Radiohead To Play Another London Free Show

Radiohead will perform another free concert on April 1st, this time within the more spacious confines of London's BBC Radio Theatre. Unlike the band's last first-come/first-served show in January — when thousands of fans mobbed the streets trying to get wristbands that would grant them access to a venue that was ultimately deemed too tiny by police, forcing it to a larger location — the BBC will give out tickets either by applying by phone or winning them over the airwaves. "You'd be a fool to miss the concert," said Radio 2 head of music Jeff Smith, making reference to the concert's scheduling on April Fools Day. The gig will serve as a warm-up for Radiohead before they begin the first leg of their U.S. tour in May.

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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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