Piano Man (song)

For the Billy Joel album of the same name, see Piano Man (album).

"Piano Man"
Single by Billy Joel
from the album Piano Man
B-side	"You're My Home"
Released	November 2, 1973
Format	45 rpm single
Recorded	September 17–20 and 26, 1973, Los Angeles
Genre	Soft rock, folk rock
Length	5:38 (album version) 4:30 (single)
Label	Columbia
Writer(s)	Billy Joel
Producer(s)	Michael Stewart
Certification	Gold (RIAA)
Billy Joel singles chronology
"Piano Man" (1973) "Worse Comes to Worst" (1974)
Piano Man track listing "Travelin' Prayer" (1) "Piano Man" (2) "Ain't No Crime" (3)

"Piano Man" is the first single released by Billy Joel. It was released on November 2, 1973, and has been included on several subsequent albums. Joel's first major hit and his signature song, the song peaked at #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in April 1974.

Overview

Song background

"Piano Man" is a fictionalized retelling of Joel's experience as a piano-lounge singer for six months in 1972 at the now defunct Executive Room bar in Los Angeles. Joel has stated that all of the characters depicted in the song were based on real people. "John at the bar" was really the bartender who worked during Joel's shift at the piano bar. "Paul is a real estate novelist" refers to a real estate agent named Paul who would sit at the bar each night working on what he believed would be the next great American novel. "The waitress is practicing politics" refers to Joel's first wife Elizabeth Weber, whom he met at The Executive Room. Joel had moved from New York to L.A. to record his first album, Cold Spring Harbor which was marred by a mastering error by the album's producers at Family Productions, the first label that signed Joel. After this bad experience, Joel wanted to leave his contract with Family Productions for Columbia Records, but the contract that he'd signed made this very difficult. So Joel stated that he was "hiding out" at the bar, performing under the name Bill Martin, while lawyers at Columbia Records tried to get him out of his first record deal.

Content

The verses of the song are sung from the point of view of a bar piano player who focuses mainly on everyone else at the bar: an old man, John the bartender, the waitress, businessmen, and bar regulars like "real estate novelist" Paul and US Navy sailor, Davy. Most of these characters have broken or unfulfilled dreams, and the pianist's job is to help them "forget about life for a while," as the lyrics state. The chorus, in bar-room sing-along style, comes from the bar patrons themselves, who say, "Sing us a song, / You're the piano man; / Sing us a song tonight. / Well, we're all in the mood for a melody, / And you've got us feeling all right."

Releases

It was first released as a single on November 2, 1973 and then as the second track on Joel's Piano Man album and was later released on several greatest hits collections.

When originally issued as a single, the song was deemed too long by Columbia Records executives (5 minutes and 38 seconds), so two verses were cut in half and spliced together for the release as a 45, clocking in at 4 minutes and 33 seconds. A promo 45 had an even shorter edit, clocking in around 3 minutes. These single edits were also remixed - bringing out a lot of the instrumentation like acoustic guitars and harmonicas. Later, Billy Joel's song "The Entertainer" refers to the editing of the "Piano Man" single by commenting, "It was a beautiful song, but it ran too long / If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit / So they cut it down to 3:05." The single mix (4:33) has only appeared on one CD to date: the European release Piano Man: The Very Best of Billy Joel.

Composition

Joel wrote and originally performed the song in the key of C Major. It has a 3/4 waltz time signature and begins with a jazzy piano solo before moving into its famous piano and harmonica introduction. The verses and subsequently the chorus feature a descending walking bassline in C that ends with a D - G turnaround. Instrumentally, Joel's 1973 version features piano, harmonica, bass, acoustic guitar, accordion, mandolin, and drums. As of 2015, Joel performs the song in B-flat Major, a whole step down from the original. When Joel received the Gershwin Prize in 2014, he performed Piano Man in the original key of C Major for the first time in several years.

Joel acknowledged on Inside the Actors Studio in 1999 that each of the characters in the song was based on a real person, either a friend of his or another stranger at the bar. For instance, Joel claimed that the waitress "practicing politics" was actually his first wife, Elizabeth Weber. Joel also criticized the fact that the verses and the chorus of the song both use the same chord sequence and a similar melody, stating that the melody "doesn't go anywhere [musically]." Nevertheless, it should be noted that Joel also included minor harmonic variation and a different melody in the song's bridge section.

Track listing

7" US single (1973)

1. "Piano Man" - (4:30)
2. "You're My Home" - (3:08)

Music video

A first promo for this song was shot in 1977. It depicted Joel as a bar act (Bill Martin) performing the song, and shows a typical American bar as a setting. A new video was shot in 1985, with new extras, and was more or less the same as the original. The original video used an alternate take of the song (but it was at the same length as the album version), while the new one used the standard album version.

Popularity

The single broke into the Billboard Top 40 in April 1974, but the single fell considerably short of the top 10 in the US (Billboard #25). "Piano Man" fared better in Canada, where it peaked at #10, and established Joel as a star there. (From 1975-80, every one of Joel's charting singles peaked higher in Canada than in the US, except for songs that reached #1 in both markets.)

Because "Piano Man" was at the time only a moderate hit in the US, the song was not played often on American radio during the next 3 or 4 years. However, after the 1977 release of Joel's album The Stranger and Joel's quick subsequent rise to superstardom, the song would soon become one of his most well-known and loved songs. It has been, since '77, a big "oldies" radio hit, and is considered Joel's signature song, partially due to its title. Today it remains popular, and ranks as Joel's #1 song on the iTunes Store as of February 2014. The song is so well known that during Joel's concerts, he usually lets the audience sing the chorus. In concert, Joel often performs "Piano Man" as a finale.

During the first Face to Face tour featuring Elton John and Joel, ads promoted the event as "Rocket Man meets Piano Man".

"Piano Man" was ranked #421 in the 2004 list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

This song was released as downloadable content for Rock Band 3, along with 11 of Joel's other songs.

During the 2015 season, it was played during New York Mets home games in the middle of the 8th inning.

Chart positions

Chart (1973–1974)	Peak position
Australian Singles Chart	20
Canadian Singles Chart	10
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	25
U.S. Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks	4
Chart (2013)	Peak position
Irish Singles Chart	83
Chart (2014)	Peak position
Dutch Singles Chart	56

Other versions

"Weird Al" Yankovic performed a parody of "Piano Man" entitled "Ode to a Superhero" (detailing the plot of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man) on his 2003 album Poodle Hat. To parody the song, Yankovic got permission directly from Joel, whom he earlier spoofed in "It's Still Billy Joel to Me" (which was never put on any Yankovic album), per the results of a minor 1996 controversy surrounding another Yankovic parody, "Amish Paradise".

External links

• "Piano Man" Music Video on YouTube / ⒞1985 Sony BMG channel
• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics