The Humble Skeptic
The Humble Skeptic
The Executive Room Piano Bar: An Interview with Another Eyewitness
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The Executive Room Piano Bar: An Interview with Another Eyewitness

Episode 55 • Featuring John Gibson

The Pilot Episode of The Humble Skeptic podcast was launched in October of 2022, and on that program, Shane told his Dad’s story of seeing Billy Joel perform at a piano bar in Los Angeles. If you’ve had a chance to listen to that episode, you know the story (if not, you should listen to that show first). On this program, Shane discusses some of the new evidence that has recently come to light about the location of The Executive Room, and talks with John Gibson about his memories of the famous piano bar.

SHOW NOTES

Related Resources
The Bar That Inspired Piano Man, #85 (Pilot Episode updated and expanded)
Evidential Reasoning, #56 with Craig Parton
Dealing with Discrepancies, #57 with J. Warner Wallace
Is My Dad One of the Characters in Piano Man? Shane Rosenthal
How to Detect Deception, Shane Rosenthal
The Virtue of Doubt, Shane Rosenthal
On Faith & Doubt, Shane Rosenthal

Related Links
The Executive Room According to Bob Egan, Pop Spots
The Legacy of the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial, John Gibson
The Life & Times of an Angry Young Man, Hank Bordowitz
John & Sandy Gibson’s role in the Billy Joel story, Hank Bordowitz
Piano Man—Billy Joel, Hank Bordowitz
ABC’s 20/20 Segment on Billy Joel
Liam Cooper’s Interview with a former owner of The Executive Room
Billy Joel’s Piano Man (sign at the very end says: “Bill Martin at the piano”)
An Interview with Billy Joel, The Library of Congress

Music
The song that appears at the very end of the podcast (in the additional material that appears after the close of the program) is “Along the Way,” by The Hunts.

According to the Library of Congress (see link above), Billy Joel stated that The Executive Room is now “a bank or an insurance building.” The image above is of the Pierce National Life building, which is an insurance company, and according to the replica also shown above, at one time it also happened to be a bank building. This also matches one of the statements that Shane’s dad mentioned on the Pilot Episode. And when Shane sent a picture of this building to John Gibson (after he volunteered the information about it being located in the lobby of a large office building), he wrote back saying, “Oh, that looks like the building!”


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