EMI/Capitol Catch Vinyl Fever with Radiohead, "Pet Sounds" Reissues

As recent studies have shown, vinyl records are bucking the trend of the declining music industry by actually being profitable. EMI, a company embroiled by personnel issues and decreasing sales, are hoping the vinyl trend can help resurrect their profits when they release fifteen of the EMI catalog's most popular albums on vinyl. A rep at Capitol/EMI confirmed that the label would reissue the fifteen albums on August 19th, with each release replicating the original artwork and packaging from when the album was first issued. Getting the vinyl treatment is the Beach Boys' out-of-print Pet Sounds, every pre-In Rainbows Radiohead album, R.E.M.'s Document, Coldplay's pre-Viva la Vida albums and John Lennon's Imagine. Also going back to wax is the Band of Gypsys album, Wings' Band on the Run, a pair of Bob Seger albums and A Perfect Circle's Mer de Noms. Pre-orders for the vinyls show they will be priced in the $20-30 range.

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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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