Overview
- The film discloses how Joel’s romance with Elizabeth Weber led to the end of his band Attila and a rift with close friend and bandmate Jon Small.
- Facing guilt and despair, he made two suicide attempts in his early 20s—one that resulted in a coma after overdosing on sleeping pills and another via furniture polish ingestion.
- Jon Small rushed him to the hospital after the second attempt and his sister Judy Molinari supplied the pills that triggered the first intervention; Joel later entered an observation ward.
- He credits that psychiatric stay with teaching him to channel intense emotions into his songwriting, shaping early classics such as “She’s Got a Way.”
- Joel missed the Tribeca premiere due to a recent brain disorder diagnosis; the documentary ‘Billy Joel: And So It Goes’ is set to stream on HBO this summer.