Billy Joel: Turnstiles [LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This reissue comes with a printed inner sleeve. Turnstiles is the first Billy Joel album made with his own touring band, and Barbra Streisand covered "New York State of Mind" a year later, opening his songs to a much wider audience.

This edition

• Printed inner sleeve
• Lyrics included
• Stereo mix

About the album

Billy Joel made this album twice. The first sessions took place at Caribou Ranch in Colorado, with Elton John's rhythm section of Nigel Olsson and Dee Murray and producer James William Guercio; then Joel took the producer's chair himself, went home to New York and recorded the whole thing again from start to finish.

This time he brought his own Long Island crew, saxophonist Richie Cannata plus Liberty DeVitto, Russell Javors, Howie Emerson and Doug Stegmeyer from the band Topper, and the songs are full of the city he'd come back to. "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" borrows its beat from the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," "Summer, Highland Falls" turns wistful, "James" is a composite portrait of people he knew, and "Prelude/Angry Young Man" opens with Joel hammering the piano to mimic the drums on "Wipe Out." AllMusic singled out the variety, from the bouncy "All You Wanna Do Is Dance" to the tongue-in-cheek "I've Loved These Days."

The cover was shot on the uptown platform at Astor Place, each passenger standing in for a song; the girl in headphones is "All You Wanna Do Is Dance." Not bad going for a subway platform, which normally inspires nothing more lyrical than a sigh.

Also at Kops: more Billy Joel on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19075939191), a reissue of the 1976 album.