Credit: Myrna Suarez

Billy Joel discusses “devastating” split from old manager in new documentary

Fri 1 August 2025 13:03, UK

In his new documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, Billy Joel opened up about the “devastating” actions his old manager took that left him “furious”.

In HBO’s Billy Joel: And So It Goes, the five-time Grammy winner recalled when he realised his colleague had been spending all his hard-earned money. The singer explained, “I found out I didn’t have any of the money I should have. It hit me like a ton of bricks.”

His former manager, Frank Weber, had a hold on Joel’s finances for some time. It was only when he was driving down the shoreline from Maine with his ex-wife, Christie Brinkley, that something began to seem amiss. This was due to encounters with several people who believed assets like properties and horses were in the immediate area.

Brinkley reminisced in the film, “I thought, ‘Wow, he’s flying everywhere on, like, a private jet. He’s buying racehorses galore, and everybody thinks we own property near them. Something’s not right here.’ I said to Billy, ‘Frank Weber’s ripping you off.’ And he did not want to hear that. Frank had become like a confidante, a trusted advisor.”

When he later decided to renovate a house, Joel ran into curious financial issues. He shared, “People in the music business that I knew were telling me, ‘You shouldn’t have a problem coming up with the money to do this. You just had all these hit records. Where’s all your money?’ And I didn’t have an answer for that.”

Joel took a while to come round to Brinkley’s suggestion that Weber was abusing his trust and using his money. Joel said, “It was a very depressing thing. When I found out that my money was pretty well-spent, I was furious. I realised I gotta start all over again. I gotta go right back to writing new songs, recording new songs and go out on the road and try to make that money back.”

Joel eventually settled the matter out of court after initially filing a lawsuit against his former advisor for $90 million.

The documentary’s release comes at a difficult time in Joel’s career. He recently missed the project’s premiere, which opened the Tribeca Film Festival on June 4th in New York, which 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.

However, he has since reassured fans that he is “feeling good.” Speaking to People about his condition, he shared, “I know a lot of people are worried about me and my health, but I’m okay. What I have is something very few people know about, including me, no matter how much you try to research it. I’m doing my best to work with it and to recover from it.”

Watch the official trailer for the new documentary below.