Ain’t No Crime: Billy Joel’s Piano Man at 50
Celebrating the album that gave the Long Island great his nickname
The album many people think of as Billy Joel’s debut—released November 9, 1973—was actually his sixth album.
It comes after an unreleased album with the Commandos (recorded in 1965 for Mercury), two with the Hassles (1967, 1969), one with Attila (1970) and the first under his own name, Cold Spring Harbor (1971, infamously mastered at too fast a speed). The Hassles managed to make it to #112 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart (which is to say, 12 notches away from making the Hot 100 singles chart) in ’67 with a cover of an Isaac Hayes/David Porter song, “You Got Me Hummin’” (which Sam & Dave had taken to #77 earlier in the year, and #7 on the R&B singles chart), and that was the apex of the first eight years of his career.
What would make Columbia Records interested in an artist with such an unimpressive track record? A live recording made for Philadelphia FM radio station WMMR. The recording of artists playing in a studio to a small audience was a phenomenon of FM radio in the ’70s; the stations liked it because they got performances exclusive to them that they could play, and the artists of course enjoyed the exposure. The twelve-song recording Joel made for WMMR at Sigma Sound Studios in April 1972 surprisingly spawned a local hit when the station excerpted the performance of one of Joel’s darkest songs, “Captain Jack,” and played it separately.
VIDEO: Billy Joel “Captain Jack” live in Connecticut 1986
It quickly became the most-requested song in the station’s history, a success notable enough that it caught the attention of Columbia promotion man Herb Gordon, who brought it to the attention of label head Clive Davis. So Piano Man owes its existence to a song about teenage ennui, drug use, masturbation and death, about which, Joel muses on the broadcast after playing it, “Thinkin’ of usin’ that as a single, but probably have a lot of trouble getting it played.”
The session, including Joel’s spoken introductions to many of the songs, was included on a second CD when Columbia released a Legacy Edition of Piano Man in 2011. Three of the songs Joel played for the WMMR broadcast ended up being included on the Piano Man LP in new recordings: “Captain Jack” (of course), “Travellin’ Prayer,” and “The Ballad of Billy the Kid.”
The inspiration for the title track, which became the biggest hit single from the album (#25 on the Billboard Hot 100), came from adversity. Joel had signed a bad contract with his manager, and after the fiasco of Cold Spring Harbor, Joel was trying to get out of that deal. Disillusioned, he moved to Los Angeles and, using the pseudonym Bill Martin so that his manager couldn’t easily locate him, worked as a cocktail-bar pianist, first at Corky’s on Van Nuys Boulevard, then more fruitfully at the Executive Lounge piano bar on Wilshire Boulevard. The song came out of character observations Joel made while gigging; the “waitress…practicing politics” was his wife, Elizabeth.
In the context of the ’70s, Joel impressed critics early on as another singer-songwriter writing material based on his life—“The Ballad of Billy the Kid” even anticipated the Eagles song “Desperado” with its equation of outlaw gunfighters and musicians—(the album Desperado was released seven months before Piano Man. But thanks to the Sigma concert, we know Joel conceived his song before the Eagles’ song came out), and there were also touches of country-rock in the arrangements (banjo, pedal steel guitar), but Joel’s songs were generally more pugnacious, especially the rockers.
VIDEO: Billy Joel “Piano Man”
He also shows an early talent for ballads that escalate into hard-hitting choruses, and one wonders whether Columbia missed chances at more hits from the LP by not releasing two solid examples of this, “If I Only Had the Words (To Tell You)” and “Stop in Nevada,” as the A sides of singles, though the former made it out as the B side of “The Ballad of Billy the Kid,” which at five-and-a-half minutes was unlikely to get played on AM radio. As Joel sang about a single edit of “Piano Man” the next year on “The Entertainer,” “It was a beautiful song, but it ran too long. / If you’re gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit. / So they cut it down to 3:05.” “Captain Jack,” at 7:05, was not released as a single, but it closes the LP in a burst of sonic glory.
As the album that, however much it was not a debut, nonetheless functioned as one by introducing Joel to a wider audience, Piano Man was a stellar success and firmly established him in the public mind as a wise-ass New York Everyman who would give us moving glimpses of his sensitive side, and whose songs were inevitably catchy, pretty much setting the pattern for the rest of his magnificent career.
His day job since 2013 has been running ESP-Disk, first under founder Bernard Stollman and, since Mr. Stollman's passing, doing his best to perpetuate and publicize the indiest indie label's unique legacy. He has produced albums by Matthew Shipp, Amina Baraka & The Red Microphone, Fay Victor, etc. Previously he worked at Black Saint Records, where he was present at the last studio session of Sun Ra. Other jobs have included editorial positions at Creem, The Big Takeover, and The New York Review of Records; inevitably, he also worked at a record store in Williamsburg (Sound Fix), where one night after closing, while drinking across the street at Mugs Ale House, he preached to some tourists about the greatness of jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley, which led to him reopening the store and selling them a copy of Harley's Re-Creation of the Gods. This is widely considered the most Holtje-esque occurrence ever.
(Photo by Dale Mincey)
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Such a terrific album. As a Lawn Gislander born and raised, I saw Billy several times in the ’70s as he was coming up (C.W. Post, anybody?). His stage presence, energy, intensity, and length of show was right up there with Springsteen. The last time I saw him, not too long ago at Madison Square Garden, I was thrilled to hear him do “You’re My Home,” one of my all-time favorites of his.