Songs In The Attic (1981)
While I was in my attic the other day, surrounded by darkness and old memories, I reflected on the significance of an attic. It's dark. Filled with possibility, in a way. Things that I hadn't touched for years resurfaced to the present moment and I now have a new perspective on them. They brought back memories, and they affected me in their own unique way. I reflected on the ideas of old memories and old songs that those memories reminded me of. I started to think about the concept of a metaphorical attic. I remembered Billy Joel's album, Songs In The Attic, and started to wonder what the significance of that title was. I imagined if those objects that surrounded me were past songs that I had written, staying fixed in the back of my mind for almost ten years without recognition or reevaluation. It was on this premise that Billy Joel decided to work on a new album, incorporating his old music, Songs In The Attic.
When Billy Joel started his music career, he was unsatisfied with his first album, Cold Spring Harbor, because it did not turn out as successful as he had hoped. Yes, he did have a disadvantage being a fairly new artist, but a major reason for Cold Spring Harbor's lack of success was due to the label that produced it. It was a small label called Family Productions that angered Billy Joel by speeding up his songs and causing his voice to sound like a chipmunk. According to a Rolling Stone article by Andy Greene, when Billy Joel first heard the final result, he yanked the record off of the turntable and chucked it down the street because of the mastering error that had occurred with the sound quality. He decided to leave the label, move to Los Angeles, and become an independent artist.
Ten years later, Billy Joel found himself extremely successful. He made himself known in Los Angeles, moved to rural New York, and finally ventured back to New York City where he released Songs In The Attic. Though he had originally planned on never returning to New York City, he felt as though he had to go back because it was his home. This is a common theme among people who have lived in New York City for most of their lives, because New York City has an effect on people with its own unique culture. In Billy Joel's case, this culture affected the production of Songs In The Attic in the way that Billy Joel wrote songs based on his surroundings. According to Suzanne Woolley in her article The Best Place to Live: New York City, "New York is a constant invention and innovation--of self, of art, of commerce, of thought. We each create our own personal universe of what New York offers, picking and choosing from an embarrassment of riches in people, places, and things. The marvel is that so many contrasts can coexist so close to one another. Somehow we make it all work, all 200 or so languages and dialects and forty-odd religious variations coming together to shape a city that is chaotic and crazy, infuriating and enchanting, maddening and exhilarating. Maybe it all works because we are a city of people who like being around other people, a city where diversity is the norm and eccentricity is encouraged--or at least appreciated". People who have grown to live in a unique culture such as New York City typically can only leave temporarily- not permanently.
Geography, no doubt, played a significant role in Joel's change of mindset when he decided to move to New York City. After he did, old memories came back to him and these long lost melodies no longer escaped his mind. He decided he was ready to recreate his older songs that his past label had messed up, because he had worked so hard on them in the past. To begin working on the new album, Billy Joel made the important decision to stop working with session players like he had been, and to start working with his live band instead, because of his desire to give his music a more personal touch. This in itself made Songs In The Attic stand out as being the first live recorded album in Billy Joel's career. The philosophy embedded in this album and the purpose of the album itself is to let go of the past and to apply it to a future success. Judith Sills, Ph. D of Psychology Today writes, "It's an axiom of psychology that we are some recombination of all of our yesterdays. To move forward wisely, we are therefore often urged to look back". Billy Joel indeed looked back, took his past errors, and turned them into a success through Songs In The Attic. The exigence of the album was to introduce his new fans to his old music through recreating it into the best it could be... and he - and his band - were extremely successful in this endeavor.
Aside from himself, Billy Joel's new band for Songs In The Attic consisted of David Brown (electric/acoustic guitar lead), Richie Cannata (saxophone/flute/organ), Liberty DeVitto (drums/percussion), Russell Javors (electric/acoustic guitar rhythm), and Doug Stegmeyer (bass guitar). Billy Joel, of course, played the piano, the synthesizer, and the harmonica as well and performed the vocals. He knew most of the band members previously because they had been in his touring band, but for this album, Billy Joel wanted to incorporate them all into the album recording. Because it was such a collaborative effort, Billy Joel and his band did more than just take the songs from his first album and remake them. They added their own flare to it and made it a style all their own, as one band. Billy Joel began trusting others with his music again, and it truly paid off. Billy and his band became famous for their chemistry and their awesome rock music.
Rock music in 1981 was one of the most popular genres at the time, which lead to Billy Joel's musical success. Through different eras and throughout history, different genres of music have risen, but music has always had an effect on people's lives. As the human condition changes, so does the music they create. When rock emerged in the 1940s, it was a lesser known form of music. It didn't become prominent until the 1950s when it's popularity spread like wildfire. The genre of rock started with larger bands, but through time, bands became smaller and music became more personal. Billy Joel wrote from his heart, and he and his small band had a lot of chemistry. Because of the New York Jazz culture influence, Billy Joel made the decision to incorporate the saxophone into his band, and it became a well-known instrument that is identified with Billy Joel's music and acts as an addition to the genre. Critics loved this new sound, and now commonly refer to Songs In The Attic as "classic Billy Joel".
At this point in his life, Billy Joel had been struggling with his career, his love life, and his private life. When he was 8 years old, his father left the family to move to Vienna, leaving Joel's mom as a single mother of two who worked hard to be able to keep paying for Billy's piano lessons. Though he learned a lot of classical music, he was more interested in rock and more modern music of that time period. According to Nicholas Paumgarten in his article "Thirty-Three-Hit Wonder", it was the Beatles, on Ed Sullivan, that really ignited his curiosity about rock and roll - and that the older girls' enthusiastic response to his Elvis-inspired hip-swivelling atop a cafeteria table. As a teen, he was busy enough working late nights as an organist, in bands and bars - and then sleeping those nights off - that he was denied a diploma from Hicksville High School. After high school, he decided to work on his career as a musician. After the failure of Cold Spring Harbor and his escape to Los Angeles, Billy Joel moved back to rural New York for several reasons. He did not want to live in New York City because he wanted peace of mind in upstate rural New York in a town called Highland Falls. He lived in Highland Falls for a few more years, worked on his music, and released a few albums, some of which included songs about Highland Falls and the effect it had on him as an artist. Billy Joel's love life at this time primarily consisted of one woman named Elizabeth Webber. She started as his business manager in 1971, when Cold Spring Harbor was originally released, and was married to him ten years later when this remake, Songs In The Attic was released. Two of the songs on the album, "She's Got A Way" and "You're My Home" were written for Webber. "She's Got A Way" was written for her as his business manager, and "You're My Home" was written for her as his wife. Billy Joel's did not share his private life much because Billy Joel was never open about his personal problems, however, he was struggling with minor depression and alcoholism during this time period. After Songs In The Attic was released, Elizabeth Webber divorced him and his depression and alcoholism escalated into a severe problem, which landed Joel in a mental hospital due to a failed suicide attempt. Evidence of Billy Joel's depression can be heard in Songs In The Attic through his song "Summer Highland Falls" with the lyrics, "It's either sadness or euphoria", and his alcoholism is evidenced in "Captain Jack", through the reference of Jack Daniels whiskey and sonic elements.
One of the many reasons why Songs In The Attic was such a success was because of the sonic elements that the album embodies. The music was influenced by Billy Joel's previous (and first ever) album, Cold Spring Harbor. The music from Cold Spring Harbor was influenced by Billy Joel's life living on Long Island before starting his music career, which is clear through songs such as "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" and "Captain Jack", which are songs on both Cold Spring Harbor and Songs In The Attic. The first song on Songs In The Attic, "Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)" was written about the state of New York City in 1981. It affected Billy Joel greatly, and this culture was incorporated in Songs In The Attic. The culture of New York City in 1981 is that it was riddled with crime, filth, and poverty. Despite these circumstances, Billy Joel still felt that it was his home. He admired the urban decay and thought it gave the city character, so he wrote a song about it that accurately depicts the perfect storm of New York City's decay. Billy Joel adds character to the five-minute song through sonic elements such as starting the song with a soft piano, then building it up to create an excitement with the blaring saxophone and piano going hand in hand, in a fast and fun speed to represent the fast pace of the city itself. The song ends with the lyrics "You know those lights were bright on Broadway, but that was so many years ago ... There are not many who remember, they say a handful still survive to tell the world about the way the lights went out, and keep the memory alive". These lyrics in themselves show how passionate Billy Joel's love was for New York City. He points out the fact that New York City used to be much safer and more glorified, however, he and other New Yorkers keep the good memories alive through their love of whatever becomes of the city. Through this mindset, this attitude about New York City is an attitude about Billy Joel himself. Within the first ten years of his success, his persona has changed and so has his music. Like New York City, people are always changing, and people's tastes are always changing. Billy Joel knows that, like New York City, he and his music will change too. He shows that he will continue to keep the good memories of his past music alive through a love and passion for albums to come.
The "Attic" in itself was Billy Joel's way of referring to his own mind through symbolism. Like an attic, it was mysterious and hid a lot of uncovered memories from the past. When the memories started to resurface in New York City, they haunted him so vividly that they provoked him to write an album about them. I personally cannot think of anything better to compare his situation to than an attic. Who knew a metaphorical attic could hold so many secrets? The Songs In The Attic have now been taken down, have been gone through, and have been shared with the world... showing everyone everywhere that it is possible to face the past and the skeletons in the closet. Or in this case, the skeletons in the attic.
