‘He told us to just tell the truth' – behind a revealing Billy Joel documentary

The Guardian

2 days ago

In 2011, singer-songwriter and pop legend Billy Joel returned a multimillion-dollar advance paid on a memoir to his would-be publisher, HarperCollins. He had apparently co-written an autobiographical book as planned, but ultimately decided that he didn't want to publish it. 'It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I'm not all that interested in talking about the past,' he said at the time, 'and that the best expression of my life … has been and remains my music.'
Billy Joel: And So It Goes, a two-part feature documentary premiering this week on HBO, feels like an attempt to stay true to that same basic ethos while not shying away from Joel's public and private life over the years. The five-hour project tells Joel's story, but does so by prioritizing his music, in content and in form. 'He has 121 songs in his catalog and we used over 110,' said Jessica Levin, who directed the film with Susan Lacy, describing just how many Joel tunes wound up somewhere in the movie. It's tempting to study the credits and figure out the unlucky 10 that didn't make the cut, but in effect it's all here. There are also a few non-Joel compositions in the film, but the vast majority of the music is his, including some adaptations of his melodies into subtle underscore. 'It was a goal of ours to use it as score, not just throw it in,' said Levin. 'It's a testament to the depth and breadth of his catalog that we were able to do that.'
More immediately noticeable, And So It Goes follows Joel's discography with more discipline than a lot of music docs, which tend to lose track of later-period records to focus on more personal ups and downs. This confers a sense of importance on his albums full of working-class story songs, accessible ballads and style-shifting pop. Maybe owing to Joel's mid-90s retirement from writing pop music, the film gives every album its due, while branching out from his career timeline to delve into more personal stories. Material about his heritage, for example, comes later in the film, rather at the beginning; the narrative more or less begins with him playing music as a young man.
At the same time, Joel himself is a part of the movie, despite his previous reluctance to talk about his life. He sat with Lacy for 10 interviews, with nothing off limits. 'He said: 'Just tell the truth,'' said Lacy, who has plenty of experience profiling artists as the creator of the PBS series American Masters; her past HBO projects have gone deep on Steven Spielberg and Jane Fonda. There are still some subjects where it seems like Joel must have stayed, if not mum, perhaps reluctant or uninterested. Whether or not he has resolved his longstanding problems with alcohol, for example, isn't discussed directly, and a song he released just last year, co-written with a lesser-known songwriter, goes entirely unmentioned. (His more recent health problems came after the interviews.) But there is insight through a deep dive into Joel's catalog.
'Once you've seen this film, you'll never hear Vienna the same way again,' Lacy said of the song that's become a concert favorite, and that the movie reveals as really about Joel's mostly absent father. 'I knew, no matter how many times he said it wasn't about his father, it was about his father, and I finally got him to admit it in the last interview,' Lacy said. Levin added: 'That song is kind of a sleeper hit. It was not a hit when it came out on [Joel's commercial smash] The Stranger; it was just a catalog song. And over the years it became more and more resonant with people. That he's talented enough to write a song like that, that's actually about something else but has this incredible universal appeal, is really something to behold.'
Managing to highlight deeper cuts such as Vienna and the title song (which, Lacy said, she didn't realize was Joel's favorite of his when she chose the title) is especially impressive given the sheer percentage of Joel's songs that have made the US top 40 chart. With 33 such entries, more than a quarter of his total output as a solo artist has been a hit single. That's contributed to his reputation in some corners as a classic panderer, rather than a more considered album artist. That's less prevalent in today's more poptimistic environment, but shifting historical perception about Joel's work was still a goal for And So It Goes. Lacy described the film-makers' intent as 'to make a film that would satisfy and appeal to the fans, but also the people who would say 'why Billy Joel?'' At the movie's best, Lacy and Levin seem like they're able to fit into both categories, even if they're not as skeptical as the latter. They both obviously love and respect Joel's music, but they're able to communicate the 'why' of his work through the observations of others.
In fact, some of the doc's best observations come not from Joel but his ex-wife Elizabeth Weber, who also served as his manager early on. 'In the beginning, she didn't want to talk about the songs,' Lacy said, characterizing her as more focused on the business side that she was so involved in, and perhaps reluctant to say more after a long silence about all matters Joel. But eventually she did speak on the many songs seemingly written about her, whether the wedding staple Just the Way You Are or the spikier Stiletto (which she says, if anything, describes Joel more accurately). That song was also sampled by rapper Nas in his song Disciple, which is why he was originally contacted to join figures such as Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen. 'We started to pursue Nas because Billy's music has been sampled a lot in rap. But he started to speak about the other songs and how his father loved New York State of Mind, and we ended up getting rid of the rap [material],' Levin said, including Nas's more in-depth appreciation instead. 'He brought a poetry to it,' Lacy said.
Though other observers and artists such as Pink (who knows Joel personally) discuss Joel's retirement from songwriting, as does Joel himself, it feels more like an event from the past than a present-day condition, even as hints of more songs or a new album fail to materialize. The documentary's ultimate ellipsis is the open question of whether he might write and record in a serious way again someday, and continue that increasingly respected discography. Lacy and Levin would love to hear more from him, too. But they understand why it remains an open question. 'That's a survival mechanism,' Levin said. 'He does live in the moment.'
And So It Goes: Billy Joel premieres on HBO on 18 July with the second installment on 25 July