A trailer has been released for Billy Joel: And So It Goes, HBO’s new two-part documentary on the singer-songwriter, which will debut on 18 July.
Featuring new one-on-one interviews with Joel, the doc is also set to include previously unseen performances, home movie clips and personal photographs. There are further contributions from Joel’s friends, collaborators, family and contemporaries.
One thing we learn from the trailer is that, although he made his name as a pop-rock singer-songwriter, Joel’s musical roots lie in a more traditional area.
“My own history as a musician started with me hearing classical music,” he says at one point. “Uptown Girl… it could’ve been a Mozart piece.”
We then hear Joel playing an Uptown Girl piano variation, complete with Amadeus-esque melodic trills to illustrate his point.
The original version, released in 1983, was a huge international hit, and starred supermodel Christie Brinkley - who would later become Joel’s second wife and also features in the documentary - in the video.
“Billy’s melodies are better than mine,” says Bruce Springsteen elsewhere in the trailer. Paul McCartney, meanwhile, reveals that “when I first heard Billy it was like, ‘Wait a minute - who’s this?’”
Joel is currently facing up to some serious health issues: he was recently forced to cancel all live performances for the rest of this year and into 2026 after it was revealed he is suffering from a rare brain disorder.
He’s come back before, though - “I think music saved my life… it gave me a reason to live,” he says in the trailer - and his fans will be hoping that he can do the same again.
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