It’s wonderful that Christie Brinkley continues to be buddies with Billy Joel, given all he put her by way of throughout their nine-year marriage.
It additionally might be fascinating to see if their friendship endures after all the things the 71-year-old “Sports Illustrated” supermodel reveals about him in her new memoir, “Uptown Girl.” In keeping with excerpts shared by Vulture, the Los Angeles Instances and different publications, Brinkley goes into fairly excruciating element concerning the rocker’s wildly extreme consuming and horrifying, even psychotic conduct, together with his mysterious disappearances, his breaking of home windows and his raging denials when confronted about dishonest.
“His drinking was bigger than the both of us — booze was the other woman, and it was beginning to seem that he preferred to be with ‘her’ rather than with me,” Brinkley writes in a single passage, in response to Vulture.
Brinkley and Joel, now 75, met in January 1983, when she was on location in St. Barts for a photograph shoot. Given Joel’s later points with consuming, it appeared to foreshadow issues to come back that they met at a bar, the Los Angeles Instances reported. The “Piano Man” impressed her by enjoying “The Girl From Ipanema” on the bar piano whereas she sang alongside. Extremely, she didn’t know that the person serenading her was a world pop megastar, in response to the Los Angeles Instances.
By the summer time 1986, Brinkley and Joel have been a yr into their marriage and she or he was nicely conscious of his fame and the unimaginable pressures it introduced. Whereas staying at a cottage within the Hamptons, she woke within the early morning hours to find that Joel had vanished.
Brinkley stated she searched the property — throughout a rainstorm — however refused to name police for concern that her report would end in “an article in the gossip columns the next day.” She lastly tracked him down at a neighborhood bar. Shortly earlier than daybreak, he returned house, stumbling out of a cab, drunk and ornery.
“I loved him and I wanted to make it work,” Brinkley writes.
However given their high-profile marriage, Brinkley additionally was afraid to confide in buddies about her husband’s dependancy — once more out of concern that his troubles would leak to the tabloids.
Brinkley additionally needed to take care of suspicions that Joel had cheated on her. Once they have been in Hawaii in 1990 for his “Storm Front” tour, Brinkley confronted him of their lodge room with stories that he’d had an affair with an Australian actress. He stormed out of the room, then returned later that night time, “visibly and audibly drunk,” in addition to locked out of the room.
“Billy banged angrily on the front door for some time, then went around to the patio, which was on the ground floor, and banged on the glass doors for a while,” Brinkley writes, in response to Vulture. “When I didn’t answer, he did something unimaginable: He picked up a chaise longue and threw it right through the doors of the patio, shattering the glass into a million pieces.”
Whereas Brinkley moved herself and their younger daughter, Alexa Ray, to a unique suite, she nonetheless was within the mode of constructing excuses for her husband and masking up his conduct. She writes that she nonetheless beloved him and she or he was nonetheless fearful about his conduct changing into a information story.
The subsequent morning, Joel apologized however insisted there was no affair, she writes. Brinkley accepted what he stated. “But, then again, incident-and-repair had become our pattern, even if, slowly, things between us were becoming more difficult to mend,” she writes, in response to Vulture.
Brinkley realized that their marriage was in all probability past restore following an incident that occurred at their Hamptons house in 1993. About to embark on his “River of Dreams” tour, Joel invited some band members over to their home after they’d dined out.
Joel claimed he was nonetheless hungry for some pasta. So, Brinkley stated she made him a recent pot, which he rapidly devoured. However when Joel regarded on the now empty pot, he had forgotten he had simply eaten it.
“Who ate all my pasta?” he demanded of everybody within the room. Brinkley laughed, then realized Joel wasn’t kidding. When she advised him that he had simply eaten the pasta, he “went ballistic” and screamed at everybody to go away his home, all whereas accusing them of being those who had his meals.
“Suddenly, he was acting delusional in a way I’d never seen before,” Brinkley writes, in response to Vulture. “I was so scared that I couldn’t think, and when one of the guys in the band grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the house with the rest of them.”
One of many bandmates advised her, “We’re not leaving you alone with him like this.” However Brinkley didn’t need to depart with out her daughter, so she bought Joel to settle down by reminding him that she was upstairs and that he wouldn’t need her to see him like this.
Brinkley stated she gave Joel one last likelihood to work on their marriage by the 2 of them spending the Christmas holidays along with their daughter. However on New Yr’s Eve, Joel didn’t return house from a live performance, and a member of his street crew referred to as Brinkley to inform her why.
“He was having an affair with a woman who worked as a caterer for the show,” Brinkley writes, in response to Vulture. “To this day, Billy continues to deny ever having had affairs, and I’ve always believed him. But on that New Year’s Day in 1994, when he did finally straggle home, I asked him to leave.” They publicly introduced their divorce months later.
