Billy Joel - Cold Spring Harbor (1971)

When Billy Joel put out Cold Spring Harbor, his first long play record as a solo artist (after having performed in some small-time bands), on a small label in November 1971, it was mixed so poorly that his voice was played back a semitone too high, making him sound like Alvin the Chipmunk. Columbia issued an extensively reworked version of the Cold Spring Harbor album in 1983, having corrected the speed of Joel's vocals, shortened the lengths of all ten of its tracks, removed some orchestrated backup, and overdubbed synthesizers to make it sound more contemporary and to clean it up. This re-done version of Cold Spring Harbor, though, wasn't much of an improvement.

Fans of Billy Joel who discovered him through Turnstiles and The Stranger and appreciated his bright melodies and his lyrical sense of irony won't find any of that on his debut album. The sound was only part of the problem; the material itself was mostly dross. The music is as dreary to listen to as the cover is to look at, even in its cleaned-up form. Joel's piano sounds nothing like a carnival - it sounds more like a wake, really - and his singing, particularly on ballads like "Why Judy Why," is as morose and self-pitying as the songs themselves. There are some songs on this record that have something resembling energy - "You Can Make Me Free" and "Everybody Loves You Now" are about the only tracks here that conjure up a pop-rock sound closer to the rock side - but Joel undercuts himself with his own overall stodginess. Only the opening cut, "She's Got a Way," a live version of which was a hit for Joel in 1982, and "Falling Of the Rain" show hints of what Joel would accomplish in his late-seventies work. The original studio version of "She's Got a Way" is moody and (over)relaxed when compared to the live version, but it does have a certain charm that the rest of Cold Spring Harbor lacks.

Billy Joel has disavowed this album on many an occasion, and his negative assessment of it is likely to go unchallenged. He seemed to be disavowing it even as he was making it; on "Got To Begin Again," the closing song, he sings about how he sacrificed today by dreaming about tomorrow, and what a grand waste of time it was. Indeed; he seemed to be looking forward to future artistic triumphs and realized he wasn't laying the groundwork in the present to make those triumphs possible. (Joel would undermine himself as a star just as he did in his pre-fame days, but that's another issue.) "Got To Begin Again" was Joel's advice to himself; by 1973, he was at Columbia Records and beginning his career anew as if Cold Spring Harbor never existed. That makes sense, considering that most of its tracks were songs that should have stayed in the attic.