Composition
Billy Joel wrote and originally performed the song in the key of C Major. It has a 3/4 time signature and begins with a jazzy piano solo before moving into its famous piano and harmonica introduction. The verses and subsequently the chorus feature a descending walking bassline in C that ends with a D - G turnaround. Instrumentally, Joel's 1973 version features piano, harmonica, bass, accordion, mandolin, drums and vocals.
Joel acknowledged on Inside the Actors Studio in 1999 that each of the characters in the song was based on a real person, either a friend of his or another stranger at the bar. For instance, Joel claimed that "the waitress practicing politics" was actually his first wife, Elizabeth Weber. Joel also criticized the fact that the verses and the chorus of the song both use the same chord sequence and a similar melody, stating that the melody "doesn't go anywhere ." Nevertheless, it should be noted that Joel also included minor harmonic variation and a different melody in the song's bridge section.
Read more about this topic: Piano Man (song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Pushkin’s composition is first of all and above all a phenomenon of style, and it is from this flowered rim that I have surveyed its seep of Arcadian country, the serpentine gleam of its imported brooks, the miniature blizzards imprisoned in round crystal, and the many-hued levels of literary parody blending in the melting distance.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
—Oscar Cullman. Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, ch. 1, Epworth Press (1958)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)