Billy Joel tried to kill himself twice before realizing he could channel his sadness into music

Billy Joel’s beingness is awash successful revelations these days — immoderate bad, immoderate worse.

Last month, the “Only the Good Die Young” singer-songwriter canceled each his upcoming concerts, revealing helium was struggling with a encephalon upset that causes a perchance reversible benignant of dementia. Then past week, helium divulged that helium attempted termination doubly successful his 20s aft falling successful emotion with his bandmate’s woman and causing the downfall of the set itself.

“I felt very, precise blameworthy astir it. They had a child. I felt similar a homewrecker,” Joel says (via People) successful the archetypal fractional of the two-part documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes,” which premiered past Wednesday and hits HBO Max successful July. “I was conscionable successful emotion with a pistillate and I got punched successful the nose, which I deserved.”

Joel said some helium and his person and Attila bandmate, Jon Small, were upset by what happened portion Joel was surviving with Small and Small’s then-wife, Elizabeth Weber. So upset that Attila — a Led Zeppelin-inspired metallic band, according to the New York Times — broke up and Joel started boozing, which sent him into a tailspin.

“I had nary spot to live,” Joel says successful the documentary. “I was sleeping successful laundromats, and I was depressed, I deliberation to the constituent of astir being psychotic. So I figured, ‘That’s it. I don’t privation to unrecorded anymore.’”

He tried doubly to extremity his beingness successful the aboriginal 1970s, according to the documentary. First, helium took the full batch of sleeping pills that his sister, past a aesculapian assistant, had fixed him to assistance him sleep. That enactment him successful the hospital.

“He was successful a coma for days and days and days,” Judy Molinari says successful the program. She thought she had killed her brother.

Joel says successful the doc that helium woke up successful the infirmary inactive suicidal, hoping to bash it “right” the adjacent time. His sister said helium coiled up drinking “lemon Pledge” furnishings polish. That time, an improbable idiosyncratic took him to the hospital: Small, his then-estranged champion friend.

“Eventually,” Small says successful the documentary, “I forgave him.”

As for those impulses to harm himself, they coiled up paying disconnected for Joel aft helium checked retired of a installation helium had checked himself into aft the 2nd termination attempt.

“I got retired of the reflection ward and I thought to myself, you tin utilize each those emotions to transmission that worldly into music.”

Joel reconnected with Weber astir a twelvemonth aft that, wrote astir her successful the 1973 opus “Piano Man,” and joined her from past until 1982. Marriages to Christie Brinkley, Katie Lee and existent woman Alexis Roderick would follow.

The archetypal portion of the documentary covers Joel’s puerility and runs done his 1982 motorcycle accident, according to the New York Times. He doesn’t conscionable his “Uptown Girl,” Brinkley, until Part 2.