Streetlife Serenader
Song: Streetlife Serenader
Album: Streetlife Serenade (1974)
Over the course of the month I’ve been working on A Year of Billy Joel, five different people have contacted me to warn me about the album Streetlife Serenade. Their messages boiled down to the following warning: Streetlife Serenade was a quickly recorded follow up to Piano Man and due to its hurried nature, its musical and lyrical content suffers in comparison to other Billy Joel records.
Put another way: This is nobody’s idea of a great Billy Joel album. In fact, Billy himself has said he’d like to take this one back. Now that I’ve heard it I understand why both Billy and his fans feel this way. The record feels slight. This isn’t to say that it doesn’t have its bright spots, but it has fewer than any other record we’ve talked about to this point.
“Streetlife Serenader” is not one of the bright spots on the record. Lyrically it feels incomplete, as if it were only half done when it was time to record it, which is a shame because it wastes a decent musical arrangement. The music tells me that Billy is going for a big opening statement on this track but the lyrics just don’t support what I think he was reaching for.
Because I know that this entire record was put together under less than ideal circumstances I’m probably going to gloss over much of it. Instead of analyzing songs that in most cases don’t warrant critical analysis I’d like to spend some time digging into some other Billy Joel related issues. Starting with some more of my personal history with Billy Joel’s music.
Since most of the people reading this haven’t known me since I was a child I need to get a brief bit of back story out of the way: I was born all kinds of fucked up. For starters, I was born three months premature. Since this happened in the mid-70’s it was not certain I would survive but obviously I made it, unless this is a ghost blog…in which case: Boo.
Please assume I’m not a ghost who is getting a glimpse of the life I never got to live. For the sake of this blog let’s continue under the assumption that I am alive.
The first three months of my life were spent in a hospital but while I was in there things were happening: Nixon resigned, Billy Joel completed the Streetlife Serenade album and doctors determined that I was going to have a lot of work ahead of me. In addition to physical problems, the part of my brain that controlled motor skills was mess.
That last thing is in no way related to the first two, they just happened around the same time. I’m not blaming the late President Nixon or Billy Joel for the fact that I had to spend a large portion of my childhood in physical therapy so I could find ways to do basic things like walking, tying my shoes and putting on a coat (which took me forever to get the hang of.)
You know what the best part of being a kid who has trouble walking is? It’s being around other kids. When I say that it was the best part I mean it was the worst because kids can be monsters and of course they were around me. You know who got me through it? My mother, who never let me quit or even ease up when it came to putting the work in. The fact that was able to walk to catch the bus on my first day of school is mostly due to her making sure that I did. Thanks, Mom.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing from there. Therapy only went so far. I also had a series of leg braces and finally surgery and that is where Billy Joel enters the picture.
In 1982, just before I turned eight years old, it was decided that therapy and leg braces had done all they were going to do so I had surgery to help me walk easier. You know what was great about it? It was successful. That spring, for the first time in my life I walked in a way that resembled what other people looked like when they walked. The downside was that once I went back to school I was unable to participate in gym class. Since I was considered disabled I had to go to a separate gym class. And since I was the only disabled kid in my grade I had to go to a separate gym class alone.
In theory, my special gym class was supposed to allow me to rehabilitate my surgically repaired leg without risking injury. In reality, it consisted of me setting up plastic bowling pins counting off twenty paces and rolling a rubber bowling ball towards them. Since knocking the pins down meant I would have to set them back up I tried to avoid actually hitting any and instead I focused my attention on the one other thing I was allowed to do: play records on the portable turntable that the gym teacher rolled out for me as part of my special gym classes.
When I say records I mean there were more than one. There were two records for me to choose from. I could play the hottest single of 1982, Asia’s “Heat of the Moment” or I could play Billy Joel’s 52nd Street. Before you ask, no I was not permitted to bring my own records. Since the Billy Joel album gave me more music with less flipping of the record, I usually chose that over the Asia single. Side one because I liked that he said the word “bitching” in the song “Big Shot,” and I thought the song “My Life” was pretty cool.
Eventually I grew angry that twice a week I was stuck inside an empty gym, fake bowling with one Billy Joel album and “Heat of the Moment” to listen to while all of the other kids in my class got to play kickball. It was unfair and the music selection was ridiculously small. While I might have been disabled I knew that playing the same songs over and over again was boring. By the end of the year I had had enough of 52nd Street and that Asia song to last a long time.
At the start of the next school year I was told that I would once again have to attend private gym classes. I soon discovered that over the summer the Asia single had gone missing, that was one indignity too many. My mother demanded that I be permitted to attend regular gym classes or at very least be allowed to select my own lonely bowling music. My doctor was called and in the end the school decided to let me go to regular gym class. The portable record player and the Billy Joel record collected dust that year while I played kickball. My body had healed but my relationship with Billy Joel’s music would only get worse.
