Catching up with the Piano Man’s past means sifting through a lot of history—and a lot of boundary-setting. Take Elizabeth Weber, Joel’s very first wife. The two aren’t exactly trading Christmas cards these days. Showing up at the Tribeca Festival premiere of the recent documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes, Weber kept it pretty real with reporters on the red carpet.
“We’re friendly but not close,” she admitted. With a wry smile, she pointed out the obvious: they divorced for a reason. Throw in a few subsequent marriages on her end, and she joked that if she were actually tight with all her exes, she wouldn’t even have the time to make it to a movie premiere. Joel himself, now 76 and happily married to his fourth wife, Alexis Roderick, was noticeably missing from the glitzy screening.
The backstory between Joel and Weber is the stuff of classic ’70s rock lore. Joel actually met her through his bandmate, Jon Small. At the time, she and Small were married, and Joel was literally crashing at their place. As the documentary lays out, proximity bred romance, and Joel fell hard. When the dust settled and the affair blew up, the immense guilt sent the “Stranger” singer into a dark, devastating downward spiral. But they eventually found their way back to each other, tying the knot in 1973 and staying together until 1982, with Weber even stepping up to manage his career.
The music biz has a notorious track record of chewing women up and spitting them out, something Weber is well aware of. She’s caught plenty of flak in the press over the decades, but she brushes it off with seasoned indifference. “I have my life, I do what I do,” she noted, refusing to get bogged down by the noise. That thick skin definitely comes in handy, especially when you consider her immortalization in Joel’s catalog. He penned the 1977 smash ballad “Just the Way You Are” specifically for her.
Once the ink dried on their divorce papers, however, Joel practically shelved the tune. Whenever he did begrudgingly play it live, his drummer, Liberty DeVitto, used to mercilessly parody the chorus from behind the kit, singing, “She got the house, she got the car.” Weber’s reaction to hearing about the ongoing backstage joke? Complete apathy. She really couldn’t care less.
That kind of ruthless protectiveness—where a deeply personal song gets sidelined because the vibe isn’t right anymore—is classic Billy Joel. He was never a massive snob about his catalog, but he had an ironclad sense of what his music wasn’t supposed to sound like. He knew better than anyone that not every track he laid down was a masterpiece. Sometimes the melody was just a hair off; sometimes the magic just didn’t happen in the booth. And honestly, he wasn’t above admitting when someone else took his work and elevated it. Look at “Shameless.” He handed that off to Garth Brooks, who turbocharged it into a massive country hit. Joel had a ton of respect for the country genre, recognizing it was a great vehicle for a tune that needed a different life.
But there was a fine line between a stylistic pivot and outright schmaltz, and Joel guarded that boundary with his life. He was a rock and roller at his core. Striking that balance was tough in the early days, especially when he was trying to bounce back from a brutal debut album slump with tender hits like “Piano Man” and “You’re My Home.” The latter was a track dripping with genuine sincerity—an earnest love letter to finding a home in your partner. The absolute last thing it needed was to be watered down into elevator music.
Enter Helen Reddy.
When the queen of easy-listening decided to cover “You’re My Home,” Joel absolutely despised the result. It felt entirely stripped of its grit. He was so irritated that during a live gig, he actually introduced the track by telling the crowd, “This is a song of mine Helen Reddy cut… to pieces.” In a wild twist of fate, her husband—who also happened to be her manager—was sitting right in the audience and instantly started throwing around threats of a lawsuit. Eventually, Reddy herself reached out, huffily declaring she would never record another one of his songs as long as she lived.
Joel didn’t miss a beat. “D’you promise?” he shot back.
You can’t really blame the guy for being defensive. Having a soft-pop icon sanitize your deep cuts when you’re trying to build rock credibility is basically like Led Zeppelin letting Rosemary Clooney cover “Thank You.” It just messes with the brand. Joel was still in the trenches, writing his masterpieces and earning his stripes. He needed to rack up a lot more mileage before he was going to sign off on smoothed-out, easy-listening renditions of his soul-baring work. He knew exactly where the bite in his music came from, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone dull the teeth.