CENTRE ISLAND, N.Y. — Popular singer/songwriter Billy Joel revealed that his 1973 hit “Piano Man” is actually about a nightmarish creature resulting from a piano being fused with a human, sources report.
“Maybe I wasn’t clear enough with the lyrics, because people are getting the wrong idea about what this song is about,” said Joel before giving a live demonstration of the monster’s gait. “It’s not a fictionalized retelling of my experience working as a lounge singer in the Executive Room bar in Los Angeles in the early ‘70s. The song deals with a grown man being joined with a piano a la ‘The Fly,’ but more similar to David Cronenberg’s version, and the shocking, Eldritch horror that he would become. What would this being eat? How would it procreate, were it so inclined? These questions fascinated me, which ultimately culminated in this song. Frankly, I’m surprised it became so popular given how grotesque the subject matter is.”
Fan Zekia Cornell was taken aback by the revelation.
“Oh, wow, that’s what ‘Piano Man’ is about?” Cornell reacted. “I guess the ‘making love to his tonic and gin’ line makes a little bit more sense to me, now that I remember how horny Cronenberg’s version of ‘The Fly’ was. I’m going to have to start reading his song lyrics more closely going forward, because I would’ve expected more detailed descriptions of this guy experiencing the conjoining of his flesh with the wood and ivory of a piano, because that seems like it would be a painful and horrific experience, but I guess Billy Joel just decided to be more subtle about it. That’s why I’m such a fan of his, to be honest.”
Music historian Tom Burke has seen this before.
“A popular song being about Cronenberg creatures is actually a much more common phenomenon than you’d think,” Burke mused. “It gets boring for musicians to constantly write about romance or drug use, so they like to spice things up by conjuring tunes about awful, stomach-churning lab accidents to keep them engaged with their work. Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘The Boxer’ is about a man who became amalgamated to a cardboard box, and Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ deals with a NASA spacecraft becoming sentient after an employee accidentally gets melted into its fuselage, just to name a few examples.”
At press time, Joel revealed “The Longest Time” is actually about spending eternity being tortured in the pits of Hell.
