ON THIS DATE (41 YEARS AGO) November 2, 1973 - Billy Joel: Piano Man 45 single is released in the US. Piano Man was Billy Joels first major hit and his signature song. Piano Man was released as a single in November 1, 1973, and has been on several albums. The song peaked at #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in April 1974. Piano Man is a fictionalized retelling of Joels experience as a piano-lounge singer at the Executive Room in Los Angeles, and Joel has stated that all of the characters depicted in the song were based on real people. Joel had moved from New York to L.A. to record his first album, Cold Spring Harbor which was unsuccessful, in large part because of the mastering error by the albums 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 hed 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. Joels own personal feelings about the failure of his first album and his professional frustrations at this time are expressed in the failed dreams of the characters in his song. 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, Davey. Most of these characters have unfulfilled dreams, and the pianists job, it seems, is to help them forget about life for a while. The chorus, in bar-room sing-along style, comes from the bar patrons themselves, who plead, Sing us a song / Youre the piano man / Sing us a song, tonight / Well, were all in the mood for a melody / And youve got us feeling all right. The songs style and subject are highly reminiscent of fellow Long Islander Harry Chapins story-songs. 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 doesnt go anywhere [musically]. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Joel also included minor harmonic variation and a different melody in the songs bridge section. Note: Could not locate the edited 45 single version - link is LP version...
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 17:59:35 +0000
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