This is a very celebrated deep cut in Billy Joel's catalog among the fan base. It first appeared in 1976 on what is often considered the "true fan's" favorite album, "Turnstiles". It was a year before his true "breakout success" in 1977 with "The Stranger" and its 4 hit singles, but of the 8 songs on the album, easily 5 of them are considered iconic classics in his cannon, and the other 3 are still beloved for rounding out a great album to listen to from start to finish.
This tune is the final cut on "Turnstiles", and is an uptempo showstopper that has been equally effective over the years as both a concert opener and encore. It also has a compelling backstory...
In 1976 Billy had been living in L.A. for a few years and had his first commercial success with "Piano Man" in 1974 (the single....the album "Piano Man" was released in late 1973). During this time, New York City went through a terrible moment and was on the brink of default, and was denied any assistance from the federal government. There was a famous headline in the New York Daily News that said, "Ford to City: Drop Dead". With this being a national news story, people all over the country were talking about it, most with bad opinions about the city of New York and how it got to this point, and Billy was hearing a lot of those critiques from people in L.A., including folks living there from New York. He made the decision that if New York was going down the tubes, he was going to go back home and go down with it.
It inspired him to write a fictional account of a person's memory of New York being destroyed by someone living in Miami, in the year 2017, which is how the title came to be. He speaks of the "mighty skyline" falling, the "lights on broadway" going out, the "churches in Harlem" being burned, and other tragic imagery.
The first time I heard this song was at age 12 on the broadcast of Billy Joel, Live at Yankee Stadium. It completely knocked me out....it had everything I love in a Billy Joel song.....powerful and gritty vocals, electric energy (that's true of a great ballad too by the way), an interesting and compelling story with great lyrics, and a kick-ass piano signature. I was totally mesmerized. I taped that show on VHS and then rewatched that song hundreds of times.
I am of course fond of the original recording from "Turnstiles", but I think something gets lost in translation compared to live renderings. One of the most powerful and poignant performances of this song though has to be at the "Concert for New York" at Madison Square Garden shortly after 9/11. I watched that on television live and after singing this song that says, "I watched the mighty skyline fall", with the horrors of seeing the twin towers of the World Trade Center coming down fresh in our memories, he said, "I wrote that song 25 years ago, but I never actually thought I'd see it happen. But unlink the guy in that song, we're not going anywhere!" It was quite a moment.
Somehow, even though this has been a regularly performed staple in his shows for decades, I have managed to never see him perform it in person across 11 shows...I still hope to catch it once before he hangs it up permanently.
Honestly, I think what this song makes me think of in the broader world is resiliency. New York went through some very tough times, and it negatively impacted millions of people....some very strongly and directly, and others more modestly and diffusely. But....over time it rallied, rebuilt, and came back stronger than ever. The people of New York were resilient, and so were the systems and structures that were tested to their limits. Some needed to be torn down and rebuilt, and others held up under the stress....but New York weathered the storm because there was always enough of it still intact to allow for the pieces to be put back together.
We are living in exciting and scary times...there are more disruptors than ever before to systems and structures, change happens faster than we've ever seen in human history, and it is incredibly easy to feel imbalanced and unstable. Everything from corporations to governments are being challenged and tested to their limits while people are being sucked into silos of ever more specific interests and curated information ecosystems.
But I believe collectively we are sorting it out. We've just never been presented with so many choices all the time around the clock. We live in a time where it is demonstrably true that more people live in greater safety, abundance, security, and peace than ever before in human history, and yet....it's so easy to feel like precisely the opposite is true. But maybe....just maybe.....this is what it looks like for a global society to work out how to co-exist productively in a world where it's impossible to get everyone's attention at the same time, and people feel more community with strangers on the internet based very specific interests than they do with neighbors living two doors down from them in the same building. It's not always pretty, and it is certainly often unsettling....but I believe in the resiliency of people and the structures we create. Systems don't go down without fighting back, and they have a tendency to adapt as needed when the status quo simply cannot abide any longer.
New York survived....so will the rest of us....one way or another.
Enjoy my cover of this song from a livestream show I did on July 15, 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and then check Billy Joel's own performance in 1990 at Yankee Stadium that I referenced (I usually try to find a video performance, but the only one of that show I could find is audio only...still totally worth hearing though).
If you'd like to explore my piano method more deeply, my best students use my video courses and join me for conversation and twice monthly Q&A Livestreams in my private community...you can find it all HERE. Thanks.
If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube
If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube