Billy Joel is sharing candid details about some tough times in his younger years in a new documentary.
Billy Joel: And So It Goes, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival in New York City on Wednesday, June 4, showed the singer opening up about one of his lowest points.
Joel, 76, shared details about how he fell “in love” with Elizabeth Weber, the then-wife of Jon Small, in his early 20s, People reported on Thursday, June 5. Small was Joel’s best friend and bandmate at the time, and Joel had moved in with the couple and their son.
Weber appeared in the documentary, noting that she and Joel spent a lot of time together before Small caught wind of the affair. It culminated in Joel confessing to Small, “I’m in love with your wife.” (Weber and Joel later reignited their romance and were married from 1973 to 1982.)
“I felt very, very guilty about it. They had a child. I felt like a home-wrecker,” Joel said in the film. “I was just in love with a woman, and I got punched in the nose, which I deserved. Jon was very upset. I was very upset.”
The affair caused Joel and Small’s band to split up, and with their friendship in tatters, the Piano Man began to spiral.
“I had no place to live. I was sleeping in laundromats, and I was depressed, I think, to the point of almost being psychotic,” he said. “So I figured, ‘That’s it. I don’t want to live anymore.’ I was just in a lot of pain, and it was sort of like, ‘Why hang out? Tomorrow is going to be just like today is, and today sucks.’ So, I just thought I’d end it all.”
In the documentary, Joel’s sister, Judy Molinari, detailed the emotional period when Joel made his first suicide attempt and she thought she was going to lose him.
“He was in a coma for days and days and days,” she said. “I went to go see him in the hospital, and he was laying there white as a sheet.”
During the second attempt, it was actually Small who rushed Joel to the hospital to get help.
“Even though our friendship was blowing up, Jon saved my life,” Joel shared. (Small eventually forgave Joel for the affair with Weber.)
Following the attempts, Joel checked himself into an “observation ward,” and the experience helped him get back on the right path.
“I got out of the observation ward, and I thought to myself, ‘You can utilize all those emotions to channel that stuff into music,'” he explained.
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