Billy Joel is reflecting on one of the most painful chapters of his life — the end of his marriage to supermodel Christie Brinkley — in the second part of the HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes.
The “Uptown Girl” singer, 76, admitted he was “devastated” when Brinkley left him after nearly a decade together, calling the unraveling of their relationship a harsh lesson in the fragility of love.
“I realized love is not concrete,” Joel said in the documentary. “You feel like it is, but there are things eating away at it, and in the end it all catches up. And it’s hard. And I was so devastated.”
Brinkley, visibly emotional in her own interview, said she had tried to make it work.
“I wanted it to work. I knew how lucky I was — having music, all that — but it just didn’t work,” she said.
The former couple met in 1983 while vacationing in St. Barts, married in 1985, and welcomed their only child, Alexa Ray Joel, shortly after.
But over time, Brinkley said, the marriage shifted. Joel’s demanding touring schedule left her feeling isolated and alone.
“Our relationship went from fun and joy to his work consuming him,” Brinkley recalled. “If I did go on the road, I wouldn’t even see him — his unwind period after shows went so late. I just thought, ‘What am I even doing here?’ I couldn’t be lonely, just Alexa and me, in a big house that was supposed to be full of love and music.”
Joel acknowledged that it was a dark period. “We were newly married, had a little girl, but I was always on the road,” he said. “I was in a relationship with someone I loved deeply, but I wasn’t there. It was a very sad time for me.”
He believes their daughter sensed what was coming. “For a child, that’s a very traumatic thing,” Joel said. His own parents split when he was eight — the same age Alexa was when he and Brinkley divorced in 1994. After his parents’ divorce, Joel’s father disappeared from his life. “She needed to know I’d always be there,” he said of Alexa, now 39.
Brinkley revealed another heartbreaking layer — Joel’s drinking.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that his drinking got pretty bad,” she said. “He wouldn’t remember what he did when he was drinking, so he didn’t understand how he hurt people. I used to pretend I was asleep when he came into the bedroom drunk, because I didn’t want to see him like that.”
Fighting back tears, she described the final turning point. “One night, we had an argument. I said, ‘I really can’t take this anymore. I’m going to take Alexa back to New York and leave.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, fine. Go.’”
Joel, narrating over the melancholy lyrics of “And So It Goes,” summed it up simply: “True love isn’t always floating on clouds and ecstasy. A lot of it’s pain.”
Following their split, Joel went on to marry celebrity chef Katie Lee in 2004. They divorced in 2009. He married his current wife, Alexis Roderick, in 2015. The couple shares two daughters. Prior to Brinkley, Joel was married to Elizabeth Small from 1973 to 1983.
The second part of Billy Joel: And So It Goes premieres Friday, July 25 at 8 p.m. on HBO and is available to stream on Max.
