The Billy Joel Papers: All I Want is Someone to Believe

 In this current recasting of career and personal Billy Joel highlights occasioned by the deserved popularity of the “And So It Goes” doc on HBO,  I’m bringing some  dramatis personae forward here on the blog. Along with excerpts from the biography I wrote with cooperation from Billy, I'm adding here fresh quotes from the files as I built them when researching the book.

Author Don Winslow, a writer I much admire, was kind enough to post on X.com that the book , which treads a path the doc would also pursue,  “goes even deeper and provides stories and insights not found anywhere else”:

.“https://x.com/donwinslow/status/1950679673345851516

  Herewith, some of that  material, some of it until now unseen. And as in the previous Joel post of last week, a paywall appears in the concluding section of the text and extras. Just briefly: the paywall isn’t meant to step in too churlishly, it just demarcates where more intriguing details await those who seek them.  (This controlled access also respects my publisher’s proper aim to sell their own stock of the actual, 392-page book the Boston Globe called, “A funny, revealing, and poignant look at Joel’s long career.”) Be assured that here in Dogtown we always appreciate members and readers of all tiers.

The below narrative picks up from a prelude posted last week, above here on the Dogtown site, and entitled, `Billy Joel: Everybody Loves Him Now')

At this stage of the life chronology, we arrive at the near-legendary story of Billy, his then and again best friend Jon Small, and Elizabeth Weber, the woman who formed a triangle with them. That course of events ended (again, past the paywall in that above post) in a true donnybrook. That moment is detailed in the following take from his then-manager, Irwin Mazur:
“So Billy’s staying in our apartment one night,” Irwin says, “and I get up in the morning, and I go in the dining room, and there’s a loose-leaf page Billy left there with what are obviously lyrics to a song. And I read it, and the title of the song is ‘Tomorrow Is Today.’ I think his state of mind would be pretty well summed up in his song. It was a suicide note.”

 Billy’s depression that led to two suicide attempts is depicted in the film and includes part of the aftermath, where we see some vintage back and white footage of the Meadowbrook, Long Island hospital where he stayed under observation for three weeks. But Small, who had effectively saved his friend's life after rushing him to the E.R. following the second attempt, well evoked for my interviews the combative, darkened mood:  

“That was it.  It was all over.  Attila was gone, everything was over.  He had no money, and his manager was paying for [some basic needs].   And he started to drink.  Started to drink wine and you could see even in the album cover of “Cold Spring Harbor,”  all the bottles, he’s in silhouette and all the bottles there.”

The prelude to Billy and Elizabeth making a run for the West Coast in 1972 is detailed in the previous post--they then boarded her Datsun station wagon and headed West (see the song "stop in Nevada") with her son Sean, 5. Billy believed Elizabeth and Jon had agreed to such a turnoff events– but alas, not.

In due course Billy and Jon got on the phone. Jon: “So Elizabeth's gone and Sean's gone.  I don't know where they are.  And I got this phony lead that they went to Ireland, but they didn't.  I go,  ”Have you seen them, Billy?”  He goes, “No.”  And Billy told me later on, “I'm looking out the window,  and there's Sean and Liz.”   But he's in a hotel and he said--he goes, “I 'm lying right to you, to my ex-best friend, and I'm looking at your son." And he’d said, “No, I didn't see them.”  But soon as I hung up that phone, I knew he was full of shit.  And I got on the plane and went to L.A. that day, flew to L.A.  I landed 10 or 11 at night. 11.  I rented a car, I drove up La Cienega--he’d told me he was playing at the Troubadour.

The career timing was that, in this period prior to Billy’s alienation from manager (and inept debut album producer) Artie Ripp, he was still in the game with Artie and was booked to play in the famous West Hollywood showcase club. 

Jon: “ I missed the whole ”Piano Man” (i.e., “Cold Spring Harbor” album)  record.  `Cause that's what he was doing, while I'm living [alone] in the Rock House, he recorded.  And I remember one day I got the record, I thought the record was great.  Elizabeth actually said to me, “Why don't you learn the record, maybe you can join the band.  And I actually learned everything, but never got the call.  Then he did a live radio broadcast from WLIR.  And I sat there and listened to it by myself in the Rock House.  And every once in a while he would almost insinuate in his talking, well, this is going to go out to my best friend, or blah-blah-blah.  And I wished that he was going to say my name, but it was never me.  I remember I sat there crying, feeling like shit that my life is just fucked.  It's like everything's not going right.  So now we're back to where we were.  And so he's off to L.A.”  

Jon  knew that the bargain choice for musicians visiting L.A. for  extended stretches was the low key, but offhandedly hip,  Tropicana—all manner of acts had stayed there, from Tom Waits to to about-to-be Fleetwood Mac centerpieces  Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham—and he staked the hotel out, steadily long-distance phone-calling his mother, who was initiating a much more aggressive agenda to undo the love match.

Jon:  : “I look at the Tropicana and there's Billy coming out of the office…and Elizabeth and Sean, they're coming down the stairs. I started running--I got them, I got them, Ma--and I run across the street as they're getting into the car, and I go right on the hood, bang on the hood and go, "I got you.” 

What followed reveals elements both tragic and comic... 

Jon Small: "So we went back into the hotel and into the room.  And within 20 minutes we were all laughing.  Cause we all realized how much we missed each other.  And I'll tell you one more funny part about it cause the funniest thing happened.  So all of a sudden I felt great.  There I was with my buddy, even though--even though I didn't like Elizabeth, I still liked Elizabeth. "

A loose plan was formulated, involving a return to Long Island for mother and son; but Jon’s mom didn’t trust the pair: “My mother says, we're sending a detective.”  Right out of the movies. I said, no, it's all set.  And she's 'No, no, don't trust him.' My mother said to me, [the private detectives]  will be there, like three o'clock in the morning, so be ready to go.  I was waiting, I figured that they'd come, we'd just slip out.  I'd take Sean--he didn't know. They'd be sound asleep, we'd catch that first plane, they wouldn't even know we were gone. 

"Well, these bozos come,  and they knock on the door, and the one guy goes--this little guy comes in, he goes, “We want to see her.”  And they wake Elizabeth up, and Billy, and they basically--she's now not going to let Sean go, blah-blah-blah.  But they convince her that he's got to go, they're like scaring her.  So it's me, there's two guys, me, Elizabeth and Sean.  And she's pissed at me--we're in the back seat of this car trying to get to LAX.  And they're asking Elizabeth for directions—" How do you get to the airport?  She goes, “Fuck you!”

We finally got to the airport.  Soon as we stepped out, there was a policeman walking, Elizabeth went up and said, “They're trying to abduct me.”  And the guy said, “Well, we're private detectives from New York and the guy said, `You have no jurisdiction here, goodbye.' So they left and I went back with Elizabeth, and when we drove back to the Tropicana, there was Billy standing in the middle of the parking lot. Cause he called his manager, whatever, he was like devastated.  But we’re back like 40 minutes later.  And then the next day we all went back.  Billy didn't go.  Billy stayed.

 It was a very heartbreaking thing for not just me, but for him too.  And I'm sure Elizabeth too.  And like I said, if I was going to say one thing about it, love is really strong.  So we see it in movies, we see it everywhere.  When people love somebody, you step over anything else to get there.  And Billy's pretty much of a romantic.  I knew it hurt him, and it hurt me and--look, I even know till today it still definitely bothers him.  He'll make jokes about it—“Hey, I saved your life.  I got you out of that thing.”  So that was–a big event in our lives.”  

It would be a while --the "Piano Man" days--before Billy said goodbye to Hollywood. It was a gradual decampment starting around 1974, memorialized in “New York State of Mind” emerging in 1975, but the bi-coastal period would for a while reunite father and son, while the couple were, as Jon told me:

“Often in L.A. and they're doing their stuff.  And eventually I get Sean back.  Sean came to live with me [then] for a bunch of years.  She didn't give Sean up for any other reason than she needed to--look, nobody had any money.  So it was a time in her life that she could further her career and Billy's career and really make something for her.  And where else to put her son than to her ex-husband, who loves her son.  So that's what happened.  It was a little tough for me and Sean at first, but then eventually everything worked out and was great.

“She didn't give Sean up for any other reason than she needed to--look, they were--nobody had any money.  So it was a time in her life that she could further her career and Billy's career and really make something for her.  And where else to put this--her son than to her ex-husband, who loves her son.  So that's what happened.  So we came--it was a little tough for me and Sean at first, but then eventually everything worked out and was great.  

Eventual, says Jon, always the philosophical one in the trio, “They all became super stars and they all became rich.  And everything changes.  And Billy wrote about it in all the songs,  “Big Shot” and stuff like that.

"Honesty’ is a perfect example of an Elizabeth song."

"Honesty” live—Houston, 1979:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghokPs1AbZI

‘I can always find someone
To say they sympathize
If I wear my heart out on my sleeve
But I don't want some pretty face
To tell me pretty lies
All I want is someone to believe