The song Billy Joel wrote about his $2m lawsuit against his manager
When musicians enlist managers to handle their books, it’s a given that they will trust them to do a good job of it. However, in the late 1980s, Billy Joel came across some rather unwelcome information about his then-manager and former brother-in-law, Frank Weber, resulting in a bitter lawsuit and a loss of money.
In 1989, Joel filed a lawsuit against Weber for $90million, accusing him of fraud and violating financial responsibilities. The primary grievance was that Weber purportedly invested over $10m in his own enterprises and distributed an additional $2.5m in loans. Joel claimed that these loans were directed toward businesses under Weber’s control, as well as horse-breeding farms and hotels.
However, the lawsuit emerged just a few years after Joel’s divorce from Weber’s sister, Elizabeth. It was only after the divorce that Joel opted to appoint an ex-relative as his financial manager. Despite placing complete trust in Weber, reports suggested that he had been overcharging Joel for music videos, siphoning funds from travel expenses, and manipulating documents to conceal illicit financial activities.
“For a long time, I was overly sensitive to this accusation that I was a hitmaker-meister just grinding it out for the money,” Joel said, reflecting on the incident years later. “So I proved I wasn’t doing it for the money because I didn’t know nothing about my money, and that way, I’d know that I had integrity.”
Although Joel was eventually granted $2m in 1990, the entire ordeal evidently had a lasting impact, particularly considering the anger and frustration threaded through in Joel’s 1993 album River of Dreams. In ‘The Great Wall of China’, his feelings of distrust echo in the lines: “Your role was protective, your soul was too defective / Some people just don’t have a heart to be broken.”
Speaking to The New York Times in 2013, Joel elaborated on the disappointment he felt at the time: “It was much more of an emotional betrayal for me than financial,” he said, “because this was somebody I trusted so much.”
While lawsuits are not uncommon in the music industry, Joel’s case stands out for its uniqueness. It involved someone he likely regarded as a friend, someone close enough to understand his needs without the concern of exploiting them. Fortunately, however, Joel managed to recover emotionally, and his legacy remains firmly intact.
