{"id":75406,"date":"2025-07-19T13:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T13:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/75406\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T13:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T13:01:10","slug":"billy-joel-and-so-it-goes-directors-open-up-on-new-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/75406\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Joel ‘And So It Goes’ Directors Open Up on New Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cMusic<\/a> saved my life,\u201d Billy Joel<\/a> admits in HBO<\/a>\u2018s And So It Goes. \u201cIt gave me a reason to live.\u201d That stark, emotional admission sets the tone for the powerful two-part documentary<\/a> premiering July 18 and 25, offering an intimate portrait of the six-time Grammy Award-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDirected by Emmy winners Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, the film<\/a> traces Joel\u2019s journey from his childhood in Long Island through his slow and steady rise as a hitmaker \u2014 ultimately revealing the \u201cheart and soul\u201d behind decades of iconic songs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur abiding principle was to let the music lead so that people could understand what made this artist tick, and what went into his music, and to get a peek behind his process but also an understanding of how his real-life experiences fed his music and his lyrics,\u201d Levin tells The Hollywood Reporter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJoel has written 121 songs, and the film includes 110 of them, Levin says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the things that we are really proud of is that the entire film is scored,\u201d Lacy says. \u201cIncluding much of his classical music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd So It Goes explores the forces that shaped Joel\u2019s artistry: his deep roots in classical music, the trauma of his father\u2019s family and their flight from Nazi Germany and the often volatile dynamics behind the scenes. Rare archival footage, home movies and candid interviews paint a fuller, more complicated picture of the Piano Man \u2014 brilliant, driven, combative, sometimes conflicted and ultimately enduring.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe women closest to Joel in his life like ex-wife and former manager Elizabeth Weber, his daughter Alexa Ray Joel and his current wife Alexis Roderick opened up about the family man behind the spotlight, while legends like Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Don Henley reflect on Joel\u2019s legacy as a songwriter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAhead of Part One\u2019s Friday release, Lacy and Levin spoke with THR about getting Joel to open up, exploring his influence on contemporary music and reframing his catalog.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBilly Joel is famously private. How did you get him to trust you with his life story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLacy<\/strong>: He actually said to me, \u201cit\u2019s not my film, it\u2019s yours. The only thing I ask is tell the truth. Just tell the truth.\u201d And he came to the table with that, and I did about 10 very long interviews with him, and he delivered. I don\u2019t know that he was actually really ready at the beginning to tell his story, but he came to realize that we were making a very deep film, a very serious film, the one that was really going to explore his music and how it connected with his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWe were interested in his craft and his process and where his inspirations came from, and where his musical training came from. And, it wasn\u2019t a fly-by-night, drive-by portrait, as many people do. He recognized that this was serious, it was also going to be long. So at one point, he said to me, \u201cYou going deep?\u201d And I said, \u201cYeah, and you know you\u2019re going to go deep too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYou brought on a lot of stars, the biggest names in music. What was the outreach process like? Were they immediately on board, or did it take persuasion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLacy<\/strong>: I think musicians love Billy, and they recognize his genius. The only person who turned us down was Elton John.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou had Nas in there, and Pink and Garth Brooks. Nas sampled \u201cStiletto\u201d in a song. How important was it to have artists from different generations and genres?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLevin: <\/strong>We are always interested in how an artist permeates culture on different levels and in different generations. We were doing some research and I just came across the fact that Billy\u2019s music had been sampled a lot \u2014 and I\u2019m not surprised because he\u2019s written a lot of great hooks, he\u2019s written some incredible melodies that are very hummable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWe had the idea to interview Nas because he sampled Billy, and we thought maybe he would talk about Billy\u2019s music being sampled in rap \u2014 which he did talk about but didn\u2019t quite make it into the film. Instead, we discovered a really eloquent talker about Billy Joel\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou focused on some of the critics \u2014 like Dave Marsh \u2014 who were negative about The Nylon Curtain. Then you cut from that review to a funny comment from Bruce Springsteen. Was that intentional?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLacy:<\/strong> We actually wanted to interview some of the critics of Billy, and most of them turned us down. I guess they just didn\u2019t want to go on record for the definitive piece. But also, I think that a lot of the critics came around. I think it was hard for critics to understand Billy because he wasn\u2019t typically rock and roll. I mean, as Bruce says, he didn\u2019t have that \u201crock-and-roll-y stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou also addressed his psychology \u2014 his search in Vienna, discovering his father and his family history dating back to the Holocaust. How did that feed into \u201cVienna?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLacy<\/strong>: It speaks to that underlying rage, the thought that \u2018I would\u2019ve liked to have known my family, they were wiped out in the Holocaust.\u2019 Many of them were in Auschwitz. He didn\u2019t know most of that.\u00a0He had complicated feelings about going to Vienna because it was a seat of Nazism, but it was also the home of the composers he loved, and it\u2019s a city surrounded by music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI think people will not hear that song the same way again after they see this film, when they see the connections to his history, to that city and his own connection to his father, or lack of connection to his father. In the film, Howard Stern says he thinks that the driving force in Billy\u2019s life was trying to connect with his father through music. I think Billy\u2019s story is way deeper psychologically than Billy wants to know.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou structured the doc chronologically by album but slipped in emotional flashbacks. How did that work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLacy<\/strong>: I didn\u2019t want to go completely linear. So that\u2019s why the childhood \u2014 the real childhood, the mother, the father, the abandonment, his mother\u2019s bipolar issue, all that \u2014 doesn\u2019t come in until he comes back to New York writing \u201cNew York State of Mind.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI think once you start with the baby pictures, you kind of lose people. But by the time we got there, I think people would be interested in knowing that early childhood, and because it\u2019s so intrinsic to who Billy became. And the other thing that\u2019s really completely nonlinear was when he did The Nylon Curtain \u2014 when he began to write about things other than himself, about the steel mills closing and Vietnam vets. And even though it\u2019s traumatic, that\u2019s the moment where he walks out on stage wearing a yellow star. He never wanted to be particularly political, but that this was a bridge too far, and he had to begin to comment on it. And that takes us back to his ancestors\u2019 story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHave you talked to Billy since the revelation of his recent health problems<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLacy:<\/strong> I haven\u2019t spoken to him.\u00a0 He did write to me when he saw the film to express his feelings about it, which were very positive and very nice to thank me for \u201cconnecting the dots of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat do you want people to take away from watching?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLevin: <\/strong>The takeaway for a fan is going to be a completely new lens on his catalog, and a revisiting of many of the songs and seeing them in a completely new way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe takeaway maybe for a non-fan is maybe to understand and appreciate who Billy is as a musician, even if you don\u2019t love his pop songs. That he\u2019s a really gifted musician who is influenced by so many different genres of music, and he followed his heart musically. They\u2019ll get a glimpse into why people connect with Billy so much, and why he\u2019s an enduring and important part of American musical history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMusic saved my life,\u201d Billy Joel admits in HBO\u2018s And So It Goes. \u201cIt gave me a reason…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":75407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[22765,434,3192,171,5560,975,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-75406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-billy-joel","9":"tag-documentaries","10":"tag-documentary","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-hbo","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75406","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=75406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}