When Billy Joel took Christie Brinkley back to his New York apartment for the first time she was forced to leave... because a 19-year-old Elle McPherson was already there waiting
When
Billy Joel managed to persuade supermodel Christie Brinkley to come
back to his New York apartment for the first time, he tried to act cool.
Secretly,
the teenager inside him was screaming 'Yes', but when he got to the
building which overlooked Central Park, he was confronted with a problem
part of him wished his friends could have seen.
For as he opened the door, a 19-year-old Elle Macpherson was already stood there, waiting for him.
A
new biography by Fred Schruers reveals that Brinkley left the pair that
night, but she ended up marrying The Piano Man in 1985, and would
inspire his album 'An Innocent Man'.
Billy Joel met supermodel Christie
Brinkley (left) during a trip to St. Barts in 1983 following the split
from his first wife Elizabeth Weber. However Elle Macpherson was also
vying for his attention at the time
The first
night Joel managed to bring Brinkley back to his New York apartment, a
19-year-old Elle Macpherson (pictured left in 1985 and right in 1990)
was already waiting for him
The events that unfolded have been released as part of the serialization of a new biography by Fred Schruers.
According to Page Six, it involves 100 hours of interviews before Joel decided against persuing the project.
In
'Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography,' the singer lays bare his history
of suicide attempts, his tumultuous marriages — including one to
supermodel Brinkley — and how he's now trying to keep his life
together.
The
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee travelled to the Caribbean island
of St. Barts after he split with his first wife Elizabeth Weber in 1982.
It was there, while playing in a piano bar, that he met Elle Macpherson, then just 19, and Christie Brinkley, 28.
The
pair were standing alongside him with the then undiscovered Whitney
Houston. All of them at the time were trying to woo Joel for his
attention.
Inspiration: Weber inspired three singles, but Christie Brinkley, who Joel married in 1985 inspired all of An Innocent Man
Brinkley,
who starred in Joel's music video for Uptown Girl, told Schurers that
Whitney was telling him 'I can sing', while Macpherson 'draped herself
on the piano like Michelle Pfeiffer [in The Fabulous Baker Boys].'
When
they returned to New York, Brinkley and Macpherson competed. Joel said
that he 'felt like a teenager again' as he dated the pair at the same
time.
The
first time Brinkley went home with Joel, the child inside him from
Hicksville, Long Island was screaming 'Yes', but when he saw Mcpherson
inside, the other side of said: 'Even as part of me thought, "Oh, God,
no," another part of me was going, "If my friends could see me now." '
Brinkley who didn't seem phased by the situation left, but she was the one Joel loved.
They married in 1985, and they conceived their daughter, Alexa Ray, on their wedding night.
Tops: Billy Joel, who has sold more
than 150 million records worldwide, found his love life and career
dogged by drinking and depression
Rough waters: Joel said in the book
that he fell in love when he first met Elizabeth Weber, who cheated on
her husband Jon Small, with Joel, before leaving both
Joel met his first wife, Elizabeth Weber, in 1970 and was smitten from the start.
'She
wasn’t like a lot of the other girls I knew at that time who had taken
home ec and cooking classes,' he recounted. 'She was intelligent and not
afraid to speak her mind, but could also be seductive.'
Joel
began a relationship with her, in spite of the fact that Weber was
married to Jon Small, the drummer of Joel's short-lived duo Attila, with
whom she had a young son named Sean.
When
Small uncovered the infidelity, Weber split, leaving both him and Joel.
While her husband was left alone, it was Joel who took her
disappearance the hardest.
One
day, Joel took a fatal dose of the anesthetic Nembutal and phoned Small
to apologize. 'The next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital and
learned that they had pumped my stomach,' he told Schruers.
It
was Small who saved Joel's life, rushing to Joel's mother's Long Island
home, finding Joel lying on the floor and getting him medical
attention.
Another
suicide attempt ended with Joel checking into a mental health center,
where he found himself surrounded by others who were not as lucky.
Third time: Joel reportedly picked up Katie Lee in a hotel lobby when she was a college student, before the two married in 2004
'The
people I was locked up with were never going to be able to overcome
their problems, whereas mine were all self-made. I can fix this, I
thought.'
Weber
returned, to Joel this time, not Small, and began to manage the
songwriter's career, which began to take off even as he medicated his
depression with a steady stream of alcohol.
Though
friends found Weber controlling and brusque, Joel was enchanted,
writing singles such as 'She's Got A Way' and 'She’s Always a Woman' for
her.
Joel
describes the relationship now as a transaction. He says when he
debuted 'Just the Way You Are' for her on her birthday, she asked him
deadpan 'Do I get the publishing, too?'
The
relationship entangled Weber's brother Frank in the finances as well,
and years after she and Joel finally divorced, the songwriter found
Frank had siphoned $30million out of his fortune.
Striking: Joel said he took Lee to a
performance of his own musical during one of their first dates, though
she didn't know who the fading songwriting star was then
'I hooked up with the Borgias!' said Joel. 'What a family to pick.'
Shortly
after things ended with Weber in 1982, Joel was vacationing and met his
second wife during an unreal encounter on the Caribbean island of Saint
Bart's.
Brinkley was asked to star in the music video for Uptown Girl, leading to the pair growing closer together.
In
1985, Brinkley and Joel married and he dedicated the album an 'An
Innocent Man' to her, though the declaration proved to be questionable
in later years of their relationship.
Touring
constantly to make up for his past financial struggles, Joel became
worn down by a life on the road and strained the marriage.
One night in 1993, after a concert at Nassau Coliseum, rather than go home to Brinkley, Joel booked a hotel.
A
band member told Brinkley that Joel was unfaithful that night, a claim
Joel denies but one that led to his eventual split with her.
'Christie
likes to joke that the end of the marriage spelled the end of my
songwriting career,' Joel said, but it became a reality, as the next two
decades saw him write and record very little.
Instead,
he drank and spiraled into depression. He had three car accidents
between 2002 and 2004, which he once blamed on 911 and denied the
involvement of alcohol.
His romantic partner at the time was Katie Lee, who was in college when he flirted with her in the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel.
According to an interview in the New York Times, one of their first nights out was to Joel's own Broadway musical, Movin' Out.
The two married in 2004, when Lee was 23 and Joel was 55, moving into a $4million penthouse in Tribeca together.
While
the relationship didn't spur Joel to new songwriting endeavors as it
had with his past two wives, but it did eventually unravel just the
same.
Joel was in and out of rehab, but at Lee's insistence went back on tour, often playing shows with Elton John.
Lee
herself became a fixture in the art scene. One day Joel saw a photo of
her dancing with another man at a gallery showing at Art Basel Miami,
though she rebuffs any accusations of an affair.
Joel could not handle his jealousy, and Lee seemed uninterested in couples counseling that he suggested.
'I
realized, it’s not going to happen,' Joel said, and told her 'We’re
over. Just don’t send me messages, don’t leave me cute little phone
calls, don’t tease me, don’t f--- with me, just end it.'
'I’m an old man now, a vulnerable man. Don’t do that to an old guy.’ The pair divorced in 2009.
It
now seems the man once described by music critic Robert Christgau as a
'force of nature and bad taste' has cut back on his time in the
spotlight.
Though
he released an album of classical compositions in 2001 and in spite of
still touring arenas, Joel hasn't released studio music for a solid two
decades.
His
drinking and depression have still not been resolved, at least
according to the man himself, who in spite of numerous trips to rehab
says he still has the occasional drink.
He's
somewhat humbled from his days of dating supermodels, and is living
with a girlfriend, 33 and a former hedge fund manager, but he says he
remains a romantic.
'You
can have all the money in the world, you can have mansions, you can
have properties, you can have yachts, you can have limousines, you can
have motorcycles,' he told Schruers.
If you don't have love, 'it doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.'
