I dream of one day being able to craft characters as vividly and efficiently as Billy Joel in “Piano Man.”
Paul “the real-estate novelist”. Three words! That’s all we need to build a complete picture of this man’s personality and history. And then it just rounds out the picture with “never had time for a wife”.
And we don’t even pause a beat before jumping to the equally vivid tragedy of “Davy who’s still in the navy and probably will be for life.”
And these two are talking together! Because of course they are, these kindred souls stuck in their lives of mediocrity.
The whole song’s nothing but lightning-fast character sketches. The old man whose song is “sad and sweet and knew it complete when I wore a younger man’s clothes.”
John at the bar, so firmly established as cheerful and friendly and exuberant before the 180 turn to “Bill, I believe this is killing me.”
The waitress practicing politics.
Even the businessmen “sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone.”
All these tiny little tragicomic figures gathered around a bar’s piano. Sketched in five minutes and thirty-nine seconds–and that’s counting the choruses and harmonica breaks.
I dunno, I just think about it every time I hear the song and think he deserves more credit for it.
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