The Kooks Talk Stones Tour and New "Konk" LP

Poppy Brit rockers the Kooks are unleashing their second album, Konk, on April 14th. The record, named after the famed studios where the LP was recorded, finds the band recapturing their debut's distinctly English charm with heavier hooks and Cheap Trick licks. To mark the release, Rock Daily is offering up an exclusive download: a live version of the band's new single "Always Where I Need To" recorded in February at London's Astoria.

And here's a bonus: When the Kooks were in New York recently, our video cameras captured singer-guitarist Luke Pritchard and drummer Paul Garred playing one of eighty demos that didn't wind of making the album, and dishing some dirt on what went on behind the scenes when they toured with the Rolling Stones.

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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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