Huge Benefit Concert for Japan Canceled

Robert Marquardt/WireImage

A massive concert that was planned for April 14th at London's Wembley Arena to benefit the relief efforts in Japan has been canceled. The show, which was intended to be a major spectacle that would be broadcast worldwide, was scrapped by Live Nation when the promoter could not book enough major acts to pull off a large-scale event.

Though the Wembley concert has been dropped, a similar but much smaller benefit event was held last night at London's Brixton Academy. That show, which was headlined by Liam Gallagher's new band Beady Eye, had a bill that was basically a who's who of Britpop – Primal Scream featuring the Sex Pistols' Glenn Matlock on bass, the Verve's Richard Ashcroft, the Jam's Paul Weller and Graham Coxon of Blur.

Here are a few video clips from last night's show:



Primal Scream perform "Movin' On Up" with Glenn Matlock.



Richard Ashcroft plays a solo version of the Verve ballad "Sonnet."



Beady Eye play their upbeat single "Bright the Light." 

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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.”

More Song Stories entries »

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