Billy Joel — Piano Man

JUL 01 1985 · 12:00

Billy Joel — Piano Man (1985) Director: Jon Small Era: MTV Classic Rock Era (1985) - Mid-decade reissue period when legacy artists re-shot early-70s catalog videos for MTV compatibility and VHS home-video distribution Exceptionally high. This 1985 HD re-shoot of a 1973 foundational text bridges two distinct eras of music video history: the pre-MTV promotional film tradition and the MTV broadcast standard. Its radical formal restraint — near-total stasis, extreme shadow, minimal editing — constitutes a significant counter-example to dominant MTV visual grammar and serves as a primary document of American working-class rock iconography. The video's 287M+ YouTube views confirm enduring cultural resonance. Context: Released originally in 1973 and re-shot for MTV in 1985, 'Piano Man' documents Joel's fictionalized autobiographical experience as a lounge singer at the Executive Room bar on Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, 1972–73. The song and video enshrine a specifically American archetype: the bar as sanctuary for unfulfilled dreamers. The 1985 re-shoot occurred during Joel's commercial peak following 'The Stranger' and 'Glass Houses,' allowing a new MTV-era audience to encounter a foundational text of his catalog. The video's near-zero kinetic energy — only two cuts across nearly six minutes — stands in stark contrast to MTV's dominant fast-edit grammar, making it a formal outlier and a cultural artifact of pre-MTV storytelling values preserved within the MTV ecosystem. Director notes: The 1985 'Piano Man' video (this version) was a re-shoot of the original 1973 promotional clip, directed by Jon Small. According to IMDB, it features new extras while retaining the same bar-room dramatic structure as the original. The video opens with a slow camera move into the sign of a Los Angeles bar and depicts the characters described in the song. Small served as both director and producer on this version. The extremely low edit count (2 scene changes, avg. shot 170s) reflects a deliberate, near-documentary observational style consistent with Small's early MTV-era approach of privileging atmosphere over fast cutting. Small has been involved in nearly every major video production by Joel throughout his career.