Billy Joel - Piano Man
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 09.11.1973
"It was right before I got the job as a piano player in a bar in Los Angeles. I left New York when I realized I had signed a terrible contract with Family Productions," says Billy Joel.
The draconian contract with the label of producer Artie Ripp deprived the New York singer of publishing rights. Joel was shackled, unable to record new material, and fell into financial distress.
It all began when the debut album of the young and promising singer-songwriter, "Cold Spring Harbor", ran aground: during the creation of the master (the original copy), a fault occurred and it was recorded at high speed. As a result, the sound quality was distorted, and the album flopped in the stores.
At that point Joel realized that in order to survive as a musician and songwriter he had to disappear from the watchful eye of the people at Family Productions, so he left New York and headed to Los Angeles, where he found work as a bar pianist under the name Bill Martin.
That moment, when a singer-songwriter suddenly finds himself in a place foreign to him, lonely, just him and the piano, is the moment from which Billy Joel managed to create "Piano Man", the song that became a bright spot of light in the darkness he was living in at the time, a song that went on to lead his breakthrough album, "Piano Man", released on November 9, 1973.
The defining moment of Billy Joel, the moment he knew he wanted to be a full-time musician, came when he saw four wonderful friends called "The Beatles" performing on The Ed Sullivan Show.
"That performance changed my life. Until that moment I hadn't considered pursuing a music career seriously, and when I saw four guys who played and sang and didn't look like a production line of stars, I realized that I could also be part of a rock band," Joel said, and he did just that: he joined "The Echoes", a band that specialized in covers of songs by British Invasion-style bands.
From there he moved on, two years later, to "The Hassles", and then formed, together with drummer Jon Small, the duo "Attila", which managed to release a debut album in July 1970 and break up three months later.
Then came the farce with Artie Ripp and Family Productions. Billy Joel became the piano man Bill Martin, who played piano in a Los Angeles bar for about half a year. During that time he wrote and played songs under his pseudonym, and even managed to sign a contract with Columbia Records, which eventually bought his problematic contract from Artie Ripp.
Joel created an album full of personal, touching stories from the period in which he was living in financial uncertainty, thinking that his short musical career had come to an end.
The album opens with "Travelin' Prayer", a song with country elements that combines honky-tonk piano, banjo and fiddle, with lyrics influenced by a traditional Irish prayer for an easy journey home.
Right after it comes the title track, "Piano Man", in which Joel is essentially singing about himself and about several characters in the bar whom he got to know by watching from the sidelines. From the personal song that became one of the biggest hits of his career, he continues to the gospel song "Ain't No Crime", with a soulful vocal by Billy about managing expectations: always keep things in proportion, because we won't always manage to get everything in life.
While drifting to California with his wife, broke and with nothing to his name, Joel dedicated to her a song as a Valentine's Day gift, "You're My Home", his romantic way of coping with a difficult situation.
Later Joel writes a kind of experiment in impressionistic lyricism, in his fictional version of the character of Billy the Kid, in "The Ballad of Billy the Kid".
One of the singles later released from the album is "Worse Comes to Worst", in which Joel drives down the road toward an unclear future in Los Angeles, determined to face the challenges ahead. It is an autobiographical song from the moments when the singer feared that his musical career was about to end.
We get the continuation of his journey on the road in "Stop in Nevada", a song that tells the story of a woman who leaves a letter for her husband before heading west to California. Nevada appears in the song as the last stop and the last obstacle before reaching a better life in California.
Toward the end of the album comes "Somewhere Along the Line", which urges young people to live their lives here and now and to enjoy them as much as they can, as long as they are young.
And closing the album is "Captain Jack", written even before Joel's wanderings to California, which refers to reckless teenagers addicted to drugs. While sitting in his apartment in Oyster Bay, Long Island, looking for a source of inspiration for the song, he watched teenagers who entered a housing project on the opposite side of the street, where they got heroin from a drug dealer nicknamed "Captain Jack".
Despite technical problems that arose on this album as well, "Piano Man" became the album that marked the breakthrough in the career of Billy Joel.
The album cover was photographed while Joel was playing at a bar in Los Angeles, his dull, sad eyes telling what was going on inside the singer's soul in those days, while the black-and-white filter further emphasizes the gloomy atmosphere against which "Piano Man" was recorded.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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