Dining in Vienna with a Stranger at an Italian Restaurant

Dining in Vienna with a Stranger at an Italian Restaurant

“Piano Man” was Billy Joel’s first Billboard top 40 hit in 1974 and despite its success, Billy Joel would remain a relatively unknown musician for another three years.  However, during this three year period he would tour as an opener with Yes, The Eagles, Seals and Croft, J. Geils Band, Chicago, and The Doobie Brothers just to name a few and gained a strong reputation as a talented songwriter and live performer.  In 1977, Billy Joel would record and release The Stranger and was propelled into superstardom almost overnight with the song “I Love You Just the Way You Are” reaching #3 on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart and would later win the Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Record of the Year.  The Stranger would eventually become the largest selling album on CBS records up to that point (passing Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel).  Billy Joel had created a very spectacular and magical album loved by many and The Stranger launched him to becoming one of the most successful musicians in history.

When I was a very little boy my mother stayed home and took care of me and my brothers.  At the time our family had a red mid 70’s Chevrolet Vega station wagon with an 8-track player.  My mother’s two most favorite 8-tracks when I was between 2 and 3 years old were Head First by The Babys and The Stranger by Billy Joel and she listened to these a lot.  I still have several vivid memories riding around with my mother in the Vega as she would run errands around Salt Lake City while The Stranger played in the car and she would always sing along with “I Love You Just the Way You Are” and “Vienna”.  I always enjoyed listening to this 8-track with my mother and the album left a very deep impression on me from as early as I can remember. 

As I grew up in the 80’s I really loved the music of Billy Joel.  My parents bought all of his albums from The Stranger onward and he was one of the very rare musicians that both of my parents enjoyed listening to.  Once 8-track players became obsolete and our family’s last 8-track player stopped working my parents bought LP’s of The Stranger, 52^nd Street, and Songs in the Attic very quickly.  Billy Joel is the perfect mix of melodic soft rock and straight up rock and roll in the musical style of New York City.  However, as time progressed through the 80’s, my parents both continued to buy more music for their collections and did not listen to Billy Joel as much.  At this time in the early 90’s Storm Front and River of Dreams are both very popular and getting very extensive airplay, but I was really starting to miss the Billy Joel of the 70’s and shortly after the release of River of Dreams in 1993 it had been so long since I had listened to The Stranger that I broke down and bought my own copy of it and once again I completely fell in love with The Stranger and several new memories of the album and it’s songs tie me into my high school years. 

My sophomore year of high school in September 1992 I was sitting in the auditorium of Hillcrest High School watching an assembly for the Homecoming Queen contest with all of the girls displaying their beauty and other various talents on stage.  By tradition at Hillcrest during this assembly the Student Body President and a few other guys serenaded the Homecoming Queen candidates by singing an extremely off key, finger nails scratching a chalkboard, wine glass shattering version of Billy Joel’s “I Love You Just the Way You Are”.  I had a cigarette lighter in my pocket and for fun I decided to light it up and wave it in the air (a very common practice at heavy metal concerts when a band would play a power ballad).  I did this strictly because I thought it would be funny and that my friends would have a good laugh, which they did.  Unfortunately, one of the teachers in the audience saw me and did not interpret this as innocent fun, rather he interpreted it as I wanted to set the auditorium on fire (by far the most ridiculous conclusion he could have possibly arrived at, but the one he chose to go with) and I was immediately escorted to the Vice Principal’s office.  The Vice Principal then asked me why I did it and I explained to her that it’s something people do at heavy metal concerts during the slow songs and she then said that would create one huge fire hazard and did not believe me as I was sitting in her office trying to defend myself from accusations of attempted arson.  She called the Fire Marshall and he drove over to Hillcrest to talk to me.  I then explained to the Fire Marshall the waiving a cigarette lighter in the air practice at heavy metal concerts to which he informed me that Neil Diamond fans also participate in this practice at his shows which ended up vindicating me and other than a stern ‘don’t do this again’ speech from my Vice Principal, my parents were not called and I did not receive any detention because my permanent record was beyond clean.  To my knowledge this may be the only time in history that “I Love You Just the Way You Are” inadvertently got someone sent to the Vice Principal’s office.

In December 1993 my Mom, my brothers, and I went to see Billy Joel together at the Delta Center and we were all very excited forgiving the fact that our tickets were in the upper bowl of the Delta Center, we were just happy that we were even able to land tickets.  The night of the show came and as we were getting settled in our seats there were two girls and a guy (ages ranging from 14 to 16 if I have to ballpark it) and one of their mother’s sitting in the seats directly in front of us.  These kids had come up with a dance routine for the song “River of Dreams” and were doing a dress rehearsal.  Then Billy Joel came on stage and everyone stood up and cheered and he sang the rocker “No Man’s Land”.  However, a Billy Joel concert is more of a sit down and enjoy it kind of concert, not a get up and rock concert.  The kids in front of us it was very clearly their first concert and even after everyone sat down after Billy finished performing “No Man’s Land” these kids were still standing and cheering like they were at a Beatles concert.  That’s one thing if you are on row 1 on the floor, but for the love of Jiminy, these were the cheap seats in the upper bowl at a Billy Joel concert, calm the hell down!  Eventually, someone a few rows behind us yelled “set your asses down” at the top of his voice and these kids finally sat down.  About 10 minutes later Billy Joel performed “River of Dreams” and these kids were standing right up doing the dance routine they had prepared for the show.  After “River of Dreams” ended several people yelled for them to sit down.  This was an ongoing battle throughout the concert and of course these people had to be sitting right in front of us, but eventually they learned to sit down and enjoy it. 

Forgiving the kids floor show on the row in front of us this was an awesome concert.  I still remember between songs Billy Joel looking over the audience and saying “I still remember the first time I played Salt Lake City.  Does anyone remember a place called The Terrace Ballroom?” and several people cheered really loud (my mom included).  Then Billy said “Man, that place was a dump!” and everyone had a really good laugh.  However, one of my favorite parts of the show is when he sang “An Innocent Band” and a girl from his backup band with an extremely amazing voice sang the really high notes and it just took my breath away.  Billy really put his heart and soul into “An Innocent Man” that night, little did I know at that time Billy’s marriage to Christie Brinkley was on the rocks which I think also put a lot of extra emotion into his performance of “An Innocent Man” that particular evening (“An Innocent Man” is in my top 5 most favorite Billy Joel songs).  Another favorite part of the show was when he performed “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” from The Stranger.  The audience sang along with every word with the same emotion and conviction as Billy sang it and it was truly a magical moment.  After the song the crowd cheered so loud I could feel it vibrate off my chest.  With no surprises the last song of the night was “Piano Man”.  Billy sang the verses the audience sang the chorus.  I was one amazing concert.  (Side note: The audience lit up their cigarette lighters and waived them in the air when Billy Joel performed “Piano Man”).

My senior year at Hillcrest High School from 1994 to 1995 I was in the Industrial Printing program.   There were only 10 of us and our teacher in this class and because we spent the first two class periods (about two hours) of every school day together we all got to know each other pretty well and had a lot of running jokes.  One day before school started I was listening to my cassette of The Stranger by Billy Joel and in the middle of “I Love You Just the Way You Are” I started to hear a muffling sound that always stuck terror in my heart.  I immediately hit stop and sure enough my Walkman was eating the cassette.  I very slowly and gently started to pull the film out of the player and despite my best efforts the film tore as I got the tape out of my player.  I immediately high tailed it to the print shop in hopes that I could save the cassette.  I walked into the shop and my teacher Mr. Bailey was surprised to see me early and immediately saw the cassette film all over a shop table.  True to Mr. Bailey’s dry and quirky sense of humor he said “why are you playing with the garbage?”  In my very sarcastic over the top soap opera doctor’s voice I said “I can save this patient!”  Mr. Bailey then noticed that The Stranger was the patient on the table Mr. Bailey then said “What’s Billy Joel doing here?  I thought you only listened to garbage?”  To which I said “You don’t know everything about me Mr. Bailey”.  He was very genuinely shocked that I was a fan of Billy Joel.  Before the final bell rang to start school I ended up taping up the cassette film with scotch tape and using an x-acto knife to trim the taped film to the appropriate size so it would roll back into the cassette and the operation was a success!  This is the greatest length I have ever gone to in order to save an eaten up cassette. 

After Mr. Bailey took roll my class entered the print shop and started working.  My friend Anthony had just landed a job at the new Albertson’s on 1300 East and Fort Union Boulevard and was pretty excited about it.  My friend Ben and I started singing “Anthony works in a grocery store, saving his pennies for someday” from Billy Joel’s “Moving Out” and had a good laugh.  This became Anthony’s theme song for the rest of the school year (mine was “Spray Paint the Walls” by Black Flag, but that’s a whole other blog for another day) and thankfully he embraced it.

The Stranger has gone down as one of Billy Joel’s most successful albums and I still hear 6 of its 9 songs on the radio fairly regularly even 35 years after its initial release.  My personal favorite song on the The Stranger is “The Stranger”.  Every time I listen to this song I literally imagine myself whistling the opening while walking down the streets of Manhattan after a really long and tiring day, and yet I don’t really feel like heading straight home.  Musically, the song is the perfect marriage of the soft and melodic with the intensity of hard rock and I love the lyrics.  I think “The Stranger” is one of the most unique songs Billy Joel has ever recorded and he simply does not have another song quite like it.

I have noticed throughout my life that Billy Joel is one of those very rare musicians that appeals to almost everyone regardless of their predisposed musical preferences, which in my opinion is one of his hugest accomplishments.  In just my high school printing class we had a metal heads, grungers, soft rockers, and mainstream pop fans and we all enjoyed Billy Joel’s music.  The Stranger still stands out as my favorite Billy Joel album and always sounds amazing to me regardless of what music is in my current rotation cycle.