{"id":107331,"date":"2025-07-31T10:43:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T10:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/107331\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T10:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T10:43:11","slug":"billy-joel-and-so-it-goes-review-indulgent-five-hour-rock-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/107331\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Billy Joel: And So It Goes\u2019 review: indulgent five-hour rock doc"},"content":{"rendered":"

B<\/strong>illy Joel<\/a> is, obviously, no Ozzy Osbourne<\/a>. Though he\u2019s experienced brushes with death, mammoth success and crushing lows, the Long Island singer\u2019s trajectory isn\u2019t as obviously cinematic as other rock \u2019n\u2019 rollers\u2019 bumpy ride down the road of mega-celebrity.<\/p>\n

While the Prince Of Darkness\u2019 fascinating life has been thus far under-explored on-screen beyond that reality TV show, Joel is the subject of a lavish new two-part documentary that amounts to five hours on the man who wrote \u2018Uptown Girl\u2019. Yes, that\u2019s right \u2013 five hours. This kind of immersive treatment can be absolutely fascinating, as was proved by 2015\u2019s four-hour Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All, which was effectively a detailed history of 20th Century America told through the prism of Old Blue Eyes\u2019 rise, fall and rise again.<\/p>\n

Filmed before its subject\u2019s recent health struggles<\/a>, Billy Joel: And So It Goes works to a tighter frame than the Frank doc. Directors Jessica Levin and Susan Lacy have painted a loving portrait of the Piano Man, exploring his hardscrabble ascent from working-class roots to head-spinning fame via detailed breakdowns of every studio album he\u2019s ever released. Yup, all 13 of them. It\u2019s as exhausting as it sounds though the cast list is impressive \u2013 Paul McCartney<\/a>, Bruce Springsteen<\/a> and even Nas<\/a> turn up to pay tribute.<\/p>\n

Essentially, it\u2019s a standard point-and-shoot rock doc with talking heads punctuating footage of Joel in his soft-rock \u201870s prime and onwards. The show\u2019s single greatest moment is probably the opening shot of the first episode, which looks like it\u2019s been created by Martin Scorsese<\/a>. \u201cWhen I was young, I worked on an oyster boat,\u201d Joel tells us via voiceover in his chewy accent. \u201cI would look up at this mansion on the hill, wondering what it would take to live in a house like that.\u201d The camera then swoops gracefully past the gigantic mansion he now calls home. The boy did good, but how did he get here?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t really take five hours to answer this question, given the star\u2019s obvious borderline genius for melody and a steely work ethic that belies his \u2018aw shucks\u2019 guy-next-door persona. Still, there are interesting detours along the way and Billy Joel\u2019s candour is commendable, if a little selective. A desire to impress his father, a classically trained pianist who showed his son little love, is gradually cited as the reason for Billy\u2019s relentless drive. Equally fascinating is the second episode\u2019s analysis of his Jewish grandfather\u2019s escape from Nazi Germany to the United States. The Nazis, Joel reflects ruefully, \u201cwiped out my family\u201d.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s aforementioned candour is a blessing and a curse. Joel discusses his two pre-fame suicide attempts with pitiless clarity and brands himself a \u201cthree-time loser\u201d for being thrice divorced \u2013 yet all this honestly only draws attention to what\u2019s been left out. If songwriting is so instinctive for him, as is suggested, why did he quit writing pop songs in 1993? His struggles with alcohol addiction are referenced frequently, but only in curiously euphemistic terms; it\u2019s never clear exactly how much this impacted his nearly three-year hiatus from playing live until his glorious stage comeback in 2012.<\/p>\n

Much of And So It Goes is like ambient telly, with yet another album breakdown washing over you. Still, mega-fans will obviously lap it up and you\u2019ll undoubtedly be reaching for that battered copy of \u2018The Stranger\u2019\u00a0when the credits (eventually) roll.<\/p>\n

\u2018Billy Joel: And So It Goes\u2019 airs August 2 on Sky Documentaries and streaming service NOW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Billy Joel is, obviously, no Ozzy Osbourne. Though he\u2019s experienced brushes with death, mammoth success and crushing lows,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":107332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,53,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-107331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114947437701777125","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}