Pete Townshend Demonstrates the Art of Guitar Destruction: Exclusive Clip From "Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who"

There have been many guitar-demolishers in the history of rock, but perhaps none more accomplished than the Who's Pete Townshend. Click above to check out an exclusive clip of Townshend demonstrating his technique from Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who, a film tracking the band's forty-plus-year career via all-new interviews with Townshend, Roger Daltrey and more, plus rare concert footage. The movie comes out on DVD November 6th along with Amazing Journey: Six Quick Ones, an additional feature-length project that compiles commentary on the Who's significance from Eddie Vedder, the Edge, Sting and Noel Gallagher, among other musicians.

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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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