Billy Joel Documentary Filmmakers on Exploring the Life and Music of the Piano Man

There is a very touching moment near the end of Billy Joel: And So It Goes, a new two-part documentary about the famed musician that premieres on HBO this Friday. It shows Joel sitting behind his piano during his long-running 2014-2024 residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden, about to perform his signature song “Piano Man.” But just as he starts to hit the keys, the scene abruptly shifts to footage from 1973 of a 24-year-old Joel playing “Piano Man” on his Columbia Records signing day. It’s a fitting reverse bookend to an extraordinary life and career.

“I don’t know what I would’ve been had I not been a musician,” Joel says in the film. “I don’t know where I would’ve been in this life if it had not been for the piano.”

At a total of five hours, And So It Goes, directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, is truly the definitive documentary about Long Island’s favorite son: from one of his earliest forays into music as a member of the mid-1960s group the Hassles; through his spectacular run as a hitmaker beginning in the late 1970s with such songs as “Movin’ Out,” “Just the Way You Are,” “My Life,” “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me, “Tell Her About It,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and “The River of Dreams”; to his present status as beloved pop culture icon who can still pack arenas.

But the documentary, which previously screened at the Tribeca Film Festival last month, is not hagiography. It candidly addresses the challenging and difficult aspects of Joel’s personal and professional life. Among them: his suicide attempt when he was a young man; his complicated relationship with his father, Howard; his near-fatal motorcycle accident in the early 1980s; and the breakup of his first three marriages, including his famous one to model Christie Brinkley.

Through archival footage and, of course, his music, And So It Goes more than succeeds in addressing Joel’s genius in tackling various musical genres and writing insightful yet relatable lyrics. In addition to Joel’s participation, the documentary features interviews with his former and current bandmates and longtime associates; his ex-wives and current wife; and his family members, including his sister Judy and daughter Alexa. There’s also commentary from such music luminaries as Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, John Mellencamp, Don Henley, Garth Brooks, Sting, Pink and Nas.

The arrival of the documentary is all the more poignant as Joel, 76, recently canceled his scheduled concert dates due to the health condition Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH). In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, directors Lacy and Levin discuss the origins of the film, what they learned about Joel along the way, and what they wanted to convey to fans and viewers about the Piano Man.

How did the film come about?

Susan Lacy: Well, it’s such a very long story. I had approached [working on a Billy Joel doc]

a long time ago when I created this series called American Masters. That didn’t go anywhere. Then, probably about five years ago, I started talking to his management. They weren’t quite ready for that yet. They wanted to tie this to the end of the [Madison Square Garden] residency, and they didn’t know when that was going to be.

Then I got a call from Sony asking about it, and then that didn’t go anywhere. And then I got a call from Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s company, Playtone, and they asked me if I wanted to make a film about Billy Joel. And I said, “What’s in the water here? It’s destiny. I’m going to make a film about Billy Joel.” HBO got excited about it. They’ve worked with both me and Playtone for a long time. So it came together in the end very quickly.

Billy, I think, was encouraged by his management to do this. They felt it was the right time, finally, for this film to happen. At the time, I don’t think anybody knew that the residency was going to end. That happened midway along making this film. It was a long process because it’s a long film.

Was there one particular revelation or aspect of Joel that you didn’t know about until you started working on this film?

Lacy: I did not know about his Jewish history and the Holocaust story. I really didn’t know about the classical music element of it. And those two elements are something that we shared. My mother was a classical pianist. We shared a Holocaust story. Our fathers came [to America] in the same year from Germany as Jewish immigrants. Both became American soldiers and went back to Germany. So there was a lot of that. And the fact that he’s so not like his public persona — all those things were big surprises to me. I think Jessica knew his catalog a lot better than I did.

Jessica, what do you feel about what you discovered about Joel through this film?

Jessica Levin: I learned a tremendous amount by working on this project, even as somebody who was really a deep catalog fan. When you’re a fan of Billy Joel, you already feel like you know him because he’s such a relatable guy and his lyrics are so universal.

You listen to the songs, and you’re like, “This is for me,” and you put on your headphones, and you get lost in it. In the process of making the film, I learned how deeply autobiographical the music was. And that really cast an entirely new light on the catalog and even the songs that I knew well — having the understanding of what Billy was going through at that time, very much ripped from the pages of his life.

That’s what’s so remarkable about Billy. He can write a song about anything and turn it into this incredible universal piece of songwriting that connects with so many people. I would say one funny revelation is I really didn’t know about the Attila years at all [Joel’s hard rock band from 1969]. I just could not in my mind figure out how Billy went from loving Led Zeppelin to becoming who he was on [the 1977 breakthrough album] The Stranger.

Part one of the documentary is particularly noteworthy for your interviews with Elizabeth Weber, Joel’s first wife and former manager, who played a pivotal part in his career. It’s not often discussed about until now.

Lacy: It wasn’t easy to get her to participate in this film, which is hard to believe because she’s so good in the film. When she left Billy, she didn’t mention his name for 40 years. Nobody even knew. I had to really convince her. She had been sort of maligned on social media a great deal. Nobody understood what she had done to make Billy Joel Billy Joel.

It’s really a feminist story in a lot of ways. We are two women who wanted to tell that story. So she was convinced to do it after many long conversations and dinners. And then we did four interviews.

Levin: Billy trusted two women to tell his story. We are really proud of the way that we were able to unfold his inner emotional story side by side with the story of his artistic growth. I don’t know what another two filmmakers would have done, but we knew that was important to us. He has a series of incredibly strong women who have been in his life: Elizabeth Weber, his mother and Christie Brinkley.

Lacy: He has three daughters [Alexa, Della and Remy].

Levin: And his current wife, Alexis, who’s an absolute force of nature in and of herself. So I think it’s really interesting that he said, “I’ll trust you guys to tell.” Obviously, it was based on a lot more than just the fact that we’re women. I mean, Susan has an incredible track record, and we’ve been making films together for 25 years. So it’s not like we’re newbies. I do think it’s interesting that he trusted women to tell his story. And we’re really proud of that.

We’re also very proud of the fact that out of Billy’s catalog of 121 songs, there are over 110 songs in this film.

Lacy: It enabled us to basically score the film entirely with Billy’s music, including the classical music and some instrumental variations based on melodies.

To underscore what Jessica was saying about trusting women, he trusted a woman to manage him. He was accused of misogyny in some of his songs. And Elizabeth said, “I’m proof that that’s not the case.” I mean, nobody else was hiring women to manage rock bands at the time, and he trusted her to do that.

Levin: And he poured out their entire story of their relationship in songs, from “Just the Way You Are” and “She’s Got a Way” to “Stiletto.”

What did you want to tell viewers and fans who will be watching this documentary about Joel’s life and career?

Lacy: From the very beginning, this film has got to satisfy the fans. But it also has to satisfy and provide revelations and surprises to people who were like, “Why Billy Joel?” And as I began to explore his music and read about him, I realized that there was a very, very deep and complex and interesting person beneath the public persona of this funny, straightforward kind of guy — that there were deep wells of emotion and vulnerability inside that man.

So the idea was to understand the origins of these songs, which is Billy’s way of expressing himself and dealing with his own history. And because of the sort of everyman aspect that he gives the impression of, he’s telling everybody’s story in a certain way. That’s why everybody relates to him. But there’s so much more beneath the surface of Billy than what people think about Billy. That was really the aim.

And also to really delve into his musicality — he’s a musical savant. And to understand where these songs came from, what inspired him, how he composed them, how much he drew on the wells of many different musical genres from Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, the American songbook, jazz, the oldies, and classical music — all of which is imbued in his albums, which reflect the various changes in his own life and what he was experiencing. So it was a big, complex task. And it’s a Shakespearean tale of love, loss and woe.

Billy Joel: And So It Goes, directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, premieres on HBO, Friday, July 18, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.