MusicBilly Joel reveals suicide attempts after a case with his best friend’s wife

MusicBilly Joel reveals suicide attempts after a case with his best friend’s wife


“I felt a lot. They had a son. I felt like someone who destroyed a family,” said artist in a new documentary


Billy Joel reveals that he tried suicide twice – driven by an affair with a bandmate’s wife – in his new HBO documentary And so it goesand that one of the attempts left him in a coma.

Before becoming Piano Man, Joel, then in the early twenties, played in a hard rock band called Attilain Long Island, next to your best friend at the time, Jon Small. At one point, Joel moved to Small’s house, where his wife lived, Elizabeth Weberand the couple’s young son. During this period, Joel and Weber passed “Lots of time together” and a romantic relationship was slowly developing. Joel ended up confessing to Small: “I’m in love with your wife”.

“I felt very, very guilty about it. They had a child. I felt like someone who destroyed a family.”said Joel in the documentary, according to the magazine People. “I was just in love with a woman, and I punched my nose – which I deserved. Jon was very upset. I was very upset.”.

The case resulted in the end of the band Attila, in (temporary) rupture of friendship with Small, and the expulsion of Joel from his friend’s house.

“I had nowhere to live. I slept in laundries and was depressed, I think to the point of being almost psychotic. So I thought, ‘That’s it. I don’t want to live anymore.’ I was in a lot of pain, and it was as if to say, ‘Why continue tomorrow? So I decided to end everything. ”

Joel’s sister, Judy “Which was medical assistant at the time,” I had already prescribed pills to sleep his brother to help him with sleep. Joel’s first suicide attempt happened when he “Decided to take them all at once”.

“He stayed in a coma for days and days”says Judy in the documentary. “I went to visit him in the hospital, and he was there, white like a sheet. I thought I had killed him”.

Disappointed by the attempt not worked, Joel woke up at the hospital and promised that next time he would “The right way”. He said he drank an entire bottle of the Lemon Pletge cleaning product, and then, his former best friend, Small, took him to the hospital. “Even with our friendship crumbling, Jon saved my life”said Joel.

Small adds to the documentary:

“He never really told me anything, but the only practical explanation I can give Billy to have taken everything so deep is that he loved me so much, and it killed him inside – for hurting me so much. I ended up forgiving him.”

After this second attempt, Joel voluntarily interrupted in a psychiatric wing for a few weeks – a decision that changed the course of his life.

“When I left the wing, I thought to myself: you can channel all these emotions and use it all in music.”

A post-school about the case: Joel and Weber eventually reconciled and married. The marriage lasted from 1973 to 1982.

And so it goes He premiered on Wednesday, 4, at the Tribeca Film Festival, but Joel could not attend the screening due to a recent diagnosis of a brain disorder. However, the singer sent a message through the filmmakers: “Aging is a drug, but it is better than being cremated”.

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Source: Rollingstone

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