Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography

Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography by Fred Schruers

What a depressing biography this is.

Like King Solomon of the Old Testament in the Book of Ecclesiastes, Billy Joel is further proof that you can have tons of money, loads of talent and fame, and gobs of beautiful women, yet still be utterly miserable.  Critics of this biography (there have been several bios of Billy of recent) state that author Schruers is a bit too kind towards Joel and he leaves out much of the unpleasantness spewed by those who are, or who have been closest to him.  What’s ironic is that this type of mud-slinging isn’t even necessary with most of the negativity within these pages coming from Joel himself.  Joel simply doesn’t have many happy things to say about his life; past nor present.

The fact that the subject matter’s life is filled with malaise is not what left me with a lukewarm feeling after I finished the book.  My reservations are that this biography talks too much about the things in Billy Joel’s life that simply don’t interest me. As a fan of music, I wanted to read about music, not things that seem to have been lifted off a tabloid front page. Early in the book, we read a lengthy story of his grandparents escaping Germany during the holocaust that takes about 7 or 8 pages, but we later read less than 1 page about the album 52^nd Street.  We then read a lackluster 2-3-page account of when Billy and first-wife Elizabeth ‘accidentally’ take her son to California without the father’s permission, but there’s absolutely nothing in this book about the album ‘Songs in the Attic’.  

I remember when I was a fan back in the glory days of the eighties, and how excited I would be whenever I would come across a magazine with an interview with Billy Joel (this was pre-internet, remember). I then became disgusted when the interviewer seemed to ask Billy more questions about Christie Brinkley than his music.  Again, maybe that’s what people want.  If so, maybe that same group of people will enjoy this book since it talks ad nauseum about his plethora of wives and girlfriends.  Although to be fair, we must remember that Billy Joel hasn’t written any pop music since 1993, so one could argue ‘What else is there to talk about?’

Fair enough. Still, I enjoyed reading the first half of the book so much more than the second half, but even as I’ve stated, I felt the first half should have focused more on his music, his band, his writing, his touring, and his life in the studio and on the road. There is some of that here, and I did learn some things, but I just wanted more.   Even when Billy was at the top of his game from 1973-1993, he was still awfully depressed, the only thing that gave him escape, it seemed, was when he performed on stage for two hours every night.

Perhaps this is why he’s still been touring successfully a quarter of a century after his retirement from recording? With so much more spare time, though, Billy sinks deeper and deeper into a wide variety of funks. In addition to the failed marriages and relationships with girlfriends, we read about managers that try to rip him off, hostility between him and his longtime band-mates, motorcycle accidents, car accidents, alcoholism, a couple of stints in rehab, and a multitude of conflicts with fellow touring partner Elton John. It really is quite sad.

With the last twenty years of his life being so haphazard, the book reads more like a series of People magazine articles than it does a ‘definitive’ biography. Even though the tough kid from the Bronx tends to shrug off his many issues with a healthy dose of machismo, you really can’t help but pity the man. One hopes that now that he’s in the fourth quarter of his life, he’ll find something to give him happiness, if not a bit more contentment.

Truly sad when you think about how his music means so much to so many people.