Today’s reason why Billy Joel is awesome.
It takes a lot of balls to not like the way your autobiography is being handled, and snuff it out. Especially when it would have made you a crapload of money. I give him a lot of credit for taking this stand about it.
Billy Joel has finally revealed why he pulled the plug on his autobiography, The Book of Joel, earlier this year. He tells New York’s Newsday, “I saw it being promoted as a salacious tell-all… That’s not how I want to be defined…. I’m not Keith Richards… I’m just not a kiss-and-tell kinda guy.”
He adds that writing it was “not all that enjoyable. I felt like I was wading through the same mud that I spent my life trying to get out of… You pull yourself out of the swamp, and then to do an autobiography, you have to dive back in and wade through it all again. I was so sick of me.”
But the manuscript is complete. Joel says, “After I kick off, somebody will probably get it out there.”
Joel is currently giving master classes at colleges around the Northeast. —Sal Cirrincione, Premiere
Sky & Em's dad. Kim's husband. Tom & Linda's son. I work in radio, at WAOR in South Bend, IN. I write fiction. I also play catch with a demanding Yorkie.
