An autographed photo of the artist Billy Joel

Billy Joel was born into a poor Jewish family, his father, an electric company worker, was not indifferent to high art. Therefore, the boy grew up listening to the sounds of classics, which his father loved to play on the piano, and soon he began to beat the black and white keys with his small hands. Even at the time of his passion for rock and roll, Billy did not change his favorite instrument - for example, in his first band there were no guitars at all.

His professional career as a musician began in the early 1970s and began extremely unsuccessfully. The company "Fanily records", with which he signed a contract to release 10 albums, did not care about his ward. Joel's first album of 1971 was inadvertently recorded at an accelerated pace, so they did not even promote it. Realizing his mistake, the musician found a radical way out: he simply fled from New York to the other side of America - to Los Angeles. The problem of "daily bread" arose quite quickly. Joel, of course, could not shine under his last name, so he took the pseudonym Billy Nelson and got a job in a bar as a taper.

It was then that he composed his watershed hit, so-called "Piano Man" ("The Pianist"). There he spoke in detail about his work at the bar and about the local environment. There was enough real material, so I didn't have to invent almost anything. Billy Joel: "John was the owner of the bar, and Paul was his real estate agent who wanted to write a great American novel, and Davey was a guy who served in the Navy… Even the girl in the song was my first wife. She also worked there as a waitress."