Billy Joel’s Message As Doc ‘Billy Joel: And So It Goes’ Opens Tribeca Festival Without Him — ‘Getting Old Sucks, But It’s Still Preferable To Getting Cremated”

An in poor health Billy Joel used to be now not in attendance this night on the global premiere HBO documentary about his existence and track however despatched phrase to a packed Beacon Theater in NYC by way of its director.

“Billy wishes he were here tonight, and he asked us to convey his greetings to you all. He said ‘getting old sucks, but it’s still preferable to getting cremated’,” relayed Susan Lacy, who helmed and produced the document Billy Joel: And So It Goes with Jessica Levin. Part 1 of 2 opened the Tribeca Festival Wednesday.

“Billy may be considered the poet laureate of New York. You feel the essence of our city in his lyrics,” mentioned Tribeca Enterprises’ Robert De Niro introducing the pageant and the movie with co-founder Jane Rosenthal.

Joel’s scrappiness and immense ability are each shiny within the movie concerning the Long Island bard who shaped his first quilt band, The Lonely Souls, at age 14. That ended in a bunch referred to as The Hassles, the Attila with drummer Jon Small, till he fell in love with Small’s spouse Elizabeth Weber. That became messy, she left. Joel tried suicide. He sooner or later rallied. Elizabeth returned, they moved to California and married. She was his supervisor and his profession slowly took off.

He stored his chip. A chilly, abusive father, additionally a pianist, left the circle of relatives, and his most likely bipolar and alcoholic unmarried mom used to be left to lift him and his sister. He described them as an extraordinary Jewish and now and then dust deficient circle of relatives in his middle-class the town. But he had track and his mom made certain he all the time had classes.

He felt alienated in California, went via a couple of manufacturers, used to be down his first label and a track industry that exploited ability and wrote songs about all of it, making him rather unpopular. We see him expending important effort within the document seeking to debunk common comparisons between himself and the opposite emerging piano enjoying pop rock celebrity Elon John.

Back in New York he shaped his band, went on excursion opening for many each and every giant act of the technology, offered out Carnegie Hall hooked up with Phil Ramone and put out The Stranger in 1977, launching an technology of hits, Grammy awards and entire on stardom to ingesting, medication a bike coincidence and break up with Weber, finishing Part 1.

Music royalty dots the movie. Paul McCartney mentioned Joel’s I Want You Just The Way You Are is the only music he wanted he had written. Bruce Springsteen praised Joel’s melodies. Nas described the wonders of Piano Man, about Joel’s stint operating at The Executive Room Bar in LA to make ends meet, and New York State of Mind, expressing aid as her returned to his house coast.

“Although we always wanted the music to speak for itself, we are immensely grateful that he was convinced that there was more to it than that,” Lacy mentioned. “It wasn’t always easy, but he peeled back the layers of his music and his life with courage and humor and vulnerability. No matter where you’re from, Billy’s music reaches across geography and generations and in this increasingly fractured world it’s a privilege to celebrate an artist whose music has connected for so long.”

“He will be back,” she mentioned.

The HBO Original has extraordinary get right of entry to to never-before-seen performances, house films, and private pictures, along side intensive, in-depth one-on-one interviews of the somewhat non-public artist.

An HBO Documentary Films presentation of a Pentimento Production in affiliation with Hazy Mills Productions and Playtone Productions. Directed and produced by means of Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin; govt manufacturers, Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, Todd Milliner, Sean Hayes, Steve Cohen; manufacturer, Emma Pildes; edited by means of Kris Liem, James Pilott, Steven Ross. For HBO: govt manufacturers, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, Sara Rodriguez. 

The document will debut on HBO and be to be had to circulation on Max in July.

Joel closing month postponed all excursion dates disclosing a prognosis of standard force hydrocephalus (NPH), stemming from an onstage fall right through a live performance closing February in Connecticut. The Rock and Roll Hall Of famer  posted on social media that his situation ended in “problems with hearing, vision, and balance” and that used to be present process bodily remedy.

In an replace overdue closing month, his spouse Alexis Roderick mentioned the circle of relatives “is hopeful for his recovery” and thanked lovers for an outpouring of fortify.