Radiohead, Petty, Johnson Set to Headline New Outside Lands Fest

San Francisco will be the site of one of this summer's newest live-music events: The Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival will feature five stages and take place August 22-24th in Golden Gate Park. While the full lineup has yet to be released, Radiohead, Tom Petty and Jack Johnson have been booked as headliners and the event's organizers -- the co-founders of Bonnaroo and one of the biggest promoters in Northern California -- are promising a wide range of acts (everything from rock and jazz to Latin, hip-hop and electro) as well as local artists, local food and exhibitions of traditional and new-media art.

Related Stories:
• Sasquatch! Festival Lineup Announced; The Cure, R.E.M. to Headline
• Radiohead, Jack Johnson, Tom Petty Headline SF's New Festival
• All Points West Announces Lineup, Radiohead Confirmed for Two Nights

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

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.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter