Madonna's Older Brother Is Homeless

Madonna

Dave M. Benett/Getty Images

Madonna's older brother, Anthony Ciccone, revealed that he is currently homeless in an interview with the Michigan Messenger.

"My family turned their back on me, basically, when I was having a hard time," says Ciccone. "You think I haven't answered this kind of question a bazillion times – why my sister is a multibazillionaire, and I'm homeless on the street? Never say never. This could happen to anybody." Ciccone attributes his circumstances to losing his job at his father's winery over a year ago.

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The Michigan Messenger's story was focused mainly on the growing homeless population of Traverse City, which has attracted many vagrants thanks to the city's network of services for the destitute. "This is a unique system with the churches here," says Ciccone. "You won’t find this in too many places."

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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.”

More Song Stories entries »

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