On Friday HBO Max aired Part II of the Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes. Shortly after, Joel treated fans to a massive, surprise-released accompanying album of the same name, collecting over 150 tracks from across the Piano Man's extensive career. Along with some beloved hits and fan-favorite deep cuts, there are also studio outtakes, remastered demos, live recordings, instrumentals from the documentary's score, and more, some of which include spoken intros excerpted from the doc.
Joel previously released some demos for the first time with his 2005 box set My Lives, and now that more are out he's got even more archival material on the way: "Over the next year, Joel will also release a steady stream of archival rarities unearthed during the documentary’s creation via his YouTube channel," his label Sony writes in a press release.
Some of the many highlights on the And So It Goes tracklist include:
· The digital debuts of two songs from Joel's short-lived hard rock band Attila.
· Early cuts of "December Theme (December Song)" and "Everybody Has A Dream" (years before it was remade as a gospel tune for The Stranger) from the sessions for his 1971 debut album Cold Spring Harbor. (Famously, the album was mixed at the wrong speed, causing Joel to disown it because he sounded like a "chipmunk.")
· A studio recording of Joel and producer Phil Ramone doing "Just The Way You Are" and making instrumentation decisions in real time. Joel decides between piano and Fender Rhodes while Liberty DeVitto attempts to devise appropriate percussion.
· Early Shelter Island studio takes of The River Of Dreams highlights "The Great Wall Of China" and "No Man's Land" with noticeable stylistic and lyrical differences.
· "Air (Dublinesque) — Original Score," a new arrangement of the instrumental from his final album, the 2001 classical LP Fantasies & Delusions, that is credited to Joel as opposed to pianist Richard Hyung-ki Joo who played on the album. Likewise, new "score" versions of "She's Got A Way"/"And So It Goes," Gen Z fave "Vienna," and the odd pairing "Souvenir"/"Laura" (renamed "Roz's Theme" after Joel's mother).
· Live recordings of "Piano Man" and "Travelin' Prayer" with Steve Gadd and Tony Levin from the day he signed with Columbia Records.
There's a whole lot to parse through -- six and a half hours, to be exact. Stream the And So It Goes album below.
