THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

215-Billy Joel-Piano Man.

1973-It has never charted in the UK.

Best Bit-At 0.08. The piano’s great, but what about the ‘Dylanesque’ harmonica…man.

William Martin Joel (see also best songs 810) was born on May 9th, 1949, in New York City, United States, he has sold in excess of 150 million records worldwide, making him one if the best selling artists of all time. In America he is the sixth best selling act, and the third best selling solo artist ever in that country. Billy Joel has released 13 studio Albums between 1971-2001, and 61 singles between 1971-2008, and although he doesn’t record any new material, he is still active touring. In America on the Billboard Hot 100, 33 of his singles have reached the top 40, with three making Number 1, while in the UK, 16 of his songs have reached the top 40, with the most successful being ‘Uptown Girl,’ which made Number 1 in 1983.

‘Piano Man’ was written by Billy Joel, and it is also the title track of his second studio Album which was first released in November 1973. It is now considered to be his signature song, and the one he nearly always closes his concerts with. The song and it’s parent Album were both produced by Michael Stewart (1945-2002) who had previously been a founding member of the American Folk/Rock group ‘We Five,’ who are best remembered for their 1965 American Number 3 hit ‘You Were on My Mind.’

Billy Joel’s debut Album ‘Cold Spring Harbor’ released in November 1971 had failed to capture the public’s imagination, and on top of that Joel was very disappointed with the Album’s production, as there had been an error in it’s mastering causing the songs to play slightly too fast, with Joel joking that he sounded more like ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ than himself. On top of that he found himself naively tied into a very unfair recording contract with his record label ‘Family Productions,’ and he was having to higher lawyers to get him out of it. So while he was contemplating his next move he relocated from New York to Los Angeles where he worked in a bar in L.A. called the ‘Executive Room’ as a piano player for six months between 1972-1973, in order to pay the bills.

Billy Joel wrote ‘Piano Man’ based on some of the people who frequented the bar, with some of their stories being fictionalised. For example ‘John at the bar’ was really the bartender, who worked shifts during Joel’s stints at the piano. The character ‘Paul is a real estate novelist,’ refers to a real estate agent called Paul who would sit in the bar each night instead of working on the book he would state he was going to write that would become the next great American novel. ‘The waitress who is practising politics’ is Billy Joel’s first wife Elizabeth Weber, who had travelled to Los Angeles with him, and worked in the bar also to help make ends meet, they would marry in 1973, and divorce in 1982. Billy Joel has spoken about his time at the Executive Room,’It was a gig I did for about six months just to pay rent. I was living in LA and trying to get out of a bad record contract I’d signed. I worked under an assumed name, ‘The Piano Stylings of Bill Martin’, and just bulls–ted my way through it. I have no idea why that song became so popular, it’s like a karaoke favourite. The melody is not very good, and very repetitious, while the lyrics are like limericks. I was shocked and embarrassed when it became a hit, but my songs are like my kids, and I look at that song and think, ‘My kid did pretty well.”

‘And the piano sounds like a carnival, and the microphone smells like a beer, and they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar, and say “Man what are you doing here?”