Billy Joel already had three shots at success before his first Columbia album. He made his rep as part of the Hassles, the third-seed of Long Island R&B/garage bands after the Young Rascals and the Vagrants. Then there was the heavy(-ish) duo Attila, and a solo album for the brain-dead Gulf+Western conglomerate called Cold Spring Harbor — on which his vocals were mixed at the wrong speed.

Still, Columbia and Atlantic were interested in him. Broke and bummed-out, he briefly switched coasts, mulled his future and eked out a living at a Los Angeles-area cocktail lounge, doing impressions, learning how to please a crowd of any size. Piano Man's title song proved Columbia's winning bet was right. With a chord structure that combined Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr. Bojangles" (Atlantic's complaint, according to one writer) and the story songs of Harry Chapin (the complaint of many critics), "Piano Man" was both a fine character study and the source of a common Joel theme: the struggle of a talented man trying to stay out of his own way and find a little peace of mind. Among the other tunes, the energetic "Captain Jack" is a favorite of many rock… read more »