Okay, so apparently I was wrong about the last word about One More Day. Sam Tweedle draws an unexpected, but all too clear, line between Spider-Man and the Piano Man:
Well think about it. When Billy Joel first hit the music scene he was an angry and edgy piano player who sang cynical and dark, yet pretty, songs about losers and heartbreak. Then he becomes famous. Then he becomes rich. Then he marries Christie Brinkley. And once you’re rich and married to a supermodel you become happy. Suddenly you lose your edge and your singing Uptown Girl. Before you know it your no longer interesting. Well, this is what basically happened to Spiderman and that, my friends, is why so much unnecessary and radical change happened to the web-crawler and why, after twenty years, we no longer recognized him as our friendly neighborhood Spiderman.
Does this mean that “One More Day” was his “We Didn’t Start The Fire”?
January 9th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Joe Q made this analogy years ago.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:31 am
“Harry Osborn Mary Jane Gwen Stacy Marcy Kane
Doppelganger Venom Carnage and Mysterio
Daily Bugle Jackal’s clone Crusher Hogan Tombstone
Green Goblin Hobgoblin deals with Mephisto.”
January 9th, 2008 at 9:37 am
“Bitten by a radioactive piano” might make for a nice absurdist origin story, but otherwise I don’t care much for the analogy. Billy Joel was pretty mediocre to start with.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
By that logic, Billy Joel would have had to start being good again once he stopped being married, which wasn’t the case. He just stopped making pop music.
January 9th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
“BIll I believe this is killing me…
as the smile went away from his face…
but I KNOW I could be a movie star…
IF I COULD GET OUT OF THIS PLACE…”
January 9th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Strangely appropriate, then, that Weird Al wrote a Spider-Man-themed parody of “Piano Man.” (Al also wrote an unreleased song called “It’s Still Billy Joel to Me,” about how Billy Joel’s then-new style sucked. Not surprisingly, Billy Joel wouldn’t give him permission to release it.)
January 9th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Want a further connection? Check out the video for the song “A Matter of Trust” if you get the chance. There’s a small Spider-Man poster on a wall of the room the band is playing in.
I’m a big fan of Billy’s, though it’s been hard to stay one when he stopped making new music and let himself an oldies act (not to mention tabloid fodder, for his alcoholism).
January 9th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
BTW, I’ve heard Weird Al’s “It’s Still Rock & Roll To Me” parody. Never released commerically, but it did get played on Dr. Demento years and years ago.
I like Al, but he was wrong. Glass Houses certainly wasn’t Billy’s best album, but I wouldn’t say it totally sucked either. Almost 30 (!) years later, songs like ISR&RTM, You May Be Right and Sometimes a Fantasy (oh, oh, oh, oh!) are still classics. Weird Al’s still that guy who does funny parody songs and does equally silly movie cameos now and then.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Randy, even if you don’t care for Joel’s music. Over 100 million albums sold, several dozen hit singles, and a guy who can still sellout the largest arenas more than 30 years after his first hit isn’t shabby.
Hell, he’s been covered by artists as diverse as Sinatra, Barry White, Garth Brooks and the Beastie Boys. I don’t care for any of those people, but that’s pretty amazing too.
Not many newer artists who are ever gonna be able to make any of those claims above.
He didn’t suck after he got married (We Didn’t Start the Fire and Uptown Girl aside), and neither did Spidey (Clone Saga and Sins Past aside, as I understand it).