R. Kelly Trial: Friends, Relatives Identify Girl and Kelly in Sex Tape

Friends and relatives of the then-underage girl supposedly shown in the R. Kelly sex tape took the stand yesterday at Kelly's child pornography trial to testify that the girl in the tape is in fact the underage girl and that the male shown in the tape is Kelly. Among the witnesses was Stephanie "Sparkle" Edwards, a former protégé of Kelly's and aunt of the girl in the video, and Simha Johnson, the supposed video girl's best friend. Both positively identified the girl and Kelly as the participants in the tape. The defense countered Edwards' testimony with allegations that Edwards attempted to extort Kelly out of money, which Edwards denied.

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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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