The Ballad of Billy the Kid

"The Ballad of Billy the Kid" is a Billy Joel song from the album Piano Man (1973). It is a historically inaccurate story of Billy The Kid. In the song, Billy the Kid was famous throughout the West during his lifetime as a bank robber. However, he never robbed a bank and he was little known in his own lifetime but was catapulted into legend in the year after his death when his killer, Sheriff Pat Garrett, published a wildly sensationalistic biography of the outlaw called The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. Beginning with Garrett's account, Billy the Kid grew into a symbolic figure of the American Old West. The song also says that Billy the Kid was captured and hanged, with many people attending the hanging. In reality, however, he was shot and killed by Pat Garrett

Joel has stated in interviews and concerts that he wrote the song when he was traveling west from New York to California for the first time. He was inspired to write a "western" song. One inspiration for the song was the American composer, Aaron Copland (also admitted by Joel in interviews), which is apparent in both the classical-style music within the song and the name of the song itself. In some live versions, Joel plays the song's long opening and says, "Every verse in this song is a lie," and, "You have to imagine it's a Western movie, with the credits rolling across the screen. Randolph Scott. Lee Van Cleef. Clint Eastwood."

The Billy from Oyster Bay was not Joel, but rather a bartender who worked there.