“Totally shocked”: The song that Billy Joel found depressing
After sunset on a random Saturday in 1972, pianist Bill Martin felt a little lost in his own spotlight. Others poured into the bar, regulars and newcomers wetting their lips with gin and the promise of feeling something that would no doubt distract their loneliness long enough to forget it even exists. Right there, Bill Martin, also known as Billy Joel, had never known despair quite like it.
‘Piano Man’ is a story most of us have heard time and time again. We know the significance of it, especially when it comes to Joel’s story, and we know why it became one of his most popular tracks: it’s heartfelt and incredibly relatable, tapping into the sentimentality in all of us that appears whenever we look around and truly pay attention to all those around us. In this story, we feel sorry for each and every character, feeling their loss and sadness as if it were our own.
It’s not really that important to know their stories or feel close to them in one way or another, but that’s almost what it’s all about: Joel isn’t presenting any of these facts like they’re important to the story or to knowing how it’s supposed to make you feel. It’s almost as though the observations are their like streams of disjointed thoughts: recollections, rather, that appear from the simple act of taking in your surroundings before you have any real chance of working out what it all means.
The melody also reflects this kind of imperfect train of thought. Sometimes, it feels like Joel is genuinely improvising, his words coming out as accidental poetic ramblings that make you feel sentimental or nostalgic, almost like capturing snippets of a conversation you know is sad but you can’t quite piece it all together to figure out why. And when we look at each character individually, it’s easy to see why we’re let in on this strangely lonely world. Who do we have, then? Throughout the song, we’re introduced to:
- The old man who can’t remember the song he’s requested, but knows it’s “sad and it’s sweet” and “knew it complete” when he “wore a younger man’s clothes”
- Barman John, who gives free drinks but wishes he were elsewhere
- Paul, who works in real estate, but doesn’t treat his wife very well
- Davy, who will be a navy man for his whole life
- The waitress, who is trying to become politically savvy while those around her indulge in the haze of meaningless chatter
Now, these are all probably people we’ve come across on an average outing because, let’s face it, at pubs, sadness is absolutely everywhere. But the way Joel uses them as tools to reflect his own stagnation makes it even more hard-hitting, not only in the disillusioned way he felt at the time but in the way that everything collectively points to the painful truth that, if something doesn’t happen soon, he’ll never make it out of there (As John says, “I believe this is killing me”).
Still, as much as we love to pick apart the song and all the reasons it became Joel’s biggest and probably most career-defining, it’s strange that he doesn’t share the same infatuation, though that’s likely because he’s his own worst critic, unable to see the beauty behind the flaws. Admitting how much he disliked the song to Music Radar, he said he was “surprised” the label wanted it as a single, not only because it’s a long song that runs over six minutes but because, well, he didn’t feel the tone was right.
“At the time, I was totally shocked that [Columbia] wanted to put it out as a single,” he said. Adding: “It’s in 6:8 time, which is a waltz. It’s a long song. And the topic is a bit depressing. It didn’t go gold or anything when it came out. But it got a lot of airplay.” Elsewhere, he explained to Metro why he felt the song wasn’t as good as his others, dismissing it as “a karaoke favourite” and saying “the melody is not very good” because it’s repetitive. He compared this to the lyrics, calling them “limericks”.
Weirdly, it feels like all the reasons Joel hates the song are reasons everybody else loves it. These characters, with their beautifully tragic hearts, are the kind that often live in all of us. And the fact that the song itself is structurally and lyrically disjointed only reflects these flaws we seek to push away, when in reality, they make us more human than we’ve ever known. It’s a mess, as Joel pointed out, but one that serves the sentimentality of it all, presenting the matter in its truest form and without unnecessary embellishments.
