Billy Joel reveals that he twice tried suicide — sparked by his affair with a band mate’s spouse — in his new HBO documentary And So It Goes, and that one of many makes an attempt left him in a coma.
Earlier than he was “The Piano Man,” a twentysomething Joel performed in a Lengthy Island exhausting rock band known as Attila alongside his then-best good friend Jon Small. At one level, Joel moved in with Small, his spouse Elizabeth Weber, and their younger son, throughout which Joel and Weber spent “numerous time collectively” and a “gradual construct” romance developed. Joel ultimately admitted to Small, “I’m in love together with your spouse.”
“I felt very, very responsible about it. They’d a toddler. I felt like a homewrecker,” Joel mentioned within the documentary, in accordance with Individuals. “I used to be simply in love with a lady, and I acquired punched within the nostril, which I deserved. Jon was very upset. I used to be very upset.”
The affair resulted in Attila’s breakup, the (short-term) finish of his finest friendship, and Joel getting evicted from Small’s home. “I had no place to dwell. I used to be sleeping in laundromats and I used to be depressed, I believe to the purpose of virtually being psychotic,” Joel added. “So I figured, ‘That’s it. I don’t need to dwell anymore.’ I used to be simply in numerous ache, and it was kind of like, ‘Why hang around? Tomorrow goes to be similar to at the moment is and at the moment sucks.’ So, I simply thought I’d finish all of it.”
Joel’s sister Judy, then a medical assistant, had beforehand prescribed her brother sleeping drugs to assist him sleep; Joel’s first suicide try got here when he “determined that he was going to take all of them.”
“He was in a coma for days and days and days,” Judy says within the documentary. “I went to go see him within the hospital, and he was mendacity there white as a sheet. I assumed that I’d killed him.”
Joel, disillusioned that his try failed, wakened within the hospital and swore to do it “proper” the second time. He mentioned he drank a whole bottle of the cleansing product “lemon Pledge,” after which his ex-best good friend, Small, took him to the hospital. “Despite the fact that our friendship was blowing up, Jon saved my life,” Joel mentioned.
Small added within the documentary, “He by no means actually mentioned something to me, the one sensible reply I may give as to why Billy took it so exhausting was as a result of he liked me that a lot and that it killed him to harm me that a lot. Ultimately I forgave him.”
Following that try, Joel entered himself into an statement ward for a number of weeks, a choice that modified the trajectory of his life. “I acquired out of the statement ward, and I assumed to myself, you possibly can make the most of all these feelings to channel that stuff into music,” Joel mentioned.
A postscript to the affair: Joel and Weber ultimately reunited, and the pair wedded. The wedding lasted from 1973 to 1982.
And So It Goes premiered Wednesday on the Tribeca Movie Competition, with Joel unable to attend the screening as a consequence of his current mind dysfunction analysis. The singer, nonetheless, did ship a message by way of the filmmakers: “Getting outdated sucks, nevertheless it’s preferable to getting cremated.”