Billy Joel reveals ‘bad blood’ with Elton John after ‘hurtful’ comments

Billy Joel has admitted that he was left “hurt” by comments Elton John made about his sobriety in 2011.

In part two of his HBO documentary,  Billy Joel: And So It Goes, the “Piano Man” singer revealed that Elton’s comments caused “bad blood” between the pair, who had been friends for decades.

“Elton had made a comment that he thought I needed real rehab,” the 76-year-old says in the documentary, referring to a 2011 interview Elton gave with Rolling Stone.

“He chalked it up to, ‘Oh, he’s a drunk.’ And that really hurt me.”

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The pair had met in the early 1990s and were often compared to each other thanks to their skills at the piano, leading to the touring together for the Face to Face tour in 1994.

It was a huge success, and they took the tour globally the following year as well as in 1998, 2001, 2003, and 2009.

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After the 2009 leg, which saw several canceled tour dates, Elton claimed to the magazine that it was due to “illnesses and various other things, alcoholism”.

“He’s going to hate me for this, but every time he goes to rehab they’ve been light… I love you Billy, and this is tough love,” Elton said; Billy had previously been to rehab in 2005.

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Responding to the comments, 15 years later, Billy said in the documentary that his comments left him “disillusioned”.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute? Don’t you know me better than that?’ And there was bad blood for a little while. There was a dovetailing of things that happened during that time,” he said.

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That same year Billy met his now-wife Alexis, and divorced his third wife, Katie Lee.

In 2023 Billy previously admitted that he had stopped drinking “a couple of years ago,” but that it was because he “got to a point where I’d had enough”.

“I didn’t enjoy being completely inebriated, and it probably created more problems in my life than I needed,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

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Earlier in 2025 Billy canceled upcoming tour dates after being diagnosed with a rare brain condition – normal pressure hydrocephalus – which can affect hearing, vision and balance.

“I’m sincerely sorry to disappoint our audience, and thank you for understanding,” he told fans.

“I’m doing my best to work with it and to recover from it,” he recently told People, adding that balance had been his biggest issue, and was the main symptom that sparked concern, describing it as feeling like he was “on a boat all the time”.