This song.....this song......

Every now and then you encounter a tune with a truly perfect blend of melody and lyric.  That's what this one is for me.  The melody and chords, the simple piano arrangement, and the sweetness and simplicity of the message all fit together like a beautiful jigsaw puzzle.

This song was written in 1971, and recorded in 1972 for Billy Joel's first ever solo album, "Cold Spring Harbor".  He was signed to a smaller label, and agreed to an absolutely terrible contract.  He gave away his publishing, his album sale royalties, basically every piece of residual income he could ever hope to earn from his writing and recordings.  He was young and stupid, and the owner of the label was a sleazy scumbag....never a great combination.

In addition to the horrible business arrangement he agreed to, he was given a shoestring recording budget.  He made the album, but then it was mastered at the wrong speed, which created an overly shrill and high pitched timbre to his voice and the accompaniment tracks that, in Billy's own words, made him sound like a chipmunk.  Even worse, the sleazy scumbag went ahead and had records pressed with this flaw and shipped it for release.  Then, to add insult to injury, the original acetate was just lost, and there was nothing to correct it with other than a finished record.  So, even with attempts over the years by Columbia Records (his next label and the one he has remained with since), there's no truly proper representation of his work in the studio for this album, and it's tragic because there are some really beautiful songs on it that foreshadow the brilliant writer he would grow into in the following years.

Nearly a decade later in 1981, he released a live recording of this beautiful number that became the "definitive version" from a performance at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, MA on a live collection of non hit "deep cuts" from his first 4 albums called "Songs In the Attic".  "She's Got a Way" was released as a single from that album, and climbed to #23 on the Billboard Hot 100, finally earning a modicum of the respect, attention, and appreciation it had always deserved.

This story makes me ponder the difference between a failure and a mistake, and the role each play in our lives.  It was a mistake...period, end of story...to sign that recording contract.  The label was trash, the owner was odious, and to this day he's never received all the royalties he should have, even from future releases on an entirely different record label, because of what he legally bound himself to by signing that terrible piece of paper.  It was a mistake.

But the botched recording was a failure....there are a lot of moving parts when recording an album, and it's difficult to be on top of all of them...especially when you have a release date deadline, and performance commitments in different states and territories.  You have to place some trust in the full creative team responsible for the recording, and he did.  They "failed" to deliver his vision on the final product....but it wasn't a mistake to try.

It was a beautiful song, in fact a collection of beautiful songs, that deserved to be recorded and shared.  And because it was a failure rather than a mistake, it was worth it to give this song another shot at a bigger life down the road....I'm so glad he did. 

One of my favorite moments from the 11 times I've been fortunate enough to see Billy live was from November 22, 1998 in Chicago, IL at what was then known as the "Rosemont Horizon" arena....now it's of course called the "Allstate Arena" because our culture has decided to be okay with corporations not actually building arenas and stadiums, but leasing the rights to their names for a decade, and the timeless names they might have originated with have drifted into the dustbin of our history....but I digress. 

He hadn't played this song in a very long time in concert, but on this tour since he didn't have a new album to promote, he was trying to incorporate some songs into the set list that had been dormant for a while, and even some they had never played live before.  When he announced that he wanted to play a song from 1971, the crowd immediately knew what he was going to do and went crazy....and then fell absolutely silent to enjoy the intimacy of a simple piano/vocal rendering.  It was a very magical 4 minutes that I can just about replay in my head beat for beat.

All of us make mistakes, and hopefully learn from them so as not to repeat them.  But are there worthy failures in your past that perhaps you're classifying as a mistake?  Something that was worth the effort even though it didn't work out, and might well be worth trying again now or in the future?  It could be anything from a hobby, to a creative project, to a failed romance (maybe the partner was a mistake, but endeavoring to love and be loved most certainly was not).  I challenge each of us to get more clear about the mistakes and failures in our lives, and give ourselves more credit for the failures than we do....and maybe, just maybe....dust yourself off and give it another go with a fresh perspective.    

Enjoy my cover of this song from a livestream show I did on July 8, 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and then check out one of my favorite performances of it by Billy Joel himself In Philadelphia in 1998 (I saw him perform this in Chicago just a few months later on the same tour), and then check out the original recording from 1972 to hear how the song evolved over time. 

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

 
If the video doesn't show above, use THIS LINK to see it on YouTube