Before "The Stranger," Billy Joel Turned Back to "Piano Man" on "The Midnight Special"

Billy Joel's October 10, 1975 stop on The Midnight Special caught him at a revealing moment. He was not yet the arena-dominating star many fans think of now, and the songs he picked said a lot about where his career stood.

For that appearance in the Burbank, Calif., studio of the TV music program, the 26-year-old Joel performed "Travelin' Prayer" and "The Ballad of Billy the Kid." Both songs came from 1973's Piano Man, the album that had first introduced him to radio through its title track.

That choice matters because Joel was in an in-between phase. His label, Columbia Records, had hoped the 1974 follow-up, Streetlife Serenade, would build on the attention created by Piano Man. It did not land the way they wanted. The album reached No. 35 on the Billboard albums chart, and "The Entertainer," one of its key songs, got to No. 34 on the Hot 100.

So the TV performance arrived at a point when Joel was still reaching backward rather than unveiling the record that would later define him. He was seven months away from releasing Turnstiles, and two years away from The Stranger, the album that became his real commercial breakthrough.

Why those two songs were telling choices

"Travelin' Prayer" showed off Joel as a musician as much as a singer. He had written it roughly two years before it appeared on Piano Man, and the recording moved at a brisk pace, with banjo played by Eric Weissberg and a notably fast vocal from Joel.

Columbia had once pushed the song hard. In promoting it as a single, the company called it "the cut that started it all" and described it as what was likely the most obvious single from what it saw as a star-making album. Radio did not embrace it to that degree. The song stopped at No. 77 on the Hot 100.

His other Midnight Special pick, "The Ballad of Billy the Kid," was also a single from Piano Man. Joel's fictional take on the outlaw was the fourth single released from the album, but it did not make the charts. Seen together, the pair made for an unusual national TV spotlight: not obvious hits, but songs that underlined his range and personality before his biggest records arrived.

The bigger story around the performance

The appearance is even more interesting in hindsight because of what followed. Turnstiles came out seven months later, and without a hit single it seemed to suggest Joel's career was slipping rather than surging. The album reached No. 122.

That modest response can look surprising now. Turnstiles includes "New York State of Mind" and "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)," two songs that became closely associated with him, among its eight tracks.

The commercial picture changed with September 1977's The Stranger. That album included "Just the Way You Are," Joel's first Top 5 single. All four singles from The Stranger went Platinum, and the album itself earned Diamond certification, representing U.S. sales of more than 10 million copies.

That is what makes the 1975 Midnight Special footage such a compelling snapshot. It preserves Joel in the stretch after Piano Man had made him known, after Streetlife Serenade had underperformed, and before The Stranger turned him into one of the era's biggest recording stars. Fans revisiting that period also have another reason to look back: an expanded 50th anniversary edition of Turnstiles is due on Dec. 11, 2026.