They are in this joyous mood not necessarily because they are happy, but rather they want to forget their real lives at least for these few hours. They say they are in the mood for a melody on this fine Saturday night. The crowd asks Billy to sing a song for them. In the chorus of the song, the regulars at the bar start chiming in. Billy himself does not know what to sing to the old man, so he just fills in. The iconic lullaby of “La, la-la, di-dee-da / La-la, di-dee-da, da-dum” is Billy Joel singing for the old man. The lyrics iconically sing “tonic and gin” instead of the colloquial use “gin and tonic.” Billy Joel explained that even this was based on real experience “the old guy was drinking.
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The old man cannot recall the song’s name, but just remembers emotions it invoked in him “it’s sad and it’s sweet.” He just wants to be taken back to a different time–a younger time when he was full of life and youth! The old man is sipping on some gin and tonic and asks Billy to play him a memory. The regular crowd starts trickling in and Billy knows some of their stories.īilly gets a request from an old man sitting right next to his piano (maybe the old man has hearing problems and doesn’t mind the piano blasting “like a carnival”). It’s a Saturday night at Billy’s piano bar where he played for six months in 1972. In the first two lines of the song, Billy Joel sets the setting for the entire song. “Piano Man” Song Meaning and Lyrics ReviewĪfter an iconic instrumental intro with a piano and a harmonica, Billy Joel gets to work. It really hurts when I hear this song played on the radio and they leave this part out.” Watch “Piano Man” Music Video by Billy Joelīuy ‘Billy Joel Essentials’ Album on Apple Music and Amazon He married while he was in the navy, had three children. His daughter Lisa told us: “He met Billy Joel in a pub in Spain in 1972 while he was in the Navy. The lyrics, “And he’s talkin’ with Davy who’s still in the Navy and probably will be for life” were inspired by David Heintz. Songfacts reveal about the Navy man Davy She was working there too, as a waitress.” “Even the girl in the song, that says ‘And the waitress is practicing politics, as the businessmen slowly get stoned’ – that was my first wife. It’s a true story and I knew when I was doing the gig, I said, ‘I gotta get a song out of this’ and it worked out.“ Paul was this real estate guy who wanted to write the great American novel and Davey was a guy who was in the Navy. Billy Joel spoke about the characters that he sings of in his iconic track with AccessOnline Are the characters in “Piano Man” based on real people? All of a sudden the entire bar full of people explode into a karaoke, asking the piano man to sing them a song and keep them entertained for the night. Notable characters in the song are An old man, John the bartender, the waitress, businessmen, and bar regulars like ‘real estate novelist’ Paul, and US Navy sailor, Davy.
And yes, this is common for the piano man himself. One common feature among everyone present at the bar is that nobody actually wants to be there. The song is sung from the point of the pianist who narrates some of the stories of the regulars at the bar. “Piano Man” is a song about a Saturday night in a lounge-bar setting where the live entertainment is a singer /pianist. But my songs are like my kids and I look at that song and think: ‘My kid did pretty well.'” What is the song “Piano Man” about? I was shocked and embarrassed when it became a hit. The melody is not very good and very repetitious, while the lyrics are like limericks. I have no idea why that song became so popular. Then I worked under an assumed name, the Piano Stylings of Bill Martin, and just bulls–ted my way through it. I was living in LA and trying to get out of a bad record contract I’d signed. It was a gig I did for about six months just to pay rent.
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