Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 2: Billy Joel

Here is the second part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. (Although note that the set order is mostly guesswork.) This album stars Billy Joel. This is a real treat for Joel fans, because this was one of the most important concerts of his entire career, arguably THE most important. 

It's important to remember that while Billy Joel is a superstar today, and has been one for decades, in 1972, he was basically a nobody. He released his debut album, "Cold Spring Harbor," in 1971. But it came out on a small label and got little notice. Furthermore, the recording was released at the wrong speed, and Joel soon got in conflict with the label, leaving him without promotional support. Joel wasn't even supposed to perform at the festival. But after some other acts dropped out at the last minute (due to reasons I've mentioned in the write-up to the first album from this festival), he was brought in to fill up time. 

This turned out to be the biggest break for his career. His career was basically dead in the water. But some important people from Columbia Records were at the festival, and were impressed by his performance. In fact, they were so impressed that eventually they bought out the rest of his original contract. Going with a major label restarted his career and gave him the support eventually become a star.

Since this concert was so pivotal for Joel's career, I was able to find some interesting quotes about it. Here's one from "Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man," a book by Hank Bordowitz: "Before Mar Y Sol, nobody had ever heard of Billy Joel, outside of the New York area, and even there, nobody cared about Billy Joel. But as the sun broke through the clouds at Mar y Sol, Billy Joel had the place reeling and rolling."

And here's Irwin Mazur, Billy's first manager, quoted in that same book: "It was a moment I'll never forget. He had the crowd in the palm of his hands. He had never had that kind of command of an audience before. That was the first moment that he took command of the stage."

Here's a lengthier explanation from Larry Russell, who was the bassist in Joel's band at the time: 

"Well, we were slightly unsure what [the crowd would] think, really. Up until that point, we were a very folky, intimate, cerebrally provoking act. Nothing too fancy, very simple four piece band, Thinking back on it now, I think we should have had one more band member to fill things out and make the sound match the 'Cold Spring Harbor' record, but that would have complicated the expenses for the record/management companies. We knew when we saw that crowd we had to toughen our set, but we were not prepared to do that with songs like 'Travelin’ Prayer,' etc. But, somehow, whatever we played that day, they loved. Everything worked. And even though we sounded nothing like the bands that were scheduled to perform. somehow that in itself, set us apart from the others. Song after song, our momentum built, and by the time we were at our last song, the crowd was ready for more.

"The last song that day and everyday was ‘Tomorrow Is Today’, which on that day was really outstanding. But when we finished that song, they didn’t want us to leave, and so we had to resort to a harder styled cover song with Billy doing a fine impersonation of Joe Cocker, singing ‘The Letter’ with piano chops and Cockers' gyrations as well! After that, I ran off the stage to smoke a joint and our manager told me we had another encore... and then [he went] into the best version I have ever heard of 'Jumpin' Jack Flash.' His vocal range was unbelievable, truly amazing. But then again, he was only 22 at the time."

Here's a link to the whole interview with Russell, if you want even more details:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201204084216/http://marysol-festival.com/interviews/interview-with-larry-russell-billy-joel

As Russell, explains, the band had only been in existence for three or four months prior to this concert, mostly performing in small venues on the East Coast. So to go from that to performing before an audience of tens of thousands must have been a really big deal for Joel. 

In 1999, Joel returned to perform a concert in Puerto Rico for the first time since this 1972 festival. Between songs, he shared some memories with his banter. One person who attended that 1999 concert summarized his comments like this:

"He explained he had been here in the island previously for a festival called 'Mar y Sol,' asking if anybody remembered that. A few screams and claps came from the crowd, to which he replied, 'Oh, so you were there too?!' He said he was glad some people remembered... He admitted that in those days he and his band were just simple amateurs, guys looking for an opening to go forward and get noticed. He was happy that he'd developed his career to get to where he could now thank Puerto Rico for being a kind of 'starting point,' maybe not recognized that much, which helped with the record company’s support from that time forward."

Listening to this recording, I have to admit that it's good, but it didn't really knock my socks off. But I think that's because I'm looking at it from the perspective of Joel being a big star for decades already, with all the crowd-pleasing skills of a big star. In hindsight, this concert was the moment Joel showed he could be charismatic and take control of a crowd, a talent he hadn't shown in public before. I'm sure a lot of that was visual, such as the Joe Cocker-styled gyrations mentioned above. 

This recording is entirely unreleased. (Joel wanted to one of his songs to appear on the official album from the festival, which no doubt would have helped his career a lot, but it wasn't possible due to conflicts between two record companies.) Supposedly, this is from a soundboard source. I don't know if that's true, or if it's from the same audience bootleg as most of the rest of the festival. But it doesn't matter since the sound quality of the audience boot is basically at a soundboard level anyway. Also, we know this is the full performance.  

This album is 35 minutes long. 

01 Travelin' Prayer (Billy Joel)
02 talk (Billy Joel)
03 Josephine (Billy Joel)
04 The Ballad of Billy the Kid (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Captain Jack (Billy Joel)
07 talk (Billy Joel)
08 Tomorrow Is Today (Billy Joel)
09 talk (Billy Joel)
10 The Letter (Billy Joel)
11 talk (Billy Joel)
12 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Billy Joel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LYxyV5Uk

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/2RF9fUzhcYJXQx9/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Various Artists - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Waldorf Astoria, New York City, 1-20-1988

Yesterday (January 28, 2026), Bruce Springsteen dropped a new song about the current problems with ICE in Minneapolis, called "Streets of Minneapolis." It's good to see a protest song that addresses current issues, since there haven't been many of those in recent years. (He wrote, recorded, and released it in four days!) Here's a link, if you haven't heard it already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWKSoxG1K7w 

Anyway, I wanted to post something from Springsteen after hearing that inspiring song. However, some recent computer problems I've been having have flared up again, which means I currently can't use Photoshop, which in turn means I can't make new album covers until that's fixed. So I looked around to see if I had some Springsteen-related album ready to go, cover and all. Luckily, I did. (I have soooo many albums I could post tomorrow, if only I had the time to finish them off. Sigh!) This one doesn't have a ton of Springsteen content, but it's a really interesting (thought short) concert. So, in a way, my current computer issues have an upside in that they're getting me to finally post this.

Now, finally, to the music. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame started in the early 1980s. In 1986, they had their first induction ceremony, complete with a short concert featuring some of the inductees and other famous musicians. This has become a yearly tradition. Some concerts have been a lot more memorable than others. In my opinion, the ones from 1988 and 1989 were the most interesting, with the biggest star power. I haven't collected the others (though I very may well do so with some of them in the future), but I've made albums of those two. This is the 1988 one.

1988 was a really big year for the Hall of Fame, because their rule is that artists are only eligible for induction 25 years after their first record (be it a single or album). And when they were making their decisions in 1987 for this ceremony, that meant they were looking at the artists who put out their first records in 1962. It just so happens that was the first year of recordings for the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Beach Boys! Those are three of the biggest and most influential musical acts of all time. The Drifters and the Supremes were inducted that year as well, plus some non-performers, like Berry Gordy.

The induction ceremony had a lot of intrigue and drama in it. The Beatles are arguably the biggest (and best, IMHO!) musical act ever, so they were the main focus here, even overshadowing Dylan and the other very big names. Since John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, he was represented by his wife Yoko Ono, and his sons Julian Lennon and Sean Lennon, and each of them gave short speeches. Ex-Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were there, and also gave speeches. 

However, the big no-show was Paul McCartney. He was in the middle of a lawsuit still connected to the break-up of the band back in 1970, so he felt he couldn't attend due to that. He put out a statement: "I was keen to go to and pick up my award, but after 20 years the Beatles still have some business differences which I had hoped would have been settled by now. Unfortunately, they haven't been [settled], so I would feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with [Harrison and Starr] at a fake reunion." 

It turns out the lawsuit, which involved the division of profits from record sales, was settled a year later. So that was unfortunate timing as far as this concert goes. But at least that opened the door to the "Anthology" collaboration between the ex-Beatles a few years later.

Normally, when I post albums like this, I skip long speeches and focus on the music. But I'm making an exception here. I didn't include all the induction speeches, but I thought the ones relating to the induction of the Beatles and Dylan were important enough to include. They're all together at the beginning of this album, and they are about 19 minutes long in total. If you don't want to hear them, or just hear them once or twice, there's still about 40 minutes of music after that.

A big element of the drama involved Mike Love, a member of the Beach Boys. Love is one of the most notorious assholes in rock and roll, something I've discussed in other posts. But he really outdid himself this time. He appeared to be drunk, and used his induction speech to insult various famous musicians in the audience. This led to a funny quip from Dylan during his acceptance speech: when he listed people he wanted to thank, he thanked Love for not mentioning him in his speech!

Anyway, there are lots of interesting stories about what happened during this event. But instead of trying to summarize them all here, I'll just point out to an article from Rolling Stone Magazine that does a good job:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 

I've also posted a text file in the download zip that has the text to that article.

Regarding the music here, everything was professionally recorded, so the sound quality is excellent. However, I found the lead vocals were rather low in most of the songs, so I boosted that up with the help of the MVSEP program. Also, there was a problem in the performance of "Stop in the Name of Love." Mary Wilson of the Supremes was asked to sing the song (since Diana Ross was another prominent no show). But it was clear for this songs, as well as all the other songs, that there hadn't been any practice beforehand, so everyone was just winging it. For the first chorus at the start of the song, Wilson sang the song in one key, while the band (or at least most of it) played in another key. That sounds pretty painful to my ears. So I erased that, and patched in a chorus from later in the song. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

Oh, also, during all the talking between songs, where band leader Paul Shaffer was trying to direct things, one or more people on stage kept playing guitar so loudly that it nearly drowned out what anyone was saying. So for most of those tracks, I used MVSEP to lower the volume of the guitar enough to make the talking more audible.  

The songs "I Saw Her Standing There" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" were officially released on the compilation album "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Volume 1: 1986-1991." Everything else here remains unreleased.

By the way, when it comes to the song list below, I only listed the name of the main lead singers. For all the songs, there was one of the most amazing gatherings of musical talent ever seen on one stage together. But it's next to impossible to figure out who was on stage doing what, other than the lead vocals. So that's why I kept the credits in the titles relatively simple. 

However, just as one example, it was Jeff Beck who started playing the "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" riff that led to that song being played, right when it seemed everyone was leaving the stage. Some of the others who were on stage at least part of the time but don't get mentioned in the song titles include: Neil Young, Paul Simon, Johnny Moore, Joe Blunt, Clyde Brown, Tom Fogerty, Les Paul, Arlo Guthrie, Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr, Little Richard, Peter Wolf,  Dave Edmunds, Jeff Lynne, Julian Lennon, Sean Lennon, Little Steven, and Clarence Clemons.  

This album is an hour and six minutes long. 

01 talk (Mick Jagger)
02 talk (Ringo Starr)
03 talk (George Harrison)
04 talk (Yoko Ono)
05 talk (Julian Lennon)
06 talk (Sean Lennon)
07 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 Twist and Shout (Johnny Moore)
10 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan with George Harrison)
11 talk (Paul Shaffer)
12 I Saw Her Standing There (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
13 talk (Paul Shaffer)
14 Stand by Me (Ben E. King & Julian Lennon)
15 talk (Paul Shaffer)
16 Stop in the Name of Love [Edit] (Mary Wilson)
17 talk (Paul Shaffer)
18 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Hound Dog - Honey Hush (Elton John)
19 talk (Paul Shaffer)
20 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
21 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
22 Born on the Bayou (John Fogerty with Bruce Springsteen)
23 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
24 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan with Bruce Springsteen)
25 talk (Paul Shaffer)
26 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Mick Jagger with Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SpmdHRju

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/yv9ChPKPJqpFcYT/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Mick Jagger.

Various Artists - 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 10-29-2009

Here's a really great concert filled with lots of big stars performing classic songs. It was a two-day concert in New York City, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm posting both days of the concert, and this is the first one. I highly recommend this.

This two-day long concert had an unusual and interesting format: eight major artists were chosen: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Paul Simon (with and without Art Garfunkel), Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen for the first day, and Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2 for the second day. Each of those major stars were hosts for one fourth of the days they were on. Then they invited other stars to join them, to play a song or two. For instance, the first major artist, Crosby, Stills and Nash, had Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor as their guests. The result was that, between the major stars and their guests, most of the major areas of rock and roll going back to the 1950s were represented. 

There were some key gaps though. For instance, although Mick Jagger was a guest on the second day to represent the Rolling Stones, there really wasn't any special representation of the Beatles, the most important musical act of all. (Although there were occasional covers of Beatles songs, at least.) Bob Dylan was also very missed. But then again, you can only do so much in two concerts containing about four hours each. 

I spent a long time putting this together. It was quite tricky. I was able to find all the songs from this, the first night, but only two and a half hours from the second night, even though that one probably lasted about four hours as well. The main source I used was an officially released DVD. But the longest version of that was only about three hours for both concerts combined. Plus, many of those were bonus tracks, which meant they were out of order and often had the starts and ends cut off.

Luckily for me, Wikipedia came through for me particularly well, with a list of all the songs performed in the correct order, including lots of details. You can see that, and more info about the concert, here:

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts - Wikipedia 

From that, I was able to figure out the songs I was missing, and try to find them. It turns out four hours of highlights were shown on HBO the year the concert happened. That was longer than the DVD, so I found some extra songs there. Then I found an audience bootleg of the entire first day. That's why I was able to include all the songs. However, the sound quality of the songs from the audience bootleg was significantly poorer than the songs from the DVD and the HBO broadcast. But, luckily, I was able to clean things up quite a lot, by putting a lot of effort into audio editing. I ran all the audience boot sourced songs through two processes that I use in cases like this. For one thing, I used the MVSEP audio editing program to raise the volume of the lead vocals in contrast to the instruments. (That is such a common problem for concert bootlegs.) Then I also used MVSEP to wipe out the crowd noise during the songs, while keeping the cheers at the beginnings and ends of songs. In my opinion, that made the quality gap between the different sources a lot smaller, though still noticeable. ("Marrakesh Express" is an example of one of the audience boot sourced songs, and the songs just before and after it are not, if you want to make a comparison.)

However, I still had a lot of work to do. Another problem with the audience boot-sourced song is that the cheering at the ends of songs sounded quite different, with the sound of clapping of individual people near the taper more prominent. I mostly fixed this by copying and pasting cheering from the ends of DVD-sourced songs, and slathering it over the cheering of the audience boot-sourced songs. I also had a lot of transition issues. It was rare to have two songs in a row from the same source. I generally fixed that by patching in more generic cheering. Yet another problem was the banter between songs. The ones from the audience boot-sourced songs sounded really weak. So I did extra editing to pull the actual talking out from the background noise. 

I could go on and on. There were lots of little tweaks. But I'm hoping that the end result is this will sound like one coherent concert from one source, more or less, and you won't notice the "making of the sausage" with all the editing to get it to sound that way. It would be really great if this whole thing gets officially released one day, in top quality. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.

One thing that makes this concert special is all the collaborations. There are too many to count. Lots and lots of big names performing songs together, and usually the only time they ever did that for the songs. There were some interesting cover versions as well, as an attempt to have some inclusion of famous musician who died or otherwise didn't attend. Stevie Wonder singing the Michael Jackson song "The Way You Make Me Feel" and Paul Simon with Crosby and Nash singing "Here Comes the Sun" are just two examples of that.

This should particularly delight Bruce Springsteen fans. He dominated this first night, which his section of the concert lasting an hour and a half, easily the longest. And he assisted Jerry Lee Lewis on the first song of the night as well. (Plus, he showed up on the second night as well, as we shall see later.)

This album is four hours and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 talk (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On (Jerry Lee Lewis with Bruce Springsteen)
04 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Graham Nash)
07 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 talk (David Crosby)
09 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 Midnight Rider (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 talk (Graham Nash)
13 talk (Jackson Browne)
14 The Pretender (Jackson Browne & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (James Taylor)
16 Mexico (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 Love the One You're With (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Rock and Roll Woman (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Graham Nash)
20 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash & Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne & James Taylor)
21 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon)
22 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)
23 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)
25 Here Comes the Sun (Paul Simon with Crosby & Nash)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 The Wanderer (Dion & Paul Simon)
28 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
29 talk (Paul Simon)
30 Two People in the World (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
31 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
32 Mrs. Robinson - Not Fade Away (Simon & Garfunkel)
33 The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
34 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
35 Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel)
36 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
37 talk (Stevie Wonder)
38 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Stevie Wonder)
39 I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
40 For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
41 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
42 Boogie On Reggae Woman (Stevie Wonder)
43 talk (Stevie Wonder)
44 The Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & Stevie Wonder)
45 talk (Stevie Wonder)
46 Mercy Mercy Me [The Ecology] (Stevie Wonder & John Legend)
47 The Way You Make Me Feel (Stevie Wonder with John Legend)
48 talk (Stevie Wonder)
49 The Thrill Is Gone (B.B. King & Stevie Wonder)
50 Living for the City (Stevie Wonder)
51 Higher Ground - Roxanne - Higher Ground (Sting & Stevie Wonder)
52 Superstition (Stevie Wonder & Jeff Beck)
53 10th Avenue Freeze-Out (Bruce Springsteen)
54 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
55 Hold On, I'm Comin' (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
56 Soul Man (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
57 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
58 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
59 Fortunate Son (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
60 Proud Mary (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
61 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
62 Oh, Pretty Woman (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
63 Jungleland (Bruce Springsteen)
64 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
65 A Fine, Fine Boy (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
66 Do Run Run Run (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
67 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
68 London Calling (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
69 Badlands (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
70 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
71 You May Be Right (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
72 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
73 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
74 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
75 Born to Run (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
76 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QU2h1WV1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7oTCzzonspG0GVX/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: John Fogerty, Darlene Love, Bruce Springsteen, and Sam Moore.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Billy Joel, D.A.R. Constitution Hall, Washington, DC, 11-19-2014

Here's another "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" award concert. This one from 2014 honors Billy Joel.

This follows the usual format of these concerts. First, some guest stars performed cover versions of songs by the honoree. Then there was an award presentation, and a speech by the honoree. Finally, the honoree performed a couple of songs to end the concert. There were a couple of twists this time, however. One is that the person to give a speech leading to Joel's speech was none other than Sonia Sotomayor, one of the justices of the U.S. supreme court. That's pretty unusual behavior for a supreme court justice, but I guess she must be a really big Billy Joel fan. The other twist is that Joel played five of his own songs, instead of the usual two or three.

It's unfortunate that the emcee for the concert was Kevin Spacey, due to his sex scandals that pretty much destroyed his career. But those scandals weren't reported on until 2017, three years after this concert. Another disappointment is that Paul McCartney didn't actually perform a song. Instead, he just sent a video message praising Joel. I noticed he would do the exact same thing for the Gershwin Prize concert for Elton John and Bernie Taupin in 2024.

Sadly, this may be the last of these Gershwin concerts I post until I can find more of them. I have most of the concert honoring Burt Bacharach, but I'm missing a couple of songs, so I'm still waiting on posting that. Otherwise, if anyone has any of the others, please let me know so I can share them. That especially goes for the two (Carole King and Smokey Robinson) that seem to only be available to people who pay for a PBS pass that's only available in you live in Wisconsin.

This album is an hour and three minutes long.

01 talk (Kevin Spacey)
02 The Longest Time (Boyz II Men)
03 Lullaby [Goodnight, My Angel] (LeAnn Rimes)
04 It's Still Rock and Roll to Me (Gavin DeGraw)
05 talk (emcee)
06 She's Always a Woman (Josh Groban with Sharon Isbin)
07 talk (Michael Feinstein)
08 She's Got a Way (Natalie Maines)
09 talk (John Mellencamp)
10 Allentown (John Mellencamp)
11 talk (Paul McCartney)
12 talk (emcee)
13 New York State of Mind (Tony Bennett)
14 talk (Sonia Sotomayor)
15 talk (Billy Joel)
16 Movin' Out [Anthony's Song] (Billy Joel)
17 Vienna (Billy Joel)
18 talk (Billy Joel)
19 Miami 2017 [I've Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway] (Billy Joel)
20 You May Be Right (Billy Joel)
21 talk (Kevin Spacey)
22 Piano Man (Billy Joel & Everyone [Edit])

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zGtLvUp6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/cQJZPngXIkAhzJX/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I'm not sure who the two men behind him are. If anyone knows, let me know so I can add that information.

Billy Joel - Cold Spring Harbor (Original Mix) (1971) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Billy Joel's 1971 debut album, "Cold Spring Harbor," has issues. It's a long and tangled tale. But the gist of it is because Joel was just starting his music career, he didn't have much control over the production of the album. And he had wound up signed to a marginal record label that did a lot of dumb things, including forcing a producer on him he didn't get along with, who produced his songs in ways he didn't want. But the worst thing of all was that the final master was accidentally sped up by three percent for all the songs! That may not sound like much, but it made his voice sound strangely high. Joel hated it with a passion, but there was nothing he could do. In retrospect, his voice was naturally higher at that time, since it was still changing in his early 20s, so that made the problem worse. He would sound noticeably different on his next album, just two years later.

Joel also signed a terrible record contract, though luckily it ended up being for just that debut album. That means that, even until now in 2025, he's had no control over that album. In 1983, after Joel became a superstar, the record company remixed the album to fix the speed problem. But they made lots of changes Joel didn't approve of as well, including hiring musicians to add new parts to some songs. The kicker though was that the version that finally got rereleased with those changes STILL hadn't fixed the speed problem! Seems like that was a clown car of a record company.

And that's how things still stand today, with the original version having issues, and the remix version having other issues, and both versions running too fast. In short, there's no good version of this album.

So guest poster Mike Solof decided to fix this. He took the original version and adjusted the speed of all the songs. But he also lowered the pitch of the songs by six to ten percent, depending on the song. That was an effort to make Joel's high voice at the time sound more like the voice he's had for all his other music. 

There's a lot more to the story behind this album and its problems. I recommend you watch the HBO Max Billy Joel documentary "And So It Goes," released just a week or so ago as I write this in August 2025. It has a whole section about it. Also, here's the Wikipedia article on the album, which explains a bit:

Cold Spring Harbor (album) - Wikipedia 

But mostly, check out the PDF Mike made that's included in the download file. It has some interesting quotes from Joel himself about the problems with the album and its remix, and Mike explains more about the things he did to fix those problems. 

This album is really a gem that has never gotten its due because of all the problems mentioned above. It's still not perfect, since some production choices can't be undone. But hopefully you'll be able to hear it in a brand new light with this improved version. 

This album is 33 minutes long.

01 She's Got a Way (Billy Joel)
02 You Can Make Me Free (Billy Joel)
03 Everybody Loves You Now (Billy Joel)
04 Why Judy Why (Billy Joel)
05 Falling of the Rain (Billy Joel)
06 Turn Around (Billy Joel)
07 You Look So Good to Me (Billy Joel)
08 Tomorrow Is Today (Billy Joel)
09 Nocturne [Instrumental] (Billy Joel)
10 Got to Begin Again (Billy Joel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/H7Kon97T

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/03UwPXPdpG7f1Bc/file 

This is the official cover of the album. However, that's in black and white. I used the Kolorize program to colorize it, since I wanted to make it a little different to show this is an alternate version.

Billy Joel - An Angry Young Man: The Bottom Line, New York City, 6-10-1976, Early Show (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

The last couple of nights, I watched the new five-hour long documentary about Billy Joel's life, "And So It Goes." It's very good. I highly recommend it, if you're a fan. Watching that made me appreciate his music more than before, and gave me the desire to post some more music by him. I knew that musical associate Mike Solof is a big Billy Joel fan, so I recently asked him about what to post. He said this is his favorite Joel concert recording of all time, so here we are.

At this point in Joel's music career, he had only been moderately successful. The album he released a month before this concert, "Turnstiles," didn't sell well, and neither did the previous one. That would put him in danger of being dropped by his record label. He would respond with a massive hit album in 1977, "The Stranger." So it's curious at first that Mike considers this is favorite Joel concert recording, since it doesn't include the many hits from "The Stranger," not to mention the albums that came after that. But perhaps that's its strength. The pre-superstar set list is pretty different from the ones that would come later.

This concert was broadcast live on the radio at the time, which is why there are excellent sounding recordings of it, despite it remaining unreleased. I got it all ready to go, and was minutes from posting it. Then Mike found an even BETTER sounding source. So I had to redo the whole thing. Sigh! But it was worth it, because the sound quality between the two sources was very noticeable.

By the way, the usual bootleg of this contains a lot of DJ talking between songs. In particular, there were three encores, and the DJ filled all the time of the crowd cheering with some pointless chatter. I got rid of that. In fact, I cut out most of the encore cheering, period, so one doesn't have to hear just a lot of cheering. That shortened the album by about five minutes. But I also got rid of some other DJ talk between songs. It should be DJ-free now.

This is an album both Mike and I did a lot of work on. But Mike wrote a PDF file of notes on it. So please give that a read as well. It also includes a bunch of other photos from the three Bottom Line shows that included this one. 

This album is an hour and 36 minutes long. 

01 Prelude - Angry Young Man (Billy Joel)
02 Somewhere Along the Line (Billy Joel)
03 talk (Billy Joel)
04 Summer, Highland Falls (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Piano Man (Billy Joel)
07 talk (Billy Joel)
08 Root Beer Rag [Instrumental] (Billy Joel)
09 talk (Billy Joel)
10 James (Billy Joel)
11 Travelin' Prayer (Billy Joel)
12 talk (Billy Joel)
13 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)
14 talk (Billy Joel)
15 The Entertainer (Billy Joel)
16 The Ballad of Billy the Kid (Billy Joel)
17 talk (Billy Joel)
18 I've Loved These Days (Billy Joel)
19 talk (Billy Joel)
20 Miami 2017 [Seen the Lights Go Down on Broadway] (Billy Joel)
21 Captain Jack (Billy Joel)
22 talk (Billy Joel)
23 All You Wanna Do Is Dance (Billy Joel)
24 Ain't No Crime (Billy Joel)
25 Weekend Song (Billy Joel)
26 Souvenir (Billy Joel) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2S5mS4SK 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/PyyF8RsyJIpP5cL/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert... maybe. It is from the Bottom Line this month. But he performed three nights there in a row. It's from one of those nights. 

Billy Joel - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany, 6-18-1994

Every now and then, I stumble across another Billy Joel BBC concert, and here we go again. I'd missed this one because it isn't usually labeled as being a BBC concert, just a soundboard. But the BBC's own website says it broadcast this. I can't say I ever heard of a BBC concert from Frankfurt, Germany, but this location was chosen because it was the last concert of the tour.

In late 1993, Joel released the studio album "River of Dreams." Surprisingly, as I write this in 2025, he hasn't released another studio album of conventional songs ever since. (He did later put out an album of classical music.) So this is a good time for a BBC concert, since it deals with pretty much all of his original material.

This album remains unreleased. There were no problems needing fixing.

By the way, I found out that Joel's concert in Leningrad, Russia in 1987 was also broadcast by the BBC. However, I decided not to post that for two reasons. One, it was officially released at the time as "КОНЦЕРТ." And two, Joel didn't like it and didn't want it released, because his voice got hoarse from too many shows and interviews in Russia in a short time period. Apparently, he jokingly called it "Kaput." His record company insisted on releasing it due to the historical nature of a major Western artist performing in Russia during the Cold War. (The Berlin Wall would come down two years later, in 1989.)

This album is two hours and two minutes long.

01 No Man's Land (Billy Joel)
02 Pressure (Billy Joel)
03 talk (Billy Joel)
04 The Ballad of Billy the Kid (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Leningrad (Billy Joel)
07 Prelude - Angry Old Man (Billy Joel)
08 Allentown (Billy Joel)
09 talk (Billy Joel)
10 Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (Billy Joel)
11 Honesty (Billy Joel)
12 My Life (Billy Joel)
13 talk (Billy Joel)
14 I Go to Extremes (Billy Joel)
15 talk (Billy Joel)
16 An Innocent Man (Billy Joel)
17 talk (Billy Joel)
18 Shades of Grey (Billy Joel)
19 The River of Dreams (Billy Joel)
20 Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
21 We Didn't Start the Fire (Billy Joel)
22 talk (Billy Joel)
23 A Hard Day's Night (Billy Joel)
24 It's Still Rock and Roll to Me (Billy Joel)
25 You May Be Right (Billy Joel)
26 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel)
27 Big Shot (Billy Joel)
28 Piano Man (Billy Joel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wUBmv5nm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dopWZYGqNp112C1/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Gent, Belgium, on May 18, 1994.

Various Artists - New York Children’s Health Project Benefit, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 12-13-1987

The first thing I want to make clear is that, while this is a star-studded benefit concert, it is also in large part a Paul Simon concert. Out of the 32 songs here, Simon sang lead on 11 of them, and backing vocals on another three. That's because Simon was the host and the prime mover behind the cause for this benefit.

I did a little research on how this concert came to be, and I think it makes for an interesting story. Apparently, when Simon was working on his studio album "Graceland" in 1985 or 1986, he was taking going to his recording studio in the heart of New York City most every day. Each morning, he would make eye contact with a homeless girl begging on a street corner. But eventually, after months, she didn't show up for a while. He asked around, and found out that she had died. Being homeless, she had no access to health care. Simon decided he wanted to do something to help.

Around this time, homelessness had greatly risen in New York City. Plus, many thousands of families were packed into squalid welfare hotels. Simon connected with Dr. Irwin Ledlener. a pediatrician, who was already working on the problem. 

Ledlener later recalled, "We went on a tour of some of the not-so-hot spots in the city. We went to the welfare hotels, to boarder-baby facilities where they had these infants whose mothers were crack
cocaine addicts, and we went to some of the infant H.I.V. programs. It was a hell of a day, just one thing after another." Simon and Ledlener decided that it was obvious many homeless children weren't getting any health care, so they decided to make that their focus. 

Ledlener told him it would cost about $90,000 for a mobile van to bring health care to where the homeless where. Simon paid for that out of his own pocket, and the van began operating in the fall of 1987. But it soon became clear that just one van wasn't enough. Plus, there were upkeep costs, and the need for a charity group (called the "Children's Health Fund") to keep medical records on the homeless kids no matter how often they moved. So Simon put this concert together. It raised about half a million dollars, which was doubled by a contribution from his record company. 

More vans were bought. The results were impressive, so the program kept expanding. By 2005, the charity had expanded far beyond New York City. They had 20 vans in 14 states. Simon followed up with two more benefit concerts (in 1993 and 2012) to help keep the charity funded. All in all, it seems like one of the best results of a benefit concert that I've heard of, although it's a shame the government wasn't performing this help already.

Anyway, getting to the details of this concert, keep in mind that Simon's most recent project was his wildly successful "Graceland" album, released in 1986. That sold 16 million copies worldwide. So perhaps it's not too surprising that Simon played eight songs from that album, while he still had support from the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo and other South African musicians that had gone on tour with him to support the album. I checked, and this was essentially the very last concert of Simon's Graceland tour.

Other than that, there were short sets by Lou Reed, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Dion, Laurie Anderson, Bruce Springsteen, Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Nile Rodgers and Chaka Khan. Apparently, Billy Joel wasn't scheduled to take part, but since he dropped in at the last minute, he did an impromptu song. I believe Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five played a song, but it got cut from the bootleg I found. I think you can hear him for about ten seconds at the end of the Nile Rodgers medley, introducing Chaka Khan. Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band backed most of the musical stars who didn't bring their own bands, like Bruce Springsteen. Debbie Harry and Grace Jones were there, but they only introduced Lou Reed and then helped sing backing vocals to "Walk on the Wild Side."

One special moment was that Dion was backed by some major star power on his song "A Teenager in Love." His backing vocalists were Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed! You can see how that looked from the album cover. That's a sign of how much of a musical influence he was on all of them, since he came from an earlier generation.

There were some celebrity appearances as well. Springsteen was introduced by New York baseball stars Ron Darling and Don Mattingly. Whoopi Goldberg introduced Nile Rodgers. She spoke for longer, but I cut out some of it because she was just stalling for time while the band got ready, as she admitted, and it showed. Comedian Bill Cosby gave a speech prior to introducing Ruben Blades. But I cut out all of it except for a few words introducing Blades, since I can't stand to hear him due to his later revealed history of rape. Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon and Chevy Chase introduced James Taylor.

As far as I know, everything here remains unreleased. But the bootleg I found has soundboard quality.

This album is three hours and 13 minutes long.

01 The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon)
02 Gumboots (Paul Simon)
03 Whispering Bells (Paul Simon)
04 talk (Paul Simon)
05 Crazy Love, Vol. II (Paul Simon)
06 I Know What I Know (Paul Simon)
07 talk (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
08 Treat Her Right (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
09 talk (Paul Shaffer, Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
10 Tell It to Your Heart (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 New Sensations (Lou Reed)
13 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed with Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
14 talk (Lou Reed)
15 The Wanderer (Dion)
16 Runaround Sue (Dion)
17 talk (Dion)
18 A Teenager in Love (Dion with Simon, Springsteen, Joel, Reed, Taylor & Blades)
19 talk (Paul Simon)
20 Yinhle Lentombi (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
21 Homeless (Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
22 Graceland (Paul Simon)
23 talk (Paul Simon)
24 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
25 talk (Paul Simon)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 Babydoll (Laurie Anderson)
28 Let x = x (Laurie Anderson)
29 talk (Paul Simon, Ron Darling & Don Mattingly)
30 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
31 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
32 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
33 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen with Paul Simon & Billy Joel)
34 Cuentas del Alma (Ruben Blades)
35 talk (Ruben Blades)
36 Muevete (Ruben Blades)
37 talk (Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon & Chevy Chase)
38 Looking for Love on Broadway (James Taylor)
39 Carolina in My Mind (James Taylor)
40 That Lonesome Road (James Taylor)
41 talk (Whoopi Goldberg)
42 talk (Nile Rodgers)
43 We Are Family - Le Freak - Good Times (Nile Rodgers)
44 I Feel for You (Chaka Khan with Nile Rodgers)
45 talk (Paul Simon)
46 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)
47 Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon)
48 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
49 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Drums (Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
50 talk (Everybody)
51 Rock and Roll Music (Bruce Springsteen & Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jKCnMBjU

alternate

https://bestfile.io/en/uLq5HEnWr1SO0XO/file

The cover photo was taken at this exact concert. It shows the moment Dion was backed by an impressive bunch of stars on the song "A Teenager in Love." From left to right, that's Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, and Dion. Dion had been further over to the left by about ten feet. In fact, I took him from a different photo taken in the same sequence. Then I used Photoshop to move him close to Springsteen.

Billy Joel - VH-1 Storytellers, Sony Studios, New York City, 9-11-1997

I'm discovering most of these "VH-1 Storytellers" episodes for the first time as I put them together for this music blog. I find most of them interesting, but this Billy Joel one is extra special. For one thing, it's extra long. This was a rare case when the concert was edited down to two episodes of about 45 minutes each, instead of one. Furthermore, I was able to find a YouTube video of some outtakes, and I added those in. So this is longer than it's ever been presented as one piece before, and it feels like a full concert (even though there probably are still some missing bits). For another thing, Joel really let it all hang out in this. He talked quite freely and extensively between songs, and played many songs he otherwise never would have played in his regular concerts, instead of most of the expected big hits. Consider that this includes cover versions of "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix, "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream, and even "Good Times, Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin!

Technically, I suppose Joel did this concert to help promote his "Greatest Hits, Volume III" album, which was released the month before. But that had only three new songs on it, and he didn't play any of them. He didn't even mention the album. He barely even did any concerts that year. Other than this, he played a couple of songs on a TV show, and did two classical music performances. Instead, he seemed to just playing whatever came to mind based on audience questions, and there were lots of audience questions. For instance, one person asked a question about the song "No Man's Land." He clearly wasn't ready to play that, but he stalled for time with talking while giving his band a chance to quietly talk amongst themselves to get ready, then he played it.

The songs I added in were "Purple Haze" and "Good Times, Bad Times." The outtakes video I took these from didn't have the same quality as the rest. There were many sonic flaws on them, to the point that I wasn't sure if I should include them. But I noticed that the vast majority were just on one of the two stereo channels. So I deleted that channel and duplicated the other one. So those two songs are effectively mono. But they sound much better that way, even though there are still some sonic flaws. I also found some other bits of banter from the outtakes video and added those in. That included adding some to the end of the brief "lounge version" of "Just the Way You Are."

If you're a Billy Joel fan, I think this is a must have. I'll bet he's never done another concert like this one before or since.

The album is an hour and 30 minutes long.

01 talk (Billy Joel)
02 River of Dreams (Billy Joel)
03 talk (Billy Joel)
04 Movin' Out (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Allentown (Billy Joel)
07 talk (Billy Joel)
08 Sunshine of Your Love (Billy Joel)
09 talk (Billy Joel)
10 Purple Haze (Billy Joel)
11 talk (Billy Joel)
12 Honesty (Billy Joel with David Krout)
13 talk (Billy Joel)
14 Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (Billy Joel)
15 talk (Billy Joel)
16 Just the Way You Are [Lounge Version] (Billy Joel)
17 I Go to Extremes (Billy Joel)
18 A Matter of Trust (Billy Joel)
19 talk (Billy Joel)
20 No Man's Land (Billy Joel)
21 talk (Billy Joel)
22 Good Times, Bad Times (Billy Joel)
23 talk (Billy Joel)
24 Summer, Highland Falls (Billy Joel)
25 talk (Billy Joel)
26 A Room of Our Own (Billy Joel)
27 Don't Ask Me Why (Billy Joel)
28 talk (Billy Joel)
29 A Hard Day's Night (Billy Joel)
30 talk (Billy Joel)
31 Gimme Some Lovin' (Billy Joel)
32 talk (Billy Joel)
33 Eroica Highlights and Discussion (Billy Joel)
34 talk (Billy Joel)
35 We Didn't Start the Fire (Billy Joel)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17168533/BILLYJL1997StrytllrsSnyStdosNwYrkC__9-11-1997_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Lzozqtm2

The cover is a screenshot from this exact concert. I later upgraded it using the Krea AI program.

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, Radio City Music Hall, New York City, 3-29-2001

Here's something that any fan of the Beach Boys will certainly enjoy. I don't know much about the backstory for this one (maybe someone else can explain?) - I'm guessing it was an anniversary of some sort. But in 2001, a bunch of great musicians got together to celebrate the music of Brian Wilson. That's basically the same thing as celebrating the music of the Beach Boys, since I think all but one of the songs performed here was originally recorded and released by the Beach Boys. (The lone exception, "Love and Mercy," is from Wilson's more hit and miss solo career.) 

In my opinion, most of these kinds of tribute concerts have more dud performances than good ones. But this one is solid pretty much all the way through. It's hard to go wrong with Beach Boys songs, for starters. But also, a lot of big names took part, such as Paul Simon, Elton John, Billy Joel, Heart, David Crosby, Aimee Mann, and many more, and it's hard to go wrong with them as well. Plus, Brian Wilson himself joined in at the end.

Most or all of the performances are unique, meaning these particular artists never did these songs before, and probably not since. They were special versions just for this show.

This concert has never been released in any kind of audio format, as far as I know. But the songs here all come from a DVD that has been released. I edited it down somewhat to remove some speeches praising Wilson. I wanted to keep it more focused on the music. (One section I removed was a talk by Beatles producer George Martin about the song "Good Vibrations.")  However, I did keep all the talking that directly preceded or followed each song that was relevant.

Unfortunately, there was a lot more to this concert that was not included on the DVD, and I can't find it anywhere else. For instance, Wilson sang lead or co-lead on five songs at the end of this album. But in the concert, he sang a few more: "Lay Down Burden," "Do It Again," "Caroline, No," and "Surfin' U.S.A." If anyone has more than I do, please let me know so I can add it in.

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

01 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
02 Our Prayer (Boys Choir of Harlem)
03 California Girls - Help Me, Rhonda (Ricky Martin)
04 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
05 Surfer Girl (Paul Simon)
06 Surf City (Go-Go's)
07 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
08 In My Room (David Crosby, Carly Simon & Jimmy Webb)
09 talk (David Crosby)
10 The Warmth of the Sun (Vince Gill)
11 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
12 I Get Around (Evan & Jaron)
13 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
14 God Only Knows (Elton John)
15 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
16 I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (Aimee Mann & Michael Penn)
17 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Billy Joel)
18 Don't Worry Baby (Billy Joel)
19 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
20 Sail On Sailor (Darius Rucker & Matthew Sweet)
21 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Chynna Phillips)
22 You're So Good to Me (Wilson Phillips)
23 talk (George Martin)
24 Good Vibrations (Heart)
25 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
26 Surf's Up (David Crosby, Vince Gill & Jimmy Webb)
27 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Brian Wilson)
28 Heroes and Villains (Brian Wilson)
29 talk (Elton John)
30 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Elton John & Brian Wilson)
31 talk (Brian Wilson)
32 Barbara Ann (Brian Wilson & Everyone)
33 Fun, Fun, Fun (Brian Wilson & Everyone)
34 talk (Brian Wilson)
35 Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson with the Boys Choir of Harlem)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16584567/VA-_2001AllStrTrbtetBrnWlsnRdoCtyMsicHllNwYrkC__3-29-2001_atse.zip.html

I have to admit, the cover is a bit fakey. I found a photo of Elton John, Billy Joel, and Paul Simon sharing the same microphone during a finale at this concert. But since it's a Brian Wilson tribute and he was there, I wanted him on the cover too. So I Photoshopped him in, using a photo that also comes from the finale at this concert. They were on stage together, just not this close. The lighting is pretty accurate. For instance, there's a shadow falling on his body that actually fell on someone else standing there.

Billy Joel - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 5-26-1990

I've posted two Billy Joel BBC concerts. I thought I was all done with his BBC material, but I found one more concert. Here it is.

In my opinion, Joel was past his creative peak by 1990, the year of this concert. Perhaps he felt that way too, because he only released one more album of original material in 1993. Since then, he's basically given up songwriting, which is pretty unique for people of his fame and talent. That said, he still wrote a bunch of quality songs since his previous BBC concert in 1984, and naturally he did most of his best songs during this concert.

An additional bonus is that this is a rather long concert. It's about 20 minutes longer than that 1984 BBC concert. So if you were to listen to just one, this probably would be my recommendation. The sound quality is excellent. I didn't have to change anything.

This album is two hours and nine minutes long.

Oh, and by the way, since I now have three Billy Joel BBC albums, I changed the cover art of the first two at the same time I'm posting this, so they all have the same font size and type.

01 Intro - Storm Front (Billy Joel)
02 Allentown (Billy Joel)
03 Prelude - Angry Young Man (Billy Joel)
04 talk (Billy Joel)
05 Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (Billy Joel)
06 talk (Billy Joel)
07 The Downeaster Alexa (Billy Joel)
08 Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
09 talk (Billy Joel)
10 Rule Britannia (Billy Joel)
11 I Go to Extremes (Billy Joel)
12 Pressure (Billy Joel)
13 talk (Billy Joel)
14 Leningrad (Billy Joel)
15 My Life (Billy Joel)
16 An Innocent Man (Billy Joel)
17 talk (Billy Joel)
18 Shameless (Billy Joel)
19 talk (Billy Joel)
20 We Didn't Start the Fire (Billy Joel)
21 Shout (Billy Joel)
22 Uptown Girl (Billy Joel)
23 It's Still Rock 'N' Roll to Me (Billy Joel)
24 You May Be Right (Billy Joel)
25 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel)
26 talk (Billy Joel)
27 A Matter of Trust (Billy Joel)
28 Big Shot (Billy Joel)
29 That's Not Her Style (Billy Joel)
30 talk (Billy Joel)
31 Piano Man (Billy Joel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8rbMYeJF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/CUDWpXloH0wsOtw/file

The cover photo was taken at Wembley Arena in 1990. However, he performed there a bunch of times, so I don't know if it's from this exact concert.

Billy Joel - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC TV Centre, London, Britain, 3-13-1978

I've got so many bootleg BBC concerts to post that it's crazy. I keep finding more and more. I'm sure I have over a hundred new ones to post. The thing is, it's often the case that they're both uncommon as bootlegs and have really excellent sound, so they need more attention. Here's a case in point. I already posted a Billy Joel BBC concert, from 1984, but I recently discovered this one from 1978, back when he was just starting to be a big star.

This concert was done for BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test." Usually, that show would have several different artists for each show, but occasionally they would use the entire show for just one. That's the case here. I was surprised that one of his biggest hits at the time, "Piano Man," wasn't played. But I discovered that he was on that show in 1975, for just two songs, and that was one of them. So I've added those two at the start. Note those two songs don't have any cheering after them, but the rest of them do.

This album is 53 minutes long. The 1978 concert, minus the two 1975 songs at the start, is 43 minutes long.

UPDATE: On December 4, 2023, I updated the cover art to match that of the other two covers in this BBC series.

01 Travelin' Prayer (Billy Joel)
02 Piano Man (Billy Joel)
03 Miami 2017 [Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway] (Billy Joel)
04 talk (Billy Joel)
05 Movin' Out [Anthony's Song] (Billy Joel)
06 talk (Billy Joel)
07 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)
08 talk (Billy Joel)
09 The Entertainer (Billy Joel)
10 She's Always a Woman (Billy Joel)
11 Root Beer Rag (Billy Joel)
12 talk (Billy Joel)
13 Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel)
14 Souvenir (Billy Joel)
15 Ain't No Crime (Billy Joel)
16 talk (Billy Joel)
17 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16020623/BillyJ_1978_BBSessionsVolume1OldGryWhistleTest__3-13-1978_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. The video of it can be seen at YouTube.

Billy Joel - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: From a Piano Man... to an Innocent Man, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-8-1984

As I delve deeper into the mountain of BBC recordings out there, I'm discovering that practically every famous musical act played for the BBC at one point or another. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you'd be surprised. I know I've been.

A case in point is Billy Joel. As an American, he's an unlikely subject for the BBC. But it turns out he did a 1984 concert in London that was broadcast on BBC TV at the time. I really like when concerts are broadcast by the BBC, because it's a virtual guarantee that the sound quality will be excellent. That's the case here with this unreleased show.

But the timing of this concert is also great. If I had to pick one year for a Billy Joel concert, it would be 1984. His 1983 album "An Innocent Man" finished a long run of commercially successful and critically acclaimed albums. He would release three more studio albums after that, but they're not as good as the rest. If you look at the crowd-sourced ratings of his albums at rateyourmusic.com, all of his prior albums got better ratings than his last three. So that means this is "all killer, no filler," with nearly every song a hit.

There aren't any surprises here, but it's a well played bunch of lively, classic songs. Personally, I think this is better than any of his five official live albums, again mainly due to the timing. (Three of those live albums were recorded in the 2000s.)

There were a couple of sonic problems, but I fixed them. The song "Scenes from an Itallian Restaurant" had multiple digital glitches, probably something going wrong with file copying. I found a different version of the same performance (on YouTube) and patched it in. "Tell Her about It" had multiple drop-outs, where the sound got quiet for a few seconds each time. I fixed those issues by boosting the volume the right amount each time. Another issue was that one of the stereo channels was much louder than the other one, but I fixed that, song by song.

You can watch this entire concert on YouTube. If you do, you'll notice that its official title is shown at the start of the show: "From a Piano Man... to an Innocent Man." So I've included that in the title.

The video footage of this is is sold in DVD format under various names, but I've checked on Wikipedia and none of those appear to be official, authorized releases.

This concert is an hour and 51 minutes long.

01 Prelude - Angry Young Man (Billy Joel)
02 My Life (Billy Joel)
03 talk (Billy Joel)
04 Piano Man (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Don't Ask Me Why (Billy Joel)
07 Allentown (Billy Joel)
08 Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
09 Pressure (Billy Joel)
10 talk (Billy Joel)
11 Leave a Tender Moment Alone (Billy Joel)
12 An Innocent Man (Billy Joel)
13 talk (Billy Joel)
14 What's Your Name (Billy Joel)
15 The Longest Time (Billy Joel)
16 talk (Billy Joel)
17 This Night (Billy Joel)
18 Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel)
19 Scenes from an Italian Restaurant [Edit] (Billy Joel)
20 talk (Billy Joel)
21 Sometimes a Fantasy (Billy Joel)
22 It's Still Rock and Roll to Me (Billy Joel)
23 Uptown Girl (Billy Joel)
24 Big Shot (Billy Joel)
25 Tell Her about It [Edit] (Billy Joel)
26 You May Be Right (Billy Joel)
27 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel)  

https://www.imagenetz.de/jFMjb

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/toJo2ys3

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/E5y5TTOHZPieBEO/file

The cover photo may not be the best, due to his facial expression. But I used it because it comes from the exact concert featured here.