Billy Joel: Cold Spring Harbor [LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This EU-pressed LP is part of the Billy Joel 50 Years reissue campaign. The album holds the first versions of "She's Got a Way" and "Everybody Loves You Now," and a live "She's Got a Way" later reached No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100.

This edition

• Billy Joel 50 Years series
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

Every Piano Man has to start somewhere, and for Billy Joel it was a Long Island harbour a few miles from home. He was 22, signed to Artie Ripp's Family Productions, and the cover photo was taken on Harbor Road, looking about as far from Madison Square Garden as a young man can get.

Jimmie Haskell arranged the strings, Joe Osborn and Larry Knechtel took turns on bass, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow added steel guitar. Joel played piano, organ, harpsichord and harmonica. "She's Got a Way" is one of the tenderest love songs he ever wrote, "Everybody Loves You Now" shows off the rock and roll side, and "Tomorrow Is Today" and "Nocturne" point straight at the ambitious songwriter of the albums to come.

Both of those songs found a second life on his 1981 live album Songs in the Attic, and Columbia gave the record a fresh, speed-corrected mix in 1983. Naming your first album after the harbour down the road is either deeply sentimental or a very good way of never getting lost.

Also at Kops: more Billy Joel on vinyl · browse Singer-Songwriter

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19075939161), a reissue of the 1971 album.