Creation Records Founder McGee Tells Bands to "Do It Yourself"

Alan McGee, the former head of Creation Records who is credited with discovering artists like Oasis and the Libertines, spoke out against record labels in an interview with XFM. McGee urged new bands not to sign with labels, saying "I'd recommend a band not to go to any record label, I think they're all fucking rubbish. You're better off doing it yourself. They're living in the past." McGee apparently practices what he preaches, as Poptones Records, the company he founded following the demise of Creation, has pretty much ceased to exist as the music industry continues to tilt digitally. Poptones was responsible for bringing the Hives to the U.K. and released side projects of bands like the Beta Band and the Icarus Line. The label's website went offline this past May.

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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.”

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