"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
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 clearing-house 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 cannot 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 & Delusions album, but
Anthony DeCurtis' liner notes linger 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 offers 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, and 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
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 flip side, 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/songwriter, 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 die-hard 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, and 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 him 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 & Company 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 who have been waiting a long, long time for a set like this. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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