Hey, there's a Billy Joel documentary!

Billy Joel is deeply uncool.

I’m not saying this to rip on the guy. I’m deeply uncool, so I get it. But most successful singer-songwriters try to project an image of effortless cool. Even Randy Newman, who has spent the last 25 years descending into mawkish sentimentality on behalf of his corporate masters at Pixar and Disney, can still retain cool points for his bleak LA period.

While the most recent Billy Joel documentary on HBO is not ostensibly about why Billy Joel is so uncool, it sort of is. And the reason is obvious: Billy Joel cares way too much. And nothing is less cool than giving a shit.

Billy Joel is a scrapper from way back, and he’s always willing to throw down with, well, anyone. He’s a guy who is always conscious of the fact that he’s an outsider. He was a Jewish kid growing up in a Catholic suburb. He sang the equivalent of Tin Pan Alley songs in an era of rock n roll and folk. He moved to California, where his New York nature made him stand out like a sore thumb.

It’s amazing he was able to eke out a career in the music industry at all. The documentary depicts a series of incidents in his early career which can easily be summed up by Billy himself, “Fuck those guys.” Which SHOULD be cool, but it’s not. Because Billy wanted to be rich and famous, and he wanted it bad.

You’re not supposed to like Billy Joel. You’re supposed to mock just how desperately he craves your approval. The guy read negative reviews from the stage for godsakes. I mean, David Lee Roth went to war with critics as well, but then he ambled off to do a pound of blow with a bunch of groupies. Bill Joel couldn’t let go.

The thing is… of course I like Billy Joel. He might not be cool, but man, the guy can write a good pop song. Sure, his cloying need for acceptance is palpable, but isn’t that universal? I have a cloying need for acceptance, whether I want to admit or not. I’m just better at hiding it than Billy.

We may all pretend to sneer at Billy Joel, but someone was buying all of those albums. The Stranger isn’t one of the best selling records of all time by some sort of alchemy. People liked it.

The big sell of the documentary is that his first wife and former manager, Elizabeth Weber, speaks extensively on camera. She guided his career to its biggest peak, and she also served as his muse. And hearing Billy recontextualize a song like “You May Be Right” as him lifting the words from an argument he had with her almost makes the song sound unimaginably cruel. His best love songs always had a bit of a bite, but Billy isn’t singing in the abstract, he’s talking to her. And that’s pretty rough when you look at the lyrics.

Elizabeth takes it all in stride. Because, at the end of the day, she is the cool one. She could walk away from him and all of that success, and simply fade into oblivion. She’s only reappearing now because her kids a grown and the past is a foreign country. The wounds aren’t fresh. And you know what? She gets a chance to take a little bit of well-deserved credit.

It’s a fascinating look at a professional partnership and a marriage. but it’s also a picture of strength. She had a line, Billy crossed, and she was gone. Just like that. If only I had the capacity to simply walk away from the person I loved when they went too far.

The documentary doesn’t make Billy Joel any cooler. If anything, revealing so much of himself makes him even more desperate. But as h winds down hi career, he looks content, and he doesn’t need my approval anymore. Perhaps because he knows, despite what we said about him, he always had it.