Putting an end to the DUI rumors, Billy Joel addresses the gossip about his driving record in his new HBO documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes.
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Joel pointed out the longtime rumor that he was charged with multiple DUI incidents while discussing being a key subject for tabloid media.
“I didn’t like the tabloid kind of press,” Joel said. “For example, there’s this rumor that I have all these DUIs. That never happened.”
He continued by stating, “But people keep repeating the myth. ‘Oh, he’s got so many DUIs.’ I never had a DUI. So f— you.”
Billy Joel then said that the press can be “so mean” at times. “So having that much attention paid to you is not easy.”
Joel previously spoke out about the DUI rumors during a 2013 interview with The New York Times Magazine. He cleared the air about numerous car accidents he had between 2002 and 2004.
“I never had a DUI in my life,” Joel stated at the time. “That’s another fallacy. Look at the police records. My mind wasn’t right. I wasn’t focused. I went into a deep, deep depression after 9/11.”
Speaking about how the 9/11 terrorist attacks impacted him, Joel said, “9/11 just knocked the wind out of me, and I don’t know even now if I’ve recovered from it. It really, really hurt that man could do that to man.”
Joel also said that other situations in his personal life caused him to be depressed. And then there was a breakup with somebody, and it took me a while to get me back on my feet again.”
Billy Joel Did End Up Going to Rehab for His Struggles With Alcohol in 2005
Along with discussing the DUI rumors, Billy Joel reflected on going to rehab for his alcohol struggles in 2005.
He said his ex-wife, Katie Lee, gave him an ultimatum. The then-couple got married in 2004. “‘Either you do something about your drinking or this isn’t gonna work out,'” Joel recalled Lee telling him. “At that point, yeah, the relationship wasn’t going well.”
Despite him not wanting to go, Joel checked into the Betty Ford Center. “With the rehab, you don’t go for somebody else,” he explained. “You have to go for yourself. You have to want to do it. I didn’t want to do it.”
Lee also appeared in the documentary, discussing Joel’s decision to take a break from touring and live a more private life at the time.
“I felt like he needed to be creating, he needed to be making music, performing, to turn down that anxiety of not having an artistic outlet,” she said. “And there were struggles with addiction. It was really hard to navigate that, because I had no experience with it.”
Even after Joel’s stint in rehab, he and Lee called it quits in 2009. Lee called the time after Joel returned from rehab “fragile.” She said she believes he felt “a little bit of resentment” that she pushed him to seek treatment for his addiction.
“In a lot of ways, it was hard to recover from that,” Lee added. “I don’t think either of us wanted it to not work out, but it just became obvious that it wasn’t working.”