Nine Inch Nails Announce Summer Dates, "Reform" Touring Band

Nine Inch Nails announced the first leg of their summer tour on the band's Web site yesterday. Trent Reznor also confirmed rumors that his touring band -- which featured Twiggy Ramirez (who since rejoined Marilyn Manson), Devo/Vandals drummer Josh Freese, the Icarus Line's Aaron North and keyboardist Alessandro Cortini -- would be "reformed," with "details coming" about the new lineup. On the tour schedule, there's a two-night window between the August 2nd show in Minneapolis and August 5th show in Toronto, conveniently making it possible for Nine Inch Nails to close out this year's Lollapalooza festival in Chicago on August 3rd as rumored.

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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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