American Songwriter is taking a look back at one of the songs from Billy's 1976 Turnstiles album, “I've Loved These Days.” Here is an excerpt from the magazine:

While it lacks the big hits of some of the albums that followed it, 1976’s Turnstiles was a turning point in the career of Billy Joel. Joel had recently left Los Angeles to return to New York and decided that he would take charge of his own sound for the first time in his career.

As he told actor Alec Baldwin in an interview in June of this year for New York’s WNYC, Joel’s decision to produce the album himself was one that was necessary at that point. “Turnstiles was recorded in New York,” he said. “I produced it myself, which, in hindsight, was probably not a good idea, but I didn’t want people telling me what band to work with, how to do the songs. I wanted to do it my way.”

That independence ties in well with the album’s overriding theme about the necessity of making decisive life changes as a means of growing up. Joel’s own cross-country move is reflected in songs like “New York State Of Mind” and “Say Goodbye To Hollywood.” Yet the album’s track, “I’ve Loved These Days,” might be the album’s most resonant song in that it hints at how such changes are often bittersweet.

Read more at American Songwriter.