Lollapalooza: Backstage With Silverchair and Interpol

On Saturday, Rock Daily went backstage at Lollapalooza to check out the behind-the-scenes action. We caught up with Australian band Silverchair just as they were about to sit down to dinner in the artists' dining area (our chat was briefly disrupted by Ryan Cabrera, who asked for a photo with Silverchair singer Daniel Johns). Rock Daily next jumped on a golf cart and rode to the opposite end of Grant Park to see Interpol arrive for their headlining set in front of more than 40,000 eager fans. The night's end found us chatting with the artists' lounge bartender, who said she proudly served Wilco's Jeff Tweedy at the fest.

More Lollapalooza coverage is on the way! Check out updated show reports, photo galleries and video throughout the weekend on RollingStone.com.

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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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