TURNSTILES

This edition of TURNSTILES is an Enhanced CD containing both a full audio program as well as a video clip for the track "Prelude/Angry Young Man." Personnel: Billy Joel (vocals, harmonica, keyboards); Howie Emerson, Russell Javors (acoustic & electric guitars); James Smith (acoustic guitar); Richie Cannatta (saxophone); Doug Stegmeyer (bass); Liberty DeVito (drums, percussion); Mingo Lewis (percussion). Recorded at Ultra-Sonic Studios, Hempstead, New York. Digitally remastered by Ted Jensen (Sterling Sound, New York, New York). Though it produced no hits, TURNSTILES is an essential Billy Joel album, the one that marked his transition from cultish singer-songwriter to budding pop-rock god--from Dylan wannabe to Dion wannabe, if you will. While Joel's world-weary cynisicm remains in the polysyllabic ballad "Summer, Highlands Falls," he does some real growing up here. "Angry Young Man" (which is introduced by the gymnastic piano workout "Prelude") finds him condemning other youthful cynics and pledging to get on with his life. To Joel, getting on meant rocking out, which he does in spades on TURNSTILES. "Miami 2017" was his first stab at the pop-epic form that would blossom one album later with "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." "Say Goodbye To Hollywood" playfully steals a beat from the Phil Spector songbook, presaging Joel's later explorations into '50s and '60s pop. On "New York State Of Mind" Joel borrows from a previously hidden influence--R&B crooner and fellow piano man Ray Charles--and comes up with one of his greatest songs, and one of the best anyone's written about the Big Apple.