I don’t consider myself a Billy Joel fan, but he had his moments. Actually, he had a lot of moments in the latter half of the ’70s.
Count “Prelude/Angry Young Man” among them. I still remember when I first heard it on an album-rock station in 1976, as this incredible piano playing gave way to some quicksilver witty lyrics. I quickly realized it was Billy Joel: talented, confident and getting ready to bust out into superstardom.
He’d had a fairly well-known hit with Piano Man three years earlier, but at that point I didn’t know much else about him. Soon, we all would.
“Prelude/Angry Young Man” wasn’t the song that propelled him into that stratosphere, but it did a pretty good job of showing just what Billy Joel was capable of, in terms of being both a performer and composer. I was never one to mind when he would drop his mondo chops down on me, because there’s been so few rock stars who can flat-out play their asses off on a piano, and that’s perhaps even more true today. We know that Elton John can plow on the piano but really, who else immediately comes to mind?
The initial two-minute instrumental hurls a kaleidoscope of ideas at listeners, abruptly shifting and punching like a tightly compacted Yes song. Then Joel fires off verses that blurt out almost faster than you can comprehend them. But they arrive so logically, the cynical, sarcastic wit comes across just as he no doubt intended:
And there’s always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he’s never been able to learn from mistakes,
He can’t understand why his heart always breaks.
His honor is pure and his courage as well,
He’s fair and he’s true and he’s boring as hell!
And he’ll go to the grave as an angry old man.
Billy Joel, of course, could have been singing about himself; he’s had his share of angry moments, too. Out of that anger some pretty good music has come forth, so I’m not complaining.
“Angry Young Man” later became a helluva concert staple for him, too. Check out the rippin’ live version of this song tagged on the expanded 30th anniversary Legacy Edition of The Stranger.
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