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.
(via daxieoclock)