You either adore Billy Joel or you can’t stand him.
Either way, Joel supports your cause, your judgment of the artist and his music.
Of course, he’ll thank the fans shelling out $95 to see him play a rare show at the Pepsi Center on Thursday — for their patronage, their keeping the faith, their continued support of a career that has slowed to a crawl the past dozen years.
But Joel even has kind and supportive words for the haters.
“People who just know Billy Joel from Top 40 singles may not like Billy Joel, and I can’t say I necessarily blame them,” Joel wrote in the liner notes for his 2005 box set, “My Lives.” “I don’t think that really represents the sum and substance of my work.”
That’s true with any popular artist. And while Joel is paying himself a backhanded compliment, especially in the context of a B-sides, live tracks and rarities box set, it got me thinking.
Joel, a notorious punching bag for critics since the 1973 release of the “Piano Man” LP, has actually long been a personal favorite. He has a way with melody, and I’ve always appreciated his sense of storytelling.
No, seriously.
I’ll happily rip him for his ridiculous, misguided attempts at piano rock: the stumbling “Big Shot,” the bombastic “Captain Jack,” the instantly dated “Pressure,” the obnoxious “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
But the beauty outweighs the schlock in Joel’s catalog. And so I decided to write this essay — let’s call it “Why the world still needs Billy Joel” — one morning while listening to the four CDs that make up “My Lives.”
First, a fun fact: Joel played piano on the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack.” Bizarre, right? It makes more sense after you hear songs like “My Journey’s End” from one of Joel’s early bands, the Lost Souls. Light, dreamy and bouncy, the song kicks off the box set and makes obvious Joel’s penchant for that full, girl group sound.
That sound was never fully realized in Joel’s solo canon. Thankfully, neither was the awful guitar rock of his later band, Attila.
Any discussion of Joel needs to note the time he spent as a starving, mediocre singer-songwriter. (Of course, some say he’s always been mediocre.) He spent the late ’60s as a studio musician while moonlighting in the aforementioned bands.
He moved to Los Angeles in the early ’70s and was a lounge singer-pianist in the Executive Room for a spell (the real-life inspiration behind “Piano Man”), and he was later signed to Columbia on the radio support behind “Captain Jack.”
Joel wrote many terrible songs before he demo’d “New Mexico,” an early version of “Worse Comes to Worse” — the first song in this collection that shows artistic promise. Joel indulges with the drastic self-harmonizing — a cheesy trademark of his music throughout his career — but that song, along with the unreleased “Cross to Bear,” offer potent foreshadowing of the singer’s impressive pop sensibilities.
And why wouldn’t this guy blow up on radio? He eventually mastered the sing-along drinking songs, and he also had a soft way with the sensitive piano ballads he made his name on. I can understand why “These Rhinestone Days” and “Goodnight Saigon” would give some music fans the creeps, but for one reason or another, those songs give me the chills. Still.
Joel is ham-handed and long-winded, and that’s part of his charm. It’s not high art. It’s far from Dylan. But his performance makes you believe it. We sang “And So It Goes” in my high school a cappella group, and I still think that song is a pop-ballad landmark.
It’s undeniable that Joel is best when he’s exploring his own brand of upbeat, tongue- tripping power pop. Songs like “Movin’ Out” are rollicking, cheerful and fun.
The staccato, self-echoing vocals in “Movin’ Out” are classic, especially since they weave such a meandering, period-piece of a tale. His conversation with himself in “It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me” is silly and entertaining, and the sax solo rules. “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” features a whinier sax, but the mid-song change-up remains innovative as a musical element and a storytelling technique.
The box set includes a couple of laughers, too — and they speak volumes about Joel and the era of popular music for which he’s best known. Have you ever heard the 12-inch dance remix of “Keeping the Faith”? Didn’t think so. With its emphasized bass line and additional horns, it never quite caught on at the nightclubs.
What about the dubbed-out “Only the Good Die Young,” starring Billy Joel as a wannabe Rastafarian? It was unreleased for a reason. Sting he’s not.
Personally I can do without “Uptown Girl” and “Piano Man,” too. And I agree with Joel that you can’t judge him on “Piano Man” alone. Even if it hadn’t been played out on radio and even if it wasn’t murdered nightly at karaoke nights the world over, it’s a tacky song — even by Joel’s standards.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
Billy Joel
Piano pop. 8 p.m. Thursday, Pepsi Center. $29.50-$95. , 303-830-8497
