Jay-Z Replaces Ailing Beastie Boys as All Points West Headliner

Jay-Z has been added as the Friday, July 31st headliner of the All Points West Festival, filling in for the Beastie Boys after the group canceled their opening-night performance. Although Jigga was a mainstay on the 2008 European festival circuit, the APW gig will mark the rapper's U.S. festival debut. As Rock Daily previously reported, the Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch, the rapper known as MCA, was recently diagnosed with parotid gland cancer, forcing the Beasties to cancel their entire tour and push back the release of their new album Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1 while he undergoes surgery and receives treatments. Thankfully the cancer, which attacks the salivary glands, is considered "very treatable."

Jay-Z's APW set comes just over a month before the rapper's new album Blueprint 3 is released. As Rock Daily reported yesterday, Blueprint 3 features a collaboration with electro-pop duo MGMT, who also happen to also be on the APW lineupâ€"so there's potential for Jay and MGMT to debut their song together in front of tens of thousands of people at New Jersey's Liberty State Park. Coldplay, whose frontman Chris Martin has collaborated with Jay-Z in the past, are headlining APW on Sunday, August 2nd. For Beasties fans disappointed with the addition of Jay-Z — and there can't be many — APW is offering refunds on Friday single-day tickets only.

The canceled Beasties tour left headlining slots open for APW, Lollapalooza, San Francisco's Outside Lands, Montreal's Osheaga and the Austin City Limits festival. Lollapalooza was the first to fill its vacancy, recruiting the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Austin City Limits replaced the Beasties' headlining slot with a "TBD" on their 2009 schedule, while Osheaga and Outside Lands both tell ticket buyers that they're on the search for new headliners.

Related Stories:
• Jay-Z's "Blueprint 3" To Feature Rihanna, Drake, MGMT
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs Join Lollapalooza Lineup As Festivals Race to Replace Beastie Boys
• Beastie Boys Cancel Concerts, Push Back "Hot Sauce" After Yauch Reveals He Has Cancer

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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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