Revelatory — even when it pulls some punches : NPR

HBO’s two-part documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes is a revealing have a look at an advanced music star who has been on the heart of pop music for many years.

However it’s additionally an excellent instance of the problem filmmakers face in making the fashionable superstar biography: a pressure between entry and objectivity.

To make sure, this undertaking — directed and produced by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, veterans of the PBS sequence American Masters, with famous person govt producers like Tom Hanks and Sean Hayes on board — walks that line very properly. The documentary, which debuts Friday with a second half coming July 25, advantages from entry to Joel, 76, his household, pals, songs and an incredible quantity of archival materials.

When the documentary premiered earlier this yr on the Tribeca Movie Competition, headlines centered on the admission that Joel had an affair with the spouse of a longtime pal and bandmember when he was in his early 20s, making an attempt suicide twice after the connection was revealed.

In some way, the filmmakers acquired ex-bandmate Jon Small to speak on digital camera concerning the second he discovered of the affair — he says “these [were] my two greatest pals” — alongside intensive interviews with Small’s ex-wife Elizabeth Weber. She ultimately married Joel and managed his profession by way of a few of his greatest successes within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties.

There are stars readily available to speak about Joel’s impression, together with Paul McCartney (he admits wishing he had written the 1977 ballad hit “Simply the Means You Are”), Pink, Nas, Garth Brooks and Bruce Springsteen, who says Joel writes higher melodies than he does. However the actual revelations come from those that are a lot nearer: his grown youngsters, sister, former bandmates, and his former wives, together with supermodel Christie Brinkley.

Billy Joel in 1977.

Artwork Maillet/Sony Music Archives/HBO

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Artwork Maillet/Sony Music Archives/HBO

Weber speaks about how Joel’s elevated consuming — and motorcycle-riding — throughout his main success within the early Nineteen Eighties led her to go away him after he was in a horrible accident. Each Joel and Weber speak about how spiky lyrics in early songs like “Massive Shot” and “Stiletto” have been references to their relationship. And different tales concerning the genesis of his hits sound like stuff scripted for a biopic: He wrote the traditional “Piano Man” whereas working in a piano bar in Los Angeles attempting to get out of a horrible recording/publishing contract; “New York State of Thoughts” got here to him rapidly on the bus experience to New York Metropolis after his time in California.

Nonetheless, for me, there may be nonetheless a slight sense of punches pulled. Joel admits to numerous horrible conduct in the course of the documentary, from affairs to out-of-control partying, firing longtime bandmembers, writing autobiographical songs with insulting traces about folks in his life, burying himself in work and neglecting his family members.

However the folks on the receiving finish of these things are principally proven forgiving Joel for his transgressions and expressing their love and admiration for him — main this critic to marvel if the image would have a been just a little totally different if he hadn’t been so intimately concerned, to the purpose the place new interviews with him are basically used as narration for the documentary.

It is a query that surfaces often relating to trendy documentaries on huge stars. When Steve Martin opens up his private archives for Morgan Neville’s Apple TV+ documentary STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 items or Michael Jordan’s manufacturing firm companions with ESPN to create The Final Dance, it is unimaginable to not marvel how the story may need been affected by efforts to maintain the superstar excited and concerned with the undertaking.

After all, this may really feel like nitpicking. Notably relating to And So It Goes, which in the end offers an vital reassessment of an artist typically given quick shrift by music critics throughout his huge pop successes.

The documentary even talks about how Joel would rip up unfavorable opinions from critics onstage again within the day. (Full disclosure: Joel as soon as ripped up a newspaper onstage with a unfavorable evaluate I wrote about his first joint live performance with Elton John within the Nineteen Nineties, although we laughed about it once I interviewed him a number of years later, and he did not even keep in mind doing it.)

Finally, And So It Goes is an expansive, wonderful have a look at Joel’s story – from his early days rising up Jewish in Lengthy Island, proper up till the top of his residency final yr at Madison Sq. Backyard, which concluded after a decade of performances. (The early screener I noticed would not tackle Joel’s current announcement that he was recognized with a uncommon mind situation referred to as regular strain hydrocephalus, resulting in cancellation of his live performance dates this yr.)

And it drops at an vital time: A number of years previous his greatest hits, it is the right second to have a look at Joel’s profession to see songs with a permanent attraction and impression past the traits and considerations of the time once they have been first launched.