with last night’s south bank show retrospective of billy joel it’s maybe time for us to confess our appreciation of the piano man. songs in the attic was part of the studio soundtrack last year and we’ve been willing in summer with cold spring harbour.

saying you like billy joel always feels like a confession due to the success of uptown girl. only intended to be a lighthearted pastiche of frankie valli it nonetheless marked joel as a writer of pop fluff and with this second bloom of chart success it seemed the rayban-wearing model-dating rock star no longer felt comfortable writing songs about the ordinary working man [1989's the downeaster alexa the notable exemption]. i always assume songwriters have a few years worth of experiences filed away to turn into songs and maybe joel had just moved beyond his point of reference. besides, he’d almost already written the obligatory ‘i had it big and hit the skids’ song [i've loved these days] albeit as a requiem for america, so in some ways there wasn’t much left for him to say. if you call a halt to your billy joel listening with the 1982 album the nylon curtain, the songwriter that emerges couldn’t be less uptown. he’s the angry young man whose songs are written around the everyday stories of the blue collar workers of america.

joel was fairly self-depreciating on the south bank show and whilst the ordinary-man-sat-in-his-garage location was rather convoluted, i thought his mention that he just writes songs the way he speaks rang true - he’s never tried to be a poet or even be clever, he just sang what he knew. to his credit, joel’s never really played the working class card whilst still being wealthy beyond his dreams [hello bruce springsteen], rather he played the rock star when he thought that’s what people wanted him to be. i thought his admission that his drinking is just what working class people do rather than the result of dealing with too much fame and money seemed authentic. and whilst the contrast between the past-it performer and his heavy-lidded younger self jarred a little, you still got the sense of that frustrated and disillusioned man who is righteously angry at the way his country ignores the struggles of people who actually do most of the work. the concert footage from the 70’s showed that anger bubbling away so much so that he sometimes can’t help but bitterly spit out even the lines of the love songs that made his fortune.