Turnstiles is the portrait of the artist in transition.
In 1976, Billy Joel, exiled to California for three years, was returning home to his native New York City, a changed man after time spent grinding out a living playing piano and picking up odd jobs in Los Angeles.
What had been meant as an escape and a chance at a new life had, instead, turned into a dead-end adventure that, while it provided plenty of fodder for future songs — including, yes, the immortal Piano Man — living in Los Angeles had not been the Shangri-La he'd hoped it might be.
But, rather than let his stumbles get the better of him, the tireless and talented Joel soldiered on.
According to fan site OneFinalSerenade.com, "Columbia executives and Caribou management preferred that Billy work with Elton John's band. Billy tried briefly, even recording some sessions at Caribou Ranch in Colorado, but it did not work in Billy's mind and ears. So he went into Ultrasonic Studios in Hempstead, New York with his own guys and produced Turnstiles himself."
(It's amusing to note Elton John's appearance in Joel's career narrative at this point, since the two would famously tour together for much of the 1990s, although at this point, Joel was often tagged as "the American Elton John," a comparison he has noted several times over the years that he considers an honor.)
It's hard to argue with the results of Joel taking control of his own production — Joel certainly knew what he was after, and although the eight-song record is all over the map (Wall of Sound tributes giving way to ersatz reggae spinning into apocalyptic arena rock), Turnstiles is the mark of an artist finally figuring out what he has to say, and more importantly, how he wants to convey those thoughts.
As on The Stranger, Joel insisted on using his road band, by now honed to near-perfection after relentless years of touring: drummer Liberty DeVitto, guitarists Howie Emerson and Russell Javors, saxophonist Richie Cannata and bassist Doug Stegmeyer all turn in stellar work here.
There is a proficiency on display that's a cut above mere session players, a fluid feeling of everyone hitting on all cylinders and not only knowing exactly where they want to go, but how best to get there.
Turnstiles often gets overlooked in the course of Joel's expansive, hit-packed catalog — although many of Joel's signature songs can be found on the record, it only spawned two singles (Say Goodbye to Hollywood and James) at the time of its release — particularly since his next record, 1977's The Stranger, would catapult him to the front ranks of American rock stars.
Still, for those who let themselves slip through these Turnstiles, they will find some of the most durable rock songs of the last half century, and further testament to Joel's unmatched prowess as a singer, songwriter and composer.
A stomping, elated ode to the Ronettes — it's all but impossible not to hear the pulse-quickening backbeat of Be My Baby as Turnstiles kicks off — this striking see-ya-later to Southern California is full of vivid images ("Bobby's driving through the city tonight/Through the lights/In a hot new rent a car/He joins the lover in his heavy machine/It's a scene down on Sunset Boulevard," Joel sings in his staccato vibrato). Fittingly, Ronnie Spector and the E Street Band would release a cover of Say Goodbye to Hollywood in 1977, and the song remains a live favorite at Joel's shows, and one of Joel's punchiest tracks.
Cascading notes stand in sharp contrast to the striking lyrics that deftly illustrate "the melancholy meditation on the era's lurches between sadness and euphoria," as described by The Week's Damon Linker in 2014. "This is for all the manic depressives in the house tonight," is how Joel introduces the tune on the Live at Shea Stadium recording, and indeed, Joel doesn't shy away from the rollercoaster nature of the psychological condition. "Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes/And I can only stand apart and sympathize," Joel sings, "For we are always what our situations hand us/It's either sadness or euphoria."
Perhaps the most purely fun cut on Turnstiles, this reggae-flavored curio taps a familiar theme in Joel's work — the good old days are sorely missed. (He'd revisit the idea several times in the coming years, notably on Keeping the Faith, and arguably, the whole of 1983's An Innocent Man, which paid musical homage to Joel's formative artistic heroes.) "Oh baby, I think you are lost in the seventies/Oh baby, 'The music she ain't what she used to be'/You don't understand what they're saying/You've given it every chance," Joel sings, delivering the musical equivalent of a bemused yet resigned shrug.
Apart from Piano Man, this song, literally written as it says in the lyrics "on a Greyhound bus on the Hudson River Line," stands as one of Billy Joel's crown artistic jewels. It is a song that was not, upon initial release, much of a hit, but as time has passed, has grown into something of a pop standard.
Everyone from the cast of Glee to Garth Brooks to Barbra Streisand has covered the tune — with or without Joel's help — and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, New York State of Mind took on an added, deeper dimension, an almost defiant quality. Its longevity is all the more remarkable given its humble origins: "Once in a while you’d come across a song that was Promethean," Joel told American Songwriter in 2014. "It just sprang out of nowhere and got written in 15 minutes like it dropped from the sky. New York State of Mind was like that – got written in fifteen minutes, half an hour.
5. James
A sensitive, subtle and ultimately stinging ballad, James softly castigates someone left behind in the pursuit of a dream: "Will you ever change/Will you ever write your masterpiece/Are you still in school/
Living up to expectations," Joel croons. What sounds like a sincere inquiry curdles a bit, thanks to Joel's mildly mocking delivery and the almost rueful horns peppering the lounge-y piano threaded through the entire song. It screams mid-1970s — visions of shag carpeting and ugly green appliances dance through a listener's head — but also, thanks to its razor blade sentiment, feels timeless.
The most up-tempo number on Turnstiles is actually two separate songs — shades of stitching together ideas, as Joel would do most famously on The Stranger's Scenes from an Italian Restaurant — but the piano-pounding instrumental (Prelude) gives way to the acidic mockery of Angry Young Man, full of jibes at an unnamed protagonist whose stubborn insistence on having things the way he sees them all but alienating everyone around him ("And he'll go to his grave as an angry old man").
Joel was, for a while, tagged by the music press as "an angry young man" himself — his early performances were, on occasion, delivered with something of a chip on his shoulder, but time has made this particular song more wry than raging.
A tongue-firmly-in-cheek satire of what is now known as First World Problems, I've Loved These Days could, with a few nips and tucks, easily be released in the 21st century for the generation of children raised on reality TV, Snapchat and Facebook. (Presumably, they aren't necessarily lusting after foreign cars, dry champagne or fine cocaine either.) It's a backhanded farewell to the louche Los Angeles lifestyle of the decadent and famous — a kind of inverse to the heartfelt adios Joel delivers at the top with Say Goodbye to Hollywood.
8. Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)
A song that will, incredibly, finally cease to be science fiction less than a year after this piece was published, Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway) was inspired by Joel's opinion of New York City's ragged state as he returned to it in the mid-1970s. (Think the headline "Ford to New York: Drop Dead.")
It's a magnificent piece of cinematic pop songcraft, full of images of a city nearly in ruin, and a whole metropolis scattered to the four corners of North America after some unexplained catastrophe.
Like New York State of Mind, Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway) took on an extra, more resonant dimension after the September 11 attacks on New York City: "I wrote that song 25 years ago," Joel said in 2001, according to a contemporary Newsday report. "I thought it was going to be a science fiction song; I never thought it would really happen. But unlike the end of that song, we ain't going anywhere!"
Most albums would open with such a stunner, but leave it to the unpredictable Joel to cap off one of his strongest albums to that point in his career with it.