Postscript: Farewell to Lee Hazlewood

In 1966 Lee Hazlewood -- who died at 78 of kidney cancer at his Las Vegas home this Saturday -- instructed a teenage Nancy Sinatra to sing his composition "These Boots Are Made For Walking" like a "sixteen-year-old girl who fucks truck drivers." The result was the most successful work of Hazlewood's career, but was hardly alone among the man's many accomplishments. Hazlewood started his career in the early 1950s as a DJ in Coolidge, Arizona. Shortly afterwards he became interested in producing records and hooked up with guitar legend Duane Eddy, with whom he crafted the 1958 hit "Rebel Rouser." In the mid-1960s he began producing Nancy Sinatra records, including her number-one hit "Somethin' Stupid." His commercial career waned in the 1970s, but by the 1990s he had become a cult hero. In recent years his songs have been covered by Primal Scream, Megadeath and Nick Cave. Recently, Sonic Youth reissued many of his early albums. In 2003 Hazlewood teamed up again with Nancy Sinatra again for the album Nancy & Lee 3, which they supported with a tour. His final album, Cake or Death, was released last December.

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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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