Billy Joel – Glass Houses

(Columbia 1980)

 By Null

 

All of this happened before I turned 10 years old.

I grew up on a dairy farm in the Michigan outback. We were all farm kids who got by with little money and survived harsh winters. Other than 70’s rock radio and country music stations, I can explicitly remember all the recorded music we had in the house:

(8-track tapes)

Barbara Mandrell – Moods (including “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed”)

Kenny Rogers – Greatest Hits

Blondie – Greatest Hits

Willie Nelson – Honeysuckle Rose

Cheech & Chong – Greatest Hits

Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band – Against the Wind

(vinyl LPs)

Kiss – Alive

Kiss - Dynasty

All the Kiss “solo” Albums

Pat Benatar – Crimes of Passion

Journey – Infinity

Journey – Who’s Crying Now

Southern Fried Rock (various artists)

A few K-Tel records with various hits of the day.

I didn’t buy any of these records. They just appeared in the farm house via my mother, or more likely, my older step-brother.

I remember these albums because I would listen to them all repeatedly. Other than the radio, this is all we had. Whether or not I liked them remains a moot point, however, it is easy for me to see now that this collection of albums laid the foundation for the music that I would love in my adult life. For instance, I still hear echoes of Pat Benatar in Judas Priest and Bob Seger in Uncle Tupelo. Trust me, those connections are there. Now, this was all in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I realized that I never really liked Kiss after I discovered they weren’t actually superheroes. Yet, my love for Pat Benatar, Kenny Rogers, and Bob Seger’s Against the Wind continues to this day.

One day my older step-brother, who only lived with us for a few years, produced a briefcase when we were sitting in the attic. He said he had “found it,” which I understood to mean he had stolen it from someone. It was an old briefcase that housed cassette tapes. Apparently, he and his friends had already scoured its contents and he was no longer interested in it, so he said I could have it. I didn’t have any cassette tapes to put in it as I was spending most of my meager allowance on the 75 cent Conan the Barbarian comic books that came out every month. My step-brother then said there were a few cassettes in the case that none of his friends wanted, and he walked out of the room.

Inside the case were three cassette tapes: Billy Joel’s The Stranger (1977), 52^nd Street (1978), and Glass Houses (1980). I devoured these cassettes with gusto. Now remember, these albums were pretty big hits, but these were also records by a very different Billy Joel than we became familiar with in the mid-to-late 1980s. These preceded “Uptown Girl,” which, by the way, was the very first 7” vinyl I ever bought with my own money.

I was getting to the age where I was beginning to question the male role models in my life, and I was beginning to feel, well, kind of pissed off at the bullshit social clicks that were beginning to form in my elementary school, an elementary school filled with farm kids, and consisted of one hallway. I think the whole school was about as big as our barn, and we had more dairy cows than the school had students. By the time I reached the 5^th grade, I had been in love with Chris McKenzie since Kindergarten.  All she ever did was kick me in the ribs, despite my unwavering devotion. There was also the constant fear of my step-fathers fists. I was getting pissed at “the system” but I really didn’t know what the system was. I did know I was at odds with my future. I wanted to go to Hollywood and make important movies like “E.T.” This is what I thought at the time anyway. My life long struggle with the world had only just begun.

Somehow, Billy Joel, with his big Italian afro and hound dog face, articulated these feelings. I mean, he wasn’t much to look at, and I perceived him as an underdog like myself. And he seemed to come from an entirely different world: New York City. His songs seemed filled with sexual frustration and the gritty streets of New York, a part of a much greater world to which I had no access. He also sang about smoky Italian restaurants and being in love with beautiful girls over spaghetti dinners. He was critical of Catholics, “Only the Good Die Young,” and I think he also laid the foundation for the future punk rocker I would become. His songs were also filled with nostalgia for people that were, “Movin’ Out,” as he was “The Stranger.”

These records fueled my imagination. I probably listened to Glass Houses more than the others, as it had the killer track, “You May Be Right,” which I felt a certain kinship with: “You may be right / I may be crazy / But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for / Turn out the light / Don't try to save me / You may be wrong / for all I know But you may be right.” I though, “you know what, fuck Chris McKenzie, fuck the farm, fuck these masculine role models.” Maybe they are right. Maybe I am crazy. Fuck it, I am going to be who I am. I am going to have this life and nobody is going to save me. When the cops come to get me, at least Billy Joel will have my back. Later, that week, during lunch at our little school, I grabbed the mustard and ketchup bottles and squirted the condiments all over the winter coats that hung in a line against one wall of the classroom. Fuck ‘em. I was never able to articulate a reason for this action to the teacher. She may be right. I just may be the lunatic she’s looking for.

The other track that was pivotal to my awareness of my isolation was “Sometimes a Fantasy.” We would get up in the morning and milk the cows. Then we would go inside and mother would put empty Wonder Bread bags on our socked feet before we slipped them into our moon boots to fend off the bitter cold Michigan winters. The school bus would come pick us up and we would drive all over the country side picking up farm kids. It would still be pitch black outside as the bus shook and rattled down gravel country roads.

Then something revolutionary happened. We got a radio in the school bus. With my furrowed brow I would sit in the bus and hear “Centerfold” by the J. Gelis Band. However, there was another track that I would hear repeated on the bus. I didn’t know who it was but it evoked a sensual fantasy in that freezing and rattling yellow contraption. The song was “For Your Eyes Only” by Sheena Easton. (It was the theme song to a James Bond movie of the same name. But I never cared for James Bond movies). I didn’t know who Sheena Easton was at the time, but this song always make me curl up and close my eyes and I would fantasize about vague shadows and silhouettes of the opposite sex. Years later, I realized the opening credits to this Bond film were startlingly similar to my school bus fantasies. It wasn’t necessarily sexual, but more an elixir for pre-teen loneliness. When the song ended, I would wake back up to my freezing and pissed off reality. I could hear Billy Joel saying, “Sometimes a fantasy…is all you need.”

To this day, I love the warm analog sound of these three Billy Joel albums. I still think his band at the time was pretty great. The sound still reminds me of turning my back on bitter cold and despondent world. In these albums I hear a longing for unrequited love, romance, sexual frustration, and a big fuck you to the world. I don’t know what other people hear in these albums. I have a friend that can’t stand Billy Joel, and I understand – Billy Joel is a weird turtle / hound dog looking man with a particular delivery. However, I still think the albums are fucking great and despite what Billy Joel became, I still have his back, as he was the only one who had mine in those early years.