What is *Three Pianos* by Andrew McMahon about?

*Three Pianos* is a memoir by musician Andrew McMahon that chronicles his life through three pivotal pianos, each symbolizing different eras: his childhood as a prodigy, his rise with bands Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin, and his battle with leukemia. It explores themes of addiction, resilience, and healing through music, framed by raw reflections on family struggles and personal growth.

Who should read *Three Pianos*?

This book resonates with fans of McMahon’s music, memoir enthusiasts, and anyone navigating themes of addiction, illness, or creative perseverance. It’s ideal for readers seeking candid narratives about overcoming adversity and the transformative power of art.

Is *Three Pianos* worth reading?

Yes—its blend of lyrical prose, heartfelt honesty, and unique structure (addressing pianos as characters) offers a fresh take on the memoir genre. McMahon’s storytelling balances grit with hope, making it compelling for both music lovers and general readers.

How do the three pianos symbolize Andrew McMahon’s journey?

Each piano represents a life stage: - **Childhood upright**: Early talent and family turbulence. - **Baby grand**: Ambition and fame during his music career. - **Baldwin**: Resilience during leukemia treatment, serving as a therapeutic outlet. These instruments act as metaphors for emotional anchors and creative evolution.

What role does family play in *Three Pianos*?

McMahon’s family dynamics drive the narrative, particularly his father’s opioid addiction and his sister’s mental health struggles. Their challenges shape his resilience, while his wife Kelly’s unwavering support becomes a cornerstone of his recovery.

How does *Three Pianos* address themes of health and resilience?

The memoir vividly recounts McMahon’s 2005 leukemia diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, highlighting his physical and emotional battles. His journey underscores the fragility of life and the determination to rebuild after trauma.

What is the significance of the *Dear Jack* documentary in the memoir?

*Dear Jack* chronicles McMahon’s public cancer battle, which he references to contextualize his vulnerability during treatment. The documentary’s raw portrayal complements the memoir’s introspective tone.

How does Andrew McMahon’s writing style enhance the memoir?

McMahon intersperses lyrical letters to his pianos with linear storytelling, creating an intimate, reflective narrative. This structure immerses readers in his emotional landscape and creative process.

Three Pianos

A Memoir

Andrew McMahon

4.4(2935 Reviews)

Overview of Three Pianos

In "Three Pianos," musician Andrew McMahon transforms his leukemia battle, addiction struggles, and music journey into a raw memoir where three instruments become powerful symbols of resilience. His poetic storytelling has fans discovering new meanings in songs they thought they already knew.

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Chapter 1

From Broken Keys to Healing Melodies: The Journey of a Piano Man

When a young boy meets a piano, something magical happens. The keys become more than ivory and ebony-they transform into portals to another world. For Andrew McMahon, this relationship with the piano would become his salvation, his burden, his confidant, and ultimately his path to healing. His memoir "Three Pianos" chronicles a life defined by music, addiction, cancer, and rebirth-a story that has resonated deeply with fans and critics alike. The book has become a touchstone for musicians and cancer survivors, with figures like Taylor Swift and John Mayer citing it as an essential read about resilience and artistic perseverance. Beyond its critical acclaim, the memoir offers rare insight into the intersection of music, illness, and recovery that few artists have articulated with such raw honesty.

Chapter 2

The Birth of a Musical Partnership

The pianoforte, created in the early 1700s by Italian instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori, evolved over centuries into a marvel of engineering-over ten thousand moving parts working in perfect harmony. For six-year-old Andrew McMahon, his first piano arrived as his mother's birthday gift, a symbol of his father's love and their family's rising status in Chicago's North Shore suburbs. The black satin skin reflected his young face like a funhouse mirror, its checkerboard teeth matching his incomplete set. Though the piano initially belonged to his mother-her clicking fake nails forever linked to solfeggio and classical compositions-it would eventually become Andrew's most faithful companion. In those early days, he would hide in hallway corners, yearning for his mother's musical magic, watching as her fingers brought life to the dormant instrument. Little did he know that necessity would eventually bind him and the piano together in ways he couldn't yet imagine. The family moved frequently, following his father's career from town to town. In Winnetka, Illinois, they appeared the perfect American family-parents and five children posed on the lawn of their brick masterpiece home. Hidden beneath this polished veneer was a complex history: his three oldest siblings had survived their biological father's drowning before Andrew's mother remarried. Confronting the past wasn't the family's strength; perseverance and camera-ready smiles were their specialty. Andrew was different from his siblings-a Michael Jackson and Phil Collins fan who attended preschool in bow ties and penny loafers. He hated sports but took years to admit it, once crying to his father in a Little League dugout because the bat hurt his hands. These early experiences shaped his identity as someone who didn't quite fit conventional expectations, setting the stage for his future as an artist who would forge his own path.

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Chapter 3

Tragedy and Musical Awakening

The summer of 1991 marked a pivotal transition for the McMahon family-moving from Illinois to California and trading their brick home for a castle-like Tudor on Flintridge Drive. But more significantly, it brought Andrew's first intimate encounter with death. Just a month before his ninth birthday, his uncle Stuart died at thirty-eight after battling cancer. Stuart's larger-than-life presence had been the family's buoyant raft; without him, they drifted aimlessly. For young Andrew, death's machinery was completely foreign. He hid a poem in Stuart's coffin lining, thinking his uncle might read it in the afterlife. For years afterward, Stuart's funeral photograph would become a makeshift memorial in Andrew's bedroom. The family moved into their strange new house the very night Stuart was buried. The Tudor sat fifty feet below street level in a ravine, perpetually shadowed by trees. Andrew took the basement level where coyotes howled outside his window nightly. For a month, he cried himself to sleep praying for Stuart to return. Then, in September, everything changed. Sitting before the piano with legs dangling from the bench, Andrew formed his first chord-a gift from a friend who had shown him that three simple notes could create six possible chords on the white keys. As he stumbled through this progression, something miraculous happened-his voice joined in, completing their circuit. The sun poured through the window, painting gold across the trees outside as time seemed to both stop and race forward. Family members passed by with confused looks, but Andrew had found something transformative. The piano became his sanctuary, and music became his salvation. From that day forward, tending this spiritual fire became their shared fate-the piano's and his. On the very best days, a song was born.

Chapter 4

A Nomadic Childhood and Musical Identity

The McMahon family's nomadic lifestyle continued, with a move to Bexley, Ohio after less than a year in Pasadena. For Andrew, these relocations became background noise to his developing relationship with music. The praise felt good-hushed voices using words like "prodigy" and astonished faces when he played-but his connection to the piano had become the constant in an ever-changing landscape. Their home at 107 South Ardmore was a three-story, blue-shingled box with a crimson door. The piano had its own room with French doors-one set leading to the entryway, another to the porch where his mother chain-smoked on difficult nights. Turning ten in this small town felt different from previous moves. Andrew entered fifth grade tired of being the new kid, cornered and lashing out until his teacher, Mrs. Davis, extended compassion that broke his defenses. Music became his social currency when Mrs. Davis encouraged him to perform for the class, leading to friendships and playground protection. At a school assembly, he discovered the transformative power of performing, losing himself in the music as children stood cheering on chairs. He began formal lessons with stern Mrs. Isringhausen at the local conservatory, who tolerated his poor study habits but taught him essential theory. Meanwhile, his father was eroding-growing volatile and distant, spending hours alone or on long drives. By spring 1994, the ground beneath their seemingly stable life had shifted, ready to split open within a year. As Andrew stood before the mirror at eleven, he confronted his changing body and the casual cruelty of middle school, unaware of the wall of tragedy being built brick by brick, soon to be demolished by a bomb blast that would forever divide his life into "before" and "after."

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Chapter 5

Family Fractures and Teenage Rebellion

The family's move to Huntington Beach, California marked another upheaval in Andrew's life. They became unwelcome houseguests in his eccentric Aunt Kristina's home, where tension between his mother and aunt created a stifling atmosphere. Starting eighth grade at Talbert Middle School filled him with dread-a concrete canvas with little shade where he'd have no friends to insulate him from bullying. The stability he craved was further shattered when the phone rang one night and his father's voice came through from a correctional facility. He'd been arrested for using counterfeit prescriptions, caught in the spiral of his addiction. The house erupted into chaos-tears, frantic calls, his grandfather arriving with anger toward his father that triggered Andrew's own rage. Despite their escape from Ohio just six months earlier, his mother was immediately pulled back into saving her husband. Court-mandated drug testing and recovery programs were arranged, with the expectation he would soon rejoin them in California. Andrew felt whiplash between hope and dread. Seeking escape, he discovered a brochure for an arts boarding school in the Idyllwild mountains. His mother supported his application, perhaps missing his absence from their piano. During his auditions, he performed a classical piece poorly but poured his soul into an original song about Chicago. For his theater audition, he channeled all his buried pain into a monologue that left the faculty speechless and his mother in tears. When his acceptance letter finally arrived with a sizable scholarship, his elation was crushed when his father, newly sober, made canceling this dream his first act of parenting. Andrew argued viciously, but realized his mother's addiction to his father meant she would forgive any harm. He reluctantly accepted their move to Dana Point where his father would rejoin them, pulling away emotionally even as he hoped his father would stay sober.

Chapter 6

Finding Identity Through Music

By late fall 1996, Andrew's life was blooming. With decent grades and emerging from his protective shell, he felt settled for the first time in years. At home, they practiced the family's version of "starting over"-rearview mirror spray-painted black to ignore the scorched earth behind them as they barreled forward. He found friendship with a group of boys who spent Saturday nights cruising in Bodger's hatchback, pulling pranks at drive-thrus and eventually escalating to stealing construction cones to create fake detours in affluent neighborhoods. These joyrides continued for years, symbolizing for Andrew the pure joy of youth-five friends with windows down, laughing over the radio, going nowhere and everywhere at once. Summer 1997 arrived with weightless freedom. He joined the school musical "Little Shop of Horrors" and began exploring new experiences. One July night, he was introduced to marijuana on the beach. After multiple attempts, the high finally hit him-the headlands, condemned trailer homes, and moonlit shadows suddenly profound with beauty. This awakening would become a feeling he'd seek in many forms, though initially with caution, perhaps out of respect for the disease that nearly destroyed his family. As high school progressed, Andrew's musical talents continued to develop. At sixteen, he abandoned his family piano for a garage keyboard, writing songs about love, car crashes, and kissing drunk girls. His band started in churches and school lunch hours before Gary, the denim-clad Coach House owner, took a chance on them. After high school graduation, Gary paid for their album, and Andrew recorded on his club's concert grand. When crowds grew, word reached Los Angeles, and Drive-Thru Records offered them a deal.

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Chapter 7

Rise to Fame and Personal Demons

Being nineteen and cut loose was miraculous for Andrew-floor sleeping, broke, binge drinking, waking in bathtubs with dried puke. Something Corporate, his band, was signed young to Drive-Thru Records, who partnered with MCA. He recorded down the hall from Tom Petty in a studio once used by the Beach Boys, made music with Paul Buckmaster who worked with Bowie and Elton, and flew worldwide for showcases. But they were the most unpunk thing at the punk show-Andrew was a piano player facing hecklers with raised middle fingers. They threw bottles, shoes, dirt, rocks, spit-even a block of ice that hit his face in Texas. The band didn't give up, bleeding for their songs until crowds turned in their favor. Meanwhile, Andrew's relationship with Kelly developed-they'd known each other since she was his sister's born-again friend, but by summer 2001 they'd evolved toward each other. Despite their seemingly opposed pursuits-her college, his band-Kelly was earth to his sky, and they never looked back. As the band's success grew, so did the fractures within it. They retreated to Shoreline, a wooded enclave outside Seattle, to record what would become Something Corporate's final album in April 2003. Like a family nearing divorce, they hoped fresh air would remind them how to breathe together. Success had initially drawn them closer, but they needed to establish individual identities beyond the band. Living in different towns and seeing each other less made agreeing on their future increasingly difficult. Andrew's vision for the band, rarely challenged in early days, now required compromise as it became everyone's livelihood. Too young to see the big picture, they bottled frustrations rather than addressing them.

Chapter 8

Jack's Mannequin and the Battle for Life

By 2004, Andrew had embarked on a new musical project - Jack's Mannequin - which represented both an artistic evolution and deeply personal journey. His bedroom transformed into an all-encompassing creative sanctuary where time seemed to lose meaning. He would work through the night, sleeping only a few hours, subsisting mainly on coffee and determination, completely consumed by the songwriting process. The walls became covered with scattered lyric sheets and chord progressions as he chased melodies that wouldn't let him rest. At Fourth Street studio in Santa Monica, Andrew found a crucial collaborator in producer Jim Wirt, who had been instrumental in crafting Something Corporate's signature sound across multiple albums. Their partnership took on new dimensions in these sessions. Without the constraints or support of a full band, they were forced to innovate - building songs from the ground up using drum machines, layered loops, and whatever instruments caught their attention in the moment. Between takes, they would blast music through the studio monitors and dance wildly, using that energy to fuel their next creative burst. Each session would stretch until dawn, with Andrew driving home through empty Los Angeles streets, new songs playing through his car speakers, his mind already racing toward the next day's possibilities. May 27, 2005 marked a devastating pivot point. After completing the album's final touches in Chelsea, New York - what should have been a moment of triumph - Andrew found himself instead in a yellow taxi racing toward Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. For nearly a week, he had pushed through increasingly alarming symptoms - violent fevers that left him shaking, night sweats that soaked through sheets, and a growing struggle to draw full breaths. It wasn't until he completely lost his voice, forcing the cancellation of a crucial performance, that he finally sought medical help. The diagnosis arrived on a Tuesday morning - acute lymphocytic leukemia, words that fell like stones in the sterile hospital room. The news created a stark divide between before and after, shattering the trajectory of what should have been a career-defining album release. Andrew immediately pushed to return to California, but his compromised immune system made commercial flights impossible. He needed specialized transportation - a private medical flight and guaranteed bed space at a West Coast facility. At UCLA Medical Center, Dr. Schiller became both his lifeline and harbinger of necessary suffering - a precise, immaculately presented oncologist whose carefully manicured exterior belied her role in administering brutal but life-saving treatments. The high-dose chemotherapy regimen ravaged his body systematically: mouth sores transformed eating into torture, migraines clouded his thoughts, angry rashes spread across his skin, and eventually even the strongest pain medications provided little relief. Through it all, his support system remained unwavering - his mother and sister coordinating their vigils during daylight hours, while his girlfriend Kelly maintained the long, quiet watches through afternoon and night, all of them bearing witness to his fight for survival.

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Chapter 9

Rebirth Through Music and Family

During his hospital stay, Dr. Schiller delivered unexpected news that would alter Andrew's trajectory - his sister Kate's bone marrow was a perfect match, a rare occurrence that happens in only 25% of sibling cases. The doctor proposed a stem cell transplant, acknowledging it as a moonshot cure with significant risks but potentially transformative results. Kate and Andrew shared a complex history; both were raised in what they called "a house on fire" - a childhood marked by instability and trauma. Kate had fought through her own battles with depression and addiction, emerging stronger. Now, in a poetic role reversal, as Andrew's strength ebbed away, she stood ready to literally give part of herself to save him. The transplant was scheduled for August 23rd - synchronistically the same day his album "Everything in Transit" would be released into the world. The procedure itself was deceptively simple: his family gathered in the sterile hospital room, watching clear bags of Kate's stem cells flow through the PICC line inserted in his chest. But what followed was brutal. For weeks, Andrew's body became a battlefield as the new cells fought to establish themselves. He endured savage rashes that left his skin peeling in sheets, mouth ulcers that made eating excruciating, and a throat so inflamed he could barely swallow water. By October, Andrew returned to his New York townhouse fundamentally changed - weighing just 114 pounds, his skin constantly cracking and peeling, his feet numbed by neuropathy that made every step uncertain. Standard medical wisdom suggested a year-long recovery, but Andrew rejected this timeline with characteristic defiance. He began recording at Fourth Street Studio while still severely immunocompromised and, remarkably, performed a show on his hundred-day transplant anniversary - though he needed help climbing the stairs to the stage. In December, seeing a future beyond survival for the first time, he proposed to Kelly, desperate to believe the worst was behind them. The wedding took place on December 16, 2006, but the months leading up to it revealed Andrew's struggle to reconcile his pre and post-cancer selves. He spent time on tour with his old party crew, deliberately courting danger and excess, as if trying to prove cancer hadn't fundamentally altered him. He became what he later described as a walking "fuck you" to his brush with mortality - recklessly daring the disease to return and finish what it started. Despite projecting joy and gratitude publicly, Andrew was drowning in private depression. The pressure to write a follow-up album to "Everything in Transit" became paralyzing - his creative confidence would surge one day only to completely abandon him the next. Cancer had shattered his illusion of control over his life and art, leading him to lash out destructively at his closest supporters - his bandmates, his long-time manager Arvis, and most frequently Kelly, who endured his emotional pendulum swings between intense affection and bitter resentment. This period would later prove to be not an ending but another beginning in his ongoing journey of recovery and self-discovery.

Chapter 10

The Road to Healing

By late 2007, Andrew was finding his way in the studio, using music as therapy for his troubled reentry into life after cancer. But his timing collided with the record industry's decline-labels were fighting piracy rather than evolving. Depression visited like an unwelcome houseguest, arriving without invitation and departing without notice. In January 2008, Andrew embarked on a cross-country road trip, seeking solitude and perspective. Driving alone through Texas's vast landscape-valleys, deserts, and hill country beneath cloud-mountain skies-he found what he'd been missing: the space between breaths, his lost sense of destiny, renewed faith in his music, and his smallness within something greater. He'd been unable to admit how destroyed cancer had left him, wearing gratitude as a mask while concealing his wounds. But alone on that road, he experienced forgiveness for himself and for the days that changed him-a private baptism that wouldn't last in the real world, but momentarily connected him with the peace he sought. In October 2008, he released the bizarre little album about surviving in a world he hadn't yet made sense of: "The Glass Passenger." Despite its difficult birth, the album represented an important step in Andrew's healing process. After eighteen months touring for "The Glass Passenger," reliving cancer in interviews by day and proving his aliveness in bars by night, Andrew worried he was choosing his father's darkness. He and Kelly rented a house in Laguna Beach to break his pattern of wild tours and wilder homecomings. The ocean became his salvation. He and Kelly returned to the beach regularly until the new year, where he began writing what would become Jack's Mannequin's final album-a study in conflict and love.

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Chapter 11

Finding Peace and Purpose

Andrew played his final Jack's Mannequin show at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on November 12, 2012. Having spent countless teenage nights pressed against its barricade in worship, it was the perfect place to say goodbye to the faithful in a room where he'd learned to pray. Jack's Mannequin had become a collective, a family shrine to music and mending. Though far from perfect, Andrew now saw clearly it was the people who believed in him that enabled his living from songs. Having made many of the same mistakes the second time around, he knew better than to end Jack's Mannequin without a proper farewell. Starting over at thirty tested his mettle in ways twenty never did. In August 2013, he rented a concrete and stone cabin in Topanga Canyon, where he spent weekdays behind a keyboard in isolation and weekends at home with Kelly, who was pregnant after an earlier miscarriage that February. As his canyon time ended, a presence visited his dreams-not the soul they'd grieved, but the little girl who would someday reach her mother's arms and his. The first song he wrote for her was among few to survive his cabin days, but the self-reliance he learned there prepared him for what followed. Cecilia Kate was born the morning before Valentine's Day, 2014, with her mother's eyes, only darker. Holding her, Andrew finally found reason for his hard-weather years. Cradling this creature of his blood transported him through time-all the moving trucks, piano recitals, hospital rooms, funerals and weddings collapsed into one moment. Cecilia was five months old when they left for their first tour as a family, beginning years that would be among Andrew's best. Parenthood is a daily mugging followed by a lottery win, the collision of theft and love, but they were together. He watched his daughter grow alongside his name in lights. In spring 2015, they kicked off festival season at Coachella. "Cecilia and the Satellite"-the song Andrew had written for his daughter-was about to break through, becoming his first mainstream hit. Under a cloudless cobalt sky, Kelly danced with their daughter in the wings, wearing a yellow dress and wide-brimmed hat. As they performed, Andrew felt delivered from harder years and a past that no longer owned him. His parents watched from the crowd-they never missed a show. Fatherhood had added layers to their relationship, awakening empathy his youth couldn't supply. He'd found home with Kelly and Cecilia, and though storms would come, he'd found his truth not in the roaring crowd, but waiting for him in the wings-his family. The journey that began with a young boy and a piano had come full circle. Through addiction, cancer, and rebirth, music had been Andrew's constant companion, his means of processing pain and celebrating joy. The three pianos that marked different chapters of his life-from his childhood instrument to his road-worn performance piano to his mature creative tool-represented not just his evolution as a musician, but as a human being learning to embrace both the darkness and the light.

★★★★★

You made it to the end of Three Pianos

“23 days in and I have used it every single day. It is part of my daily habit now.”

jayallen

Key Themes in Three Pianos

musical catharsis
cancer survival
artistic resilience
nomadic childhood
creative recovery

Quotes from Three Pianos

Confronting the past wasn't the family's strength.
Music became his salvation.
On the very best days, a song was born.
Music became his social currency.
Andrew felt whiplash between hope and dread.

Characters in Three Pianos

Andrew McMahonThe protagonist, a musician and cancer survivor
StuartAndrew's uncle whose death deeply affected him
Mrs. DavisAndrew's fifth-grade teacher in Ohio
Mrs. IsringhausenAndrew's stern piano teacher at the conservatory
Bartolomeo CristoforiThe Italian inventor of the pianoforte

About the Author

Andrew McMahon, renowned musician and memoirist, is the author of Three Pianos: A Memoir, a poignant exploration of resilience, creativity, and the healing power of music. Best known as the indie-rock frontman of bands Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin, McMahon weaves his experiences as a child piano prodigy, leukemia survivor, and Grammy-nominated artist into this raw, introspective work.

The memoir delves into themes of family trauma, addiction, and artistic identity, reflecting his nearly three-decade career in music and his role as founder of the cancer-research nonprofit Dear Jack Foundation.

McMahon’s storytelling extends beyond the page through his solo project Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness and the acclaimed documentary Dear Jack, which chronicles his cancer battle. His TEDxTalk on creativity and survival further amplifies his authority on overcoming adversity.

A Billboard-charting artist, McMahon’s music and writing resonate with fans globally, blending vulnerability with anthemic hope. Three Pianos has been celebrated for its lyrical prose and unflinching honesty, cementing McMahon’s legacy as a multifaceted voice in contemporary memoir.

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"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

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Chapter 8

Three Pianos

OverviewOverview of Three Pianos

One book. Many ways to hear it.

From Broken Keys to Healing Melodies: The Journey of a Piano Man

The Birth of a Musical Partnership

See every word as you hear it

Tragedy and Musical Awakening

A Nomadic Childhood and Musical Identity

Get more out of Three Pianos

Family Fractures and Teenage Rebellion

Finding Identity Through Music

See every word as you hear it

Rise to Fame and Personal Demons

Jack's Mannequin and the Battle for Life

Get more out of Three Pianos

Rebirth Through Music and Family

The Road to Healing

See every word as you hear it

Finding Peace and Purpose

You made it to the end of Three Pianos

Key Themes in Three Pianos

Quotes from Three Pianos

Characters in Three Pianos

About the Author

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What is Three Pianos by Andrew McMahon about?

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Is Three Pianos worth reading?

How do the three pianos symbolize Andrew McMahon’s journey?

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BeFreed Brings Together A Global Community Of Curious Minds

BeFreed Brings Together A Global Community Of Curious Minds

One book. Many ways to hear it.

From Broken Keys to Healing Melodies: The Journey of a Piano Man

The Birth of a Musical Partnership

See every word as you hear it

Tragedy and Musical Awakening

A Nomadic Childhood and Musical Identity

Get more out of Three Pianos

Family Fractures and Teenage Rebellion

Finding Identity Through Music

See every word as you hear it

Rise to Fame and Personal Demons

Jack's Mannequin and the Battle for Life

Get more out of Three Pianos

Rebirth Through Music and Family

The Road to Healing

See every word as you hear it

Finding Peace and Purpose

You made it to the end of Three Pianos

Users also liked

Discover more

Overview of Three Pianos