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.