Sting Celebrates 25-Year Solo Career

Sting

Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images

Sting will perform a special concert at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan on October 1st to celebrate the 25th anniversary of solo career on the eve of his 60th birthday. The show, which will feature music from the singer's extensive body of work, will be a benefit concert for the Robin Hood Foundation, an organization that fights poverty in New York City.

Sting's performance will also include a number of major guests, including Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Lady Gaga, Mary J. Blige, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock and Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas.

Photos: Hot Rock Offspring: Madonna, Sting, Keith Richards and More Stars' Famous Kids

Tickets for the event will not go on sale to the general public, though a small number of tickets have been reserved for members of Sting's fan club.

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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.”

More Song Stories entries »

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