Billy Joel - "The Entertainer"

If you clock out that 45, you'll see it's longer than 3:05. Still shorter than the LP, but they obviously labeled the time as 3:05 as a joke, because of the lyric.

Another note about the 45 edit of The Entertainer: It contains an edit at about the 1:01 mark at the end of the "go their merry way" lyric on the tail end of the word "way". It picks up at the tail end of the last (different) word of another lyric later in the song (I don't remember the lyric). I had assumed it was a remix and wouldn't work as a straight edit. But I tried the edit and it's seamless. One of those edits that mysteriously works.

sriv94 wrote: If you get a chance to dig it out and/or listen to it, can you post exactly where the edit occurs for those of me who may want to try to replicate it?

At approximately the 1:01 mark, where he sings the word "way", just after the bass drum beat, start your edit point exactly where the synthesizer riff begins. Place your ending edit point at about 1:26 mark, where the synthesizer riff begins on the word "same". Delete the :25 or so seconds in between those 2 points, and there you have it.

Hope that helps.

sriv94 wrote: The edit does work, but it's still not the 45 version. Chendagam's dub of the 45 includes what sounds like steel guitars underneath the verse that leads into the edit. The LP version as I have it (from GH1&2) doesn't have any additional guitar aside from the acoustic guitar strummed throughout. So it seems there are mix and/or instrumentation issues as well and the 45 can't be replicated from the LP (unless the GH1&2 version was an underdub).

You're right; I never noticed the steel guitar before. I was using the GH1&2 version as well. I'll have to dig out one of my other Billy Joel CDs and see if the mix is the same as GH1&2.

Well, "eleven" doesn't rhyme with much beside "heaven" and "seven", so I guess I see why Billy wrote "they cut it down to 3:05". (And of course, at the time he wrote this song, he had no idea how much they'd cut it down to ... or if they even would!)