It’s exceedingly difficult to find a prominent musician of the past five decades that wasn’t touched by, at the very least, one or two songs from The Beatles’ extensive discography or that of their subsequent solo endeavours. (Faroutmagazine)
Over the 1960s, the songwriting partnership of Paul McCartney and John Lennon planted the seeds of change for Western culture with their progressive artistic approaches and trendsetting style.
Inspired by the early rhythm and blues artists of the 1950s, Billy Joel was still just like any other music lover until he saw The Beatles’ famous debut on US television. When a 14-year-old Joel sat in front of the TV for the Ed O’Sullivan Show on February 9th, 1964, he saw clarity in his future aspirations.
“That one performance changed my life,” Joel once recalled. “Up to that moment, I’d never considered playing rock as a career. And when I saw four guys who didn’t look like they’d come out of the Hollywood star mill, who played their own songs and instruments, and especially because you could see this look in John Lennon’s face – and he looked like he was always saying: ‘Fuck you!’ — I said: ‘I know these guys, I can relate to these guys, I am these guys. This is what I’m going to do — play in a rock band’.”
When asked by Stereogum to name his favourite McCartney composition prior to the Beatle’s 80th birthday in June, Billy Joel picked out the classic Help! cut, ‘Yesterday’. He described the song as a changing point in McCartney’s songwriting and a beautifully simple, striped-back ballad.
“I believe it was released in the States around late ’65,” Joel said of ‘Yesterday’. “The Beatles had had a few albums before that. This was a completely different type of Beatles song. This was one guy, no drums, no electric guitars, an acoustic guitar, with a string quartet. I think I was about 15 or 16 when this came out — you know, at the height of puberty. I recognized that this was something dark, troubling, sad. Not like their other uptempo happy stuff like ‘Please Please Me’ or ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.” This was more of a grown-up song. A lot of people in my age group related to that song in the same way. It was kind of a rite of passage. Life isn’t going to be all roses. It’s going to get dark, and sometimes you’re going to be sad, and you’re going to have to deal with adult feelings.
“I think George Martin contributed a great arrangement to it,” he added. “It was a combination of a great songwriter and a very musical producer. The combination of those two, in a very simple recording, was very effective. It was almost a reintroduction of the Beatles in a different way. I had heard other people doing sad songs, the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison. But the Beatles were a band. To hear, all the sudden, one solo voice and one solo guitar with a plaintive melody — almost baroque type of music, not like Bach, but like Scarlatti. Very simple, very profound. It just cut through everything else.”
He continued, explaining how the song connected with him at an impressionable moment. “I suppose I was at an emotional age. When you’re in your mid-teens, everything hits you heavier. The ’60s were an interesting time. They were a coming-of-age time for most baby boomers. I imagine most people in my age group remember that song distinctly. Even Sinatra covered it. He wasn’t a big fan of a lot of pop music. The fact he did that was very significant to some people who didn’t take the Beatles seriously. Like, ‘Wait a minute, this must be a pretty damn great song if Frank is doing it.’”
Billy Joel paid tribute to Procol Harum’s Gary Brooker, who died Feb. 19 at the age of 76, with a rendition of the band’s classic “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” a song that Joel has frequently praised (and covered) throughout his career.
Taking the stage at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, Joel delivered a moving rendition of “Shade of Pale” following a performance of his own “Only the
