Billy Joel is reflecting on his time in rehab.
The “Uptown Girl” singer, 76, says he sought treatment for alcohol abuse at the Betty Ford Center in 2005 after his wife at the time, chef and cookbook author Katie Lee, presented him with a tough choice.
“She kinda gave me an ultimatum,” Joel recalled in HBO Max’s new two-part documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes. “‘Either you do something about your drinking or this isn’t gonna work out.'”
Lee, who was 23 when she tied the knot with the 55-year-old Joel the year before, said their marriage was left in a “very fragile” state after he returned home from treatment. Joel also admitted that it “wasn’t doing well” by that point.
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Billy Joel and Katie Lee in 2008
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“She became very career-oriented and she wanted to be in the city — she wanted to socialize,” he recalled in the doc. “There’s a theory that she was having an affair with some guy. That’s a bunch of bulls—. We just drifted apart from each other.”
Lee added that their 32-year age gap didn’t help matters — nor did her ultimatum. “I wanted to be doing all of the things together, but I think that’s where our age came into play,” she confessed. “Also, I think that there was maybe always a little resentment that I had really pushed him to go to Betty Ford.”
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Billy Joel and Katie Lee in 2008
“With the rehab, you don’t go for somebody else — you have to go for yourself,” Joel said. “You have to want to do it. I didn’t want to do it.”
Lee admitted that it was “hard to recover” their bond after Joel’s stint in rehab.
“I don’t think either one of us wanted it to not work out, but it just became obvious that it wasn’t working,” she said. “And I remember one night we had dinner and I said, ‘Bill, I’m unhappy.’ And he said, ‘Do you wanna get a divorce?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Okay.’ And that was it.”
The couple ultimately went their separate ways in 2009 after five years of marriage. The divorce proceedings and the reality of being alone once again after his third failed marriage led Joel to start drinking again.
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Billy Joel performs at Madison Square Garden in New York in July 2016
“I was going through another divorce — three times,” he said in the documentary. “Three-time loser. And the fear of being alone again, dying alone, not having that person in my life anymore, and getting old … so I was drinking again, just to kind of ease that pain. It was kind of a lost time.”
Both Joel and Lee have found love again. Lee married television producer Ryan Biegel in 2018, while Joel tied the knot with Alexis Roderick in 2015.
Billy Joel: And So It Goes is streaming now in full on HBO Max.
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