Exclusive: Arcade Fire Play Surprise Show in Haiti

Photograph by Lee Celano

Fresh off their Grammy and Juno victories, Arcade Fire played a surprise show on March 29th at the Hotel Oloffson in earthquake-battered Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Rolling Stone was on hand to document the intimate, highly emotional gig, which included covers of songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Rolling Stones and Cyndi Lauper as well as their own hits "Keep the Car Running," "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" and of course, "Haiti."

Exclusive Photos: Arcade Fire Perform in Haiti

Haiti is a very important place to the Canadian band. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Régine Chassagne is the daughter of Haitian immigrants, and the group have raised over $1 million for post-earthquake relief efforts there.

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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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