Billy Joel revealed he’s been sober for two years. During a chat with The Los Angeles Times ahead of his Friday night (March 10th) concert with Stevie Nicks at L.A.’s Dodger Stadium, the “Piano Man” was asked about his drinking these days, and admitted, “I stopped a couple of years ago. It wasn’t a big AA kick. I just got to a point where I’d had enough. I didn’t enjoy being completely inebriated, and it probably created more problems in my life than I needed.”
When pressed about wanting to drink after a show, Billy said, “I don’t need it now. I used to get offstage and be so wound up and adrenalized that I needed something to calm down to go to sleep. But I realized when you’re drinking yourself to sleep, you’re not really sleeping. You’re just passing out. (After the show) I go to sleep. It takes all my strength these days just to get through a performance because it’s hard work. I leave it all on the stage.”
Billy was asked about when he first met Stevie Nicks: “We met at a Fleetwood Mac gig in San Francisco probably 10 years ago. I just got to meet her backstage, but we’ve never worked together, even though we both kind of hit at the same time. So this’ll be a completely new thing for me. I’ll probably do one of her songs and she’ll probably do one of mine. . . That’s up to her.”
Over the years, Billy’s problems with alcohol popped up frequently in the press, resulting in his last stay at the Betty Ford Clinic in 2005. Two years before that, he appeared on NBC’s Dateline and spoke candidly about his relationship with the bottle: “I can abuse alcohol if the demons get me. I’ll go on a bender. It’s happened to me before. That’s why I went into rehab, I was on a binge, I was on a bender. And I said, ‘This is stupid, I’ve got to stop.’ Then I went and I did stop and I’ve learned to recognize what those signs are.”
