R. Kelly Wins $3.4 Million Back Pay Settlement Against Tour Promoter

R. Kelly was awarded $3.4 million in back pay from his most recent tour after the tour's promoter "swindled" Kelly and others involved. Kelly's legal dispute with promoter Rowe Entertainment dates back to February, while Kelly was still on the road. Leonard Rowe was accused of selling shares of Kelly concerts in exchange for cash investments, but then falsely told the investors that the concerts lost money. "I agreed to let Leonard Rowe promote my tour because he convinced me he was an underdog who deserved a chance to prove himself. Like the saying goes, 'No good deed goes unpunished,'" Kelly said in a statement. "I have complete sympathy for all the good people who were swindled by Rowe, and I will do everything I can to help them get their money back from him."

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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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