In a new Billy Joel documentary spearheaded by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, the early promise of an awkward Jewish Long Islander who metamorphosed into the Piano Man is on display in archival footage and newly remastered recordings entitled ‘And So It Goes.’

Things are okay with him these days – he’s got a good doc that’s got a good soundtrack.

Billy Joel, fresh off a lull in touring spurned by a brain condition, stars in And So It Goes, a two-part HBO docuseries with a behemoth seven-hour soundtrack. Joel is famously reluctant to discuss his past in any great detail; he backed out of his once-authorized biography by Fred Schurers partway through the interview process and nixed a prospective biopic spearheaded by ex-manager Artie Ripp. Here, however, his past is laid (mostly) bare in new interviews with his friends, family and bandmates. Much has been written about Joel’s meteoric post-Stranger success, but the doc shines in its newly unearthed artifacts of a pre-fame, pre-perm William Martin Joel.

Hailing from Hicksville, Long Island, Joel is far less urban than his tunes might suggest. Indeed, his doting mother insisted that he maintain a piano lesson regimen even when the family could not afford it; only when Joel’s attendance at the piano studio/dance workshop spurred cracks like “hey, Billy, where’s ya tu-tu” did the songwriter arm himself with boxing gloves. Joel’s classical training armed him with a finesse and facility a cut above his wannabe-Beatle peers. As such, his earliest stabs at songwriting are nothing to sneeze at.

“My Journey’s End” is an earnest attempt at “another Lennon-McCartney Original,” replete with lyrics like “well I’d climb the highest mountain/ and I’d swim the deepest sea/ if I knew you’d be there at my journey’s end / a’waitin for me.” Joel would revisit the balladeer template set by McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” on other early cuts, particularly “You Can Make Me Free” on Cold Spring Harbor. By complete coincidence, Harbor was initially produced by Denny Seiwell, the initial drummer for McCartney’s Wings (Sir Paul yanked Seiwell from the mixing boards for the initial Wings rehearsals). Years later, Joel penned a career-best soft rock ballad, “Just the Way You Are.” McCartney himself appears in the documentary as a talking head, offering “people often ask me, what’s the one song you wish you’d written? And I always tell them ‘Just The Way You Are’ by Billy Joel.” Joel and McCartney would be inducted as peers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 1999.

Joel’s early efforts also elicit praise from fellow East Coaster The Boss. Springsteen, like Joel, fronted many bar bands in his 20s, sporting shoulder-length hair and drawing inspiration from late 60s acts like Vanilla Fudge. Springsteen calls Joel’s music “bridge-and-tunnel” and “tin-pan-alley” (“that’s why Billy writes better choruses than I do”), but both men had pseudo-psychedelic stints. For his part, Bruce fronted a unit called “Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom”; Joel, with his band the Hassles, delivered melodramatic Vox Organ-soaked covers of “A Taste of Honey” and a bona fide Long Island hit, “Every Step I Take (Every Move I Make).” The only Hassles song to make the leap into the Joel canon proper, however, is “You’ve Got Me Hummin’”; originally a toe-tapping single in 1967, Joel re-recorded the number as the B-side to “Tell Her About It.”

For the uninitiated, the sole truly bizarre entry in Joel’s early catalog emerges in a hard rock duo with Hassles drummer Jon Small, Attila. Miraculously signed to Epic records – Joel surmised “they signed anyone with hair below their shoulders” – the chaos they made was pretty universally unlistenable in its day. In retrospect, however, Attila was a proper record for Joel to flex his chops; tracks like Wonder Woman are sonically fleshed out with only an organ, drums and a feverish rock yelp that Joel rarely employed since. Sure, the poetry might leave a bit to be desired –

Wonder Woman – with your skin so fair
Wonder Woman – with your long red hair
You have the velvet touch
You have what I want so much
My love is burning fire
My need is my desire!

– but it is a genuinely outrageous creative leap, and we are gifted these zany album photos for posterity. Unfortunately, the phrase “I’m in love with your wife” tends to end bands and friendships, and it did when Joel confessed to drummer John Small and took up with Elizabeth Weber.

Joel has no love lost for his solo debut, Cold Spring Harbor.

Belabored in an LA studio with hustler Artie Ripp at the helm, the record was mixed at the wrong speed and initially pressed sounding much like The Chipmunks. Narratively, it evokes a messy period in his personal life and two suicide attempts which Joel rarely discusses in detail. In his biography, he is dismissive of these attempts – “I drank furniture polish and stayed up all night burping” – but his half-sister Judy recalls this period with genuine grief and dread.

Despite the tumult, there are bona fide gems here – “She’s Got a Way” (another McCartney send-up) would find life as a centerpiece of Songs in the Attic, as would the biting “Everybody Loves You Now.” A Cold Spring outtake, “bye bye,” is heard for the first time in this set, and sports an earworm chorus amidst its sullen narrative. Though Ripp butchered the mastering in 1971, these songs have never sounded better than in their 2025 remasters, and live versions of these tracks hint at an album that could have been.

The rest, as they say, is history – a little track about a drug dealer took off on Philadelphia radio as William Martin hid out in an LA piano bar, as the regular crowd shuffled in…

And So It Goes has a lot going for it – rare photos, exclusive family interviews, and restored concert footage galore.

Ultimately it showcases that the young Joel was brimming with promise, an infectious onstage verve, and an ear for melody that is positively indelible. Everybody loves you now, Billy.

And So It Goes is now streaming on HBO Max.

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