I suppose I’m humor-impaired, because I don’t get the rolleyes. I’m not sure what my answer spoiled for you, but I apologize. I thought the OP was asking for a more or less factual answer, which I tried to give. It was based on an interview I either heard or read with Joel back in the late 70s.
And I haven’t a clue what Mick and the boys are on about regarding the troubadours, and Sgt Pepper seems fairly straightforward, so there is no danger of me ruining those.
Th’ hell?
One uncited web site says: The “Troubadours who got killed before they reached Bombay” refers to the hippies who traveled the “Hippie Trail” by road. Many on them were killed and ripped off by drug peddlers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Not relevant to this particular song, but I’ve seen him in concert a few times. Good performer, amusing stage patter. He introduced “Just The Way You Arr” by talking about the problem of singing love songs about someone with whom you are no longer in love, that you tend to go on autopilot, and think about what you’re going to eat when you get back to the hotel:
Don’t go changing…
(Should I get the steak?)
to try and please me
(Suppose I should eat more fish…)
You never let me down before…
(…or get the pasta…)
He was talking about singing on autopilot like this one evening, thinking about singing a love song to a woman he had divorced years ago when he gets ready to the chorus and his long time drummer Liberty DiVito sings to him:
She got the house, she got the car!
Billy Joel and his music are my sacred cow. whimpers
Do not eat that steak! Please?
I once heard “Always a Woman” while sitting in the waiting room at the OB/GYN. I was amused.
As some have already pointed out, you really can’t analyze Billy Joel lyrics too closely but this one’s always been obvious to me.
She got a degree that provides immunity from future convictions in Allentown next to the big coal mine and shared a class with some guy who later hit it big as a real estate novelist.
It might be disco and it might be the blues
Or maybe even somethin’ like the B-52’s
Just a handclap, finger snap
Even if it’s mindless pap
It’s still Billy Joel to me
Clearly, she has a law degree, and she represents herself.
Since she can kill with a smile and wound with her eyes, how’s she ever gonna get convicted? She’ll just kill and main the jurors until they have to declare a mistrial due to too small a jury.
And with the number of prosecutors she’s probably killed too, who’s gonna have the guts to re-try her?
Is that the pirate version?
*
Don’t go pillaging
upon the high seas
you never walked the plank before
…
I love you just the way you arrrr*
Is it sad I’ve been told twice now that this song was written about me? Specifically the line, ‘she’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding’ (emotional cutting, of course).
Unrequited love, it hurts.
Ooh, I already like you. I’ll be destroying myself shortly.
Some female comedian I heard years ago:
“‘Don’t go changin’ to try to please me … I love you just the way you are.’ Aw, it’s pretty, isn’t it? Except he wrote it for his first wife. Yeah, don’t go changin’, 'cause I’m leaving you for Christie Brinkley anyway!”
Well obviously she must have gone changin’.
You win the thread!
But now I just gotta ask: what’s a real-estate novelist?
I know of real-estate salesmen, real-estate agents, real-estate brokers, real estate laywers, etc…but a novelist?
And for extra points: is there any other song on earth that features a real estate professional ?
Jane Anne Phillips wrote Shelter; does that count?
The whole song “Piano Man” is about a bar where all the customers AND employees are miserable, lonely people who wish they were doing something different and better with their lives.
It’s based on a real cocktail lounge where Billy Joel was working before he hit it big.
Billy, who dreams of being a rock star, is stuck singing “Misty” and “Cry Me a River” for a crowd of drunks.
There are a LOT of aspiring actors in New York who work at mundane jobs while hoping for their big break. “John at the bar” is one of them. He’s been working as a bartender while hoping to make it as an actor, but is starting to realize he’s never going to make it.
Paul is a “real estate novelist,” which means he’s a middle-aged real estate salesman who’s been talking for years about the great novel he plans to write, but has never gotten around to writing (and probably never will).
Everyone at this bar has big dreams that probably aren’t going to come true.
Except for Davey, who’s still in the Navy, and probably will be for life.
Please stop. I’m never going to be hear the easy listening in my office without guffawing again.
Reading this, I thought HOLY CRAP! I never knew that was Billy Joel singing this song! WOW!!
Then, halfway down, it registered that Billy Joel is not Billy Idol.
Damn beer dyslexia.