Streetlife Serenade may be one of the more unusual – and perhaps overlooked – albums in Joel’s celebrated catalogue. His third album (and second for longtime home base Columbia Records), it followed the modest breakthrough of 1973’s Piano Man with a similar formula to its predecessor. Working again with producer Michael Stewart and a team of Los Angeles session musicians, Joel later admitted the difficulty of recording a follow-up album with an admittedly thinner notebook of songs, so occupied had he been touring in support of Piano Man – at one point opening for The Beach Boys. Consequently, the album boasts not one but two instrumentals: the dexterous “Root Beer Rag” and the offbeat closer “The Mexican Connection.” The remaining songs furthered Joel’s…
Tag Archive: Billy Joel
Following the premiere of the second part of Billy Joel’s And So It Goes documentary, the Piano Man dropped a massive 155-song companion album on digital services featuring unreleased recordings and more. Never-before-heard music from Joel’s archives are peppered throughout the five-hour HBO documentary, from his early days with Long Island rockers the Hassles to his orchestral and instrumental works.
The seven-hour And So It Goes, a “musical companion” to the documentary, features dozens of unreleased live recordings and demo versions, including historic moments like Joel’s first-ever live performance of his epic “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” recorded May 6, 1977 at Long Island’s C.W. Post College.