News Ticker: Lady Gaga, Phoenix, Daniel Johnston, Dave Grohl

• Sting, Elton John and Lady Gaga will perform together at the Rainforest Fund's 21st annual Carnegie Hall benefit on May 13th, Reuters reports.

• Phoenix are offering up a free download of their Live in Sydney disc on their official website. The eight-song set was recorded at a show earlier this month and features the band's recent hits "1901" and "Lisztomania."

• Daniel Johnston has a surprise new disc due in just three days. TwentyFourBit reports that Beam Me Up!, a 12-track LP recorded with a Dutch orchestra, includes three previously unreleased solo acoustic tracks.

• Dave Grohl has clarified that the caffeine overload he joked about in the "Fresh Pots" video Them Crooked Vultures unleashed via YouTube was an indication of a medical problem. He told Absolute Radio (via Spinner) that his coffee OD landed him in the hospital with chest pains.

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  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

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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