Joe Cocker to Headline New Israel Peace Festival

Joe Cocker has been recruited to headline a new summer festival in Israel. The three-day Gilboa Coexistence Festival, taking place August 26-28, will promote peace between the Jews and Arabs living in the Gilboa section of the Middle Eastern country. "Many acts will be original musical Arab-Jewish ensembles and bands created especially for the festival in never-before seen lineups," concert booking agent Hillel Wachs told Billboard.com. 2BVibes, the company staging the festival, also organized last year's Jerusalem Rocks fest, which featured Black Eyed Peas and Arrested Development. Joe Cocker seems the logical choice to headline Gilboa, because if there's one thing Jews and Arabs can agree on, it's that they have no idea what Joe Cocker is saying when he sings; thankfully, they'll have access to the handy translation in the video above.

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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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