I’ve been playing “Vienna” for a long time – it’s one of those songs that I can pull out at a piano bar or a party when it doesn’t feel like it’s the right kind of room to do one of my own songs. For that matter, it’s one of only two covers I’ve everRead More »

When I said I was going to cover The Stranger in its entirety, I knew (as did you all) that what I really meant is that I was going to have to deal with “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant.” This song is a singular, magnificent creation; it does not want to be reckoned with. IRead More »

There’s a fun tradition in gospel music of taking secular love songs and, with the smallest changes in the lyric – a pronoun here, a reversal of direction there – turning them into love songs to God. It was in that spirit that I decided to revisit the 1978 Grammy Award winner for Record ofRead More »

The second track on The Stranger is the title track, a song that on the original album bounces in turn from smoky film noir jazz to Steely Dan-style rock to tropical disco and back again over the course of five minutes and fifty-one seconds (with the best drumming and bass playing on the whole album).Read More »

Billy Joel’s LP The Stranger was released at the end of September, 1977, and I’d guess it made its way to our house in Rockland County about two months later, presumably because my mom or dad was into “Just The Way You Are” or “She’s Always A Woman.” (They didn’t buy many records when IRead More »