Billy Joel

Channeling turmoil into melody, Billy Joel recounts two suicide attempts following an entanglement with his best friend’s wife—a storyline that skews far closer to Greek tragedy than piano man nostalgia.

Billy Joel confesses a harrowing chapter in his HBO documentary And So It Goes, revealing he attempted suicide twice in the aftermath of an affair with Elizabeth Weber—his best friend Jon Small’s wife. In the early '70s, while playing in the heavy rock outfit Attila alongside Small, Joel falls into a spiral of guilt and heartbreak.

Sleeping in laundromats and medicated by despair, he downs an entire bottle of sleeping pills. Days in a coma follow. The second attempt involves Lemon Pledge and lands him back in the hospital—this time rushed by the very man he betrayed.

Small, though betrayed, chooses forgiveness, attributing Joel’s spiral to how much it pained him to inflict that hurt. Joel later checks into an observation ward and starts channeling his misery into music, recalibrating his trajectory from collapse to catharsis.

Premiered at Tribeca, the film lands as Joel copes with health struggles, including a recent diagnosis of normal pressure hydrocephalus. His daughter Alexa Ray confirms he’s fully focused on recovering, while Joel insists, “I’m not dying.”