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Telegraph
12 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The dark genius of Billy Joel, the most underrated man in rock
Has Billy Joel been underrated? It might seem an absurd thing to suggest. The American singer-songwriter is among the top 30 best-selling artists in pop history; he's had 33 hit singles, sold 160 million records, won multiple Grammy, Emmy and Tony awards and ranks as the fourth-most-popular solo artist in America of all time. Yet at the height of his 1970s and Eighties fame, he was something of a critical whipping post, a purveyor of 'self-dramatising kitsch'. A new two-part documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, attempts belatedly to redress such critical disdain. 'I had a chip on my shoulder,' Joel admits in the documentary, recalling when the pugnacious superstar would tear up reviews on stage and phone critics personally to scold them. He casts it back to childhood bullying during an impoverished upbringing in Long Island, New York. 'I learnt life is a fight. And that was a good lesson to learn.' And So It Goes is packed with fantastic never-before-seen footage, home movies, candid snapshots, intimate backstage and domestic scenes – as well as compelling studio and live performances, with musical luminaries queuing up to laud his talent, including Paul McCartney, Sting, Don Henley and Bruce Springsteen. ('His melodies are better than mine,' the Boss admits.) I have always had a soft spot for Billy Joel. At the height of punk, when he was perceived as one of the least cool musicians on the planet, I loved his 1977 album The Stranger, for its sharp, romantically observed songs of everyday life. The mixture of romanticism and cynicism in his greatest work strikes a powerful chord, from pugnacious rockers such as My Life to the epic sweep of Scenes From an Italian Restaurant and Vienna. Such worldwide smash hits as Uptown Girl, We Didn't Start the Fire and River of Dreams have fixed his place in the top 30 best-selling music artists of all time, even though he effectively gave up writing songs in 1993 and has recently had to cancel all his upcoming tour dates due to ill health. The documentary arrives with unfortunate timing. In May, the 76-year-old revealed that he was suffering from fluid build-up in his brain that affected his 'hearing, vision and balance'. The condition is called normal pressure hydrocephalus, though Joel claimed he is 'not deathly ill' and has undergone surgery in the hope of making a recovery. 'They keep referring to what I have as a 'brain disorder', so it sounds a lot worse than what I'm feeling.' Yet it seems quite unlikely that he will ever be back on the road again. One might conclude from the documentary that it is about as much as Joel would have expected from life. 'I've had a lot of hard lessons,' he ruminates, contemplating struggles with drugs and alcohol and three divorces. 'I realised life doesn't always have a happy ending.' There is a surprising darkness at the film's heart, with a persistent undercurrent of downbeat fatalism. 'Life's not a musical, it's a Greek tragedy,' is how Joel sums up his philosophy. 'I always felt like an outsider,' he says of a childhood as the only Jewish family in an Italian neighbourhood, raised by a single mother after his father deserted them when Joel was eight. 'We were the discard family on the block. We didn't have a new car, we didn't have a dad, we were the Jews, we didn't have any money, sometimes we didn't have any food.' ('There was poor, and there was Billy Joel poor' confirms lifelong friend Jon Small). His mother's moods swung between depression and euphoria, and she was 'probably bipolar', according to Joel's older sister, Judy Molinari, but 'no matter how poor we were, she knew Billy had to have his piano lessons'. Their father was a frustrated classical concert pianist, who once knocked Joel unconscious for rocking up Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. 'He was a very dark man,' recalls Joel. 'He told me once as a kid 'life is a cesspool.'' Following his parent's divorce in 1957, Joel didn't see his father for 16 years. One of his greatest songs, Vienna, was inspired by an ultimately frustrating reunion with his father, whom he tracked down in Austria with a second family (he has a half brother, Alexander Joel, who grew up to become a respected orchestral conductor). It was there he learnt the devastating history of the Joel family, formerly wealthy German industrialists who lost everything during the rise of the Nazis and were mostly wiped out in the Holocaust. Joel reveals a love-hate relationship with his own art. He describes songwriting as 'a lonely job', and confesses 'I see the piano as this big black box with 88 teeth trying to bite my hands off.' Each episode is two and a half hours long, and, frankly, five hours in the company of Billy Joel is a lot. It is leavened by humour, thankfully, and not all of it based around the physical appearance of a pop superstar who always manages to look like he hates getting his picture taken. He looks positively ill during his first wedding, to Elizabeth Weber in 1973 ('I had reservations,' he admits). His second wife, supermodel Christie Brinkley, admits that she was almost put off by his 'Long Island bubble hair' and terrible clothes. He is a pop star who never had a good haircut – the pictures of Joel wearing chainmail and sporting shaggy ringlets and a droopy moustache in short-lived early Seventies heavy metal duo Attila have to be seen to be believed. By the end of the documentary, you might conclude that baldness is the kindest thing ever to happen to him. Episode one is the most compelling but also the saddest, with a huge romantic arc, following the love affair that drove his career, and broke both their hearts. Joel met Elizabeth Weber-Small when she was married to his best friend and Attila bandmate, Jon Small. He was so ashamed of their burgeoning love affair he twice attempted suicide (first with pills, then with furniture polish) and wound up in a mental hospital. He wrote the whole of his tender 1971 solo debut album, Cold Spring Harbor, in a state of romantic longing. When they eventually got together, Weber became the driving force in his career, taking on the role of his manager. She is the subject of such deathlessly romantic ballads as Just the Way You Are and Always a Woman, as well as the less flattering Stiletto. Interviewed for the documentary, Weber talks about Joel with tenderness and insight, revealing that she left him because of his heavy drinking and the near-suicidal behaviour that led to a life-threatening motorcycle crash in 1982. 'I would have stayed,' she reveals. 'Like so many women before me, make that accommodation for someone you love. But there was no way I could stand by and watch him kill himself. I didn't have it in me. I felt very strongly that's where it was going.' 'It was sad,' is the most Joel can admit on the subject. The second episode is a lot of fun, packed with delightful home footage shot by his second great love, the eternally bright-spirited Brinkley, who inspired Joel's most upbeat album, An Innocent Man, in 1983. There's a lot of witty patter, goofy backstage carry-on and fantastic music, with domestic bliss breaking out as the couple marry in 1985 and have a daughter, Alexa (also interviewed for the documentary). But it all goes sour when his new manger (his ex-wife's brother, whom she warned him against) defrauds him of multi-millions, Joel starts drinking again, quits songwriting and breaks up with Brinkley. She gets emotional recalling the moment she told him how unhappy she was, and his response was to just snap, 'Yeah, fine, go.' 'It was a very sad time for me,' admits Joel now. 'I was so devastated.' At which point viewers may realise they still have an hour to go of stints in rehab, falling out with Elton John (conspicuously absent from the documentary) over Joel's destructively heavy drinking during co-headlining tours, and another failed marriage, before we leave Joel in his fourth marriage (to Alexis Roderick, an equestrian and lawyer 30 years his junior, in 2015), with two young daughters (Della and Remy), sailing his beloved boat Alexa out to sea, and proclaiming hope for a future that we already know is about to be dashed by illness. I met Joel in a hotel bar after a concert in Detroit in 1990 and spent a long and increasingly drunken night in his company. I really liked him. He was funny, self-deprecating and the life of our spontaneous party, getting on a hotel piano and leading a rowdy sing-along into the small hours. The next day, his tour manager accused me of having led him astray and revealed that Joel had lost his voice and would have to cancel that night's concert. I realise now that was during a period when things were starting to go south again for Joel, who told me Brinkley had gone to stay with her parents in Hawaii. 'You can't have a fight with your wife when her parents own a beautiful beach house in Hawaii,' he joked. 'It's like any excuse to pack your bags and run home to momma.' That humour percolates through And So It Goes, but so does the self-absorption and melancholy that seem to have haunted him all his life. His songwriting seems to have been a vital outlet for his deepest feelings, but he cut off that part of himself in 1993, exhausted by artistic struggle. As Sting admiringly points out, Joel is a master of song structure, and the documentary explores his compositional roots in European classical music, which Joel adores. 'I realised I've never forgiven myself for not being Beethoven,' he confesses. It's clear that Joel's songs sprang from a deep well of often troubled emotions and experiences, reflecting the life of a man for whom music was a vocation, a burden and, perhaps, salvation. 'Everything I've done, everything I've lived through, has somehow found a way into my music,' says Joel. His place as an all-time great singer-songwriter cannot really be in doubt.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Molly-Mae Hague jets off to lavish £2k-per-night hotel in Turkey with Tommy Fury and daughter Bambi - after 'out of touch' influencer was blasted for claiming she 'hasn't done one fun thing' all summer
Molly-Mae Hague looked worlds happier as she enjoyed a £2K-per-night holiday in Turkey with Tommy Fury and daughter Bambi on Sunday, after claiming her summer has been 'no fun' - despite spending much of it abroad. To date, the millionaire Love Island star has spent the warmer months enjoying first class trips to Dubai, Paris, Saint Tropez and Wimbledon 's Centre Court, where she was greeted like Hollywood royalty after being invited by tournament sponsor Evian water. But the evidently hard to please influencer has once again ruffled feathers this week across social media by claiming her summer has, thus far, been boring. 'I haven't socialised once,' she told her older sister Zoe in a recent YouTube vlog. 'I haven't done one social, fun thing... I haven't a life.' However, Molly has now once again jetted off on her seventh holiday of the year, this time to the luxury 5-star Regnum The Crown hotel, which has been 'carefully curated to deliver a true family holiday without compromise.' The TV personality has shared snaps from her current getaway on Instagram, as the family enjoyed the hotel's Aqualantis, the newly unveiled water park. Bikini-clad Molly was seen beaming as Bambi, two, sat on her lap while going down a small water slide, at the Aqualantis which also includes a number of water slides, lazy rivers and an immersive themed zones for hours of entertainment for every age. The family looked happy to be spending quality time together at the celebrity hotspot where Jennifer Lopez recently celebrated her birthday and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and actor husband Jason Statham have also holidayed. Other celebrities who have stayed at the hotel's same hotel group, include Dua Lipa, Rita Ora, Jason Derulo and Tom Jones. Molly shared a glimpse at the families huge luxurious room, which is one of 553 spacious suites and private villas at the hotel, as Tommy and Bambi cosied up in bed. The couple also enjoyed a freshly cooked lunch while sitting in a restaurant overlooking the picturesque beach. If Molly and Tommy would like some time alone the hotel also offers 'Bamboo Kids World, a safe, vibrant space where children can explore, learn and create under expert supervision while, parents can enjoy well-earned relaxation, knowing their little ones are in excellent hands.' The mother-of-one looked restless on Thursday as she prepared to board a Jet2 flight with partner Tommy and Bambi after arriving at a busy Manchester Airport. The influencer had her hands full with Bambi's empty pushchair and the family luggage while Tommy walked hand-in-hand with their young daughter. And there wasn't a smile to be seen as she waited at check-in with her family before helpful Jet2 staff came to their assistance. After landing at the Antalya International Airport, Molly only had a twenty minute trip to the hotel which is surrounded by panoramic views of the turquoise Mediterranean. The couple also enjoyed a freshly cooked lunch while sitting in a restaurant overlooking the picturesque beach However, the holiday is the latest in a series of overseas trips for Molly-Mae, but neither the art and architecture of Paris, the sun-kissed glamour of Dubai nor the sweeping Mediterranean coastlines of Saint Tropez have impressed. 'I will get to the end of summer without having done one fun thing,' she moaned while talking to her sister in July. 'Zoe, I haven't socialised once. I am going to get to the end of this summer, I haven't done one social fun thing.' The globe-trotting influencer added: 'I haven't a life. I haven't a life. It's not good. 'It's all kids related, if it's not work and kids I am not doing anything. It's not good. People going for a drink with their friends or to a beer garden. 'Oh my gosh, I don't remember the last time I did my hair and makeup and put an outfit on for something that wasn't work related. 'I don't do anything. Lets normalise it. For the girls that are going to get to the end of summer and not done one fun thing.' However Molly-Mae did accept that her recent trip to Wimbledon, during which she did indeed wear make-up and a £3,000 Dior dress, was a 'fun' occasion. She said: 'No that's a lie because people are going to say "You went to London in your last vlog and had a ball," and I did.' Unsurprisingly, Molly-Mae's latest comments didn't go down well with her two million-plus YouTube subscribers, with many claiming she was 'out of touch', 'tone-deaf' and 'always moaning'. The influencer started strong this summer by signing a seven-figure deal with consumer goods firm Unilever and starring in a new campaign for its detergent brand, Persil and Comfort, in May. She fronted a new 'delicate' fragrance range with her toddler Bambi, who made her campaign debut in a fluffy pink jumper and ballerina tutu. Putting her name behind their 'Heaven Scent' non-bio capsules, fabric conditioner and a scent booster elixir, Molly-Mae said: 'I can be really protective of what I use at home, especially since having Bambi. 'My skin's always been sensitive, so I need products I know are kind to my skin but still leave everything smelling amazing and this range honestly does both.' But it wasn't all work though as Molly-Mae jetted off on her sixth holiday of the year – once again to Dubai. She and Tommy travelled business class to one of the most luxurious hotels in the UAE, the five-star Jumeirah Al Naseem, where rooms cost a whopping £13,897 per night. The hotel has its own private 2km beach, a turtle rehabilitation sanctuary and an infinity pool – which the couple were pictured canoodling in. If that wasn't enough time away from home, that month Molly-Mae also visited private members' club Soho Farmhouse in the Cotswolds. She's not the first celebrity to be drawn to the £500-a-night retreat, with the Beckhams, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and Taylor Swift also fans. Molly-Mae treated herself to a couple of nights in one of the cabins, where members can enjoy spa facilities, country bike rides and tennis. For her final trip in May, she flew on a private jet to Disneyland Paris to celebrate her 26th birthday alongside Tommy, their daughter and some of her best friends. She shared pictures from inside the jet alongside photos complete with birthday cake, balloons and plenty of Minnie Mouse ears. Come June, Molly-Mae told her YouTube followers she was jetting off yet again. First to Germany for two nights for a 'secret project' and then on to the South of France to shoot the summer campaign for her clothing brand Maebe. Basking in the sunshine at a luxury villa in St Tropez, the influencer shared various snaps of herself lounging on sunbeds and dining at luxury restaurants. Later that month, Molly-Mae was whisked back to the Cotswolds for a 'surprise staycation'. This time, she and Tommy stayed at the lavish £700-a-night hotel Estelle Manor which has a swimming pool, four restaurants, spa and farm on site. Basking in the sunshine at a luxury villa in St Tropez, the influencer shared various snaps of herself lounging on sunbeds and dining at luxury restaurants On her Instagram stories she showed off the plush accommodation as well as swimming in the pool with daughter Bambi. July didn't see Molly-Mae slow down either, as a trip to London beckoned. After a day shopping with friends and staying at the luxury Corinthia hotel in London, she attended Wimbledon as a guest of Evian water. On Sunday, she gave a tearful defence of her comments in a separate video. She told followers: 'I don't care who tells me I am out of touch with reality or all this stuff that's going on on TikTok at the minute... I don't care. I'm not going to not talk about it.'
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
The perfect dress for ‘sticky' hot days has landed in Sainsbury's for just £22.50 & it's a must-have for summer holidays
IT'S that time of year again when many of us are preparing for a holiday in the sunshine. From making sure you have the right luggage to filling it with summer staples, and Sainsbury's has just the thing. 2 Shoppers are going wild for The Lobster Printed Strappy Midaxi Dress that is currently available in stores and online. The print features mosaic tiles each filled with different Mediterranean-inspired themes. Printed on the tiles are an array of summer items such as lemons, starfish, chillis, crabs and lobsters, making you reminisce about sitting by the beach enjoying a plate of fresh seafood. The dress features hints of blue, yellow and sunburnt orange to add to the summer vibe. It comes in a midaxi length and it's loose fit makes it classy and comfortable all at the same time. It features a low V-neck front and back with thin straps, making it an effortless style you can dress up or down. The dress is perfect for the beach with a pair of sandals and can also be styled with heeled shoes for the evening. It comes in an inclusive size range starting at a 6 and going up to a size 24. The best part is that the dress is super budget-friendly coming in at just £22.50. TU bosses say: "Designed in a orange lobster print for a distinctive summer look, this sun dress is a chic choice for beach days and sun-soaked getaways. I'm 5ft3 & a size 12-14 - my 7 Tesco dresses are an absolute bargain & perfect for a last-minute wedding guest outfit "Cut to midaxi length, it comes in a loose, flowing silhouette - finished with shoulder straps and a v-neckline." Shoppers who already bought the dress raved about it online, scoring it 4.9 out of 5. One person wrote: "Absolutely beautiful dress, lightweight and perfect for this hot sticky weather! Get lots of compliments when wearing this dress." Another commented: "I'm very happy with this purchase, really cool and easy to wear for our recent heatwave." "I love this dress! It's so comfortable to wear which is perfect for summer days and evenings. I really love the fact that it has pockets," penned a third. Is supermarket fashion the new high street? DEPUTY Fashion Editor Abby McHale weighs in: The supermarkets have really upped their game when it comes to their fashion lines. These days, as you head in to do your weekly food shop you can also pick up a selection of purse-friendly, stylish pieces for all the family. Tesco has just announced a 0.7 per cent increase in the quarter thanks to a 'strong growth in clothing' and M&S has earned the title of the number one destination for womenswear on the high street. Asda's clothing line George has made £1.5 million for the supermarket in 2023, 80 per cent of Sainsbury's clothes sold at full price rather than discounted and Nutmeg at Morrisons sales are also up 2 per cent in the past year. So what is it about supermarket fashion that is becoming so successful? Apart from the clothing actually being affordable, it's good quality too - with many being part of schemes such as the Better Cotton Initiative. A lot of the time they keep to classic pieces that they know will last the customer year after year. Plus because they buy so much stock they can turn around pieces quickly and buy for cheaper because of the volumes. Meanwhile a fourth said: "Love this dress! Flatteringly flowy and cool and too nice to just be saved for holidays!" "Very comfortable to wear. May buy another one to put away for my holiday!' claimed a fifth
