Billy Joel says surgeons implanted a shunt in his brain to treat normal pressure hydrocephalus, and that his doctors warned every loud concert was giving him “something like a concussion.” The 77-year-old told fans not to worry: “I’m not going anywhere.”
Jon Small drummed alongside Billy Joel in the Hassles and Attila, then watched Joel marry his wife. He drove Joel to the hospital anyway, and spent the next fifty years filming him.
Cold Spring Harbor hit shelves at the wrong speed, pitching Billy Joel’s voice up for years. Here’s what happened, how to hear it, and why it matters.
How Billy Joel’s 1980 album Glass Houses shattered his soft-rock image, delivered his first No.1 single, and still sounds sharper than his critics.
Billy Joel has long cultivated an image as the everyman musician—the Piano Man who sings for the working class and…