Billy Joel didn’t always have a handle on his finances.
In the five-time Grammy winner’s new, two-part HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes, out now, he recalled learning his former manager Frank Weber allegedly betrayed him financially — a situation that reached a breaking point when Joel, 76, filed a $90 million lawsuit against Weber in 1989.
The “Vienna” singer spoke in the film about coming to the realization after driving down the shoreline from Maine with ex-wife Christie Brinkley, to whom he was married from 1985 to 1994, and encountering people who believed Joel owned various assets, from horses to properties, in the area.
At the time, Brinkley started to worry Frank (the brother of Joel’s first wife, Elizabeth Weber, who took over his management following their 1982 divorce) was making purchases with Joel’s money.
“I thought, ‘Wow, he’s flying everywhere on, like, a private jet. He’s buying racehorses galore, and everybody thinks we own property near them. Something’s not right here.’ I said to Billy, ‘Frank Weber’s ripping you off.’ And he did not want to hear that,” she said in the film. “Frank had become like a confidante, a trusted advisor.
Soon, Joel found himself running into financial issues when looking into renovating a home. “People in the music business that I knew were telling me, ‘You shouldn’t have a problem coming up with the money to do this. You just had all these hit records. Where’s all your money?’ And I didn’t have an answer for that,” he said in And So It Goes.
He decided to authorize an audit of his finances. “I found out I didn’t have any of the money I should have,” explained Joel. “It hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Brinkley, 71, recalled having a hard time getting Joel to believe Weber was taking advantage of him. “I said, ‘Look, I love you, I’m trying to protect you. I see people ripping you off.’ Billy trusted him. He trusted him more than he trusted me, which of course hurt me to hear that,” she said in the film.
After accepting the circumstances, Joel filed a $90 million lawsuit against Weber for fraud and breach of contract. “I owed Uncle Sam $5 million, I didn’t have the money I thought I have, and it was devastating. It was an emotional shock,” he exclaimed. “If I can’t trust this guy to look after my best interest, how stupid was I? How naive could I have been?”
Jemal Countess/Getty
The “We Didn’t Start the Fire” artist continued, “It was a very depressing thing. When I found out that my money was pretty well-spent, I was furious. I realized I gotta start all over again. I gotta go right back to writing new songs, recording new songs and go out on the road and try to make that money back.”
Joel and Brinkley’s daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, 39, was a young child at the time, and he “was taking care of everybody” around him.
“I was worried about, ‘This is not gonna be good for my marriage.’ This is not gonna be good for my relationship with my daughter. But I had no choice. I had to go out and make a living,” he said.
Michael Putland/Getty
He and Weber ultimately settled, though the details of the settlement were not publicly disclosed.
In the documentary, Alexa described the whole ordeal as a “life-changing, tragic event” for her father. “He had a great deal of pain about it,” she said.
Billy acknowledged that similar situations are common in the music industry. “We’re not financially oriented. It wasn’t about the money. It was about being a musician. I didn’t like thinking as a businessman. I wanted to be an artist,” he said, quickly adding, “Well, bulls—. I wasn’t above all of that.”
He continued, “I needed to protect these songs. These were my children. They were orphans until I asserted my parenthood of them. So I took over my management and I never looked back.”
The experience with Weber inspired Billy’s 1993 song “The Great Wall of China,” which features cutting lyrics about his feelings.
“You take a piece of whatever you touch / Too many pieces means you’re touching too much,” he sings on the track’s second verse. “You never win if you can’t play it straight / You only beat me if you get me to hate / It must be so lonely to think that you have only / Somebody else’s life to live if they let you / I ain’t too selective, but it don’t take no detective / To find out how fast your friends will forget you.”
Billy Joel: And So It Goes is available now.
