The Executive Room — Billy Joel "Piano Man" Bar, Beverly Hills

From 1972 to 1973, Billy Joel performed as a piano lounge singer at The Executive Room, a cocktail bar at 8504 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. He had temporarily adopted the pseudonym Bill Martin to escape a recording contract dispute, and his nightly sets for a clientele of regulars — a barman named John, a waitress named Davina, a real estate agent who sang along, a Navy man on leave — became the raw material for "Piano Man." Released in 1973, the song catalogued those lives with affectionate precision and became his signature recording.

Billy Joel had moved to Los Angeles after his first album Cold Spring Harbor (1971) received a poor reception. Broke and frustrated, he took the piano gig under his pseudonym and spent six months playing five nights a week. The experience proved transformative: the characters he observed and the melancholy of the setting gave him the subject matter for a song that would define his career. "It's nine o'clock on a Saturday / The regular crowd shuffles in" remains one of the most recognisable openings in pop music.

The building on Wilshire Boulevard has since changed use and the original bar no longer operates. "Piano Man" reached number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has become one of the most-played songs in American bar culture. The Executive Room is cited in virtually every biography of Billy Joel as the inciting location of his artistic maturity.