Sure, we know him now as the Piano Man responsible for hits like “My Life,” “It’s Still Rock & Roll to Me,” and “Uptown Girl.” But when Billy Joel was a younger lad he wanted to rock out with his, well, you know.
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Despite his band Attila’s reputation for bursting people’s eardrums, they released a self-titled acid rock/proto-metal album through Epic Records in 1970. The cover featured Joel and fellow rock warrior Jon Small dressed in medieval armor standing in a meat locker. Not subtle. Smirk-inducing. It did not fare well.
Wait, Billy Joel What-Now??
Some back story: Keyboardist Joel and drummer/singer Jon Small had played together in a Sixties band called The Hassles that was very much in sync with the sounds of the times. Joel wrote or co-wrote three songs on their self-titled debut in 1967, and he took over as singer for 1968’s Hour Of The Wolf, most of which was written by the future star and took a psychedelic turn. But once the group broke up, Small and Joel sought to keep creating music together. And they wanted it to be more intense.
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In 2014, Joel told biographer Fred Schruers: “We wanted to be a heavy band and we decided we were going to get heavy…somehow.” And to DJ Dan Neer in 1985, he recalled, “We had titles like ‘Godzilla,’ ‘March of the Huns,’ ‘Brain Invasion’. A lot of people think [I] just came out of the piano bar… I did a lot of heavy metal for a while. We had about a dozen gigs, and nobody could stay in the room when we were playing. It was too loud. We drove people literally out of clubs. [They would say,] ‘It was great, but we can’t stay in the club.’”
C’mon Now, the Worst Album Ever?
Attila has been trashed by some – AllMusic have hilariously cited it as the worst album of all time – and Joel didn’t like it in retrospect either, reportedly calling it “psychedelic bulls**t.” While it’s not radically different from hard rock of the time, it possesses an interesting distinction. Attila was a two-piece band with no guitar; Joel’s organ was run through a wall of distorted amplification. It was a novel and creative idea. The most fun track on the album is “Amplifier Fire / Part II: March of the Huns,” a loud blast of organ noise and big band-style tom rhythms. One YouTuber noted that “Brain Invasion” may have had the first blast beat on a rock album. Good catch. Not that anyone likely noticed back then.
Is Attila a masterpiece? Far from it, but it’s fun to check out, as are The Hassles. Fans of Joel’s piano tunes will likely run screaming from Attila. Both groups certainly display Joel’s early keyboard prowess.
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When speaking at Harvard University in October 1994, Joel was asked by an audience member asked what happened to his former band members, and of his Attila collaborator he said, “Jon Small is a very successful video clip producer and director. And he was actually my first ex-wife’s first husband. It’s all very incestuous… Jon Small is very active and a very good friend of mine and close friend. And because we both share an ex-wife, we have a lot of good stories to swap.”
All’s Well That Ends Well (for Billy, at Least)
In other words, Attila flamed out in classic rock ‘n roll fashion – reportedly, Joel had an affair with Small’s wife. Naturally, that led to their dissolution before they could sonically ransack many more concert venues. But years later they would collaborate when Small directed the videos for “Piano Man” (New Version), “Tell Her About It,” “That’s Not Her Style,” and “Baby Grand” (with Ray Charles) and the concert videos Live At Yankee Stadium (1990) and Live At Shea Stadium (2011).
A year after the failure of Attila, Joel would release his first solo album, 1971’s Cold Spring Harbor, which also did not sell well. By 1975, however, he’d land his first gold album with Piano Man, and by the late ‘70s he became a bonafide star with The Stranger and 52nd Street.
We do think it would be a hoot if Joel and Small did an intimate, one-night only reunion of Attila to please the fans who actually got a kick of discovering their long-lost album so many years later. But we won’t hold our dragon’s breath.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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