59 year-old rocker Billy Joel has a pretty candid interview in the upcoming issue of Details, and I found myself laughing out loud at a few of his comments. He talks about a suicide attempt at 21, about his young bride, and about the many car accidents he’s had, all of which he claims had nothing to do with his drinking. He also likens the Betty Ford clinic to a “concentration camp” and says that he just needed to dry out.
On his suicide attempt at 21 with furniture polish
Q: Is it true that after the failure of [your heavy metal band] Attila you tried to kill yourself by drinking a bottle of furniture polish?
A: That’s true. Yeah, I was suicidal. I was 21. It’s a tough age. Things hit you really hard. A relationship with a girl had ended and I was devastated, and then it didn’t work out with the recording we did, and I just figured the world didn’t need another failed musician. You take yourself so seriously—you’ve got your head so far up your ass you can’t see straight.
Q: But why did you use furniture polish?
A: I was just lookin’ for poison. I looked in my mother’s closet and there was bleach, and it had the skull and crossbones, and then there was furniture polish. And at the time I thought, Well, the furniture polish will probably taste better than the bleach, so I’ll drink the furniture polish. And all I ended up doing was farting furniture polish for a couple of days and polishing my mother’s chairs.
[From Men.Style.com]
On his trips to rehab and car accidents
Q: What spurred your checking into the Betty Ford Center in 2005?
A: Well, I had tried to go to a rehab before that, but I was only able to be there for a few days—the press found out about it and they were swarming the place and I had to leave. That was in Connecticut, a place called Silver Hill. It was disrupting the program for everybody else, so I said, “Look, I’m going to split, because you guys can’t get anything done here.” You know, I grew up in a neighborhood where everybody ended up at the corner bar at the end of the day. I guess eventually, if that’s part of your lifestyle, it’s going to become problematic. And I realized I was just drinking too much. I said, “You know, I don’t want to do this.” And I went to Betty Ford—I hated it. I hated it. It was like a concentration camp—well, I can’t say that, I’ve never been in a concentration camp. But for me it was. There’s a lot of dogma that goes with it, and there’s the whole AA thing, and for a lot of people that works. I didn’t necessarily follow that. But it was good. I dried out. And it was probably one of the best things I ever did, because I realized I was just drinking too much, and I really don’t need to do that. Once in a blue moon, I’ll have a glass of wine. But I’m very afraid of going beyond that. I don’t want to be out of control. I mean, I had some car accidents. Everybody thinks that I was drunk driving. I was not drunk driving. There was only really one bad accident, and that was on an icy road. The other two accidents were really blown out of proportion by the tabloids. But that had nothing to do with the booze. It was just a weird time of life for me. I was preoccupied.
On why the Olive Garden sucks
Q: As the man who wrote “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant”, do you have any recommendations?
A: Oh, there’s a great place down on Houston Street called Ballato’s. It’s just a humble place on Houston Street, and the food is made with love. You can taste the love in the food.
Q: What are some warning signs that an Italian restaurant is no good?
A: Well, a bad sign is glop. Too much cheese. Too much garlic. Like the Olive Garden. I’m sorry. I know they’re trying to bring an Italian cuisine to America, but it sucks.
On seeing a ghost
I used to live in East Hampton, and it was an old house that had been renovated, and I was going to bed one night, and I walked into my bedroom and I saw what looked like a woman brushing her hair in front of a mirror. She was very old-fashioned-looking—it looked like a 19th-century woman in a dressing gown. It was quite realistic. It was quite three-dimensional. I wasn’t dreaming. I saw this. It lasted for about a minute, and I said, “Okay, I’m one of those people,” you know? I realized I don’t know everything.
Joel’s 26 year-old wife Katie is a cook so he presumably knows what he’s talking about when he says the Olive Garden sucks. Joel also said that Katie wants to establish herself first before they decide to have children, and that “I’m actually very proud of her for doing that. She doesn’t just sit around and spend my money.” He wouldn’t specify if they were planning on children and said “That’s something between me and her, though.”
Have any of you seen a ghost(s)? I thought I saw one once, but I was just 15 and was impressionable and tired at the time. It also was more of a whispy thing and wasn’t all detailed like the one Joel claims to have seen. You would assume that some kind of drugs or alcohol were involved, but I’ve known plenty of smart people who swear they’ve seen ghosts. To continue Joel’s theme of passing gas and near-death experiences, I think apparitions are just mind farts. Sometimes the brain gets too many chemicals sloshing around in there and plays tricks on us. Joel’s is not necessarily in tip top shape after all he’s gone through. He’s got a great sense of humor about it though.
Billy Joel and Katie Lee Joel are shown in the header on 8/14/07. Credit: Antonio Salvador / WENN. He is shown performing on 8/4/07. Credit: Julie Ramos/WENN. Photo below is from 6/14/07. Credit: PNP/WENN
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