It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in
Catalog
Billy Joel
William Martin "Billy" Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States. His compilation album Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2 is one of the best-selling albums in the US. Joel had Top 40 hits in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, achieving 33 Top 40 hits in the US, all of which he wrote himself. He is also a six-time Grammy Award winner who has been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards. He has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. Joel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1992), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1999), and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame (2006). In 2001, Joel received the Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2013, Joel received the Kennedy Center Honors, the nation's highest honor for influencing American culture through the arts. With the exception of the 2007 songs "All My Life" and "Christmas in Fallujah", Joel stopped writing and releasing pop/rock material after 1993's River of Dream
Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness.
Sing us a song, you're the piano man.
Making love to his tonic and gin.
You've got your passion, you've got your pride. But don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
You're so ahead of yourself that you forgot what you need.
You'd better cool it off before you burn it out.
Yeah she steals like a thief but she's always a woman to me.
She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes.
That’s what I really wanted to do, is be a songwriter. I didn’t expect to be a rock star. My goal in life was actually to have other people do my songs. I started out as a songwriter.
Well, it was sort of just an observation that you have your whole life to live. A lot of people in their twenties think they’ve got to get it all together by the time they’re thirty. And they kill themselves trying to get the golden ring by the time they’re thirty. You have an entire life to live.…
My neighborhood, it’s not 'turn the other cheek.' Someone hits you, you hit ’em right back.
I don’t think so. It’s a job. I don’t walk around thinking, 'Hey, I’m a superstar,' and everything’s great. You know, it’s a job. I take off the hat when I go home. I take out the garbage, I cook food, I feed the dogs, I clean up the poop.
Sure, I’ve got regrets. Anyone who’s really lived has regrets. If you have no regrets, what kind of life did you have?
Everybody’s got something they love to do and they should be doing and they have a talent at or a propensity for, and I see people kind of wasting their lives sometimes, just not really putting their talent to that purpose.
I grew up in a neighborhood and it was mostly Irish and Italian and Polish. So everybody went to mass. I was in a Jewish family, but we never had any religious upbringing. The closest I got to Jewish was, you know, they clipped the tip. That was it. I had no say about that at all.