The first part of the new Billy Joel documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, premiered at the Tribeca Festival in New York on Wednesday and it featured a section about one of the most difficult periods in the 76-year-old singer’s life. According to People, the film co-directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin delves into a dark incident early in Joel’s career when he attempted suicide two times after having an affair with a former bandmate’s wife.
“Bill and I spent a lot of time together,” Elizabeth Weber says in the documentary about the affair she had with Joel when he was in his 20s and she was married to the singer’s best friend and Atila bandmate drummer Jon Small. She says in the film that the affair was a “slow build” until Small, who had a son with Weber, suspected something was going on and Joel fessed up to the affair, telling him, “I’m in love with your wife.”
Joel — who did not attend the premiere after cancelling a summer run of shows due to a recent diagnosis of the brain condition normal pressure hydrocephalus — says in the film that he felt “very, very guilty about it. They had a child. I felt like a homewrecker. I was just in love with a woman and I got punched in the nose which I deserved. Jon was very upset. I was very upset.”
The brawl marked the end of Atila and the pair’s friendship, with Weber leaving Small — and later reconnecting with Joel, to whom she was married from 1973-1982 — and the singer spiraling into a dark period of drink and depression. “I had no place to live. I was sleeping in laundromats and I was depressed I think to the point of almost being psychotic,” Joel says in the film. “So I figured, ‘That’s it. I don’t want to live anymore.’ I was just in a lot of pain and it was sort of like why hang out, tomorrow is going to be just like today is and today sucks. So, I just thought I’d end it all.”
Joel’s sister, Judy Molinari, was a medical assistant at the time and she gave him some sleeping pills to help him get some rest. “But Billy decided that he was going to take all of them… he was in a coma for days and days and days,” she says: “I went to go see him in the hospital, and he was laying there white as a sheet. I thought that I’d killed him.”
The singer said he was “very selfish” at the time and recalled waking up in the hospital determined to end his life again. Molinari said her brother drank a bottle of the furniture cleaner Lemon Pledge, with Small driving him to the hospital after that attempt. “Even though our friendship was blowing up, John saved my life,” he says of his former bandmate.
“He never really said anything to me, the only practical answer I can give as to why Billy took it so hard was because he loved me that much and that it killed him to hurt me that much. Eventually I forgave him,” Small says in the movie. Joel later wrote the song “Tomorrow Is Today” for his 1971 Cold Spring Harbor album, in which he delves into his despondent feelings at the time. “Oh my I’m goin’ to the river/ Gonna take a ride and the lord will deliver me/ Made my bed, I’m gonna lie in it/ If you don’t come, sure gonna die in it,” he sings on the track.
At Wednesday’s premiere, Lacy shared a message with the audience from Joel in which she said “He will be back. Billy wishes he were here tonight, and he asked us to convey his greetings to you all. He said ‘getting old sucks, but it’s still preferable to getting cremated.'” Billy Joel: And So It Goes will stream on HBO in July.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
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