Recording “Christmas in Fallujah” with Billy Joel

As Billy’s long-time keyboardist, David knew just what to do at Hyde Street, laying down everything from organs to strings to ethnic samples. Here’s what he had to say about the song and session.

What instruments did you use in the studio to record “Christmas in Fallujah”?
I used a Kurzweil K2600, a Motif ES7, MOTU’s Ethno Instrument, Kontakt, and a B-3 through a 122 Leslie that they had in the studio. It was such a great organ — it sounded amazing.

Synth strings play a big part in the track. How did you come up your sounds? What sources are they coming from?
The main string patch on the chorus is something I created on the 2600 with three octaves of strings layered with a modified Motif violin patch. Then I exactly doubled the phrasing of the guitars.

The string sound leading into bridge is a layer of the 2600 and a Motif string sound I built for the song. I doubled it with a sample of a pungi, which is the snake charmer instrument, and played it using Kontakt.

For the verse, I was looking for an Arabic phrase, something authentic, something that I wouldn’t have played or thought of playing myself. So I went into the Ethno Instrument library and found a short phrase that was in the middle of one of their extended phrases — just a segment — and I thought it would work. I changed the tempo, truncated it on both ends, and used that. It gives it that Arabic feel, and it comes in right after the lyric about Pakistan.

How do you use your rig to play the song live?
When I do it live, for organ, I’m using Native Instruments B4 II from my Receptor through a 147 Leslie for the chorus. The verses have a completely different organ sound, so I use the Hammond XK3 for that.  The string sounds and samples are played from a K2600r using a Motif ES7 and a K2661 as controllers.

There are a lot of layers and lots of different parts. So the challenge was mapping it out and figuring out how to play all the parts live. Along with the organ in the chorus, I’m actually playing a sample of the main guitar and string line blended together as it is in the mix. It’s split into two samples — it’s the same phrase a fifth apart, but the second repetition sustains on the last note. I’m also playing some background vocal samples to create the impression of more singers. When I play samples live, I try to split them into the shortest phrases possible. This way the band can breathe and the tempo can fluctuate a little, but as long as the samples are short enough, it’ll still be close enough to work.

There’s also a Christmas carol I play at the end. It’s after the hallelujahs — “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” — I play that with a cello section sound.

What was the pre-production process like?
Billy came in with the raw idea and a finished lyric. He played it for the band at sound check and we jammed it out before a couple of shows. It evolved once we got in the studio, where we got sounds and fine-tuned the arrangement. This whole thing happened so fast — within two weeks of Billy showing us the song we were recording it, before it was finished the president of iTunes came to the studio, heard the song and liked it, and two weeks later it was released.

Billy provided direction, but gave us free reign to create. But he came up with the harmonic minor line that leads into the bridge, and it was his idea to play “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” over the repeating choruses at the end.

How did Billy end up neither playing nor singing on the final track?
Well, Billy did do some background vocals, but for the lead he felt that he wanted a young voice, someone who, under different circumstances, was young enough to have been in Iraq himself. That was the appropriate voice for the song. He didn’t play piano because the sound of the song didn’t call for it.

What was your biggest challenge while working on this track?
Based on the imagery of the lyrics, I wanted to find a way to meld together a rock tune with some Middle Eastern elements without it sounding hokey. I wanted to try to create an atmosphere that would support the mood of the lyrics.

It was a lot of fun recording it. The band plays so tight and there’s a lot of chemistry.  It was great to bring that into the studio — especially with the inspiration of a new song from Billy.