Billy Joel is dispelling the long-standing rumor that he has gotten multiple DUIs over the years.
The “Piano Man” singer, 76, set the record straight in the second installment of the new HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes.
“You know, along with fame comes a lot of gossip, rumors. I didn’t like the tabloid kind of press,” Joel confessed. “For example, there’s this rumor that I have all these DUIs. That never happened, but people keep repeating the myth: ‘Oh, he’s got so many DUIs.’ I never had a DUI, so f— you.”
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Billy Joel performs at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., in February 2025
Word on the street was that Joel had potentially been drinking and driving after the five-time Grammy winner was involved in a string of car accidents in short succession in the early 2000s and then entered rehab in 2005.
The musician suffered a serious crash in East Hampton, N.Y., in June 2002, and, less than a year later, had to be airlifted to a hospital after swerving off the road and smashing his car into a tree in January 2003.
Joel made headlines yet again in April 2004 when he crashed through a row of bushes and into a Long Island home. However, a Nassau County police spokeswoman confirmed to The New York Times at the time that authorities found “no evidence of alcohol or drug involvement” in the incident.
Still, the rumor persisted, despite Joel repeatedly denying that he’s ever gotten a DUI.
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“I had gone through a breakup and was really broken up about it, and I decided, ‘I’m drinking too much. I should go to rehab,'” he told The New York Times Magazine in 2013. “But people made a connection, like, ‘Oh, he went there because he was in a car accident from drinking.’ No.”
Joel added, “I never had a DUI in my life. That’s another fallacy. Look at the police records.”
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Billy Joel performs the last show of his residency at Madison Square Garden in New York in July 2024
But that didn’t stop the gossip from weaving its way into popular culture at the time. Saturday Night Live even referenced Joel’s alleged drunk driving in a 2004 sketch that saw the singer, played by Horatio Sanz, chug a bottle of pineapple schnapps and crash into several walls and mailboxes while driving a group of women — played by Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, and host Lindsay Lohan — to a Long Island party.
“Well, the press could be mean,” Joel said in the documentary. “So having that much attention paid to you is not easy.”
Billy Joel: And So It Goes is streaming now in full on HBO Max.
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