An Innocent Man

£3.78

1. Easy Money
2. Innocent Man
3. Longest Time
4. This Night
5. Tell Her About It
6. Uptown Girl
7. Careless Talk
8. Christie Lee
9. Leave A Tender Moment Alone
10. Keeping The Faith

Fifties rock n roll with an eighties feel - This was Billy Joel s big commercial hit album of the eighties - his Thriller, Brothers In Arms or Born In The USA. You know, the one the people bought who owned no other albums of his and wouldn t consider buying Glass Houses or 52nd Street for one minute. That said (and for that reason it has never been one of my own personal favourites) it is certainly an upbeat, immaculately-produced album that takes an interesting nineteen-eighties look at the doo-wop style of nineteen-fifties East Coast USA - guys huddling by braziers in the snowy evening singing in harmony and such romantic notions. Highlights in this regard are Easy Money, the hit single Tell Her About It, the Four Seasons pastiche Uptown Girl and Joel s own nostalgic look back at those classic years growing up in Keeping The Faith. There is also the classically-inspired (Beethoven I believe) of This Night, the sax-laden rock n roll of Christie Lee and the almost accepella harmony of The Longest Time. The title track brings things up to date with a bass-driven eighties-style ballad, in which Joel s voice has never sounded so intuitively seductive. Leave A Tender Moment Alone features some top notch harmonica from the late Toots Thielemans and Careless Talk is pleasant enough.This album drifts through the air like a spring breeze and is most enjoyable, although it is nowhere near Billy Joel s finest work, by any means.

Numero Uno - I am a massive Billy Joel fan and started out listening to my parents Bily Joel The Stranger album. I naturally progressed onto his next most successful album An Innocent Man. At first I was dissappointed.....how ignorent of me! I left this album for months until I had nothing to do and then I gave it another try!! As a 17 year old boy I found tracks that realted to where I was, where I had been and where I wantd to go!!Its an album that you just relate to. Every feeling that you ve ever had, but couldn t describe, is in this album! The girls you wanted to kiss,the girls you shouldn t have kissed and the girls you wish you could kiss again-its all in this album!!Its growing up put into music!!!Its also amazing music no matter what!!A must have

The classic album from 1983 - Billy is a classically trained pianist but he opted for a career in pop and rock music. He has proved to be a remarkably successful singer-songwriter. It is said that he has sold more albums within the USA than any other solo performer except Garth Brooks and Elton John. Neither Billy nor Garth ever achieved anything close to that level of success in Britain, but Billy has fared better than Garth (whose UK recognition level is quite modest) particularly due to this album, which yielded five UK hits including a number one (Uptown girl), a top five hit (Tell her about it) and a top ten hit (An innocent man). Given his American popularity, I m sure he did even better in his homeland but I haven t checked. The success of this album means that many tracks from it are available on his hits compilations but the other songs here are well worth a listen.Billy deserved all the success he had with this album as the songs are great - all of them, not just the hits - and the musicianship and production are also superb. The album opens with Easy money (a song about an optimistic gambler). Next comes the title track, which is not about a prisoner wrongly convicted - it is actually about a man protesting to his woman that he is innocent of the deeds she accuses him of, but she won t listen to him any more. Great stuff. In contrast, Billy sings about different aspects of new love in The longest time and This night.Billy gives a great piece of advice in Tell her about it - if you love somebody, make sure they know how much you appreciate them. Billy wrote Uptown girl as a tribute to his wife, but something went amiss in the years that followed because she is no longer his wife. Careless talk is a cautionary tale about gossip. Another cautionary tale follows in Christie Lee, about a woman who wants a man s possessions but doesn t want the man.Billy offers more advice in Leave a tender moment alone - however, it is clear that he has difficulty following his own advice. Billy closes the album with a song about his past, Keeping the faith.So this is an album that can appeal on many different levels - the brilliant, rhythmic music makes this great to play as background music but the lyrics are very thoughtful and will offer much pleasure to those wanting to give this album undivided attention.

Billy Joel- An Innocent Man - As a Teenager Billy Joel was influenced by many musicians and styles from Classical (Beethoven), 50 s Pop (James Brown) and the 60 s (Beatles). This is evidant in his Music. On this album the songs are a dedication to the Doo Wop and Soul Music of the 50 s, songs are remiscant of James Brown, Franki Valli and The Drifters. Here Joel gives us a collection of Easy Listening but well created songs of complete diversity.This was Joel s most popular album to date and was due to the fact that is sounded like he was having so much fun- well he was i n love with a famous Model at the time. this album contained at least 5 hits including 2 number 1 s (Uptown Girl, Tell her about it)The best Highlights are the Acapella number The Longest Time the poetic Ballad Leave a tender moment alone the tempations style An Innocent Man and the Soul sounding Easy Money and Keeping the Faith the latter an expalanation of the album which closes the album where Joel states The Good old days weren t always Good and tomorrow ain t as bad as it seems so he doesn t want to wallow in Nosatlgia, although there s no harm in reminiscing.Billy says he writes with no audience in mind he does what he does because he feels like it at the time. Joel has recorded Rock N Roll, Ballads and Jazz with a little bit more complexity but I don t think he recorded songs that were as fun and entertaining as he did on An Innocent Man. One to enjoy again and again.

Tribute to early rock, doo-wop in one of Joel s best albums - An Innocent Man, Billy Joel’s 1983 follow-up to the seminal Nylon Curtain, is a heartfelt tribute to the doo-wop and rhythm-n-blues based rock and roll music of the late 1950s and 60s. Its 10 songs vary in moods and tempos, ranging from the sassy “Easy Money” to the introspective title track, “An Innocent Man.” This retro atmosphere is reflected not only in most of its songs, the album’s front and back cover art has Billy and his band looking for all the world like a youth gang out of “West Side Story.” Musically speaking, Joel’s creative roots show a very eclectic set of influences. “An Innocent Man” has a pulsing bass undertone very similar to the classic doo-wop song “Under The Boardwalk,” the type of romantic vocal made famous by such groups as The Platters, The Regents, and The Diamonds. “This Night,” an ode to a friendship that turned into romance, not only has Frankie Valli-style vocals, but Billy Joel’s love of classical music shows in its chorus, which lifts its melody from Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. “For The Longest Time” is also in the style of classic doo-wop, down to the a capella background vocals and melodic constructions. (In fact, it was this song that inspired me to listen to real doo-wop, a genre of music that I find more stirring that what passes for pop songs today.) “Uptown Girl,” which was Joel’s musical Valentine to Christie Brinkley, with its poor-guy-loves-a-rich-girl storyline, Frankie Valli falsetto styling, and catchy hooks and backbeats (provided by ace drummer Liberty DeVito) is sunny and charmingly innocent.“Leave a Tender Moment Alone” is more contemporary, or at least more “timeless.” Its self-deprecating narrator paints a vivid mental image of the awkwardness we guys feel when we fall in love with a woman. “Even though I’m in love/Sometimes I get so afraid, I’ll say something so wrong/Just to have something to say.” How true! To me, the heart and soul of this album is the title track. It deals with the difficulties faced when entering a relationship with someone who has been hurt in the past by former lovers. “Some people stay far away from the door,” Joel observes in his opening line “if there’s a chance of it opening up/They hear a voice in the hall outside/And hope that it just passes by.” It’s both a warning and a plea. It warns about the danger of willful self-isolation (“Some people live with the fear of a touch/in the anger of having been a fool…), while making a case for redemption (“But I’ve been there and if I can survive/I can keep you alive/I’m not above going through it again…”). Maybe in the raunchy era of Britney and Christina, these songs (like the doo-wop songs that inspired them) are corny and wear their heart on their sleeve. But in these uncertain times, maybe corniness and sentimentality are sorely needed.

• 52nd Street
• The Stranger
• Storm Front
• Glass Houses
• Piano Man