"Billy does take things harder than most people," says Jon Small, a Long Islander who met Joel in 1965, played drums in Joel's first two bands and was briefly married to the woman who would become Joel's first wife. "Emotionally, he takes things harder than I ever did. But all us guys in his inner circle always knew that Billy writes his best when he's having problems. He works best in drastic situations, and those are always due to his relationships."

That, of course, is the paradox: Joel's art is defined by his life, and his best work is his most morose. Thus he can achieve greatness only through despair. But for Joel, at 53, that artistic transference seems to be failing. There was a time when sadness spawned genius; now it just reminds him that he's alone. "I'm kind of in a dark place," Joel says. "And I know some people are actually excited about that, because they think I'll write an album about being sad. But that's not what my music is about. There have been times when I've done that, but I'm not going to do it again."

Joel hasn't made a pop album in almost 10 years, even though his last one ("River of Dreams" in 1993) moved five million units. There's always a chance he might someday decide to make another, he says, but he currently has no plans to try; he describes himself as unmotivated, uninspired, alienated from the concept of commercial songwriting and uninterested in composing lyrics. He still plays around with what he calls "thematic fragments" of instrumental music, but he has no concrete aspirations for any of it.

"I don't have a new project," he says. "I'm not doing anything but personal life stuff." He talks like a guy who has conquered every goal he dreamed about as a teenager, only to discover that those victories have absolutely nothing to do with satisfaction.

"Cold Spring Harbor," his first album, came out in 1972. Joel hated it; a mistake during the production sped up the album's master tape, making his vocals sounds shrill and chipmunkesque. (He recalls smashing the LP against a wall the first time he played it for friends.) His second solo release, "Piano Man," in 1973, was an artistic advancement and his first defining moment as a musician - and probably the moment that marginalized him forever.

"In the big picture of pop music, I don't know if what I've created is seen as being that important or that necessary, at least not if you ask the experts," he says. "I was tagged right after 'Piano Man': I was a balladeer, I didn't write substantive music, my records were overproduced, I played too many ballads. Oh, and of course my favorite: 'He studied piano.' I had never realized that one of the prerequisites for being critically acclaimed was not knowing how to play your instrument. That stuff bothered me for a long time."

Joel's musical output from 1976 to 1982 ("Turnstiles" through "The Nylon Curtain") was one of the most successful runs in rock history. But the records he made during that period are consistently maligned by virtually every school of rock scholarship. "Rolling Stone magazine would not say anything positive about me, and they were the tastemakers at the time," Joel explains. "There were people from the old guard who insisted I wasn't a real rock and roller. Well, OK, fine - I'm not a real rock and roller. You got me."

The reasons for that critical disdain are hard to pin down. There are no lyrics from "The Stranger" as ridiculously melodramatic as the worst lines from "Born To Run" ("Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims/And strap your hands across my engines"), nor was Joel's public posture any less organic or more calculated than that of the Sex Pistols. But guys like Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Rotten have a default credibility that Joel will never be granted, and it's not just because he took piano lessons. The problem is that Joel never seemed cool, even among the people who like him. He's not cool in the conventional sense (like James Dean) or in the self-destructive sense (like Keith Richards), nor is he cool in the kitschy, campy, "he's so uncool he's cool" way (like Neil Diamond). He has no intrinsic coolness, and he has no extrinsic coolness. If cool were a color, it would be black - and Joel would be kind of a burnt orange. The bottom line is that it's never cool to look like you're trying...and Joel tries really, really hard.

"He just doesn't get it," Robert Christgau tells me over the telephone. "The person I compare Billy Joel to is Irving Berlin; that's the positive side of what he does. But Billy Joel also has a grandiosity that Irving Berlin never got near. That's what's wrong with him. If he wanted to be a humble tunesmith - a 'Piano Man,' if you will - he would be a lot better off. But he's not content with that. He wants something grander. And that pretentious side infects not only his bad and mediocre work, but also his best work."

Christgau has covered music for The Village Voice since 1969 and is widely considered the "dean of rock critics." When I told him that Joel suspects critics will never include him among rock music's pantheon of greats, it took him about 15 milliseconds to agree.

"Well, he's right," Christgau says. "He's not good enough. He and Don Henley are really notable for how resentful they are about their lack of respect. You don't catch Celine Dion complaining about a lack of critical respect, and she's a lot worse than Billy Joel. But she doesn't care. Billy Joel cares deeply about that respect, and he wants it bad."

Perhaps as a response to three decades of slights, Joel made a classical album in 2001 called "Fantasies & Delusions: Music for Solo Piano." Influenced by Chopin and credited as the work of "William Joel," "Fantasies & Delusions" sold remarkably well, topping the classical charts for months - though arguably, Joel could smash a piano with a ball-peen hammer for 75 minutes and release it as a live album, and it would still sell remarkably well. But the record - and the college lecture tour he undertook to accompany it - didn't reinvent Joel at all. It just convinced the Robert Christgaus of the world that they were right all along.

In 1970, Joel tried to commit suicide by chugging half a bottle of furniture polish. The conventional wisdom has always been that this attempt stemmed from the fact that his career was floundering. (His attempt at a psychedelic heavy-metal band - an ill-fated two-piece called Attila - had just imploded.) In truth, Joel says, it was over problems in his relationship with Elizabeth Weber, the woman who would become his first wife. "I was absolutely devastated," he recalls. "I couldn't bring anything to the relationship. That was the driving force behind my suicide attempt."

Weber is the subject of one of Joel's most famous songs, "Just The Way You Are." It's a love letter that says everything anyone ever wanted to hear: You're not flawless, but you're still what I want. He tells Weber not to try "some new fashion" or dye her hair blond or work on being witty. It's a criticism of perfection, but in the best possible way; it's like Joel is saying that he loves Weber because she's not perfect, and that he could never leave her in times of trouble.

The irony, of course, is that Joel and Weber divorced five years after "Just The Way You Are" won a Grammy for "Song of the Year." Some would say this contradiction cheapens the song and makes it irrelevant. I'd argue that the opposite is true; the fact that Joel got divorced from the woman he wrote this song about makes it his single greatest achievement. It's the clearest example of why Joel's love songs resonate with so many people: he expresses absolute conviction in moments of wholly misguided affection. This is further validated when he admits - just 40 minutes after telling me about his suicide attempt - that he was never really in love with Weber at all, even on the night he tried to kill himself. He thought he was in love, but he wasn't.

"I shouldn't have gotten married," he says of his union with Weber. "She said we either had to get married or our relationship was over, so I said, 'OK' I was 24. I was too young to get married, although it ended up lasting eight years. Was I really in love? I don't think so. But when I married Christie, I really wanted to get married and I really wanted to have kids."

"Christie" is Christie Brinkley, the gangly sex kitten Joel married in 1985 and lionized in the hit single "Uptown Girl." Brinkley agreed to be interviewed for this article, only to change her mind at the last possible moment. She is the mother of Joel's 16 year-old daughter, Alexa, and is generally perceived to be the love of his life - although he insists that his six-year relationship with Carolyn Beegan in the 1990s and his more recent courtship of Trish Bergin, a TV news anchor, were almost as deep. In fact, tabloid speculation was that Joel's breakup with Bergin was the reason he spent 10 days in alcohol rehab this summer, a rumor Joel confirms, saying that Bergin was the reason he "started drinking all that wine.'

But as the hours pass and we keep talking, he slowly widens the scope of his melancholy. "The more I think about it, the more I think it was all four of those relationships," he says. "I never really stop thinking about any of them."

So how much wine do you have to drink before you need to check yourself into rehab?

"A lot," says Joel. "A lot." Joel says he was on a "well-documented bender" for three months before checking himself into Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut in mid-June. This would date the bender's origin to right around the time of his March 15th, 2002 concert with Elton John at Madison Square Garden, an evening in which Joel was widely described as disoriented, exhausted and erratic. (Throughout the performance, he shouted out the locations of famous World War II battle sites like "Midway!" and "Guadalcanal!") In early June, he drove off the road in East Hampton and wrecked his Mercedes; a week later, The New York Post was reporting, "Billy Joel in rehab after galpal dumps him."

"I was amazed by the way all of that played out in the media," he says now. "To me, a musician going to rehab is like a normal person going to get his teeth cleaned. Don't these people ever watch 'Behind The Music'? It's a cliche. If I had known that the story was going to be reported in the way that it was, I would have considered not going at all."

Part of what perplexes Joel is that he feels as if he is no longer the kind of celebrity who warrants tabloid coverage; when I argue that the news media are always going to be interested in anyone who has sold 21 million copies of his greatest hits collection, he reminds me that he hasn't made pop music in almost 10 years.

"I don't think what has happened to me is that different from what happens to most people," he says. "The only difference is the scale. People seem to think my problems are larger than life, but they're not larger than my life. Yes, I was married to Christie Brinkley, but it didn't work, just like a lot of marriages don't work out. I don't sit around thinking: Oh, my God! I'm this famous guy who lost his famous wife!"

It's a contradiction: Billy Joel is keenly aware that he is "Billy Joel," but he doesn't seem to understand fully how that designation is the cause of virtually everything good and bad about his life.

"On the one hand, it probably is easier for me to meet women than it is for most people, because I have a certain degree of fame," he says. "But on the other hand, I have certain problems in relationships that other people don't. I was recently on a date with a woman, and she told me: 'You're one of those guys who comes with all this stuff. You're always being written about and photographed and all that star stuff.' And it dawned on me that she was probably right."

"Movin' Out," Twyla Tharp's $8 million show based on Joel's songs, will have its official Broadway debut on October 24th, 2002. But it has already absorbed some of the baggage that Joel has carried for years. When the unorthodox musical opened in Chicago in late July, theater critics described it as "inane" and "cliche-ridden," prompting major changes to the first act. And though those barbs were mostly directed at Tharp, it's easy to see how they could strike Joel as well, even though he played virtually no role in the production. The characters in "Movin' Out" include Brenda and Eddie (the couple from "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant") and Tony (from the song "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song"), all of whom have their lives thrown into chaos by the Vietnam War (illustrated by tracks like "Goodnight Saigon"). Tharp describes it as the story of the entire baby boom generation, a demographic for which Joel has often been tagged as an apologist. "He chronicled the time in which I lived," the 61 year-old Tharp says.

But there are elements of Joel's work that Tharp considers timeless. "There is a large component of the loner in all of Billy's music," she says. "It's something, for better or worse, that has been part and parcel of the idea of the artist in the 20th century and 19th century. In our culture, the perception of the artist is that of a loner."

Oddly, one of the loneliest songs in Joel's entire lonely oeuvre didn't make it into "Movin' Out." It's called "Where's The Orchestra?" and it seems particularly apropos, since it uses the theater as a metaphor for loneliness. The lyrics are one long allusion to watching an alienating, dissatisfying play ("I like the scenery/Even though I have absolutely no/Idea at all/What is being said/Despite the dialogue"), and it doesn't take a rock critic to see it as a metaphor for the emptiness Joel himself feels. It's also the Billy Joel song that I have always related to the most on a personal level; in fact, I sometimes tell people that they would understand me better if they listened to "Where's The Orchestra?"

I tell this to Joel, thinking it might make him feel better. But I think it makes him feel worse.

"That song still applies to me," he says in a weirdly stoic tone. "I heard it the other day, and it still moved me, because I feel like that today. I've only felt content a few times in my life, and it never lasted. I'm very discontented right now. There are situations in my life that didn't pan out. I'm like most other human beings. I try and I fail. The whole metaphor of that song is that life is a theatrical play, and it's all a tragedy, and - even though you can enjoy the comedic, ironic elements of what you're experiencing - life will always come up and whap you on the head."

To punctuate this statement, he whaps himself on the side of his skull with an open hand. It's the kind of thing that should be funny, but somehow it isn't. Probably because when Joel hits himself, he isn't smiling.

"I'm back, I'm back," Joel told the sellout crowd of 20,898 at the St. Pete Times Forum, before breaking into his classic "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)." "I apologize for the delay. ...I got sick. Thanks for waiting around."

Joel postponed a tour stop with Elton John in Tampa in March due to a severe respiratory infection and laryngitis. That illness also led to the postponing of several New York shows in March, after Joel struggled through a Madison Square Garden concert during which he made some incoherent statements. After battling the respiratory problems, Joel said he felt he'd grown too dependent on alcohol and in June checked into Silver Hill Hospital, a rehab facility in New Canaan, Connecticut, days after he was slightly hurt in a serious one-car crash in Sag Harbor.

On stage, Joel, 53, made no mention of his stint in rehab or his other recent troubles. Aside from a knowing glance at the audience when he sang "I don't want you to worry for me 'cause I'm all right" during "My Life," Joel left his personal battles backstage. Elton John only referred to the problems in passing, saying, "I'm so sorry to have you wait so long, but things happened. We're here to make up for lost time."

That's exactly what the duo set out to do with their three-hour concert. Joel looked tentative during the show's opening duets with John, but gained momentum the deeper he went into his hour-long solo set.

He sounded strong and looked fit. Though early on he ended the dramatic, piano-intensive "Prelude/Angry Young Man" by nervously shaking his fingers, by the time he reached "I Go To Extremes" he was clearly enjoying himself, kicking over stools and pounding piano keys with his behind. John also tried to keep things light, causing the sole flub of the evening during "You May Be Right," when Joel stopped singing to laugh as John tickled him.

Joel's current hit-filled set is similar to the one he used early in the tour. In his new set, Joel shows his fondness for New York, which has had its own turbulent times in the past year, by tying together an unlikely pair of songs, the moving "New York State of Mind" and "Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)," a science-fiction tale about New York's destruction that after the terrorist attacks strikes close to home.

Joel and John's "Face 2 Face" Tour returns to New York on September 23rd, 2002 to begin a string of makeup dates for shows canceled in March. After an initial Madison Square Garden concert, the tour moves to Nassau Coliseum for four shows starting September 25th, 2002.

"I'm not going to meet anyone out here," said Joel, who lives in East Hampton, a posh community in nearby Long Island. "The happiest times in my life were when my relationships were going well - when I was in love with someone, and someone was loving me. But in my whole life, I haven't met the person I can sustain a relationship with yet. So I'm discontended about that. I'm angry with myself. I have regrets."

Joel will go on tour this fall with Elton John, and Twyla Tharp will take to Broadway a play called "Movin' Out," featuring modern dance interpretations of Joel's songs. But he said his success - including a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - is little consolation.

"You can't go home with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," he told The New York Times Magazine. "You don't sleep with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You don't get hugged by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and you don't have children with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I want what everybody else wants: to love and to be loved, and to have a family. Being in love has always been the most important thing in my life."

"Aaaahhhhh!" cheered the sold-out crowd Tuesday night at Philips Arena.

And in the other corner, a hometown favorite though his Buckhead penthouse is only a part-time home - oh, and in rather conservative purple - Elton John!

Ding! Ding!

Oh - make that "Pling! Pling" We are talking about two of pop's heavyweight pianists/vocalists, who brought the tour they first trotted out seven years ago back to Atlanta again.

John and Joel entered the arena rather congenially Tuesday night, sharing a hug before dueting on a few of each other's tunes. As an opener, Joel started John's classic '70s ballad "Your Song." And in turn, John made Joel's 1977 breakthrough single his own, fashioning the compliment into something that came off like, "I love 'Chu just the Waaayoouarrrre.'"

Then after the full-piece band charged into the couple's rendition of John's "Don't Let The Sun Go Down," Joel deferred to local royalty, and let John play from 32 years of hits.

"Piano Man" Billy Joel, who recently opened his first musical, "Movin' Out," in Chicago with hopes of heading to Broadway, had lunch yesterday at chef-owner Barbara Lynch's No. 9 Park. Joel, in town for a concert Friday night, came in to the Beacon Hill restaurant with band members. Joel ordered a light lunch: an endive salad and a salmon entree. But the staff sent out a special tasting of Lynch's truffled gnocchi with lobster and some tagliatelle with bolognese sauce....

"Sorry for the wait," Joel said during one of several apologies to the sold-out crowd. "I really did get sick, and I'm really glad you waited. By the way, if you think if I lost all the weight after rehab, you're wrong. I lost it on the bender."

Aside from some enthusiastic swivelling on his piano stool, Joel was a consummate professional. Visibly humbled and moved by the crowd's cheers of support, Joel returned the love with a focused, emotional performance that was a frankly surprising match for Elton John's hit-filled solo set. John's career packs more credibility, and more of his songs have (rightly) earned a place in the rock annals. "Just The Way You Are," meanwhile, hangs like an albatross around the Joel catalog's neck. But an hour-long, cherry-picked set revealed a stable of classic pop songs that has more substance and integrity than it generally gets credit for.

After a brief duet trading verses and piano flourishes on super-famous ballads, each artist played energetic solo sets accompanied by their own bands. Outsized set-openers were the fashion: John blasted off with the synth-heavy drama "Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" and Joel with the acoustic prog-rock number "Prelude/Angry Young Man."

John, fabulously restrained in an eggplant suit with the subtlest smattering of rhinestones, loves a pompous popera as much as a gorgeous ballad, and played extended, embellished versions of both - among them "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," "Rocket Man," "Take Me To The Pilot," "Tiny Dancer," "I'm Still Standing," and (the truth must be told) the awful but understandably beloved "Philadelphia Freedom" - as well as the new songs "I Want Love" and "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore."

He was effusive in his thanks, traversing the stage after every song to bow and reach his hands out to the audience. It was a dramatic, and welcome, change from the detached demeanor that deflated John's most recent solo tour through Boston.

Joel chose songs with equal care, playing the working-class sagas "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" and "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," and the gem "Allentown," whose chord changes are winsome and clever enough to slip unnoticed onto an XTC disc. His voice was fit and strong; he didn't even seem to be straining for the high notes on "New York State of Mind."

But a poignant mix of gratitude and sadness infused Joel's demeanor. He's got his health back, and now all he needs is the girlfriend he's so publicly pining for. After the arena tour ends, a weekend gig at a neighborhood piano bar might be just the thing.