The second part of the sprawling documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes” ends before the musician’s recent announcement that he has the brain disorder normal pressure hydrocephalus. That is to say, if you’re looking for an update on Joel’s health, the film by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, which HBO aired on Friday night (and is streaming on HBO Max), does not provide one.
But Joel, in a podcast interview with Bill Maher earlier this week, is seen playing the piano. “It’s not fixed,” he said of his condition, but it’s “being worked on,” and he assured fans: “I feel good.” “They keep referring to what I have as a brain disorder, so it sounds a lot worse than what I’m feeling,” he added, likening the sensation to being on a boat with poor balance.
While the first half of the film, which premiered in June at the Tribeca Festival, focused on the little-told story of how Joel’s relationship with his first wife, Elizabeth Weber, shaped the early days of his career, the second covers more familiar territory. Starting with the production of “The Nylon Curtain” in 1982, it chronicles his much discussed marriages to Christie Brinkley and Katie Lee Biegel, his well-documented struggles with alcohol, the betrayal of his manager Frank Weber, his decision to retire from the road and eventual return to live performance following the “12-12-12” benefit concert for Hurricane Sandy relief.
And still, the nearly two-and-a-half-hour exploration of his life and career makes time to delve into his complicated relationship with his father, Howard, as well as his retreat from producing new pop music and the influence of classical compositions on his work. Here are five takeaways.
The Holocaust looms large in Joel’s family history.
Joel’s Jewish identity comes into play heavily during the second part of the documentary, specifically with regard to his fraught relationship with his father, Howard Joel. He describes how in his mid-20s he discovered that his paternal grandfather, Karl Joel, had a textile factory in Nuremberg. The family lived next to the park where the Nuremberg rallies were held and Joel speculates about the trauma his father must have endured watching those unfold as a young Jewish boy. Joel’s grandfather was targeted by Nazi propaganda newspaper Der Stürmer and was forced to sell his business, though he was never paid. The Joels escaped Germany over the Swiss border and the factory was ultimately used to manufacture the striped uniforms for prisoners in concentration camps.
Joel was around 21 or 22 and touring in Europe when he finally found his estranged father in Vienna. There, he first realized he had a half brother, Alexander. He also learned that most of his paternal family was killed in Auschwitz. “I didn’t even know I had that many relatives,” he says. “There is an underlying rage that comes out sometimes.”
Joel’s admittedly awkward attempts to reconnect with his father resulted in his song “Vienna.” “Those thoughts marinated and one day I just sat down and started writing this song,” he says.
Joel’s first argument with Christie Brinkley was over paparazzi.
As one might expect, Joel’s courtship of and marriage to the supermodel Christie Brinkley is central to the second part of the documentary. (She sits for a revealing, at-times tearful interview.) We’re treated to the story of their meeting in St. Bart’s at a hotel bar where he was playing the piano. Brinkley sat next to him and started singing “The Girl from Ipanema.” She was accompanied by Elle Macpherson and a young Whitney Houston, on an early modeling gig.
The relationship gave him a level of celebrity he wasn’t exactly comfortable with, however, and Brinkley explains that their first fight was over the paparazzi. Joel was rude to the cameramen. “I said it’s so much easier just to give them a smile,” Brinkley remembers. So they developed a shtick. Every time a camera came along, she’d strike a pose and he’d put his hands up.
The influence of classical music goes deep for Joel.
Despite his wild success as a rock star, the documentary makes the case that Joel’s heart was always with classical music. He relays an anecdote, where he read that Neil Diamond said he eventually forgave himself for not being Beethoven. Joel realized his problem was the opposite. “I have not forgiven myself for not being Beethoven,” he says. To prove just how connected he is to classical composers he demonstrates how “Uptown Girl,” if you strip away the jaunty lyrics, could have been a Mozart composition or how “This Night” is a “direct lift” from Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata. And you don’t just have to take Joel’s word for it: Itzhak Perlman says, “What I admire is his harmonic progressions,” and cites “Allentown” as an example.
Joel’s obsession with classical music continues when he releases “Fantasies & Delusions,” an album performed by the pianist Hyung-ki Joo in 2001. Critics were largely dismissive, but Alexander sees it as a “homage” to their father. Joel, however, says that his dad never told him what he thought about the work.
Joel grew tired of pop songwriting.
Until his recent diagnosis, Joel performed consistently — he ended his Madison Square Garden residency after 10 years because there were opportunities for him to play stadiums worldwide. And yet he has not released an album of new, noninstrumental music since “River of Dreams” in 1993. Why did he end there? In the documentary, Joel explains that by the time he finished making that album, he had “recognized that the song form had come full circle.” He was tired of writing words. “I was tired of the tyranny of the rhyme,” he says. According to Pink, he found the experience of pop writing excruciating because of his perfectionism.
The documentary does not cover his return to pop with the single “Turn the Lights Back On,” released in 2024.
Joel did not want to go to rehab when his third wife pushed for it.
The latter half of the film tackles some of the oft-covered troubles that Joel had in the 2000s, including multiple car accidents, and his marriage to Katie Lee Biegel. Joel says he has never had a D.U.I., a stance he has long maintained, and he also denies that Lee had an affair. Both attribute the breakdown of their relationship to their difference in age — she wanted to go out and he wanted to be at home — but she also adds that there was festering resentment over the fact that she pushed him to go to rehab in 2005. “With the rehab you don’t go for somebody else, you go for yourself,” he says. “You have to want to do it. I didn’t want to do it.” Lee adds, “It was hard to recover from that.”
But Joel discusses how despite his many romantic dramas, he still believes in love. In addition to home-shot video of Brinkley and his oldest daughter, Alexa, the film includes footage of him with his wife, Alexis Roderick, and their two young daughters, who — true to their genetics — are already showing an interest in music.
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