Billy Joel breaks silence on old Donald Trump feud in new documentary
Billy Joel has opened up about the moment he realised he couldn’t keep quiet about Donald Trump in his new documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes.
In the second instalment of the new HBO documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, the singer reminisced about his decision to take a public stand against the US President, Donald Trump. It all began with Trump’s reaction to the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“I think there is blame on both sides,” the president told reporters in August 2017. He continued addressing the Unite the Right protest—which was organised by Nazis and white supremacists—by stating, “You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Trump’s defence of Nazism made Joel furious. “I’ve never liked getting political onstage… People wanna get away from a lot of that stuff,” he said on the documentary. However, when he heard white supremacists chanting slogans like “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, he had to act.
The Jewish musician said, “We fought a war to defeat these people!” In his eyes, Trump “should’ve come out and said, ‘Those are bad people.’ There is no qualifying it. The Nazis are not good people. Period.”
Joel played a show at the iconic New York venue, Madison Square Garden, only a few weeks after the rally. During the show, he pinned a Star of David to the front and back of his jacket. Reflecting on the decision, he said, “I had to do something, but I didn’t want to get up on a soap box on stage and say, ‘This is wrong.’ So I wore the star. But basically to say, no matter what, I will always be a Jew.”
Despite the defiance shown in his stance on Trump, the documentary’s release came at a tragic time in Joel’s career. He recently missed the project’s premiere, which opened the Tribeca Film Festival on June 4th in New York. The premiere arrived merely weeks after Joel shared that he’d been diagnosed with the brain disorder, Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH). As a result of his health issues, all of his future live commitments have been cancelled.
The two parts of And So It Goes streamed on July 18th and July 25th in the US on HBO Max. The documentary does not yet have a confirmed UK release date.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.