Billy Joel finally lets fans into his life in documentary And So It Goes

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

In 2011, Billy Joel had every copy of his tell-all autobiography pulped just before release.
It was a dramatic move, but not completely out of character for an artist who seems to have his guard permanently up. He rarely gives interviews and those that do happen tend not to reveal all that much about the man behind some of modern music's most enduring pop songs.
As America's fourth-highest-selling solo artist, he has a lot of fans. But the desire for more information isn't just due to the size of his fanbase, it's also because he seems like the kinda guy you want to know. His songs are plain-spoken and relatable. They're songs we see ourselves in.
"He comes across like one of us," Nas says towards the end of And So It Goes, a monstrous two-part, five-hour documentary that offers fans the most intimate insight we'll ever get into the world of Billy Joel.
His reluctance to embrace the spotlight is interrogated early and often in the film. Joel considers himself a musician more than a rock star, he doesn't love being on camera and isn't particularly comfortable with the enormity of his success. It's a long way from his roots, raised poor by a loving but manic single mother in Long Island.
In the late 1960s, homeless and suicidal after destroying his band and closest friendships, Joel checked into a metal health observation ward. He detested it so much he was determined to never come back, and it was his raw, dark emotions at the time that fuelled his debut album, Cold Spring Harbor.
That record heralded the first of a few monumentally unsound business decisions but also started him on a roll of tireless writing and performing that would train him to become both the songwriting and performing force who would ultimately take over pop music.
The film generally follows his life and career chronologically from here, showing him cutting his teeth as an opening act before finally cracking the big time with his fifth record, The Stranger.
Striving for success is part of the story, but the deeper message lies in Joel's tenacity. Music initially gave him something to live for and was a dream worth pursuing at all costs. Ultimately, it was music more than fame that would inspire him to move forward, try out new moods and styles to the delight of fans and chagrin of critics.
There's nothing groundbreaking about the way the film plays out: this is your tried-and-true talking-head music doco, where the artist is revealed through conversations with the talent, friends and famous admirers.
Lovely as it is to hear from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Pink and Paul McCartney, the most illuminating comments come from those who know Joel intimately. His band mates, his ex-wives, his family.
It makes sense. Joel says relationships are at the core of his work, and his best songs all revolve around the ways we interact with one another and the ways that shapes our existence.
Part one is dominated by first wife Elizabeth Weber, and for good reason. Her role in Joel's life and career has never received much public recognition, and she's a relatively humble but confident subject when speaking about the success she brought to him.
Joel's band were as close to him as anyone, and his loyalty to them is another relational aspect that says a great deal about his character.
By the time he met his second wife, supermodel Christie Brinkley, Joel was a superstar. She taught him to deal with the spotlight, gave birth to their daughter Alexa, and inspired some of his most enduring work. But another poor business decision forced Joel to spend more time at work than at home, ultimately leading to the breakdown of their marriage.
This was another inflection point in the singer's life, and one that changed his trajectory forever. There would be no new pop music (OK, almost none) after this — Billy Joel was done.
The length of this film allows directors Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin to tell so many under-appreciated stories from Joel's career. We see so much of his early years in bands like The Hassles and Attila, we learn about the lack of label support for multimillion-selling album The Stranger, and hear the deep-seated personal reasons for making his 2001 classical album, Fantasies and Delusions.
Then, there are countless asides, like how he doesn't hate 'Piano Man' as much as you might think, Bob Dylan was the reason he signed with Columbia Records, and Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow convinced him to put his career-saving smash 'Just The Way You Are' on record.
If the interviews don't grab you then the archival footage surely will. There is a bevy of it: unseen clips from his youth, from studio sessions, from life on the road, and plenty of intimate home videos shot by those closest to him that show a Billy Joel most fans have never seen.
There are also moments of great discomfort. As his family laments his alcoholism, Joel admits that rehab wasn't effective because he simply didn't want to be there. His consistently fractured relationship with critics is never far from the story, and there's clearly no love lost there. At one point, the spotlight even shines on his string of car accidents in the 2000s.
Early in the film, Joel says that a chef once told him the key to success is about recovery, how you come back from your mistakes. Such is the story of And So It Goes. A flawed man makes countless mistakes across his extraordinary life but, driven by nothing more than a passion for making music, recovers with finesse.
While one can't imagine And So It Goes converting any of the myriad Billy Joel haters out there, it's a rich vein for his many fans who've spent a lifetime in the dark about the extent of the famously guarded Joel's struggles.
This is a music documentary like so many others, but it's also a tale of loyalty, tenacity, addiction, adversity, redemption and self-belief. The story of an outsider who happens to find himself at the epicentre of pop culture and whose work endures in the mainstream in a way so few manage.
And So It Goes is streaming on Max.