Billy Joel - My Lives

RiPPER: .... [uF]Crew                   █ S
RLS DATE: .. Nov-22-2005                █ T
STR DATE: .. Nov-22-2005                █ A
ARTiST: .... Billy Joel                 █ T
ALBUM: ..... My Lives                   █ S

BiTRATE: ... VBR.Kbps.44.1kHz
MODE: ...... Joint-Stereo
TRACKS: .... cd1: 19 cd2: 18 cd3: 17 cd4
LENGH: ..... 284:57.Minutes

"People who just know Billy Joel from Top 40
singles may not like Billy Joel, and I can't say
I necessarily blame them. I don't think that
really represents the sum and substance of my
work."

So says Billy Joel in the liner notes to My
Lives, a comprehensive four-CD/one-DVD box set
that uses rarities, B-sides, soundtrack
contributions, demos, album tracks and the
occasional hit to draw a musical biography of
one of the more successful recording artists of
the rock & roll era. In essence, the box is an
argument for Joel's statement that his hits do
not represent his work accurately (thereby, it
also acts as an antidote to his previous box
set, which just stuck the three volumes of his
greatest hits together). The fact that this is a
clearinghouse for non-LP cuts, something that
has been long-awaited by hardcore fans, is
almost beside the point -- this is intended as
defense of Joel's work as a whole, an argument
for his strengths as a writer and a musician,
with the rarities being offered as exhibit A.
While it can not be argued that Joel's
unreleased material is on the level of either
Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen -- quite frankly,
he's not nearly as prolific a songwriter as
either -- My Lives does act as a counterpart to
Tracks or The Bootleg Series in how it fills in
the cracks within the catalog. But since this
doesn't add much to the official record, the way
that those two landmark sets did -- for the
abundance of rarities here, there are only five
brand-new, unfamiliar songs hauled out of the
vaults; the rest are alternate takes and early
versions of familiar songs -- a better
comparison is the Band's A Musical History,
which traced the group's career using a wealth
of rare material to illustrate the band's growth
and depth.

Here, the unreleased material, oddities and
overlooked tracks are used to illustrate the
truth within the set's title -- that Joel did
indeed have several musical lives during his
long career. To that end, My Lives is indeed a
success, since it's the first Billy Joel release
to acknowledge that he was in bands prior to
launching a solo career in 1971, offering two
songs apiece from the Lost Souls and the Hassles
and just one monstrosity from his legendary
heavy metal organ-n-drums duo, Attila. It also
goes out of its way to emphasize Joel's
latter-day classical work; not only does it
contain three selections from his Fantasies and
Delusions album, but Anthony DeCurtis's liner
notes lingers so long on Joel's classical
pieces, it seems like a justification of sorts.
But that's fine -- having the lesser-known
psychedelic and garage R&B bands bookend
classical compositions performed by Richard Joos
not only offer a nice contrast, it tells the
story and in a way no other Joel compilation
has, even if 2001's Essential did end with a few
classical cuts. And if the intention was to help
build the case for Billy Joel, songwriter and
musician, opposed to rock star, this box is
successful, at least partially.

For the first two discs, My Lives is flat-out
terrific, even when the music is somewhat less
than perfect. The Lost Souls were generic '60s
garage pop, while the Hassles were better, they
were a bit too close to the Rascals, yet all
this works in the greater context of the box --
it provides context for what Billy Joel did
next. And after the aptly titled "Amplifier
Fier" from Attila, the set goes into a great
series of rarities, starting with the
organ-driven precious pop of "Only a Man" and
continuing through "Oyster Bay," the best
previously unheard song here, and then a bunch
of western-themed Piano Man demos, including the
title track with different lyrics and
mind-bendingly distracting echo, "The Siegried
Line," an early version of "Worse Comes to
Worst" called "New Mexico," and the unreleased
"Cross to Bear. Soon, album tracks start to be
woven into the greater fabric of the set, but
the rare material keeps flowing throughout the
second disc. And there are a bunch of highlights
here: an early "Only the Good Die Young" with a
reggae beat, a demo of the B-side "Elvis Presley
Blvd" called "The End of the World" plus the
actual flipside, an early version of "For the
Longest Time" called "The Prime Of Your Life"
that has none of the doo-wop, a version of
"Christie Lee" that's looser and better than the
finished one, an early "And So It Goes" dating
from 1983, the year it was written, and the
rollicking "Nobody Knows But Me," a contribution
to a children's album. Some of this material is
a little rough, but taken together, it not only
gives a good sense of the range of Joel's work
-- he did rock & roll, R&B, sensitive
singer/songwriters, epic pop -- but that he had
an exceptional sense of craft, something that's
particularly notable from the demos.

If My Lives consisted of just these two discs,
or mined this time between 1971 and 1983 (even
1986) more thoroughly, it would not only be
flat-out essential for diehard fans, it would be
worthwhile for doubters, since it offers an
insight to Joel as a musician and craftsman that
isn't quite heard on the final product.
Unfortunately, the set has another two discs to
go, covering the years from 1989 to 2005 -- a
decade and a half where he produced exactly two
pop albums and one classical project. It's not
just that Joel's productivity dropped sharply
during this time, so did the quality of his
work, as the third and fourth discs here make
plain. Nearly all of this consists of non-LP
rarities -- or more specifically, contributions
to soundtracks and various compilations, with a
handful of live performances and B-sides for
good measure. On the third disc, a whopping 11
of the 17 songs are covers, and all of them feel
tossed off in the studio, as if Joel knocked
them out because of contractual obligations.
Arriving after the lively and interesting first
two discs, this aggressively bland sequence of
slick covers -- highlighted by a version of
"Highway 61 Revisted" set to a beat borrowed
from Elton John's "Whenever You're Ready (We'll
Go Steady Again)" -- is dispiriting and
illustrates Joel's decline in a more dynamic,
depressing way than either Storm Front or River
of Dreams. The fourth disc covers Y2K forward,
although even that is a little misleading: his
many tours with Elton John are covered with a
duet from 1994, there are two selections
recorded in the early '80s taken from the
Essential Billy Joel DVD while the rest,
including the three classical selections, are
from 2001. This is Billy Joel the old pro,
turning out serviceable selections of his
classic hits -- a version of which can be seen
on the largely inconsequential DVD, A Voyage on
the River of Dreams, a live concert from
Frankfurt that was originally broadcast on the
Disney Channel -- and while it's marginally more
spirited than the third disc, it doesn't exactly
make a case for Joel being a vital artist --
which is pretty much the opposite of the first
two discs, where it's possible to hear Joel grow
and develop. Here, you can hear the stagnation
set in.

That said, these two discs do help clear out the
closet of all non-LP Billy Joel items, so
they're useful in that regard, and they do help
round out the portrait of Billy Joel the artist
-- that his glorious first decade and a half was
followed by a decade and a half that failed to
deliver on his promise. Accurate though it might
be, it doesn't make for great listening, but
fortunately, the dividing line is pretty clear
on My Lives -- with the exception of his
contribution to the Oliver & Co soundtrack "Why
Should I Worry" on disc three, all the good
stuff arrives on the first two discs. And
there's more than enough good stuff there to
make this set worth every penny for the hardcore
fans that have been waiting a long, long time
for a set like this.

TRACK TiTLE                            TiME

:  :. Cd1                                        :.

:01:. My Journey's End (the Lost Souls)     02:07:.
:02:. Time and Time Again (the Lost Souls)  02:01:.
:03:. Every Step I Take (the Hassles)       02:29:.
:04:. You've Got Me Hummin' (the Hassles)   02:27:.
:05:. Amplifier Fire (Attila)               03:07:.
:06:. Only A Man (Demo)                     03:16:.
:07:. She's Got A Way                       02:56:.
:08:. Oyster Bay (Demo)                     03:46:.
:09:. Piano Man (Demo)                      02:53:.
:10:. The Siegfried Line (Demo)             02:36:.
:11:. New Mexico (Demo)                     02:38:.
:12:. Cross to Bear (Demo)                  04:20:.
:13:. Miami 2017 (Demo)                     04:51:.
:14:. These Rhinestone Days (Demos)         03:01:.
:15:. Everybody Has A Dream                 04:36:.
:16:. Only the Good Die Young (Alt)         03:39:.
:17:. Until the Night                       06:38:.
:18:. Zanzibar (Unfaded Album Version)      06:48:.
:19:. It's Still Rock and Roll to Me        02:57:.

:  :. Cd2                                        :.

:01:. Captain Jack (Live, Unreleased)       07:21:.
:02:. The End of the World (Demo)           03:23:.
:03:. The Prime of Your Life (Demo)         03:44:.
:04:. She's Right on Time                   04:15:.
:05:. Elvis Presley Blvd.                   03:16:.
:06:. Nobody Knows But Me                   02:55:.
:07:. An Innocent Man                       05:19:.
:08:. Christie Lee (Demo)                   04:03:.
:09:. Easy Money                            04:07:.
:10:. And So it Goes (Demo)                 03:15:.
:11:. I'll Cry Instead (Live)               02:25:.
:12:. Keeping the Faith (12' Dance Remix)   04:53:.
:13:. Modern Woman                          03:51:.
:14:. Baby Grand (with Ray Charles)         04:05:.
:15:. Getting Closer (Alt)                  05:39:.
:16:. House of Blue Light                   04:45:.
:17:. Money or Love (Demo)                  04:02:.
:18:. The Times They Are-A-Changin' (Live)  02:55:.

:  :. Cd3                                        :.

:01:. The Downeaster 'alexa'                03:45:.
:02:. I Go to Extremes (Live)               04:52:.
:03:. Shout (Live at Yankee Stadium)        05:50:.
:04:. All Shook Up                          02:10:.
:05:. Heartbreak Hotel                      03:21:.
:06:. When You Wish Upon A Star             03:43:.
:07:. In A Sentimental Mood                 04:02:.
:08:. Motorcycle Song (Demo)                04:20:.
:09:. You Picked A Real Bad Time            04:56:.
:10:. The River of Dreams (Alt)             05:50:.
:11:. A Hard Day's Night (Live)             02:46:.
:12:. Light as the Breeze                   06:14:.
:13:. To Make You Feel My Love              03:53:.
:14:. Hey Girl                              03:57:.
:15:. Why Should I Worry                    03:34:.
:16:. Where Were You (on Our Wedding Day)   01:59:.
:17:. Highway 61 Revisited (Demo)           05:10:.

:  :. Cd4                                        :.

:01:. Movin' Out (from Millennium Concert)  03:44:.
:02:. You May Be Right (with Elton John Liv 04:49:.
:03:. Big Shot                              04:45:.
:04:. Don't Worry Baby                      03:26:.
:05:. Goodnight Saigon (Vietnam Vets Versio 06:30:.
:06:. Los Angelenos                         03:55:.
:07:. New York State of Mind (Live America  06:01:.
:08:. Opus 1. Soliloquy (on A Separation)   11:23:.
:09:. Opus 8. Suite for Piano (Star-Crossed 07:47:.
:10:. I. Innamoratio                        01:31:.
:11:. Ii. Sorbetto                          03:37:.
:12:. Iii. Delusion                         06:50:.
:13:. Elegy-The Great Peconic               08:58:.

TOTAL:. 284:57 min

SiZE:.  392,7.Mb

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