Linda in New Billy Joel "The Stranger" Pitchfork Review

[RobGNYC]

pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/billy-joel-the-stranger/

"Famously, Joel likes to say that he didn’t want to put the biggest song on the album. “That’s one of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard,” Linda Ronstadt apparently told Joel after hearing “Just the Way You Are” in the studio. A lot of people have since agreed with her, including those at the Recording Academy, which gave Joel the Grammys for Record and Song of the Year."

The Pitchfork version leaves Phoebe Snow out of the story. Joel has mentioned her before:

kool1079.com/billy-joel-reveals-he-almost-refused-to-record-the-song-that-saved-his-career/

"One day we were in the studio and [producer Phil Ramone] goes out and comes back in with Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow. He goes, 'I'm gonna play you a song.'....and he knew that they were gonna like the song, before they even heard it. It's a girls' song. They heard the song, and Linda Ronstadt goes, 'Are you crazy? That's a great song!'...I was like, 'Really?' And Linda Ronstadt was pretty cute. I said, 'Oh Linda Ronstadt likes it? Okay!'"

[Deleted]

Thanks Rob, its great reading new material about Linda's past.

[cymru56]

Apologies if this has been raised before but it was new to me.
IDKM was the final song in a programme of Love Songs on BBC2 TV tonight.
The tag line at the bottom of the screen contained some trivia about Linda including that she helped kickstart Billy Joel's career.
Mystified I googled this and discovered that Billy had no intention of releasing "Just The Way You Are" until Linda and Pheobe Snow suggested it should be included on his album.
Who knew !

[warren]

Feb 10, 2024 19:09:24 GMT -5 cymru56 said:

Apologies if this has been raised before but it was new to me.
IDKM was the final song in a programme of Love Songs on BBC2 TV tonight.
The tag line at the bottom of the screen contained some trivia about Linda including that she helped kickstart Billy Joel's career.
Mystified I googled this and discovered that Billy had no intention of releasing "Just The Way You Are" until Linda and Pheobe Snow suggested it should be included on his album.
Who knew !

Background


Joel shared that the melody and chord progression for this song came to him while he was dreaming.[5] In an interview on the Howard Stern Radio Show on November 16, 2010, Joel said that the inspiration for writing the name of the song and how it sounds in the chorus was directly taken from the last line in the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons song "Rag Doll", which incidentally was also a larger inspiration for Joel's later song "Uptown Girl".[6]



"Just the Way You Are", which Joel had written for his first wife (and also his business manager at the time) Elizabeth Weber, was initially not liked by either Joel or his band, and Joel had originally decided against making the track a part of The Stranger, but at the request of both Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow (both were recording in other studios in the same building at the time), he agreed to put the song on the final mix.[7] However, the album's producer, Phil Ramone, later contradicted Joel's claim, stating in an interview that they could not afford to exclude the song because Joel did not have that much material from which to choose for the album.[8] The song also shares some similarities to "I'm Not in Love" by 10cc, due to the keyboard and background vocal tape loops Joel and Ramone used.[9]

After Joel and Weber divorced in 1982, Joel rarely performed the song live after 1986 until the 2000s, and Joel has publicly stated that he disliked playing the song live in the wake of his divorce from his first wife. He noted that during performances of the song around the time of his first divorce, his drummer Liberty DeVitto would jokingly parody the lyrics in the chorus as "She got the house. She got the car."[10]



When "Just the Way You Are" was released as a single, it was shortened by over a minute. The differences are the removal of the second verse and an earlier fade. A live performance of the song was also used as a music video. On February 18, 1978, the song peaked at No. 3, and Joel performed a shorter version of the song as the musical guest that day on Saturday Night Live (along with "Only the Good Die Young"). The single version (fading 8 seconds later) was included in the first release of Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II, but the full album version was restored for the remastered release of that compilation.



The saxophone solo was played by Phil Woods, a well-known jazz performer and Grammy award winner. Woods' performance on the song exposed him to a wider audience and introduced his music to rock fans.[11]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_the_Way_You_Are_(Billy_Joel_song)