Billy Joel looks back on major reason behind marital troubles

Billy Joel got candid on his new documentary, Billy Joel: And So It Goes, and offered a rare glimpse into his personal life behind the scenes.

The 76-year-old legendary singer opened up about struggling with addiction and how that became a major reason behind his divorce with then-wife, Katie Lee.

The Vienna hitmaker shared that Lee had given him an “ultimatum” to fix his drinking problem to save their marriage.

“‘Either you do something about your drinking or this isn’t gonna work out,’” he recalled in the documentary. “At that point, yeah, the relationship wasn’t doing well.”

Although Joel got admitted into the Betty Ford Center, he admitted that he didn’t really want to quit at the time.

“With the rehab, you don’t go for somebody else. You have to go for yourself. You have to want to do it,” he said. “I didn’t want to do it.”

The couple ultimately divorced in 2009, and Lee recalled in the film, “In a lot of ways it was hard to recover from that. I don’t think either of us wanted it to not work out, but it just became obvious that it wasn’t working.”

After their divorce, Lee went on to marry Ryan Biegel in 2018, while Joel married Alexis Roderick in 2015.

Years later, in 2023, the rocker also revealed in an interview that he has given up drinking alcohol.