Billy Joel completes stay at rehab clinic
After a 10-day stay, singer-songwriter Billy Joel reportedly has checked out of a Connecticut substance-abuse and psychiatric hospital, and is resting at his home in New York’s Hamptons.
After a 10-day stay, singer-songwriter Billy Joel reportedly has checked out of a Connecticut substance-abuse and psychiatric hospital, and is resting at his home in New York’s Hamptons.
People magazine, in a story to be published in the magazine’s July 8 issue, reports that Joel became depressed after a respiratory infection forced him to postpone a series of March concert dates with Elton John.
“I then began what was a prolonged period of overindulgence,” Joel told People. “I don’t want to get more specific.”
Joel added that his 16-year-old daughter, Alexa Ray, whose mother is his ex-wife Christie Brinkley, motivated him to seek help.
“I told my daughter that I recognized I was having a problem,” he told the magazine. “And my gift to her for Father’s Day was going to be cleaning up my act.”
Earlier this month, Columbia Records announced that Joel, 53, had checked himself into Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan “for a planned 10-day stay to deal with a specific and personal problem that had recently developed.”
Joel and John are scheduled to resume their tour in September.
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