Digest: Ryan Adams Records With Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan Producer; Chic's Nile Rodgers Beats Cancer

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Ryan Adams Begins New Album With Glyn Johns
Ryan Adams is working on a new album with Glyn Johns, the legendary producer of records by Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Clash, the Who, the Eagles and many others. No other details about Adams' new record have been made available. [NME]

Nile Rodgers is Cancer-Free
Chic's Nile Rodgers has announced on his website that his doctors say that he is now cancer-free. The guitarist had been battling what he had referred to as aggressive cancer in a previous blog post.  [Nile Rodgers]

Jermaine Jackson to Write Memoir About Michael Jackson
Jermaine Jackson has begun work on a memoir about his relationship with his brother Michael Jackson. The book, titled You Are Not Alone: Through A Brother's Eyes is set to be released by the end of this year. [Reuters]

The Mountain Goats Auction Song For Charity
John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has announced that he will be auctioning off a cassette tape featuring a demo of an unreleased tune called "Eugene Sue" to benefit Doctor Without Borders' recovery efforts in Japan. [Pitchfork]

MTV to Revive '120 Minutes'
120 Minutes, MTV's indie rock and alternative music showcase that originally ran from 1986 until 2000, is about to be revived by the network as a monthly series on MTV2. The series will be hosted by Matt Pinfield, who previously hosted the show in the late Nineties. A sister program, 120 Seconds, will appear weekly on the MTV Hive website. [Press release]

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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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