“Music saved my life,” Billy Joel admits in HBO‘s And So It Goes. “It gave me a purpose to stay.” That stark, emotional admission units the tone for the highly effective two-part documentary premiering July 18 and 25, providing an intimate portrait of the six-time Grammy Award-winning Rock and Roll Corridor of Famer.
Directed by Emmy winners Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, the movie traces Joel’s journey from his childhood in Lengthy Island by his sluggish and regular rise as a hitmaker — in the end revealing the “coronary heart and soul” behind many years of iconic songs.
“Our abiding precept was to let the music lead so that folks may perceive what made this artist tick, and what went into his music, and to get a peek behind his course of but in addition an understanding of how his real-life experiences fed his music and his lyrics,” Levin tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Joel has written 121 songs, and the movie contains 110 of them, Levin says.
“One of many issues that we’re actually happy with is that your entire movie is scored,” Lacy says. “Together with a lot of his classical music.”
And So It Goes explores the forces that formed Joel’s artistry: his deep roots in classical music, the trauma of his father’s household and their flight from Nazi Germany and the usually risky dynamics behind the scenes. Uncommon archival footage, house motion pictures and candid interviews paint a fuller, extra sophisticated image of the Piano Man — good, pushed, combative, generally conflicted and in the end enduring.
The ladies closest to Joel in his life like ex-wife and former supervisor Elizabeth Weber, his daughter Alexa Ray Joel and his present spouse Alexis Roderick opened up in regards to the household man behind the highlight, whereas legends like Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Don Henley replicate on Joel’s legacy as a songwriter.
Forward of Half One’s Friday launch, Lacy and Levin spoke with THR about getting Joel to open up, exploring his affect on modern music and reframing his catalog.
Billy Joel is famously non-public. How did you get him to belief you together with his life story?
Lacy: He truly stated to me, “it’s not my movie, it’s yours. The one factor I ask is inform the reality. Simply inform the reality.” And he got here to the desk with that, and I did about 10 very lengthy interviews with him, and he delivered. I don’t know that he was truly actually prepared at first to inform his story, however he got here to comprehend that we have been making a really deep movie, a really critical movie, the one which was actually going to discover his music and the way it related together with his life.
We have been all for his craft and his course of and the place his inspirations got here from, and the place his musical coaching got here from. And, it wasn’t a fly-by-night, drive-by portrait, as many individuals do. He acknowledged that this was critical, it was additionally going to be lengthy. So at one level, he stated to me, “You going deep?” And I stated, “Yeah, and you understand you’re going to go deep too.”
You introduced on lots of stars, the most important names in music. What was the outreach course of like? Had been they instantly on board, or did it take persuasion?
Lacy: I feel musicians love Billy, and so they acknowledge his genius. The one one who turned us down was Elton John.
You had Nas in there, and Pink and Garth Brooks. Nas sampled “Stiletto” in a track. How necessary was it to have artists from completely different generations and genres?
Levin: We’re all the time all for how an artist permeates tradition on completely different ranges and in several generations. We have been doing a little analysis and I simply got here throughout the truth that Billy’s music had been sampled quite a bit — and I’m not stunned as a result of he’s written lots of nice hooks, he’s written some unimaginable melodies which can be very hummable.
We had the concept to interview Nas as a result of he sampled Billy, and we thought possibly he would discuss Billy’s music being sampled in rap — which he did discuss however didn’t fairly make it into the movie. As an alternative, we found a very eloquent talker about Billy Joel’s music.
You targeted on a few of the critics — like Dave Marsh — who have been unfavorable about The Nylon Curtain. You then lower from that evaluation to a humorous remark from Bruce Springsteen. Was that intentional?
Lacy: We truly needed to interview a few of the critics of Billy, and most of them turned us down. I assume they only didn’t need to go on report for the definitive piece. But additionally, I feel that lots of the critics got here round. I feel it was exhausting for critics to grasp Billy as a result of he wasn’t sometimes rock and roll. I imply, as Bruce says, he didn’t have that “rock-and-roll-y stuff.”
You additionally addressed his psychology — his search in Vienna, discovering his father and his household historical past courting again to the Holocaust. How did that feed into “Vienna?”
Lacy: It speaks to that underlying rage, the thought that ‘I might’ve preferred to have recognized my household, they have been worn out within the Holocaust.’ Lots of them have been in Auschwitz. He didn’t know most of that. He had sophisticated emotions about going to Vienna as a result of it was a seat of Nazism, nevertheless it was additionally the house of the composers he cherished, and it’s a metropolis surrounded by music.
I feel individuals is not going to hear that track the identical approach once more after they see this movie, after they see the connections to his historical past, to that metropolis and his personal connection to his father, or lack of connection to his father. Within the movie, Howard Stern says he thinks that the driving power in Billy’s life was attempting to attach together with his father by music. I feel Billy’s story is approach deeper psychologically than Billy needs to know.
You structured the doc chronologically by album however slipped in emotional flashbacks. How did that work?
Lacy: I didn’t need to go utterly linear. In order that’s why the childhood — the actual childhood, the mom, the daddy, the abandonment, his mom’s bipolar difficulty, all that — doesn’t are available till he comes again to New York writing “New York State of Thoughts.”
I feel when you begin with the child footage, you sort of lose individuals. However by the point we received there, I feel individuals can be all for understanding that early childhood, and since it’s so intrinsic to who Billy grew to become. And the opposite factor that’s actually utterly nonlinear was when he did The Nylon Curtain — when he started to put in writing about issues aside from himself, in regards to the metal mills closing and Vietnam vets. And though it’s traumatic, that’s the second the place he walks out on stage sporting a yellow star. He by no means needed to be notably political, however that this was a bridge too far, and he needed to start to touch upon it. And that takes us again to his ancestors’ story.
Have you ever talked to Billy because the revelation of his current well being issues?
Lacy: I haven’t spoken to him. He did write to me when he noticed the movie to specific his emotions about it, which have been very optimistic and really good to thank me for “connecting the dots of his life.”
What would you like individuals to remove from watching?
Levin: The takeaway for a fan goes to be a very new lens on his catalog, and a revisiting of lots of the songs and seeing them in a very new approach.
The takeaway possibly for a non-fan is possibly to grasp and admire who Billy is as a musician, even when you don’t love his pop songs. That he’s a very gifted musician who’s influenced by so many various genres of music, and he adopted his coronary heart musically. They’ll get a glimpse into why individuals join with Billy a lot, and why he’s an everlasting and necessary a part of American musical historical past.