I'll get into the kind of a lot perhaps, or perhaps I won't, but part of my 2015 goals (I hate "resolutions," but I can live with goals) is to read at least a book a month. So far this year I've finished three, so I'm not off to a bad start as I write this on February 1st, 2015.
Awhile back, when I used to try to update this blog at least periodically, I went through and tagged things. One of the tags that I used was "required reading." I suppose that was a toss out to the approach taken by professors in my under grad and graduate programs. The joke, of course, is that nothing is really "required reading." One class in my graduate program I decided to test that theory, didn't even buy the books, much less read them, and still got an A with little effort. The key is what you know, not how you learn it.
That said, I am an avid reader, and I believe that reading, in the various available forms, is a crucial part of gaining knowledge and informing your world view. I have a huge book collection, and I despise electronic books. The only way this will benefit me is if the world loses all electricity. Solar flare here we come! Of course, this blog would then be lost to the ages as well, which wouldn't happen if I was documenting my thoughts in a journal instead... but then, with my awful handwriting, it would take someone who can decipher my chicken scratch anyway ... and I digress.
As I look back at this blog, here are the books that I've written reviews on and tagged as "required reading":
- 2011: I wrote a post about, intermittently, Jeff Pearlman's book on Walter Payton (which I had not read, but had just finished the Sports Illustrated excerpt on) and a prior Payton book, Never Die Easy. Honestly, I think I tagged it as "required reading" just to add a tag, but I think I wrote the post to explore thoughts on celebrity, and athletes in particular. More on that to come in a future post.
- 2009: I wrote a post about Big Russ and Me by Tim Russert. It's now been over six years since his death, and I really do miss that man. It's funny how you can miss someone you've never met, but Russert's unexpected death left a hole in the lives of many people.
And... that's it. I love reading, and that was the best I had. So, in the spirit of a new year, and with lots on my mind, and with the need to (very much selfishly) put it out there for the world, but really for me to see, let's give it a new shot.
Billy Joel is my favorite musician of all time. That fact will surprise a lot of people, especially given the fact that I have been to (checking antsmarching.com... please hold) 35 Dave Matthews Band shows (plus three Dave and Tim Shows) in my life. Well, I also love DMB, but there are two major considerations:
- DMB tours a lot more (yearly) and much more closely (hello Deer Creek!).
- DMB tickets are cheaper (as long as my wife continues to let us sit in the lawn - it gets much more expensive when you want to get closer to the stage, but still the most expensive DMB tickets are roughly equal to the cheapest Billy Joel tickets).
I've written before that my love of DMB dates back to 1994's release of Under The Table And Dreaming, which is impressive given that I was roughly eight at the time. Well, my love for Billy Joel predates that, to a handful of dubbed cassette tapes that my older brother gave me when I was roughly four or five. By 1993 I wanted Billy Joel's River of Dreams for myself, and it was A) a Christmas present from another kid who was at my mom's day care, and B) one of my first cassette tapes ever. Today, I have every Billy Joel album (including Kohuept and Songs From The Attic) on both cassette and CD. When Billy did the River of Dreams tour I remember my dad and brother racing to Indianapolis to see him in concert ... and I remember thinking how much it sucked that I didn't get to go. Many of the family vacations of my youth involved me singing along with Harry Chapin, John Denver, Neil Diamond... and then putting on my headphones and pressing play on my walkman to listen to whatever Billy Joel cassettes I brought with me. When my mom and dad would agree to put in a Billy Joel cassette, it was an awesome moment in the trip: I could sing out loud, rather than having to keep my singing in my head. The cassette release of Greatest Hits Volume 1 & 2 probably got more walkman play than any other cassette: it was routinely the one album that would put me at ease enough to get me to sleep on the road, and to this day it is one that I draw up on my I Pod to help me unwind when I can't stop my mind.
This last fall, a close friend shot me a text with a link to this article from the New Yorker, entitled "Billy Joel, Thirty-Three-Hit Wonder." It was written by Nick Paumgarten, and I savored it, reading a bit at a time, and loving every minute of it. Then I realized that there was a book by Fred Schruers set to be released, and the first thing I did was send a text to my mother and sister-in-law asking if either of them were planning on buying the book for my brother for Christmas, and if not, that I would be. I got the word to get the book for him, and put the book on my wish list as well.
I first saw Billy Joel in concert in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in the late spring (early summer?) of 2007. I had recently (in the fall of 2006) given in and gone to my first real concerts, seeing Dave Matthews Band at Tinley Park, Illinois, and seeing Roger Waters and his band doing a bunch of Pink Floyd hits, including an entire second act consisting exclusively of Dark Side of the Moon, at Deer Creek. When I realized that Billy was touring, it was time. I bought an extra ticket in hopes that my brother would join me and my friend Mike, but he was unable to join us, so Andy tagged along instead. We were running late to the show, due to traffic heading around Detroit, and Mike got progressively more and more pissed, Andy and I handled it better, but we were all thinking the same thing: "I don't want to miss a minute of this (expletive deleted) show!" We got to the Palace of Auburn Hills, parked, and ran to the venue. As we hit the walkway heading towards our seats we heard the initial notes hit to "Prelude/Angry Young Man" and we knew the show was just starting. We rushed in, singing along, and didn't stop for the whole night. Simply put, Billy delivered, even at the age of 57 (five days before his 58th birthday).
And then Billy fell of the touring radar. I continued to see DMB, I added in other shows as they were available for other acts (Matchbox 20, The Goo Goo Dolls, etc). I figured that Billy had probably finished touring, and I was feeling pretty blessed that I got to see him even once. Then, after Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy hit the eastern seaboard, there was a concert (12.12.12) and Billy played. I didn't see the show and heard that Billy wasn't looking or sounding good from some friends, so I, reluctantly looked up the show ... and couldn't have disagreed more. Further, the reviewers of the show seemed to agree with my interpretation, as Billy seemed to have stolen the night. He rocked, he had the presence, and his voice still sounded great. The ensuing "residency" at Madison Square Garden was announced, and then a few other tour dates trickled out. Before I knew it we had purchased tickets to see Billy at The Palace again in February 2014. Once again I reached out to see if my brother and his wife would want to join in the show, and it didn't work out. My wife, mother-in-law, and I went and had a blast. While the show was shorter than the previous show I saw, I also had to remember that it was almost seven years later, and Billy was turning 65 now. Every song he sang, however, gave no indication that he couldn't still bring it with the best of them. And then they announced it: Billy Joel - Wrigley Field - July 18, 2014. As an avid Cubs fan, and a fan of DMB and Pearl Jam, having seen both play Live at Wrigley, it wasn't a question of it I would go. It was simply a question of how much money I would have to spend on the secondary market after I was unable to buy the tickets prior to the show selling out.
I had learned my lesson the year before, for the Pearl Jam show. That time I thought "there's no way these tickets will sell for this much, I'll wait for them to come down." In related news, sometimes I'm an idiot. I passed on the Pearl Jam tickets at 1.5 times the face value... and ended up paying, let's just say, a bit more than that. While it was totally worth it, I was not going to relive that experience. As soon as the show sold out, and I was unable to get tickets, I went to StubHub, went to the same general section I had been in for both the DMB and Pearl Jam shows (upper deck, down the right field line) and bought two tickets. I then called my brother, told him to get the day off work, and that I was taking him - no questions asked - just the two of us. It was time.
This isn't about reviewing that show - Billy brought it, as expected, only days after his mother died - but let's just say that while I hope to see Billy again before he hangs up his playing shoes for the last time, finally seeing him live, with my brother who got me hooked on him all those years ago, was the pinnacle in many ways. So, when I had the chance to buy him the book for Christmas it was a no-brainer. Furthermore, it was equally awesome when he bought me the same book for Christmas. And so, with all this background, I sat down to read the book.
What can I say about the book? It's phenomenal - Schruers does an incredible job throughout the book of interspersing Joel's life story with the lyrics he has written. The best part of the book is how it definitively ties together lyrics that you always suspected were based in real life experiences. Schruers breaks the book apart in sections, each playing the part of a certain act of Billy's life. There are the origins (entitled the Ballad of Billy The Kid), which looks at Billy's childhood, family history, and goes up through his early music career. The second section, about him breaking through, is entitled They Say There's a Heaven for Those Who Will Wait. This section looks at Billy's rise, going through most of his albums, and into the late 1980s. The next section, entitled It's All or Nothing at All, looks at the end of his pop-music writing career, encompassing Storm Front and River of Dreams, and the ensuing tours for the following decade and a half. Finally, Schruers looks at the fourth chapter of Joel's life, entitled "A Legend in His Time: Ain't It Sweet After All These Years." At the end of this section Joel talks very frankly about his impending death, and about his experience on the Earth. He talks about what he would say to an 18 year old version of himself, wonders if the 18 year old would listen, and muses about the intersection of mortality, history, and the future.
The best part of the book is that these discussions the Billy has are frequent, and they give such tremendous depth to all of his work. I am very familiar with all of Billy's studio albums; in fact, the one he (and most fans probably) hate the most, Cold Spring Harbor, is one of my very favorites for the rawness in the lyrics (not to mention the more folksy feel). This book has made me go back to them all, listening again, seeking confirmation and better understanding. This is doubly so due to Billy's own willingness, as examined in this book, to examine his own lyrics and the reasons for them. Reading about his own method for constructing songs ("backwards" according to Billy), sheds light on why a song like "Nocturne," the ninth track on the aforementioned Cold Spring Harbor, can resonate so deeply without even a lyric. For a fan of Billy Joel this song lifts the veil and allows you to see the brilliance that exists within a man who is historically aware enough to acknowledge that he wouldn't be here "without the Nazis" (a reflection on the way his family was forced to leave Europe to survive, ultimately ending up with his father in New York). For a fanatic, such as myself? Well, this book is a tome of information, insight, and is quite simply a joy. The book certainly meets my criteria for rating something as an exceptional book: I'm a bit sad that it's over. But the beauty of this work is that it is a self-fulfilling cycle: while the book may be over, Billy's music never will be, at least not for me. This book enabled me to get even deeper into the music than I was before, and that is a gift. As a country we love our heroes, and we want them to be largely infallible (click here for my previous take on this regarding Walter Payton and the aforementioned Pearlman book). Billy Joel is the exact opposite: he is beloved because he is every bit as screwed up as we are, and he made a living presenting that imperfect existence in a way the resonated with anyone who was willing to listen, and was being honest with themselves. Billy's music is unbridled human existence presented through the guise of piano music. It is a series of history lessons mixed in with the philosophical questions man has been asking since the beginning of time in many ways. And it's all wrapped up in a catchy tune that enables it to become rather timeless.
My son will grow up singing Dave Matthews Band for sure (poor kid, he doesn't have a chance in between his mother and me), but he will also grow up singing Billy Joel. Already, at five months, he is familiar not just with "Lullabye," but also with "2000 years" and "Leningrad" from being sung to sleep. There are many more to come. As I watched Billy take the stage after receiving the Gershwin award (one of so many awards he has received through the years) I thought about how fortunate we are to have music as a release for creative expression. Specifically, how fortunate we are to have had Billy Joel to explore his own existence, his own depths of solitude, and his own moments of euphoria. At the end of the day, most music is in some way about the human experience. Billy Joel simply does it better than most.
