He Played Anyway

Billy Joel, broken chords, and the music that never really stops

The recent Billy Joel documentary, both parts, finished and left me cracked open in the best, worst, most alive kind of way. I sat on the couch with my wife, in that quiet end-of-night space, tearing up. Not just because the songs are good (they are) or because he’s a legend (he is), but because it was the kind of story that doesn’t just land, it mirrors. And I saw myself.

Billy didn’t want to be famous. He wanted his words to be felt. That’s different.

He wasn’t chasing celebrity, he was clawing for a lifeline. A piano in a bar. A melody in the dark. A note that said, Hey, you’re not alone in this. And if you’ve ever gone through something, addiction, heartbreak, the long, cold silence of disconnection.

If you’ve been broken, if you’ve lost your edge or your voice or your will and somehow still kept moving…slowly, crookedly, honestly, then Billy’s music speaks in your dialect. His mistakes are mapped out like scaffolding. He didn’t hide the falling apart; he composed it.

Watching him struggle with his creativity, fall in and out of love with his own art, disappear from performing, and almost die more than once by his own hand. I felt something in me exhale. Like, Oh. It’s not just me. The creative life doesn’t hand out arrival points. It keeps you cycling. And if you’re lucky, if you survive, you might make something real enough to last.

This wasn’t a comeback story, not in the movie script sense. It was something harder and better. A man returning to himself, again and again. He never left the stage because he never left the fight. Even when he stopped writing, the songs kept playing. They outlasted his doubt.

“Don’t ask me why,” he said. Right. Because some of it defies reason. You can’t explain why you keep showing up to the blank page, or the microphone, or the piano, when part of you feels done. You just do.

I thought about all the things I’ve stopped doing because they hurt too much. Writing when it doesn’t flow. Creating when the well feels dry. Starting over when I’m tired of beginning again. But Billy reminded me that none of it’s really over. You just pick up the thread wherever you dropped it. The music’s still in there.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but: it’s not too late. Not for the thing you put down. Not for the voice you muted. Not for the younger version of you who swore they had something to say. That kid is still in there, pounding on the piano.

It made me think about sobriety, too. About what gets lost when you go dark, and what comes back when you stay. Billy didn’t hide his drinking. He didn’t polish the pain. He let it show. And that kind of honesty is its own kind of grace.

There’s a moment in the doc when he says he doesn’t understand his success. He shrugs it off, almost embarrassed. But that’s the thing about true artists. They never believe they’ve arrived. They’re too busy listening to what’s next, what’s still trying to come through.

And maybe that’s what I needed to remember, even when it’s not finished, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Spoiler alert: the story ends with Billy still performing at Madison Square Garden, sold out month after month. Not because he needs to. Because he wants to. Because when you survive yourself, there’s a kind of gratitude that spills out of your body and begs to be shared. Music. Words. Love. Presence.

That’s the part that wrecked me, in the best way. He didn’t find resolution. He found return.

So yeah. It spoke to my soul.

And it said: Keep going. The music is still in you.

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You are reading BEing Human, a weekly newsletter about an honest exploration of trust and leadership from the bestselling author of Human-to-Human and Shareology, 3x CEO of Silicon Valley companies, and TEDTalker. Written by Bryan Kramer, an executive coach, mentor, and board advisor. Bryan walks with leaders and teams who have lost the plot and want it back.

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