“It’s a pretty good crowd for a Saturday” has never made sense to me, and it bugs me every time I hear it.
I could understand if he said (for example), “It’s a pretty good crowd for a Tuesday,” since Tuesdays are usually dead. But Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest days for bars.
That’s the whole point.
A largish crowd like this would, on a Tuesday, be a sign of a successful, hopping night spot full of happy people. But on a Saturday, it is the exact opposite: an almost-but-not-quite-large-enough-sized group of customers, all of whom are sad businessmen getting stoned out of desperation “to forget about life for a while”.
I think it’s just a matter of meter. Saturday is the only day of the week with three syllables.
Younger man’s clothes. Well, for me in 1968 it would have been a Nehru jacket. In the 70s probably a double-knit jacket. Now I slob around in sweat pants and a tee and really can’t imagine why I wore those things.
Agreed. And also since Cafe Society, you know, actually exists now.
Yeah new joint opened up. Check it out!
The one thing about this thread, is, it sure is nice not to see signature messages any more. Glad that’s gone.
I really dislike that song, and I will change the station when it comes on- that song could depress a hyena.
Back to the original question. In an interview on NBC’s Sunday Today, Billy Joel explained that Paul was a real estate broker, who wanted to write a novel, worked on it for years, and so never took time to date. Or, he added, there’s an Internet story that the song is about a gay bar, since it’s all men, and Paul is talking to Davey, who’s still in the Navy.
And @DrDeath, he says he’s surprised the song was ever released as a single because, a) it’s long b) it’s a waltz and c) it’s depressing.
After twenty-five years of careful consideration, I have come to this conclusion.
The walrus was Paul.
Deth, not death. I didnt put myself thru 12 years of imaginary medical school to have people get that wrong. 
This doesn’t sound like the kind of bar that young folk would go to for fun
Buncha middle age guys drinking alone, and one waitress talking politics.
Many years back, I saw Piano Man on a list of the worst songs from the 1970s. I thought that was crazy talk.
No, the waitress is practicing politics.
I always took that to mean that the waitress was trying to collect enough tips to make a decent living. So she would be friendly to the men who were the bar’s customers - but not so friendly that they’d start getting the wrong idea. The waitress had to walk a careful line, which Joel described as her practicing politics.
That’s my feeling also. She’s practicing politics by being diplomatic, not offending any patron, laughing at their corny jokes, avoiding saying that their team stinks, and similar. Will she get a decent amount of tips? Don’t know, but her “practicing politics” approach in this way likely garners more in tips than her saying, “That’s a joke? I guess I forgot to laugh,” and “Your team sucks.”
I used to see a great guitarist performing at a local bar regularly.
He always changed the line to
“When I wore a young woman’s clothes.”
I assumed she was talking politics because it fit into the theme of everyone at the bar wanting to be something more than they currently are. But could be both.
I think the song is so popular because it resonates with a lot of people. Particularly before the age of social media where everyone is expected to show how much of a “winner” they are all the time. The people aren’t “losers”. They are just regular people for which life just happened (or in some cases didn’t happen).
Sadly, I can not say it was the worst hit song since there was MacArthur Park. 
"Let us return to the new towns. … Of all the excitements that life offers there are few to be compared with the whirl of a red-hot boom; … And consider all that is in it! The headlong stampede to the new place; the money dashed down like counters for merest daily bread; the arrival of the piled cars whence the raw material of a city–men, lumber, and shingle–are shot on to the not yet nailed platform; the slashing out and pegging down of roads across the blank face of the wilderness; the heaving up amid shouts and yells of the city’s one electric light–a raw sizzling arc atop of an unbarked pine pole; the sweating, jostling mob at the sale of town-lots; the roar of ‘Let the woman have it!’ that stops all bidding when the one other woman in the place puts her price on a plot; the packed real-estate offices; the real-estate agents themselves, lost novelists of prodigious imagination;
‘Letters of Travel (1892-1913)’ Rudyard Kipling
I think some people here have a problem understanding metaphors.
You’re overthinking it; “When I wore a younger man’s clothes” is just a poetic way of saying “When I was younger”.
Maybe, but to me it’s more that he was entirely focused on his drink, drinking it slowly, carefully, savoring every sip, while ignoring everything else around him.
This, exactly. I look at what I wear now, and it’s nothing special. Plain golf shirts from Walmart, black Levi’s, Etonic walking shoes. But definitely different from what I wore, years ago.
To me, a “younger man’s clothes” would mean what I wore, back in the day. Which would look ridiculous on me now. And no, I will not be more specific.