The New Issue of Rolling Stone: Best of Rock 2008

The new issue of Rolling Stone hitting newsstands this week features our massive Best of Rock package, which calls out 175 people, places and things ruling the rock & roll universe right now — from Best Breakthrough My Morning Jacket to Best Festival Band Radiohead to Best MC Lil Wayne (with plenty of fantastic remasters, books, venues, T-shirts, gear and much more). Check out the expanded version of the feature here.

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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
• 
  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.”

More Song Stories entries »

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