SXSW Video Wrap-Up: My Morning Jacket, N.E.R.D., Paramore, Vampire Weekend, Morello, Bareilles, More

Rolling Stone was all over SXSW — hanging with My Morning Jacket, N.E.R.D., Paramore and Moby, checking out Vampire Weekend, the Breeders, MGMT, Sara Bareilles, Ben Harper, Robyn and many more — and our trusty cameras captured it all. For a taste of the best SXSW '08 had to offer onstage and behind the scenes, check out our wrap-up video.

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  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
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  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
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  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
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  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.”

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