The Concert Room celebrates Billy Joel - Captain Jack live at Sigma Sound Studios 1972 and Vienna live at the Spectrum in 1986!

0:07 SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, welcome to the concert room inside the Philly Concert Experience. I'm your host, Bob Hill. The Concert Room is a podcast session dedicated to the performances, performers, bands, and artists who played on the stage at the legendary Philadelphia Spectrum Arena. And in this session, I'll feature an artist who needs no long introduction or kudos, Billy Joel. I have a two-parter today in this session that spotlights his career arc. Because I recently watched the Billy Joel documentary that is now streaming.

0:39 SPEAKER_00: And it is really, really good. I thought it was really fascinating. Uh because I wasn't always the biggest uh Joel fan, especially in the eighties as a kid. Uh because that decade for me started out with heavy metal and hard rock bands, uh the uh middle of the decade, uh you know, the glam bands, and then the end of the eighties, uh the shift in hard rock, heavy metal with uh bands like Jane's Addiction, G and R, and Soundgarden, it didn't really leave a lot of room for me or interest uh to listen to to the top 40 uh pop artists like Billy Joe, um Elton John, Whitney Houston, Madonna, and of course uh Michael Jackson.

1:21 SPEAKER_00: However, now that I'm older and I'm sort of working backwards in discovering music I missed out on. And uh with today's technology and media delivery capabilities like YouTube, TV, and online streaming services um and the music platforms, it really helps uh make it easy for all of us to discover classic artists that we grew up on, their music and especially their personal lives. Um so I've always heard the hits obviously from Billy Joel going back to the mid-70s. Yeah, my older sisters would uh you know put the albums on.

1:57 SPEAKER_00: But again, as a as a kid, a preteen, uh that was always kind of like grown-up music to me with grown-up themes. Uh but here we are today, and I'm happy there are recordings and media regarding Billy Joel, especially performing in Philadelphia. Because Billy and the city go way back, and we actually helped break him in the mainstream, which brings us to this performance that I'm going to play. But first, a backstory. Back in 1971, uh Billy Joel was a 22-year-old aspiring artist from Long Island. He released his first album, Cold Spring Harbor, which uh got no attention or airplay.

2:39 SPEAKER_00: And uh then one day in 1972, uh Philly music producer Dennis Wyland of local rock radio station WMMR. He launched a live WMR concert series from Philadelphia's Sigma Sound Studios, which is a legendary studio here. See David Bowie. Dennis learned about this uh young singer pianist named Billy Joel during a visit to New York. He invited Joel to do one of those WMR live broadcasts. Of course, Billy Joel accepted. What a great opportunity. So on April 15, 1972, Joel sat down at Sigma's piano. He and his band played through much of Cold Spring Harbor, including She's Got Away.

3:29 SPEAKER_00: But it was a new and previously unreleased song that really impressed Bill and WMMR's DJs, and that was Captain Jack. And in the following days and weeks, the station put its live Sigma recording of Captain Jack on constant rotation. So other stations on the East Coast called on, and before long, a lot of people were um, you know, uh calling up and and requesting this unreleased tune. Now, over at Columbia Records, legendary producer Clive Davis heard the buzz. He signed Joel to a contract, Joel released Piano Man, uh the next year, and the rest, as you know, is history and on to a legendary career.

4:17 SPEAKER_00: So again, uh Philadelphia, you know, started, uh helped, you know, break Billy Joel, which is this little performance in Sigma Sound Studios. And uh according to Joel, uh it had a tremendous ripple effect, um, this performance in in uh Sigma Sound. The song, you know, just took a life on its own. So, let's get to this historic performance that launched a legendary career for a young songwriter. We'll hear from WMMR DJ Ed Shockey on the intro of the series. And speaking of legendary, um Ed is sorely missed.

4:57 SPEAKER_00: He was a legendary shockee here in Philadelphia. He helped break uh not only Billy Joel, but for Springsteen and others. So here is this great performance of Captain Jack that started it all, performed by Billy Joel in the Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia on uh April 15th, 1972.

5:22 SPEAKER_01: Well, good evening. We are miraculously cross town once again at Sigma Sound Studios, and I'm Ed Jonathan. I'd like to welcome all of you here in the studio and all of you at home to WMR's live radio concert number eleven. So now let's welcome Billy Joel.

6:31 SPEAKER_03: Everybody knows something like this.

6:41 SPEAKER_03: You know, and they and they really just they don't know where anything is at. They read rolling stone, you know, from cover to cover. That's their whole life.

6:50 SPEAKER_03: That's their whole conversation. Drugs in a group, and you know, you must know people like that. And where I come from, there's a lot of people like that on Long Island. Uh but there's a lot of people like that all over. Anyway, songs called Captain Jack.

7:52 SPEAKER_06: Tired of living in your hostel. You like to find a little hole in the ground for a while.

8:10 SPEAKER_06: So you go to the village in your tie-dye jeans, and you stare at the junkies in the closet queens. It's like some pornographic magazine, and you smile.

8:41 SPEAKER_06: And take it to your special island, we'll get to find a tie.

8:53 SPEAKER_06: Just a little bit, you've got it's an island.

9:12 SPEAKER_06: Your sister's gone out, she's on a date, and you just sit at home and masturbate. Your phone is gonna ring soon, but you just can't wait for that call.

9:36 SPEAKER_06: So you stand on the corner in your new English clothes, and you look so polished from your hair down to your toes. Oh, but still your fingers gonna pick your nose after all that little punch you won't be smiling So you decide to take a holiday. You got your tape deck and your brand new Chevrolet.

10:50 SPEAKER_06: Oh, but there ain't no place to go anyway, except feel like they'll fight. What for?

11:03 SPEAKER_06: So you got everything all, but nothing's cool. They just found your father in the swimming pool, and you guess you won't be going back to school anymore.

11:25 SPEAKER_06: Yeah.

12:03 SPEAKER_06: So you play your albums, then you smoke your pot, then you meet your girlfriend in the parking lot.

12:16 SPEAKER_06: Oh, but still you're aching for the things you haven't got. What went wrong?

12:28 SPEAKER_06: And if you can't understand why your world is so dead, and why you've gotta keep in style and feed your head.

12:45 SPEAKER_06: And that's too low, wanna get you to get the biggest.

14:17 SPEAKER_00: According to him, quote unquote. They wanted to hear it over and over again, he remembers. Quote, it was uh the top requested item for the next two years. That's incredible. Two years of of of requesting this uh great performance. So now let's jump to October 13th, 1986.

14:45 SPEAKER_00: Uh first spectrum show was on December 6th, uh, 1977. And I believe it was at the Spectrum Theater. So the Spectrum concert capacity was about 18,000 people. But the Spectrum Theater was a venue for acts not big enough to fill the entire spectrum arena. Uh the stage was placed in the middle of the spectrum floor and the other half of the arena was behind uh the other half of the arena behind the stage was closed off with curtains, creating a uh theater like environment. So half the audience would still sell out.

15:23 SPEAKER_00: You still get to play you know, the spectrum and uh instead of a club. So a lot of bands and artists performed in this theater style at the spectrum including Bowie and Zappa. And in fact the doors, their only appearance at the spectrum was in the theater. I believe uh Billy Joel felt this was a great way to play the big arena, uh, but also sell it out uh before he moved on to the bigger venues like Madison Square Garden and the Forum. And of course Billy would come back the following year, 1978.

15:58 SPEAKER_00: And he played the Spectrum a total of 16 times. A lot of those engagements were multi-nights. So I pulled a nice performance from an October 1986 show, pilling the band in high form here and uh in the middle of the bridge tour. So it's one of my favorites. And it's a slower performance of Vienna. So here's Billy Joe on the spectrum stage on October 13th, 1986, performing Vienna.

16:29 SPEAKER_07: It's called Vienna Sunday, as a child.

16:50 SPEAKER_05: You so ambitions for children out, but then you're so small. Tell me why are you still so afraid Where's the fire what's the hurry about? Pull it out before you pull it out You got so much to do and only so many hours in a day You know that when the truth is told You can get what you want You can just get old You gotta Kick up before you even get halfway to When will you realize the always you're doing fine You can't be everything you wanna be all time yourself to me know you are you know you know we see we run the western That sounded great.

20:11 SPEAKER_00: Another sold out Spectrum crowd satisfied. Um set list on this tour uh was phenomenal, and the performances are nice and relaxed, but still full of high energy and spirit. Uh Billy and the band are in fine form here, mid-80s. Excellent. So hopefully you're able to see Billy Joel and this uh his wonderful band back in the day, or you know, try catching him coming around. He's still vibrant and uh out there. Um and again, pull up that documentary. Even if you're not a fan of Billy Joel, I mean at this point, how can you not be?

20:47 SPEAKER_00: But um it is really fascinating into uh his life, his music, and uh, you know, the impact of uh culture and uh his music on it. So uh these two great performances I think show how an up and coming young singer, uh songwriter with uh one album under his belt, you know, was able to break open and go on to sell our concerts uh all throughout the following decades and sell millions of copies of his albums. Uh truly a legendary career. So thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this session. One more to go to close out that season one.

21:25 SPEAKER_00: Please feel free to leave a comment and of course subscribe and tell a friend. And I'll see you again in the concert room.