Billy Joel Is Still Baffled by the Success of One of His Biggest Hits

Billy Joel has had plenty of hits at radio. Beginning in the 1970s, Joel rose to prominence with songs like “Uptown Girl”, “Just The Way You Are”, “Tell Her About It”, and plenty more. But it all began with “Piano Man“. Out in 1973 as the title track of Joel’s sophomore album, Joel wrote the song by himself.

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“Piano Man” is Joel’s first hit at rock radio. It also remains one of the best-selling singles of his career, even after so many decades. The success of the song, born from when Joel was just getting started, is baffling to him.

In 1972, Joel was playing at a piano bar, following the lackluster sales of his freshman Cold Spring Harbor album, a record that failed to produce any hits. Not yet known as Billy Joel, the singer, whose real name is William Martin, was at the time going by the name Bill Martin.

“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,” Joel recalls (via Songfacts). He adds that he was working under an assumed name, the Piano Stylings of Bill Martin, at the time.

“[I] just bulls–ted my way through it,” he continues. “I have no idea why that song became so popular. It’s like a karaoke favorite. 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.’”

The Message in “Piano Man” by Billy Joel

“Piano Man” begins with, “It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday / The regular crowd shuffles in / There’s an old man sitting next to me / Making love to his tonic and gin / He says, ‘Son, can you play me a memory? /I’m not really sure how it goes / But it’s sad, and it’s sweet / And I knew it complete / When I wore a younger man’s clothes / 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 alright.’”

Elsewhere in “Piano Man”, Joel mentions John, Bill, Paul, and Davy. Although songwriters are known to embellish or even make up details, Joel says “Piano Man” is largely true to his own life experience playing at the piano bar.

“It’s pretty accurate. It’s what really went on when I was a piano man in this piano bar,” he says (via Parade). “All the characters have the same name. There was John at the bar, the bartender. Davy was in the Navy. A guy named Paul, who was a real estate agent, and was trying to write the great American novel, and the waitress, who was my girlfriend at the time and then became my wife.”

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