A cut-rate Hollywood talent agency had gotten Billy Joel the gig at the piano bar where he received union-scale pay, good tips, and free drinks, per "Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography." Elizabeth Weber worked there as a waitress as well. While Joel played, he began collecting the raw material that would become the basis for "Piano Man." The regulars provided a lot of help in that regard.
"When he sings 'the waitress is practicing politics,'" that was Elizabeth," Hank Bordowitz, the author of "Billy Joel: The Life and Times of an Angry Young Man," told the New York Post. "There really was a Davy who was in the Navy, and probably would be for life. Paul was a real estate broker, but he wanted to be a novelist." According to "Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography," Angelique Norton, who owned the bar with her husband Russell, recalled that "there'd been so many piano players coming and going, but he stood out ... and he had a following."
