American singer inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992 after 15 years preparation for success as a singer and songwriter. His hits “Piano Man,” ” My Life,” “I Love You Just the Way You Are,” and “Only the Good Die Young” display his trademark talent for pop, soul and piano-based rock. Seven consecutive albums of his made the Top 10. Despite his success in the music industry, Joel remains cynical about the business, having sued two of his managers for cheating him of his money. On 25 September 1989, Joel filed a $90 million suit against his ex-brother-in-law and former manager Frank Weber.
Joel’s father emigrated from Germany to the Bronx in the 1930s. He met his future wife and they wed, having a daughter and son. At the age of one, Billy’s family moved to Hicksville on Long Island. Both of his parents were musically trained, his father a classically trained pianist. At four, the boy was pounding on an old Lester upright piano. His mother took him kicking and screaming to his first piano class and he dropped out of piano lessons at 11 because he hated to practice. Billy grew up in a volatile family as his parents constantly bickered. In 1957, his father left the U.S. and moved back to Europe. He would not see his father again until 1973. In the late 1950s, Joel found life difficult as a poor kid and the only Jewish child in a neighborhood full of Irish, Polish and Italian families. He got into many scraps defending his Jewish heritage.
In his teens, Joel adopted a tough punk look, sporting leather wristbands and carrying switchblades that were never used. He was an amateur welterweight boxer. In high school, Joel played with a band called “The Hassles.” They played their gigs until 4:00 A.M. so Joel began skipping classes and missing out of his exams. The principal encouraged Joel to get his high school degree by attending summer school but Joel would have no part of it. His mother worked a string of menial jobs in order to raise her children. She was disappointed that her son preferred to sing and play the organ in a band with his friends rather than receive an education. Music meant everything to Joel and he bristled when family and friends tried to discourage him to give up his dreams for a practical career.
In 1969, Joel grew despondent over his difficulty in obtaining a musical career. He was working in a succession of miserable jobs so out of despair he tried to kill himself by overdosing on pills. He second attempt, by swallowing furniture polish, also failed to kill him so he checked into a hospital for medical care. He left in three weeks with a new perspective on his life. After leaving the hospital, he signed his first solo record contract and his album “Cold Spring Harbor” was produced in 1972. Because of his naiveté in the music industry, he signed away all his rights making him responsible for promoting the album with no pay. Unhappy living out of a van on the road, Joel moved to Los Angeles and changed his name to Bill Martin. He took a job in a piano bar and got married to Elizabeth Weber in 1973.
Joel’s hit “Piano Man” about life in the piano bar was his breakthrough hit in 1973 becoming a platinum selling record. Leaving Los Angeles for New York, Joel continued to explore the facets of life in New York with his hit albums “The Stranger,” 1977, “52nd Street,”1978, “Glass Houses,” 1980 and his multi-platinum album, “An Innocent Man” in 1983. Onstage, Joel cultivated a bad-boy image by wearing leather jackets and tearing up bad reviews. He appeared in public as hot-headed and misbehaved in front of reporters. In the seventies, he was pitted against fellow pianist and solo singer Elton John by the music establishment. The two singers have great respect for each other and have toured together on the world’s concert stages in the ’90s. In 1987, Joel appeared in Moscow as part of a cultural music exchange between the U.S. and the USSR. In the late ’90s, Joel concentrating on writing instrumental music that is closer to his father’s classical roots.
Joel was married to his first wife, Elizabeth Weber for nine years. He became a workaholic and dismissed his need for a personal life. After his divorce in 1982, Joel met model Christie Brinkley while playing piano in St. Bart’s in the Caribbean. They married in 1985 and had a daughter, Alexa Ray, born in 1986. They announced in mid-April 1994 that they had been separated since Thanksgiving 1993. They congenially share custody of their daughter, putting aside the bitterness of their divorce in their mutual love of their child.
On 24 September 1989, Joel was taken to New York Hospital for removal of kidney stones. His health problems continued when, on 16 June 1998, doctors advised him to cancel six shows due to laryngitis and asthmatic bronchitis that hit after a June 2 outdoor concert in Glasgow, Scotland.
Joel was slapped with a $5 million lawsuit on 15 February 2000 from a woman who claimed she was beaned by his flying drumsticks during a concert.
The singer became engaged in January 2004 to Katie Lee, age 22. They married in a sunset ceremony on 2 October 2004 at his Long Island, NY estate. This was Joel’s third marriage.
In March 2005, the musician entered a rehabilitation center for alcohol abuse following a series of accidents and treatment for gastro-intestinal distress. This is his second attempt in three years to combat his abuse of addictive substances.
In mid-June 2009, he and Katie Lee announced that they were separating. On 4 July 2015, Joel married his fourth wife, Alexis Roderick (aged 33 at the time), an equestrian and former Morgan Stanley executive, at his estate on Long Island with the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, conducting the ceremony. The couple had been together since 2009. On 12 August 2015, the couple’s daughter, Della Rose Joel, was born. The couple had a second daughter, Remy Anne, on 22 October 2017.
Link to Wikipedia biography