Say Goodbye To Billy Joel

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I’m not a huge Billy Joel fan.

But there are scads of artists out there that I don’t much care for that still manage to grind out a song or two that I love.

And for Billy Joel, that short list is pretty much “Captain Jack” (the live version; the studio original annoys me), “Only The Good Die Young”, most of the “An Innocent Man” album, watching people singing “Piano Man” at karaoke night getting beaten with pool sticks (which isn’t actually an endorsement of the song)…

…and “Say Goodbye To Hollywood.

So how do you make that song perfect?

Have it covered by Ronnie Spector, backed by the E Street Band, in a cover that I’d forgotten ever existed:

And for one moment, all is forgiven.

5 thoughts on “Say Goodbye To Billy Joel”

  1. Jesus, that gets you immediately. Thanks for the post. Makes you wistful for Clarence and 45’s all at the same time.

  3. Fingers,

    Yeah, I don’t wanna say I ever *hated* Joel; he largely bored me stiff, with the occasional bit of “whoah, I liked that”. There’ve been a few; Bridge was all right, I liked a lot of Nylon Curtain, and of course Innocent Man.

    But for whatever reasons, most of the Billy Joel I really cared for was on Songs in the Attic. I think hearing “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” for the first time made me think “Hey – that could be a Springsteen song!”. I didn’t know back then (what, senior year of high school) about the Ronnie Spector cover…

  4. The Stranger was an important soundtrack for my circumstances.

    Mid-80’s a show Called Crime Story was popular. Cop show that took place in pre-Beatles Chicago

    Dennis Farina was the star and the theme song was a good but uncredited version of Del Shannon’s Runaway.

    On one episode, Runaway was covered by Ronnie Spector. She did her stuff to it and put Del to shame.

    Can’t find it on the internet. I believe it was her but could be mistaken.

  5. Heh, you and I are pretty much opposites with Billy and Bruce. I like a lot of Billy Joel’s music. Not that I’m a huge fan of him like you are with Bruce, but I do like a lot of his stuff. Springsteen, however, has never done anything for me. His music is boring and merely tolerable to me.

    I will admit to being biased to favoring the piano, however.

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