Bruce Springsteen Inducted Into New Jersey Hall of Fame

Bruce Springsteen was among the inaugural class of twenty-five inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame on Sunday. Springsteen was on hand to accept the honor at Newark's Performing Arts Center, alongside novelist Toni Morrison, Yankee cathcer Yogi Berra and retired General Norman Schwarzkopf. "Rise up, my fellow New Jerseyans. We are all members of a confused but noble race," Springsteen told those on hand. "Even with this wonderful Hall of Fame, we know there's another bad Jersey joke just around the corner." Frank Sinatra was also chosen as a first ballot Hall of Famer. The NJ Hall of Fame only exists as a website now, but funds are being raised to build an actual museum. Meanwhile, Bon Jovi sits idly by the phone, waiting for his rite of passage.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter