Billy Joel Complete

By Billy Joel

I agree with what C. McF has written below...This book is worth buying, but as he says, a lot of Billy Joel's music is not actually that cool. Having said that he is still one of the most phenomenal composers around - the amount of songs he has written...

is incredible. They are all average or above average. I bought Volumes 1 and 2 and there are a few double ups, but hardly any. I don't think any musical library is complete without BJ's music - songs like Root Beer Rag are going to go down in history, especially considering the tempo that it should be played at. I recommend getting both volumes because it is too hard to decided between one of the other.

I have been a big fan of BJ for many years, so I have both Volume 1 and Volume 2. If you're looking for arrangements that sound close to his real music, Volume 1 is the choice, mostly because many of his later songs simply don't have much...

piano accompaniment. There really isn't one song on either "Glass Houses" or "An Innocment Man" that translates well to piano (especially with the right hand following the melody), and very few on "The Nylon Curtain". The only exception is "The Bridge", where I liked the arrangements for "Baby Grand", "This is the Time" and "Temptation." Volume 1, by contrast, has a lot to choose from..."Root Beer Rag", "Vienna", "Honesty," "Scenesfrom an Italian Restaurant", and to a lesser extent, "My Life," "52nd Street," and "Until the Night."

The standards are well notated, however there are a lot of very mediocre songs stuck in between. Playing the whole book, you see that BJ wrote a lot of stuff that is very average. The book itself is great, but only 1/3 of the songs are worth playing.

The music book, Billy Joel Complete, Vol. 2, is excellent. It is fun to play the exact music that can be heard on the CD. In fact, you can play along with the CD. The variety of music is extensive.