‘Billy Joel: And So It Goes’ Review: Smart, Sprawling Documentary Makes a Case, Even for Non-Fans, of the Piano Man’s Greatness

Almost five hours in length, the two-part look at the hard-to-pin-down artist flows effortlessly, making for a riveting watch even for those coming to it with little affection for his work.

“Billy Joel: And So It Goes” is a bit like the Piano Man and his songs: not particularly flashy or stylish when you first see it, but brimming with insight, entertainment value, and deep feeling. And like Joel, it carries a little chip on its shoulder. “And So It Goes” spends a lot of its nearly five-hour running time pushing back against the critics who thought Joel was uncool or derivative. And, well, it should.

Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin’s documentary looks at that criticism head-on — there are so many close-ups of snarky Rolling Stone reviews — and builds a case that’s really quite self-evident if you look at Joel’s music as it is rather than what you wish it was: as thematically and melodically complex as that of any pop artist with a bunch of number one hits.

His “me against the world” demeanor is there in so many different ways through “And So It Goes.” One of the best is a TV clip from the mid-’70s when Joel disputes the idea that he and future touring buddy Elton John have much in common just because they’re both rockers who play the piano. He shows off the differences in their styles: Elton is very rhythmic in his piano playing, while Joel insists he himself has more of a “five-finger” approach, indicative of his classical training. It’s almost like that moment in Clint Eastwood’s “Bird” when Charlie Parker, bemused by the relative simplicity of rock ‘n roll, tries out a rocker’s saxophone himself “to see if it can play more than one note.”

Lacy and Levin show their chops in sourcing archive clips there — they are veterans of PBS’s “American Masters,” with Lacy as the actual creator of the nearly 40-year-running series — but the interviews they conduct are even more revealing. It helps that Joel is a uniquely introspective and well-spoken subject (even with as much as he and others in the doc claim he couldn’t articulate his feelings other than through song). But so is his first wife, Elizabeth Weber, and his second, Christie Brinkley, his daughter Alexa, as well as various members of his band through the years. And of course, Bruce Springsteen and Nas to add a little additional Tri-State perspective to this documentary portrait of Long Island’s favorite son.

At one moment, Sting talks about the “rock solid” construction of Joel’s songs, and “And So It Goes” evokes a verse-chorus-verse structure in its own way: Not following a straight line, the documentary begins with Joel’s earliest days playing in groups The Hassles and Attila before striking out on his own. After two suicide attempts after falling in love with Weber, the wife of his then best friend, he and Weber moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a lounge pianist and gathered the life experience to write “Piano Man.”

It goes virtually album by album from there, except with repeated flashbacks to earlier aspects of his life: His childhood in Hicksville, Long Island, being the only Jewish kid in his neighborhood, how he took refuge in classical piano from the time he was four years old. Other flashbacks throughout the epic running time of “And So It Goes” go into how his father emigrated from Germany when the Nazis took power (and how his grandfather’s factory, Joel Macht Fabrik, ended up producing for the Third Reich the notorious “striped pajamas” uniforms worn by concentration camp victims), and how he ultimately reunited with his father in Vienna in the early ’70s, even playing piano together on stage.

As befits the best tradition of “American Masters,” if transported now to HBO, “And So It Goes” defies the Wikipedia-like rundowns of so many biographical documentaries of recent years. It allows its subjects to breathe. As crammed with information as it is, it’s concerned more with themes, with moments, than with an endless assortment of facts. That’s why even longtime devotees of Joel who may know most of the material presented within should still find it compelling. And newcomers can finally “get” what all the fuss is about this guy.

The heart of “And So It Goes” lies in moments like Joel sitting at his piano and showing how the melody of “Uptown Girl” can be played in the style of Mozart, and with the trills and filigrees he gives it, you’d think it’s a song straight out of the 1780s. What is exceptionally unique about Joel’s oeuvre is that, where most of the rest of rock ‘n roll draws on the blues for its fuel, his work is powered so heavily by European classical music. (Lately, Joel’s is a voice you hear frequently on Sirius XM’s Symphony Hall channel, sharing his love of all things classical.) In writing about the great Fats Domino, the legendary critic Robert Christgau once noted how rock ‘n roll has been celebrated more for the “rock” than the roll. We talk about rock music. We never talk about roll music. And Domino emphasized “the roll.”

Well, so does Joel. And that might be a big reason why the critics haven’t always gotten him. If all this makes it sound like “And So It Goes” is much heavier into the musicology than the psychology, never fear: There’s a lot of soul searching that happens too, and Joel is never interested in passing off hagiography. “The Last Dance” this is not. Even with Joel’s celebrity friends Tom Hanks and Sean Hayes aboard as producers.

“And So It Goes” isn’t flashy. It’s not trying to shake up what music documentaries can be. But like its subject, it isn’t about surfaces. Both Joel and the makers of “And So It Goes” understand that when you look beyond the surface, you can glimpse the soul.

Grade: B+

“Billy Joel: And So It Goes” Part One airs on HBO on Friday, July 18, with Part Two airing on HBO Friday, July 25. It world premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival.

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.