Billy Joel Drummer Liberty DeVitto on "The Nylon Curtain"
One of the best albums in Billy Joel's storied career turns 40 this year. I caught up with his legendary drummer to dive into it.
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. This issue was an absolute joy to write, because, prior to writing it, I had the honor of talking to a personal musical hero of mine — drummer Liberty DeVitto. A member of the Long Island Music Hall of Fame, Liberty spent 30 years as part of one of the best and biggest bands in rock and roll. But, because that band was backing up one of the most successful solo artists of all time, a lot of people don’t know who he is. DeVitto’s drumming was the backbone of singer/songwriter Billy Joel’s best songs and albums.
Liberty was kind enough to agree to talk to me about one of my favorite Billy Joel albums, which happens to turn 40 years old this year. And that’s plenty of preamble for this week. Let’s just get to it.
Billy Joel has always been one of my favorite recording artists. It seems like I’ve known his name since I first started listening to rock and pop music as a kid. His songs were all over the radio. You know them: “Piano Man,” “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” “Just the Way You Are,” “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” “Only the Good Die Young,” “She’s Always a Woman,” “Honesty,” “My Life,” etc. Those and several more were among Billy’s songs that I heard on the radio. I liked them all, but it took a few years for me to get around to buying his records.
It’s odd to think this, but maybe he was on the radio so much that it never occurred to me to actually own a Billy Joel album. That changed in the early 1980s. I had heard “Allentown” on the radio and was captivated by it. There was something about the combination of the seriousness of the lyrics, the bouncy, hook-laden melody, and my general awareness of Allentown as a real place — no doubt from seeing its name on signs for roads leading there while traveling between my home in Ohio and visiting relatives in New Jersey. Knowing that “Pressure” was on the same album, I got Billy’s The Nylon Curtain album when it came out.
The Nylon Curtain was released on Sept. 23, 1982, which was just days after my 16th birthday. I had been transitioning from records to cassette tapes and I got The Nylon Curtain on cassette. My memory is a bit fuzzy these days, but I know I got Billy’s 52nd Street album right around the same time. I proceeded to play the hell out of both albums and they remain among my favorite Billy Joel records to this day. Part of that is the imprint that first albums have a tendency of making on a person. But after years of acquiring and listening to Billy’s entire catalog, I think that imprint matters less and the quality of both albums matters more. I have previously ranked both of these albums among my top four Billy Joel albums, and, on any given day, either of them could occupy any of the top four spots.
With The Nylon Curtain celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, I reached out to Liberty DeVitto, Billy’s longtime drummer, to discuss this excellent record. Liberty spent 30 years in Billy’s band and played on 13 platinum Billy Joel albums that sold in excess of 150 million copies. They represent Billy’s best work in a considerable and impressive career, and part of the magic of those albums lies in his core band — DeVitto, multi-instrumentalist Richie Cannata, guitarist Russell Javors, and bassist Doug Stegmeyer. Billy’s band primarily came from DeVitto’s Long Island-based band, Topper.
“Myself, Doug Stegmeyer, Russell Javors, and a fellow named Howard Emerson, who played on Turnstiles with Billy, were a band called Topper before we got with Billy,” DeVitto said. “Doug Stegmeyer got the gig. He went out to California on the Streetlife Serenade tour. On that tour, Billy decided he wanted to move back to New York and he wanted a New York-style drummer.
“I had met Billy when I was younger — not really met him, just passed in the dark — his band, the Hassles, and my band, New Rock Workshop played in the same club. He knew my drumming and I knew his singing, and he played Hammond organ at the time, he didn’t play a regular keyboard. When he asked Doug, ‘Do you know any drummers?’ Doug said, ‘Well, you know the guy.’ So, Topper eventually became the Billy Joel band through the album Turnstiles, with the inclusion of Richie Cannata on sax.”
Joel embarked on an amazing run of albums once the guys from Topper and Cannata became his core band, releasing Turnstiles (1976), The Stranger (1977), 52nd Street (1978), and Glass Houses (1980), although Emerson only played guitar on the first of those and was then replaced by David Brown.
Cannata left prior to the recording of The Nylon Curtain, taking a key component of Billy’s band away after four consecutive smash hit albums. That move turned out to give The Nylon Curtain a bit of a different sound because Cannata wasn’t really replaced for recording the album. Suddenly, there was a lot less saxophone.
“Well, it was strange because we were a tight-knit group,” DeVitto said of the vibe at the time. “Richie left because he had so many other things going on. He had opened his own studio. He was playing with the Beach Boys and stuff like that. They offered him a big deal and it was time to make a decision. So, he kind of left and we were left holding the bag on The Nylon Curtain. And if you notice, there’s not a whole lot of sax until (the last track) ‘Where’s the Orchestra?’ on the reprise of ‘Allentown’ at the end.”
The Nylon Curtain was recorded in the winter of 1981 and spring of 1982. The recording took place at both Mediasound and A&R studios in New York City.
“They had sold the A&R building. That’s where all the other albums were recorded,” DeVitto said. “They knew they were going to tear it down to build this new building there. So, we were looking for another studio and Mediasound was a church that was converted into a studio. But it sounded good. What Billy looked for in a studio is that after we record the song, will all the guys in the band be able to fit in the studio when we listen back? Some control rooms are very small, but Media had a nice big (control) room and a big room that we could play in. A&R had that too. It was nice.”
Joel composed nine tracks for The Nylon Curtain that loosely hold together thematically, although not conceptually. Much of the record is based on the shared experiences of Billy’s generation. Although he had written “story songs” throughout his career, The Nylon Curtain marked the beginning of a shift to more socially conscious lyrics. Joel put himself, as narrator, into the shoes of groups of people to tell stories from their perspectives. Two songs on The Nylon Curtain — “Allentown” and “Goodnight Saigon” — began the trend, and another well-known hit, “Downeaster Alexa” from Joel’s 1989 Storm Front album, are notable examples of this method of songwriting.
The song “Allentown” kicks off the album, with lyrics describing the plight of the American steelworker in Pennsylvania. The story is really about the nearby town of Bethlehem, but Allentown fit better because the song was originally intended to be about Levittown, New York, near where Joel grew up, but the song really took off after changing the location.
“That was really Billy’s first political voice,” DeVitto said. “‘Allentown’ was a big one. It started ‘Well we’re living here in Levittown,’ and he had nothing to say about Levittown. And then when he got Allentown, it was about the steel worker.”
The song details the aspirations of the blue-collar workers who watched their American dreams turn to dust with the decline of Bethlehem Steel. The industrial sounds, such as a factory whistle and the sound of manufacturing steel ingots, add the perfect atmosphere to the song and the band got creative in the studio as well. Small percussion instruments in hard-shell cases were shaken to provide a unique sound.
“When you hire things from SIR, Studio Instrument Rentals, when you want percussion stuff, it comes in a big black case,” DeVitto explained. “In this case, there’s tambourines and maracas, and all kinds of shakers and cowbells and everything like that. So, I had picked them up and we were looking for that pile driver sound. There is one that was sampled that’s on there.”
“But, I said ‘Listen to this one,’” he said, miming the shaking of a case. “I would jump in the air and come down with the two cases and it would go ‘kkkkkksshhh’ and it would sound great! So, I had to do it during the song. My arms were stiff after because the cases were heavy. I had to time myself to jump before it was time to hit (the sound), because they had to hit when I hit the floor. And then, when it was time to open the cases, everything (inside) was smashed.”
“Laura” is one of the great songs in the Billy Joel catalog that wasn’t a hit but is widely considered by his fans to be a highlight of The Nylon Curtain. On the surface, the song seems to be about a toxic relationship with a girl, but it was written with Billy’s mother in mind. The song is packaged in music that pays tribute to the Beatles, both vocally and instrumentally, and DeVitto’s drumming is a highlight.
“That whole album is a tip of the hat to the Beatles, because that’s who we grew up listening to, and ‘Laura’ comes the closest, I think, to a Beatles song,” DeVitto said. “It’s a real John Lennon tune. And everybody thinks it’s about another girl. It’s not. It’s about (Billy’s) mother, it’s just the syllables fit perfectly. Lau-ra, mo-ther. It was really fun to play that one because we could be the Beatles for that tune. ‘Laura’ is definitely my favorite one on the album. I listen to it and I go, ‘I can’t believe that’s us.’”
The guitar work by Brown channeled George Harrison and DeVitto said he tried to emulate Ringo Starr, with an immaculate drum sound thanks to the studio engineers under the direction of producer Phil Ramone.
“Laura” is also notable for Joel dropping a rare swear word. Billy uses an f-bomb.
Here I am, feeling like a fucking fool.
Do I react the way exactly she intends me to?
Joel tried a number of less explicit words in that spot during the writing and recording of the song but nothing else worked, or had the right amount of emphasis, so the f-bomb stuck.
The album’s first single was “Pressure,” which is another track that allows DeVitto’s drumming to shine. Joel layers synthesizer overdubs in the song to create a frantic sound that mimics the feelings of anxiety one experiences when dealing with the titular pressures and responsibilities of adult life. There’s an odd keyboard solo in the middle that approximates car horns as if the narrator is stuck in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic.
“I remember driving in the car with Billy into the city to go to the recording session,” DeVitto said. “And he said, ‘I have this song,’ and he played a cassette.”
DeVitto said that Joel warned him during playback not to think of a Russian wedding song, with a “hey!” punctuating each synth run, but he knew that the synthesizer part was memorable from the song’s earliest stages of development.
Side 1 of The Nylon Curtain stands as one of the best album sides — possibly the very best — of Billy Joel’s catalog, and it ends with the seven-minute “Goodnight Saigon,” a song that details what soldiers went through in Vietnam. Joel didn’t fight in the war and DeVitto was rejected after failing his Army physical, but the band captures so much across those seven minutes. There’s a sampled helicopter sound, haunting quiet parts, and suddenly loud parts that crash down on the listener. And the chorus (And we would all go down together) sounds simultaneously tragic and hopeless, yet somehow uplifting at the same time. The entire band sang the chorus together, with DeVitto ad libbing a line (“You’re all right, Sarge!”) that was too far down in the mix and had to be re-recorded.
It was a song that had seeds planted during recording of a prior album but hadn’t taken root until later.
“The song ‘Goodnight Saigon,’ we had worked on it the album before, which was Glass Houses,” DeVitto said. “(Billy) was playing it but it was more a thought of World War II. And it wasn’t until he spoke to a friend of his, who was in Vietnam (that it changed). I think that song is us saying we were very fortunate that we didn’t go — I had to go for my draft physical and I was rejected by the Army — and a lot of guys didn’t go and we feel bad that somebody else took our spot and maybe didn’t come back.”
The lyrics captured a particular moment for DeVitto, who, along with his friends, lived in dread of receiving a draft notice in the mail.
“I remembered immediately getting the letter, what it was like,” he said. “Going to the beach, where my father was, and telling him he fought the war to end all wars and throwing the letter at him. And he told me, ‘Go for the physical, they probably don’t even want you.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I just told a guy who lost his brother in that war that he fought — and jumped out of airplanes — that he wasted his time!’”
The lyrics also reminded DeVitto of a friend from school, who had served in Vietnam.
“I walked into a bar one day and he had come home from Vietnam,” he said. “And he had ears on a chain around his neck. Viet Cong ears. I was like, ‘Wow, what is happening here?’ My sister married a gentleman, and his brother was a door gunner on a helicopter, and he told all those stories about how when they didn’t see anything they just shot cows and stuff on the way home. It was really scary to hear those stories. And every time I said ‘I didn’t go,’ all those vets would always say ‘You’re better off that you didn’t. You’re lucky that you didn’t.’”
“Goodnight Saigon” was different than other songs about that particular war. It showed empathy for those who fought and what they went through, rather than just serving as a protest or giving the usual “war is bad” message. It was also an odd choice for a single, but it reached No. 56 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and hit the top spot in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Side 2 kicks off with “She’s Right on Time,” a love song (more or less) done in the style of Steve Winwood’s former band, Traffic. DeVitto again shines on this song with excellent drum sounds. This song can be a bit jarring when heard any time of year other than December, with its Christmas references.
“I told Billy, ‘Give me a song that starts like Winwood when he did ‘Colored Rain,’’” DeVitto said, referring to how Winwood opens with a loud vocal prior to the music coming in. “He had to put that little piano intro in the beginning (before breaking into the sudden vocal).”
After the love song, Joel goes thematically in the opposite direction on “A Room of Our Own,” a blues rocker about needing one’s space in a relationship. The song goes through some twists and turns and DeVitto actually lost his place while recording it.
“I told Billy, ‘I made a mistake, can we do it again?’ And he listened back to it and said, ‘No, that’s great,’” DeVitto said.
I couldn’t honestly tell you what “Surprises” is about, but I find it an enjoyable song. The arrangement is fairly sparse and again DeVitto’s drums kind of steal the show. The vocal melody and piano is haunting and I find the lyrics a bit inscrutable but I could listen to the drums and Billy’s vocal all day.
The second overtly Beatles-esque song on the album is “Scandinavian Skies,” a song about a drug experience in Amsterdam. As a kid, I thought this was about some kind of World War II aerial battle with DeVitto’s military march drumming and a few flight references. At times it sounds sinister and other times jaunty. It channels some psychedelic Beatles vibes and it sounds unlike anything else Joel had ever done before.
“When we first recorded it, it was just me, Doug, and Billy on the Hammond organ,” DeVitto said. “I think this is our ‘Day in the Life’ with all the different parts and stuff. The part ‘On the plane,’ They wanted it really, really big, so I had to play the same fill three or four times. And I don’t read music, so I had to remember what I did. Usually when I do something I don’t remember what I did.”
There’s a lot going on in the song and it stands out as one of the more remarkable deep tracks in Joel’s catalog.
The album closes with “Where’s the Orchestra?,” a metaphor for reaching the top and wondering why things aren’t the way one imagined they would be. It’s told from the perspective of someone who goes to a stage play rather than the musical they expected to see.
Joel ends the song with a slow reprise version of the “Allentown” melody in a minor key. It ties the end of the album back to the beginning beautifully, repeating the device Joel used to great effect with the whistle at the end of The Stranger album.
“The song that I didn’t realize how great it was until years later was ‘Where’s the Orchestra?’ It’s like, ‘here I am at the top of the heap now, and I thought this was going to be a great play with music,” DeVitto said. “Where’s the orchestra? There’s nothing here! This is my big night on the town. What happened?’”
The nine songs hold up well after 40 years. Aside from the synthesizer sounds used on “Pressure,” The Nylon Curtain doesn’t come off as dated four decades later. It’s a classic album in an iconic artist’s catalog. It’s also an important album in my life, as it was one of the first cassettes I attempted to wear out, and — along with 52nd Street — it was the gateway to my passion for Billy’s music. While Joel himself generally gets all the credit — and with good reason, as the main composer — The Nylon Curtain and other classic albums in his catalog might not have turned out nearly as well without DeVitto, Stegmeyer, and Javors.
You can learn more about the making of classic Billy Joel albums and DeVitto’s life in the drummer’s 2020 autobiography Liberty: Life, Billy, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The book is available from Hudson Music and can be purchased on Amazon and other online retailers. It’s also available on Kindle and as an audiobook, narrated by Liberty himself.
If you missed my Billy Joel album rankings, here they are from least to most favorite:
My entire (quite enjoyable) conversation with the legendary Liberty DeVitto can be seen in the video below or heard on Episode 64 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast, which is available now at all major podcast platforms. In addition to The Nylon Curtain, Liberty discussed more about his background and influences, working with other artists like Meat Loaf, Paul McCartney, and Carly Simon, the latest news about his other bands (The Slim Kings and The Lords of 52nd Street), writing his autobiography, being part of the Hired Gun documentary, and more.
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