Joel recalls her asking him to sign everything he had over to her. While in the hospital, doped up on pain pills and contemplating what future he might have as a musician, Weber came to visit, contract in hand. He agreed to buy her everything she wanted - a $4 million town house on the Upper East Side, an Alfa Romeo - but then he had a motorcycle accident, smashing both his hands. In 1982, they filed for divorce, but Joel hoped to reconcile. His next record - and its eponymous hit single, “The Stranger” - were also inspired by her. She brought her brother, Frank, into the fold, and Joel felt deep unease. One year, he wrote “Just the Way You Are” as her birthday gift, and after he played it for her, she said, “Do I get the publishing, too?” She wasn’t kidding.Īs his wife, Weber was entitled to 50 percent of Joel’s worth and was also taking a cut of his earnings as manager. He wrote “Just the Way You Are” as her birthday gift, and after he played it for her, she said, “Do I get the publishing, too?” “She’s Got a Way” and “She’s Always a Woman” were inspired by her, but many around Joel were concerned: They found Weber controlling, manipulative, rude and far more enthralled with the rock n’ roll lifestyle than Joel. After much agonizing back-and-forth, he got together with Weber, who had shrewd business sense and agreed to manage him. Never much into drugs, he self-medicated with booze and cigarettes. He had an epiphany: “The people I was locked up with were never going to be able to overcome their problems, whereas mine were all self-made,” he told Schruers. Another family member found him, and this time, Joel checked himself into a mental hospital, where he stayed for three weeks. “I thought to myself, ‘Oh, great, I couldn’t even do this right.’ It was another failure.”Ī few weeks later, Joel tried again, this time drinking furniture polish. “The next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital and learned that they had pumped my stomach,” Joel told Schruers. Alarmed, Small raced to Joel’s mom’s house in Hicksville and found Joel on the floor. Not long after Weber took off, Joel overdosed on Nembutal, then called Small to apologize. He was 21, broke, friendless, loveless and “crashing at my mom’s place again, which is abject failure.” When Small discovered the affair, Weber left them both, disappearing for weeks. Almost like a European-type - not a typical American girl.” intelligent and not afraid to speak her mind, but could also be seductive. “She wasn’t like a lot of the other girls I knew at that time who had taken home ec and cooking classes,” he told Schruers. Elizabeth Weber was married to Small, and they had a baby son, Sean - but Joel was knocked out. Joel met his first wife in 1970, through his friend and bandmate Jon Small. The Shark Billy Joel and Elizabeth Weber WireImage His three tortured marriages - and the music they’ve inspired - are testament to that. I can even try to achieve it again, and often have.” I used to wonder: How come I don’t have that? I can dream about it, think about it, write music and lyrics and sing about it. I see old folks walking down the street who look like they’ve been together 50 years, and there’s something very touching about it - that they’ve lasted so long. “You just need one - one person out of millions - to know and accept and love you for being, well, just the way you are. “None of those people in the arena screaming your name really know you,” Joel tells author Fred Schruers in the new book “Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography.” (Joel, who sat for 100 hours of interviews, eventually withdrew from the project over fears it would be too revelatory.) Yet he’s always felt a failure where it most counts: love. A Hicksville native, he has been considered the poet laureate of Long Island for decades. In 2013, he was among the recipients at the Kennedy Center Honors. He has sold more than 150 million albums and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His monthly shows gross him more than $2 million each. Today, at 65, Billy Joel is in the midst of an unprecedented residency at Madison Square Garden. Legendary Village Voice critic Robert Christgau derided him as “a force of nature and bad taste.”
He has spent much of his life in battle: against his ex-wives, against booze, bad managers and bankruptcy, and against critics who’ve considered him too uncool for rock ’n’ roll. For someone who hasn’t really released new music in more than 20 years, Billy Joel is having an epic third act.
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