Lynyrd Skynyrd Recording With Metal Guitarist, Plot New Album

Lynyrd Skynyrd are reportedly eyeing an early-2009 release for their next studio album, says guitarist Rickey Medlocke. The band has spent the last year recording with a surprising choice — Marilyn Manson/Rob Zombie guitarist John 5 — and hope to spend the latter portion of 2008 in the studio to finish recording the new album, the band's first since 2003's maligned Vicious Cycle. "We've been doing quite a bit of writing with John 5," Medlocke said. "While everybody thought, 'My god, you are going to write with this guy? How is that ever going to work?' But this guy came in and is really multi-talented in all genres." Two of the songs expected to make the track list are the dark "Floyd" and the uptempo "Bang, Bang." The band is currently on the road sharing co-headlining duties with Kid Rock, who appeared on the band's last album.

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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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