Live Earth Wrap-Up: Attendance, Axl Rose, Madonna

For anyone who somehow missed Rock Daily's extensive coverage of Al Gore's twenty-four-hour music marathon this past weekend, here's a quick summary: A reported two billion people watched more than 100 artists perform on all seven continents. Attendance at the Washington, D.C. event (which was announced one day before the show) and in Rio were reportedly less than anticipated, and promoters in Johannesburg explained their lower-than-expected turnout by blaming climate change. Guns n' Roses frontman Axl Rose explained his band's absence from the event, saying, "We were not asked until the last couple weeks while we were on tour in Australia and have upcoming sold-out dates already rescheduled in Japan." And Madonna allegedly had some rigid requirements for her London interviews, stipulating journalists must look her in the eye.

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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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