Perez Hilton on Paul McCartney, Winehouse, How He'll Reinvent the Music Biz

Last month word broke that Internet gossip guru — and staunch supporter of acts like Mika and the Gossip — Perez Hilton was making moves to officially enter the music industry as a Warner Bros. scout. Rock Daily tracked Hilton down at his SXSW party, which featured Swedish star Robyn, to find out how the man who reinvented gossip blogging would save the record industry — and what Paul McCartney had to say when the two met.

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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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