It was Billy Joel's make or break album. And he didn't even know it at the time.

Billy Joel’s early career had its ups and downs.  Mostly downs.  “Piano Man” had been a modest hit, but it didn’t really generate a following.  The next two albums got some attention, but in spite of the songs they contained (“The Entertainer,” “New York State of Mind”), they still didn’t sell.

In a 2008 interview published on MassLive.com, Billy himself has marveled that his record company, Columbia Records, didn’t drop him after such a poor showing.  “Can you imagine in this day and age somebody putting out four albums and not really having any commercial sell-through for a record company, and them not dropping the artist?  I found out after the fact that had The Stranger not been a successful selling album. they probably would have dropped me from the label.”

But perhaps not knowing what was at stake made it possible for Billy and his musicians to make the record that they did.

Producer Phil Ramone was recruited to bring the new album into the world.  With a Grammy Award for producing Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years, Phil had the right credentials.  And Billy appreciated his help turning a handful of ideas into a complete record.

“I had ‘Just The Way You Are,’ but we did not have the right drum pattern for it.  We had it as a cha-cha which made us hate the song right off the bat.

“‘Scenes From An Italian Restaurant’ might not have been completed as an arrangement.  We had fragments of the song like the middle section which we called ‘The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie.’

“I had ‘Only The Good Die Young’ which we had as a reggae originally.

“I think we only had three or four songs completed before we went into the studio which is par for the course for me.  Phil was helpful in terms of helping us write the songs.”

And not just writing them, but in steering Billy and his band to find the magic in the music.

“Being a producer is partly like being a psychologist to an extent,” Billy explained.  “You've got to know the dynamic of the moment and how to get people through a dead spot or a tough situation.  [Phil] would keep us in the studio by ordering Chinese food.”  And according to Billy, it was the little moments like that which “would help me and the band work out any difficulty we were having.”

But the real bottom line is the album they all created together.    

“We had fun!  You're supposed to have fun when you're recording.  If you're not having a good time it's going to show in the recordings.”