Billy Joel Admits to Attempting Suicide Twice After Affair with Best Friend’s Wife

Rock legend Billy Joel has shockingly revealed the time he was so distraught over having an affair with his best friend’s wife that he made multiple suicide attempts.

The admission was revealed in the new documentary of his life, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, which debuted Wednesday. In the film, Joel, 76, admitted that he fell in love with his best friend’s wife in the late 1960s when he was living with the couple, TMZ reports.

Joel says he and Elizabeth Weber — wife of his best friend, Jon Small — had an affair, but the tryst left him so conflicted and ashamed that he became distraught over it.

Weber noted that when Joel was living in their home, she and the “Piano Man” singer “spent a lot of time together,” and that closeness eventually evolved into a love affair.

But when the whole situation came to light, Joel said he felt “very, very guilty” and also felt like a “homewrecker,” especially since the couple had a child before Joel got between them.

Joel also admitted that Small “punched [him] in the nose,” but he was not upset over the assault because he felt he deserved it.

The hitmaker fled the Small’s home even though he didn’t have anywhere to live. He ended up sleeping in laundromats, he said.

“I was just in a lot of pain,” Joel explained. “It was sort of like why hang out, tomorrow is going to be just like today is and today sucks. So, I just thought I’d end it all.”

Ultimately, the anguish led him to try to end his own life.

He first tried to do so by swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills that his sister, a nurse, gave him to help him sleep. His sister, though, found him in a catatonic state and got him to the hospital where he ended up in a coma for several days, documentary viewers learn.

His second attempt came when he drank a bottle of Lemon Pledge furniture polish. That time, he was saved by no less than than Jon Small, the very friend Joel had betrayed. Small got Joel to a hospital and saved his life.

“Even though our friendship was blowing up, Jon saved my life,” Joel says in the documentary.

Small eventually forgave Joel. A few years later, the singer even hooked back up with Weber and in 1973 they married. The union was not fated to last long and they were divorced by 1982.

Joel recently dropped another shocking revelation this month when he had to bow out of his concert tour because he suffers from a rare brain disorder called normal pressure hydrocephalus. Not only has he canceled concert dates, he was also absent from the premiere of his documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival.

“Billy Joel: And So It Goes” will premiere on HBO Max sometime this summer.

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