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‘Billy Joel: And So It Goes’ Review: The Tribeca Festival Opens with a Luscious Longform Documentary That Captures Just the Way He Is

Part 1 of HBO's two-part documentary traces Joel's life and career through 1980, testifying to the contradictions that fueled his incandescent pop.

To launch himself out of the scruffy demimonde of the Long Island rock scene, he’d secured a contract with the only one interested in signing him — Artie Ripp, owner of Family Productions (who’d gotten wind of Joel through Woodstock co-creator Michael Lang). They had loving and tempestuous bond, and while it’s not as if the film shares a million scandals, co-directors Lacy and Levin catch the saga of the marriage through their delicate use of archival footage, letting us read what’s happening in the couple’s faces. Billy Joel isn’t Bob Dylan, but he’s a major artist with a 55-year career behind him, and I felt nourished by how this longform film lets you sit inside the irresistibility of his music, and the mighty contradictions that fueled it.

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