perhaps most...

This may be the beginning of 2021, but this installment marks the end of our first 12 months of episodes. So, we decided to do something special for the occasion.    We’re hosting a round table with some of the biggest Billy Joel fans we know. It’s an opportunity for us all to chat about the music we love.    Our conversation uncovered new stories about Billy and the band that we’d never heard. An...

William Martin Joel had released three solo albums by the beginning of 1976. In many ways, however, that was the year he became the Billy we all know today.    It was the year he recorded and released Turnstiles, finally winning his battle with CBS records to cut an album with his touring band. That band, of course, was now almost entirely the classic Lord of 52nd Street lineup.    By then, Billy...

We’re kicking off 2021 with a look back and a look forward at Billy Joel’s work, his fans, and the music industry in general.    This episode features two sets of interviews. The first is with Mikhail Pivovarov and Billy Ruegger from the online music collective Love Raptor. We’ll go behind the scenes of their funk covers of “Movin’ Out” and “She’s Got A Way” and also talk about some of the latest...

When it comes to Billy Joel’s most successful run of albums, you can’t talk about the man behind the piano without also talking about the man behind the board: Phil Ramone.    By the time Phil and Billy teamed up, Ramone was already a renowned engineer and innovator in the recording studio. His discography included landmark albums by Stan Getz, Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane, Paul Simon and Elton Jo...

Billy Joel’s World Tour from 2006 through 2007 turned out to be a true page-turner in his career. He’d played virtually no concerts the previous two years. And by the end of 2003 his performances were getting just a little stale.    But, you’d never know that from the 110 or so dates he mounted when he got back into touring mode. And, from all the high-quality footage that’s available, he seemed m...

This holiday week, settle in with some classic songs, a small glimpse into the Philadelphia music scene, and some exciting new artists making music today!    This is our second playlist episode, where Jack and Michael take turns playing DJ to spin some tunes and tell some stories behind them.    Jack’s on the turntable (literally, in some cases) this time to bring you:    All You Wanna Do Is Dance...

Date: May 14, 1974 City/State: Boston, MA Venue: Orpheum Theatre Supporting: Jesse Colin Young & Livingston Taylor   The Setlist:  Travelin' Prayer Somewhere Along The Line Technical Difficulty Blues Piano Man The Entertainer The Ballad of Billy The Kid Worse Comes To Worst Everybody Loves You Now Captain Jack Ain't No Crime   ------   In less than 50 minutes, the bootleg recording of Billy Joel a...

They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. If that’s true, then the sun rose for Billy Joel in 1983. That’s not to say things were bleak before then. But the past year or so carried a more somber tone. In 1982, Billy was in a bad motorcycle accident that left his hands severely injured for months. Despite this, he completed, released, and toured behind The Nylon Curtain. That album is arguably...

Sometimes, the best way to find out what makes a songwriter special is hearing someone else sing their songs. Listening to how other artists interpret their work brings out aspects of the music that weren’t as obvious before.    That’s what Michael and Jack discovered when they put this episode together. This week, They're diving into versions of Billy Joel songs performed by other people. To do i...