A Little Ditty About Renegade and Evergreen

William Martin “Billy” Joel is one of my favorite artists. He sold over 150 million records, has 33 top 40 hits, and 23 Grammy nominations, with too many awards and lifetime achievements to mention. He is the only Steinway artist who is not a classical pianist and has been honored with a painting in the Steinway Museum.

He is often referred to as “Piano Man”-one of my favorite songs to play on guitar. In this video at iconic Harvard Theater-an acoustic marvel-he does a lot of talking around it, but he somewhat fails to close on the true genesis of the song, which reportedly relates to one of his first contracts, where the man who sponsored him-the “owner” of the rights to his songs-wouldn’t renegotiate after Joel started to achieve success. He still received a pittance-less than 50%-and had some time left until the contract was renewed or expired-and he is a New Yorker-think stubborn as they come-so he was playing in dive bars killing time until the contract lapsed, writing songs, but not publishing anything. Hard knocks of the music business, but moreso a classic case where greed and lack of compromise cost one participant time, the other likely millions of dollars while settling for thousands.

His first experiences were terrible, with Columbia records-the powerhouse at the time-dropping his initial contract, labeling his debut album and him as a “stiff”-somebody the Artist and Repertoire (A&R) folks can’t sell, telling him not to quit his day job. This is an amazing account of one man’s persistence to get Joel’s music listened to, somewhat haunted by the cover of Joel’s album with the somewhat “bug eyed” look, with Piano Man (only 196 million views) the chosen A&R lead-by default.

For those who did not experience this period of time, there were seemingly two genres of music pre-dominating where I grew up on the east coast. Southern rock was in bigly-you couldn’t tune your radio to a local station without hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers Band, Marshall Tucker, but also the Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, Jay Geils, Boston-dozens of rock n’ Roll bands predominated, and also what was then classified as rock but would later modulate down toward the pop or easy listening line on the scale as heavy metal became a thing (Bob Seger, America, Don McClean, James Taylor, etc.)

But the dominant sound when Joel was trying to breakthrough was Disco-which revived interest in a lot of rhythm and blues artists-that Motown Sound-but Disco broke through in the club scene and would dominate-and flame out-leaving the platform shoes, spikey high heels, ultra-wide loud pants, pastel or “Easter colors” and “Saturday Night Fever” outfits in the closets and the stories to the dust bin of history. It was a “big hair” era for the girls and an “I have chest hair” period for the guys: of course, today those attributes might be reversed….

These phases are instructive and interesting. Being in the military as Disco flamed out, there were times when you would be on a TDY somewhere in middle America and it was like a flashback to the seventies, Disco Ball a flashing, some period costumes, but not quite the big hair scene of yester year. It was still popular in Korea in 1980, as well as Germany in the mid-80s. An example of one such specific time, I was attending the Combined Armed Services Staff School at Leavenworth in 1992 and one of my classmates had roomed in college with Red Sox star Ellis Burks. The Sox were in town playing the Kansas City Royals. We met a handful of Sox after the game at a club that was a Disco throwback-glittering ball, period iconic music blaring (I’m your Boogie Man, oh, my!) and the atmosphere, with a number of Sox’-Burks, Wade Boggs and others-on the prowl. We weren’t there for the dancing and neither was a Manhattan teacher’s group who were in town for fun and a break: quite a crazy night (not for me.)

Joel was a square peg in relation to these genres-a story teller not unlike the reputation cultivated by country stars Kenny Rodgers (“21 number 1s”,) or Don Williams, only with jazz infusion/influences, melodic riffs on the piano-he fit neither category above when the A&R folks at Columbia were signing Disco hopefuls by the scores.

By a strange coincidence, my brother’s band experienced the music scene of this period close up and personal. The band’s lead singer had an older brother who managed Sherman Hemsley-George Jefferson-one of the most popular TV shows of the 1970s. Sherman was making silly money per episode. He decided to buy two custom extra length Lincoln Continentals-the kind used for prom dates-from a shop in Rhode Island that specializes in them. His manager-Ken Johnston-played a demo tape of the band, offering to have Sherman sponsor the band out in Los Angeles in exchange for them delivering the Lincolns. As is always the case with artists-musicians-and bands-although it is usually drummers-but schtuff always seems to happen just when things seem on track. Things were going swimmingly until they hit a deer outside of Hershey Pennsylvania and totaled one of the Lincolns (oh, my!) Sherman had insurance-big bucks-and one of the Lincolns was big enough to accommodate the band. They were put up in a somewhat swanky hotel in Bel Aire and spent the next year laying down an A&R demo and first album at Music Lab, LA, during a time when my later colleague and buddy Skunk Baxter was doing studio work there supporting huge artists of the day (Melissa Manchester, Donna Summers…)

What could go wrong? Well, the lead singer-Ken’s brother-had recently had a baby and his wife decided it was put up or shut up time. There was a choice of signing a deal to produce a record and starting on tour fronting for well-known bands or coming home to momma. The tour would come with a divorce. When he opted for the latter, with him went all the rights to the songs and all the work that had been done. The rest is not history…

I’ve grinded through enough of the Hildebeast story at this point-so it’s a good time for a break for both of us-including dear reader who has been subjected to this extended ranting-but I’ve been thinking about this little “ditty” ever since I mentioned it in the first article. That was envisioned as a laundry list of Biden problems-the threat of which I’m not taking off the table, notwithstanding how depressing such an effort might be-but I thought it would be more in keeping with the Beast series to somewhat summarize what I’ve covered in the first 8 parts. So with apologies to Billy Joel (and a shout out to AFNN’s parody king-Albert Constantine, Jr.,) this is loosely timed to We Didn’t Start the Fire and obviously tongue in cheek…

HRC’s illegal server, got a problem need to warn her,

Barry doesn’t know about it, HRC glad

Comey has a special plan, usurping the justice man

Lynch is on the tarmac, have a nice day

Clinton talking grandkids, Lynch thinks she can keep it hid,

No ones gonna know about it, Orange Man Bad.

Someone leaked it to the press, round 2 of a great finesse

Comey works dismissal, on to next stage

Lynch must recuse herself, Comey takes it on himself,

Tells illegal things she did, makes it sound bad,

But she ain’t gonna hang today, email problem whisked away,

Barry on campaign trail, Orange Man Bad

We didn’t stop their lying, the swamp was always spinning,

All about the winning,

We thought it was a straight show, but the plan was power,

always fueled with dollars

Hillary hatched a new plan, gonna smear the Orange Man,

Lies spread like wildfire, Russians in play

Brennan briefed the boss about it, something must be done about it,

Gonna do a document, referral in play

Do it at a slow pace, this is not the time to race,

Flip the script for Reid to warn, Orange Man Bad

Reid gets word to Comey first, seems like story’s gonna burst,

Lamestream media in the can, Hillary okay,

Need to hatch another scam, got to smear that Orange Man,

John McCain has got a plan, Steele is in play

Chief of Staff has got to pee, dossier stole sneakily,

Got to get it into play, Orange Man Bad

We didn’t stop their lying, the swamp was always spinning,

All about the winning,

We thought it was a straight show, but the plan was power,

always fueled with dollars

Dark clouds on horizon, Hillary’s got a Wiener problem,

Southern District warns about it, emails in play

Strzok and Page concerned about it, meet with boss to talk about it,

Best if we don’t deal with it, things are okay

A month goes by and no solution, pressure mounts for absolution,

Comey has to write about it, Orange Man Bad

FBI is in a bind, lots of emails little time,

Comey adds a lot of slime, emails ain’t bad,

Comey once again usurps, clears the Beast with just some words,

Gets her to the finish line, justice is served

But soon there is a bigger problem, HRC can’t break the ceiling,

DJT much more appealing, Orange Man Bad

We didn’t stop their lying, the swamp was always spinning,

All about the winning,

We thought it was a straight show, but the plan was power,

always fueled with dollars

Time to hatch another plan, got to get that Orange Man,

Bodies buried in the swamp, all is okay

Flynn is target number one, he knows how to get it done,

got to get the takedown done, soon as we can

sneaking in to set a trap, treat him like he is a sap,

lie about what he said, Orange Man Bad

Gonna use the Logan Act, nothing there it’s all an act,

Take him out and make him pay, Barry’s on board

Carter Page another ruse, paint him as a Russian Stooge,

Gateway to the Orange Man, FISA okay

Gonna brief the Pee Pee Hoax, POTUS knows that it’s a joke

Leak it to the lamestream, Orange Man Bad

We didn’t stop their lying, the swamp was always spinning,

All about the winning,

We thought it was a straight show, but the plan was power,

always fueled with dollars

Mueller gonna get his man, will do everything he can

Working on the Orange Man, but it’s not there

Weissman wants to slime the man, dirty tricks and other plans

Make him wince and fold his hand, cheating okay

But Donald Trump’s a different cat, he punches hard and right back

Mueller is not up to that, Orange Man Bad

Swamp comes up with new plan, gonna now impeach the man

Make stuff up, smear him down, all is okay

But Orange man was there to stay, not a game that he would play,

Gonna punch you anyway, hard as he can

Nancy can’t set her teeth, Schumer stretching gotta reach,

Shot their wads, nothing stuck, Orange Man Bad

We didn’t stop their lying, the swamp was always spinning,

All about the winning,

We thought it was a straight show, but the plan was power,

always fueled with dollars

Nancy’s got a new plan, stick it to the Orange Man,

Insurrection word in play, scheme to take and win the day

Gonna let the RINO’s loose, no support-she cooked her goose

Biden’s dragging down the party, Trump is okay

Nancy’s got a new plan, stick it to republicans

Can’t allow their candidates, Orange Man Bad

HRC back on scene, not too late for her it seems,

Harris is a cackling fool, Trump is okay

Swamp is taking on more water, polls receding like disorder

Biden gonna talk about it, cringe for the day

Disasters breaking cross the board, election time will be reward,

Putin exposed all as frauds, Orange Man Bad

We didn’t stop their lying, the swamp was always spinning,

All about the winning,

We thought it was a straight show, but the plan was power,

always fueled with dollars

Max Dribbler

7 March 2022

Maxdribbler77@gmail.com

LSMBTG: Lamestream media echo chamber (LMEC-L) social media (SM) big tech tyrants (BT) and government (G)

Follow AFNN

Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAz…
Twitter: @AFNNUSA
GETTR: @AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
30  Patriot.Online: @AFNN