Billy Joel in 1973.
Don Hunstein/Sony Music Archives/HBO
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Don Hunstein/Sony Music Archives/HBO
HBO’s two-part documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes is a revealing take a look at an advanced music star who has been on the heart of pop music for many years.
But it surely’s additionally a great instance of the problem filmmakers face in making the trendy celeb biography: a pressure between entry and objectivity.
To make certain, this mission — directed and produced by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, veterans of the PBS collection American Masters, with celebrity govt producers like Tom Hanks and Sean Hayes on board — walks that line very properly. The documentary, which debuts Friday with a second half coming July 25, advantages from entry to Joel, 76, his household, mates, songs and an amazing quantity of archival materials.
When the documentary premiered earlier this 12 months on the Tribeca Movie Pageant, headlines targeted on the admission that Joel had an affair with the spouse of a longtime good friend and bandmember when he was in his early 20s, trying suicide twice after the connection was revealed.
In some way, the filmmakers bought ex-bandmate Jon Small to speak on digicam concerning the second he realized of the affair — he says “these (had been) my two greatest mates” — alongside intensive interviews with Small’s ex-wife Elizabeth Weber. She finally married Joel and managed his profession by a few of his greatest successes within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties.
There are stars readily available to speak about Joel’s impression, together with Paul McCartney (he admits wishing he had written the 1977 ballad hit “Simply the Approach You Are”), Pink, Nas, Garth Brooks and Bruce Springsteen, who says Joel writes higher melodies than he does. However the true revelations come from those that are a lot nearer: his grown kids, sister, former bandmates, and his former wives, together with supermodel Christie Brinkley.
Billy Joel in 1977.
Artwork Maillet/Sony Music Archives/HBO
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Artwork Maillet/Sony Music Archives/HBO
Weber speaks about how Joel’s elevated ingesting — and motorcycle-riding — throughout his main success within the early Eighties led her to depart him after he was in a horrible accident. Each Joel and Weber speak about how spiky lyrics in early songs like “Large Shot” and “Stiletto” had been references to their relationship. And different tales concerning the genesis of his hits sound like stuff scripted for a biopic: He wrote the basic “Piano Man” whereas working in a piano bar in Los Angeles making an attempt to get out of a horrible recording/publishing contract; “New York State of Thoughts” got here to him rapidly on the bus trip to New York Metropolis after his time in California.
Nonetheless, for me, there’s nonetheless a slight sense of punches pulled. Joel admits to loads of horrible conduct through the documentary, from affairs to out-of-control partying, firing longtime bandmembers, writing autobiographical songs with insulting traces about individuals in his life, burying himself in work and neglecting his family members.
However the individuals on the receiving finish of these things are principally proven forgiving Joel for his transgressions and expressing their love and admiration for him — main this critic to surprise if the image would have a been slightly completely different if he hadn’t been so intimately concerned, to the purpose the place new interviews with him are primarily used as narration for the documentary.
This can be a query that surfaces commonly concerning trendy documentaries on massive stars. When Steve Martin opens up his private archives for Morgan Neville’s Apple TV+ documentary STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 items or Michael Jordan’s manufacturing firm companions with ESPN to create The Final Dance, it is unimaginable to not surprise how the story may need been affected by efforts to maintain the celeb excited and concerned with the mission.
After all, this could really feel like nitpicking. Significantly concerning And So It Goes, which finally gives an vital reassessment of an artist typically given brief shrift by music critics throughout his massive pop successes.
The documentary even talks about how Joel would rip up detrimental evaluations from critics onstage again within the day. (Full disclosure: Joel as soon as ripped up a newspaper onstage with a detrimental evaluation I wrote about his first joint live performance with Elton John within the Nineteen Nineties, although we laughed about it after I interviewed him a couple of years later, and he did not even bear in mind doing it.)
Finally, And So It Goes is an expansive, wonderful take a look at Joel’s story – from his early days rising up Jewish in Lengthy Island, proper up till the top of his residency final 12 months at Madison Sq. Backyard, which concluded after a decade of performances. (The early screener I noticed would not tackle Joel’s current announcement that he was recognized with a uncommon mind situation referred to as regular stress hydrocephalus, resulting in cancellation of his live performance dates this 12 months.)
And it drops at an vital time: Just a few years previous his greatest hits, it is the right second to have a look at Joel’s profession to see songs with an everlasting enchantment and impression past the developments and considerations of the time once they had been first launched.
