Damn You, Billy Joel
I have every single album ever at my finger tips. Why do I want this one on vinyl?
Before the pandemic, I didn’t give a fuck about Billy Joel. I mean, I knew who he was. He’s the piano man. He plays at the bar, and they put bread in his jar. He is also the guy who really wants us to know that he did NOT commit arson. Like to a suspicious degree.
If you subtract the rocking melody and iconic music video and focus solely on the lyrics, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is a word-salad cry for help. Any competent law enforcement official would hear that and immediately arrest him.
FBI AGENT
Mr. Joel, we understand there’s been an incident.
BILLY JOEL
Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, “The King and I” and “The Catcher in the Rye”
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye
FBI AGENT
[troubled silence]
BILLY JOEL
ELVIS PRESLEY!
DISNEY LAND!
FBI AGENT
Get him out of here.
So aside from knowing he definitely didn’t start any fires, I didn’t know much else about him. Frankly, I thought he was a bit overrated. That’s because I was a complete idiot.
I should clarify, I’m not a complete idiot. I’ve heard “Piano Man,” and yeah, it’s one of the most efficiently written musical short stories ever.
But still, I didn’t fully appreciate what he had cooking. Even more, I didn’t know he would begin sending me messages from the past in the form of his songs. Ok that sounds dramatic, but that’s only because it is.
This weird fixation began as a fluke around July 2020. We’d been locked up for about four months by then. I was working from home in my job as a private equity associate at a law firm and feeling very lucky to have a job that not only existed but also didn’t require me to leave the house.
The only problem? Pandemics are bad for the market. Bad markets are bad for private equity deals. We had little to no deal work.
Instead, I spent my days working on pro bono assignments, plugging in my headphones and powering through research projects.
I was on a 1970s playlist because in my soul I’m 63 years old. Up pops a song I’d never heard before. A sincere opening piano solo. A voice.
“They say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known.”
Ooooof.
I stopped what I was doing to look up the song. It was “Summer, Highland Falls.”
“For we are always what our situations hand us. It’s either sadness or euphoria.”
The song absolutely wrecked me. I played it again. And then again. And again and again.
The lyrics rang out like an indictment.
“And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives with our respective similarities, it’s either sadness or euphoria.”
I was privileged to sit, safe, at home researching legal responses to COVID-19 in vulnerable communities. Safe inside listening to the musical stylings of one of the greatest songwriters of all times. But something in that song ate at me, like I should be doing something else, something more.
Damn you, Billy Joel.
A few weeks later, I saw a job listing on LinkedIn for an “Elder Justice Fellowship.” It involved helping older adults who had been abused or financially exploited. So, like, not at all what I was currently doing.
I texted Meagan, my unofficial life coach and former “work wife” who herself had left the firm the previous October.
“Go for it,” she said.
“It’s a huge pay cut,” I said.
“You’ll figure it out.” She sounded sure. She always does.
I consulted a few other friends and family members. Then Billy chimed in, this time via another tune on the same album called “I’ve Loved These Days.”
“We dress our days
In silken robes
The money comes
The money goes
We know it’s all a passing phase.”
He got me again. Damn you, Billy Joel.
I put in an application. I interviewed once, then again, then got an offer. It was time to leave the high paying, white shoe firm. It was all just a passing phase.
On my last day “at” the firm, I returned my laptop, said my goodbyes over Zoom, then called Paris to join me on the couch.
“Will you listen to this song with me?” I asked. He said of course he would. I played “I’ve Loved These Days.” Billy summed it up while I sat beside Paris and cried.
“So before we end
And then begin
We’ll drink a toast to how it’s been
A few more hours to be complete
A few more nights on satin sheets
A few more times that I can say
I’ve loved these days.”
The end of an era. Marked by a song that was written well over 40 years prior.
A few weeks later, my comedy home, Dallas Comedy House, closed. For good. Kaput. Gone. Forever. The night of the initial announcement, I sat up in bed, well past when Paris had drifted off and scrolled through picture after picture, saving them in a special album I could revisit whenever I wanted.
I shoved down how much it hurt by busying myself with the new job. I let up on the Billy Joel music, too. I cycled through a country phase.
But the other night I turned on Spotify while I was cooking dinner. There was Billy Joel again. Spotify said they thought I might like his songs. OH REALLY? YOU THINK??
After that, I put Turnstiles back in my rotation. Released in 1976, the record only runs 36 minutes, but it packs a lot of feelings in those moments. I decided I had to have that record, the physical record.
I looked through my collection, a combination of records from my parents and stuff I’ve grabbed from thrift stores or bookstores over the years. Inside, I found I already had two Billy Joel records — The Stranger and 52nd Street. Both great albums, but they’re not Turnstiles.
We ventured out on a Saturday to try and find this record. I stood before the J section at Good Records then again at 14 Records next door. No Turnstiles. At Half Priced Books, a helpful associate approached me as I thumbed past the Jacksons and Johns.
“I’ve got these,” he said, a stack of Elton John records in his arms. “Not sure what you’re looking for.”
“I’m trying to find Turnstiles by Billy Joel.”
“Ah, I haven’t seen that one in a while. Good record, though,” he said.
I left, disappointed, still on my search for a physical manifestation of a group of sounds that I could access any time I wanted with just the press of a button.
There’s something about having a physical album. It’s the same reason why I cling to my copies of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Abbey Road. Why I hold Rumours so close to me. They’re tokens of my beloveds.
My mom won that Sgt. Pepper record from Dallas radio DJ Ron Chapman way back when the DJs gave records away on radio stations. He asked listeners to write in a list of all the famous faces that appear on the record’s cover. Little did he know, Seventeen magazine had recently published the list, so my astute future mom scribbled down the list and won the contest.
My dad walked into a record store and picked up my copy of Abbey Road. He took it home, and slipped the circle out of the cover. He sat it on the turntable and placed the needle just so until the unmistakable drum beat of that first song begins. When I pull the record from the sleeve and do the same, I’m transported, not just by the music but by the physical act.
I couldn’t find Turnstiles in person, so I settled for buying a used copy online. While I waited for delivery, I turned to the Spotify version during a run this week.
During the final few meters of my run, “Miami 2017” began. If you haven’t heard the tune, it is sung from the perspective of a man in the far-off future of 2017 telling his grandkid how New York was destroyed in the apocalypse. Fun stuff!
The song began just as I ran past the home of some comedy pals (Hi Kyle & Maggie!) I thought of them and comedy and our community as the song played. My mind shot to Deep Ellum, the Dallas neighborhood where the comedy house stood.
“I’ve seen the lights go out on Broadway.”
A frog climbed in my throat.
He went on:
“They turned our power down
And drove us underground
But we went right on with the show.”
I picked up my pace. By the time the song’s narrator ends up in Florida, I was full on sob-running. That’s where you’re running as hard as you can and audibly crying so loud that an older woman in a red SUV stops when backing out of her driveway to ask if you’re ok and then you point to your headphones and say, “Billy Joel,” and then she says, “Yes of course.”
All the photos I had sorted through back in August were on loop in my head. The stage. The lights. The songs. Sitting on a couch backstage, knowing that when the door popped open, no matter who it was, it would be great.
Then I thought of the lights out. Doors locked. The empty building. I sob-ran through the feelings — devastated, guilty, angry, powerless. It wasn’t all about DCH either. It was life, the way things were. Buildings, institutions, businesses, how it used to be — gone.
Every generation goes through change, through loss. But this one hits different. There is such a clear demarcation between then and now. Between before and after. Between March 2020 and March 2021.
So yeah, I want a physical record. I’ll keep it with all my others. I’ll give them to my kids someday. Let them set the vinyls on a turntable and feel how a song can dig its way into your brain but also kick you right in the heart. How music that’s powerful enough can help you quit one thing and start another. How it can bring healing and comfort and closure. And also how it can make you look like a bit of a wacko in public.
Damn you, Billy Joel.
