Billy Joel: 'I feel fine,' but admits to balance problems, in new Bill Maher podcast interview
In his first public interview since disclosing his brain disorder diagnosis in May, Billy Joel appeared on the podcast “Club Random with Bill Maher” and revealed that he’s experiencing problems with balance.
“I feel fine,” Joel told the comedian, adding, “My balance sucks. It’s like being on a boat.” He also downplayed his diagnosis somewhat: “They keep referring to what I have as a brain disorder,” he told Maher, “so it sounds a lot worse than what I’m feeling.” Joel has been diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus, which can also cause memory problems.
The hour-plus podcast episode, which debuted Monday morning, features Joel talking about “Billy Joel: And So It Goes,” a two-part, five-hour documentary produced by HBO (which is also the home of Maher’s ongoing talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher"). Joel touches on his songwriting process and the history behind some of his songs. The episode marked the first time Maher’s podcast has traveled to interview a guest; typically, the show is recorded in what’s described as an “undisclosed location.”
In the YouTube version of the podcast, the two men can be seen speaking at the Florida home of Steve Cohen, Joel’s longtime creative director and an executive producer on the documentary. Joel sits at a piano, as he does in the film, while Maher sits in a nearby armchair. Both men draw on vapes throughout the interview; Joel’s is stubby and cigar-shaped, Maher’s resembles a very long cigarette.
Maher, clearly a longtime fan, is able to rattle off song lyrics as quickly as the singer himself. And at similar ages — Joel is 76, Maher's 69 — the two men bond over their outmoded listening habits. Joel confesses he owns a high-end McIntosh turntable that he doesn’t know how to use. “It’s easier for me to find a radio station in the car than it is at home,” he says. Maher says he misses the iPod.
Joel discusses some of his favorite musical artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Cream and The Beatles (though he dismisses "The White Album" as “songs that they didn’t finish writing because they were too stoned”). He also says that his song “Stop in Nevada,” from the 1973 album “Piano Man,” was a tribute to “Wichita Lineman,” the melodramatic ballad released by Glen Campbell in 1968 and written by Bayville resident Jimmy Webb.
“If I could write a song as good as ‘Wichita Lineman,’ ” he notes, “I would be a very happy man.” (Maher, unimpressed by the song, replies, “Oh, stop it.”)
Later, Maher brings up Joel’s shocking revelation in the documentary that he once tried to kill himself by drinking a bottle of Lemon Pledge — a detail Joel does not seem to immediately recall. “You remember that?” Joel says, to which Maher responds: “It’s kind of hard to forget.” Joel jokes that he chose the furniture polish because it was “tastier” than bleach.
Joel and Maher also discuss their shared experience as uncool suburbanites during the counterculture 1960s and '70s. “So we were kind of made to feel nonexistent almost — useless, vanilla,” Joel says. He adds that his music was an attempt to raise his voice: “I’m here, we’re here. We have something to discuss, we have something to talk about. We’re not nonexistent, we do exist."
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