| Scenes from an Italian Restaurant |
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The song looks back at the teenage years where the popular kids in school seemed to have had it all made back then and their future planned out perfectly. 20 years later, looking back, it seems as though things did not turn out quite the way that everyone had anticipated and even those who were not so popular in school years has had their day, gotten married, a great job and a successful lifestyle. Billy Joel, the musician, composed the music first as he usually did and slotted the words from several of his incomplete songs afterwards. It is very much inspired by the Beetle’s music of that era, in particular Abbey Road. It is said that the first line “Bottle of white, bottle of red” which is repeated a number of times during the song, comes from a real life situation when a waiter asked him his preference of wine. The reference to “Bottle of Red, Bottles of whites” is also a name of an Italian pizzeria in Long Island. The second part of the song where the rhythm changes, comes from a string of lyrics written even long before he wrote “The Stranger”. They have been reordered to fit in here. The song goes on to talk about the king and queen of the prom, Brenda and Eddie. These lyrics come from a tune he wrote called “The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie”. In an interview with USA Today Joel talks about the source of inspiration for this track. It was an Italian restaurant across from Carnegie Hall where the food was really good. Though he went there often, he was not recognized and often struggled to get a table. One day he popped in to the restaurant at a time that he was performing at Carnegie Hall and was recognized instantly. From then he didn’t have a problem getting a good seat. |