"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.

"I'm hearing he's very much on his Venusian side right now," says Joyce Dolberg Rowe, a licensed mental health counselor and the director of the Mars & Venus Counseling Center in Boston. "If he wants to attract women into his life, he needs to focus on his Martian side."

Sensitivity, it turns out, is a liability. "John Gray says women think they want sensitive guys - until they get one," says Rowe. "What they want is a strong man." With a Venusian man, "a woman is not able to be on her softer side because she has to be stronger for him. And it's a turn-off."

Take stock. While the experts might disagree about the volume level of what Joel's saying, they don't dispute the importance of introspection.

"Here's the bottom line," says Rowe. "Figure out what you want, determine what your values are, and look at what you have been doing to sabotage your previous relationship. And finally, find out whether you have realistic goals."

Finding the love of your life doesn't happen by accident, adds Fran Greene of Commack, a clinical social worker and a flirting and dating coach. "We spend hours or months researching what computer to buy or our new home, but we often don't spend time on the most important relationship of our life."

By now, says Greene, Joel should know that the supermodel looks that presumably attracted him to his second wife, Christie Brinkley, only go so far.

"If he's thinking about a lifelong partner, what keeps people together is a sense of humor, the ability to be there for each another and the ability to talk things out."

Hire a helper. The two best places to meet people, says Greene, are your workplace and through your own network of personal acquaintances. These days, that latter group has expanded with the popularity of online matchmaking services, where subscribers can scroll through pages of possible partners.

But the likelihood of Joel posting a want ad on Match.com is pretty slim. Which is why Greene thinks he ought to do the same thing he does with most daily minutiae - delegate.

"Perhaps Billy needs to hire someone to be his own matchmaker," says Greene. "Someone who knows a lot of people, especially available women."

If Joel wants to be a do-it-yourselfer, he has one important advantage: the financial means and lifestyle to devote as much time as he likes to the hunt, wherever it will take him - across the country or across the globe.

But it won't be a fun trip unless Joel cultivates one crucial quality: a sense of humor. "He has to be lighthearted about it," she says. "Dating is hard work, and you gotta kiss a lot of frogs before you find someone to connect with."

Shelve the uptown girls. "It seems like he's gone for women who would enhance his self-esteem because he feels they are out of his reach," says Amatenstein. "If it doesn't work out, it's almost like reconfirming what you knew anyway."

The perfect prescription might be "someone more like him" - someone who can relate to his middle-class Hicksville roots.

"Hey, I'm a nice Jewish girl from Queens," Amatenstein offers. "He can call me."

"I want what everybody else wants: to love and be loved, and to have a family," he recently said in a high-profile interview in the Sunday Times magazine.

"Being in love has always been the most important thing in my life."

Which is all very well, but it's not enough, says Bonnie Eaker Weil, a psychotherapist and author of "Make Up, Don't Break Up."

"I see people like him all the time," sighs Weil.

"They can't sustain a relationship.... When a person starts to love them, they move away - they distance themselves, provoke and alienate."

"Billy Joel yearns for love," Weil declares, "but he doesn't know how to stay in love."

As most of the world knows, Joel's been married twice - to Elizabeth Weber, the brunette music manager for whom he wrote "Just The Way You Are," and to the perennially perky Christie Brinkley.

Not only are he and Brinkley still close - they have a 16 year-old daughter, Alexa - but she fixed him up with one of his latest ex-girlfriends, Long Island TV newscaster Trish Bergin.

There's still hope for him though, says Weil.

"Anyone who writes such beautiful love songs can definitely find love," she says. "He just needs to take the risk of being rejected first, and to put the time and energy into his next relationship."

To that end, Joel is planning a move from East Hampton (where he's been renting ever since selling his mansion to Jerry Seinfeld) to Manhattan - just so he can meet women.

Good move, Weil says.

"He's not going to meet anyone in the Hamptons because it's mostly couples there," she says.

He should also steer clear of the booze, she says. The singer checked into rehab at Connecticut's Silver Hill Hospital in June, shortly after Bergin announced her engagement to someone else.

Actually, says Weil, it wouldn't be a bad idea for him to stay away from supermodels and newscasters altogether.

"Models are insecure because they think they're loved only for their looks, and newscasters are workaholics," she says. "He needs to find someone who's less invested in her career."

In fact, Weil just happens to have a few possibilities (plucked from her mental Rolodex) who might make the "Piano Man" sing again.

They include a 37 year-old dental hygienist ("funny, spunky, outgoing and home-centered"), a 6-foot-tall former model turned real-estate saleswoman ("she loves going out with men who are not tall and she's very down to earth") and a 42 year-old ad agency head who loves to travel (maybe she'll join Joel on his current tour with Elton John).

As an added incentive, she'll even throw in tickets to Joel's upcoming musical, "Movin' Out."

"I've got four tickets - we can double-date," she says.

Billy, call Dr. Bonnie: (212) 685-9236.

"Do I get a vote?" Joel asked when he spoke to The Post earlier this week. "I'd write in for Nicole Kidman."

Joel was also surprised to read in the Times that he was "trying to rent an apartment in Manhattan for the sole purpose of meeting women."

"I never said that!" he protested. In fact, this week, he closed on a $12 million house near his hometown of Oyster Bay.

Looking good (he's lost 35 pounds) and feeling great, Joel is currently on tour with Elton John, and they will play shows in New Jersey and Long Island through next week. And Joel's music is the cornerstone of "Movin' Out," which will come to Broadway in a Twyla Tharp production next month.

Tired of all the dime-store analysis of his personal life, here Joel sets the record straight.

Post: Back in March, you played the Garden when you were sick, then had to cancel the subsequent performances. What was wrong with you?

Joel: I had an upper-respiratory infection. I didn't even know if I could sing. My doctor told me not to perform at all. He said if I did, I was going to make it worse. He was right - I did make it worse.

Post: There were reports that you were drunk.

Joel: I had every kind of medication you could take. In one respect, the Times review that said I ingested something stronger than cough syrup was right - but it wasn't booze, it was medication.

Post: Were you incoherent?

Joel: They said I was yelling out the names of World War II battles incoherently. I thought I was very clear. I named some famous battles America has fought, and I ended up by saying, "Who the hell do [these terrorists] think they're fucking with? Do they think we're not going to fight back?" That was my point. But they used that to show I was this drunken, incoherent imbecile.

Post: That was what the Times said - not the public. By their reaction that night, the fans appreciated your effort.

Joel: A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. And now that's what people's perception is. It's not fair. I don't know how many times I have to profess I wasn't drunk - I was sick. Now there's the new one that I'm desperately longing to meet my romantic partner.

Post: Are you?

Joel: The New York Times took six quotes and turned them into a one-dimensional piece. They made it sound like all I was talking about was poor me and my love life. That was not the gist of the conversation, but somebody, somewhere decided that was going to be the tone of the piece.

Post: It was the greatest personal ad ever.

Joel: I don't need to do that to meet people.

Post: You just bought a home in the Oyster Bay area, so is the plan for a Manhattan pad out?

Joel: No, I miss the city, especially since September 11th, 2001. I was looking, and eventually I will look again. I'm close on the North Shore and I can hop into the city real easy.

Post: We spoke last year, a few days after September 11th, 2001, and you had just visited the ruins of the Trade Center and were shaken and devastated by what you saw. Does it still haunt you?

Joel: I think a lot of what's happened to me over the last year is connected. I went into a deep, deep, dark depression. Not only because it was my city and my country, but because I can't understand what drives this kind of hatred.

Post: Your recent problems are a direct result of September 11th, 2001?

Joel: No, but I have to say that's when things started. I'm still not over it. I tried to write through it, but I couldn't do it. As a matter of fact, I talked about this with the guy who wrote that Times piece, but that never came out. Let's not go there.

Post: Those problems landed you in rehab.

Joel: Nobody is to blame for my overindulgence. And I interrupted it by going into rehab.

Post: What do you mean by overindulgence?

Joel: I was on a bender. I was drinking too much, and I said, "This is stupid." There was no intervention. I just did it. There wasn't a woman who drove me to drink; I didn't start because of a breakup. It wasn't anybody's fault, and the demons that drove it can't be placed on any one person.

Post: So why did you go into rehab?

Joel: I was on a bender for more than two months and I wanted to end it. Before this, I did the same thing with cigarettes. I also stopped drinking hard liquor, I stopped taking any kind of drugs - I don't even drink caffeine. There have been a lot of things that I've had to let go of in my life. I'm not a temperance drum beater. I'm not evangelical. I took out of rehabilitation what I needed.

Post: Which was?

Joel: Dry it out, man. Stop drinking so much. How's that for a concept? I did it. If I put my mind to something, I can do it. But that doesn't mean I'm never going to have a glass of wine again - it's one of the basic food groups.

Post: At Monday's show, you seemed to have fun with that, by changing the lyrics in "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" to "Bottle of white, bottle of red, perhaps a glass of Perrier instead."

Joel: People are reading into everything I'm doing now. I'm not obtuse, and I can look at myself and laugh. That's what I did with the lyrics. I've always had fun doing that, and I'm going to continue.

"I’m not going to meet anyone out here," he told The Times, referring to the East End, where he’s famously lived for years.

(Of course, he’s been eulogizing the Hamptons since his 1989 song "The Downeaster 'Alexa'.") But now it looks like the veteran rocker’s heart is taking him home - not to the big, bad city.

The hall-of-fame crooner recently put a halt to his Manhattan apartment search, backed out of a contract to buy a $14 million East Hampton mansion - losing a $2 million deposit in the process - and bought a $12 million waterfront home in his hometown of Oyster Bay, Long Island.

"Billy Joel's real estate - I need a separate career just for that," joked Mr. Joel's publicist, Claire Mercuri.

"It has beautiful views, a good amount of acreage, it’s on the water, it’s private, and it’s in close proximity to the city," the "Piano Man" told The Observer in a statement, referring to his most recent purchase - a 16-acre sprawl with a guest house and pool. "I was looking for an apartment in New York City, and I decided instead I would prefer to live in a house on the North Shore."

Ever since selling his East Hampton mansion to Jerry Seinfeld in 2000, Mr. Joel's brokers on Long Island and Manhattan have been scrambling to find his next "permanent" home. It appeared he was ready to settle down in North Haven with the purchase of a $7 million waterfront estate, but he put that place on the market this summer without ever moving in. It’s still for sale. Later in the summer, he toured several high-end Manhattan apartments, coming extremely close to signing a deal at Trump Palace, but he backed out at the last minute. Mr. Joel’s longtime Manhattan broker, Michele Kleier of Gumley Haft Kleier, had no comment on the search.

In Mr. Joel's latest bout of indecision, he reneged on a deal to buy a $14 million mansion on East Hampton’s Old Beach Lane, an offshoot of Further Lane.

"He just said he didn't want to live in East Hampton any more," said the house’s owner, Fred Stein, a Wall Street portfolio manager.

Ms. Mercuri said it's no secret that Mr. Joel is prone to wavering on real-estate decisions.

"He changed his mind," she said. "This isn’t the first time he saw a property he liked and fell in love with it on the spot, and then had second thoughts about it."

Unfortunately, this time the second-guessing cost Mr. Joel a $2 million deposit, as well as some hard feelings from the lady of the house.

"It was very upsetting to my wife," said Mr. Stein. "We had to move out 60 boxes full of stuff. But I think he paid for it - he left a big chunk of money on the table."

Despite his wife’s anger, Mr. Stein said he doesn't harbor any resentment toward Mr. Joel.

"I thought he was very decent. He acted like a gentleman," he said. "We parted on friendly terms. If I saw him I’d say 'Hi, Billy,' and I'm sure he'd say hi, too."

Mr. Stein said he believes that Mr. Joel "wasn't being capricious at all" in his dealings. To offer proof of Mr. Joel's good intentions, Mr. Stein explained how Mr. Joel had visited the house two or three times each week, bringing his architect, a designer and his teenage daughter, Alexa Ray.

"He had planned to build a music room and do all kinds of things," Mr. Stein said. "That’s why it was such a shock to all of us."

Referring to the Times Magazine piece, Mr. Stein said he empathizes with Mr. Joel's plight.

"He's just kind of a lost soul, and he's got some problems he's got to resolve for himself."

Mr. Stein's Old Beach Lane house, which does not have ocean frontage, has its comely features nevertheless: The 12,000 square-foot mansion overlooks the Maidstone Club and Hook Pond. John Golden of Sotheby's has the listing.

Real-estate sources tell The Observer that Mr. Joel most likely flip-flopped at the last minute because the Oyster Bay house - which Mr. Joel had always wanted, but was then off the market - came on the market unexpectedly, and Mr. Joel couldn't resist.

As for his other holdings, that North Haven waterfront estate is on the market, and Mr. Joel has a house on Shelter Island that is still for sale. He also owns a modest Sag Harbor house that was once a bait shop.

And regarding his "New York State of Mind"?

"As far as questions on my intentions of moving to New York City," Mr. Joel said through his publicist, "maybe in the future."

"Movin' Out," the new musical collaboration between pop legend Billy Joel and choreographer Twyla Tharp, will move into Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre on September 30th, 2002. Opening night is October 24th, 2002.

The musical left Chicago's Shubert Theatre, after a summer-long stay that began June 25th, 2002.

The show follows the story of Brenda and Eddie, the characters at the center of Joel's anthemic song "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." As the lyric goes, "Brenda and Eddie/Were the popular steadies/And the king and the queen of the prom/Riding around with the car top down/And the radio on." In the tune, the couple gets married, hits the skids and breaks up. The musical also drafts the character of Tony from "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," as in "Anthony works in a grocery store/Saving his pennies for someday/Mamma Leone left a note on the door/And said "Sonny, move out to the country/Working too hard can give you a heart attack." Brenda and Tony get involved.

The other characters are also taken from Joel songs. They are Sgt. O'Leary from "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," Judy from "Why Judy Why" and James from, yes, "James."

The bookless, dance-and-music heavy entertainment runs at 45 minutes for the first act, 50 minutes for the second act, with a 20 minute intermission. There is no dialogue and all the songs are performed by pianist, singer and Joel sound-alike Michael Cavanaugh, who heads an on stage band during the show.

The musical's songlist is a collection of pre-existing Joel songs which make up the narrative's score. Among the selected tunes are such monster Joel hits as "We Didn't Start The Fire," "Big Shot," "Uptown Girl" and "Just The Way You Are," as well as more obscure early work such as "James," "Summer, Highland Falls," and "Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)."

The Chicago tryout was greeted with mixed to negative reviews from the Windy City papers, with critics applauding the production numbers of the second act, while saying the first needed narrative clarity. The notices resulted in a mini-scandal where New York Newsday reprinted the Chicago Tribune's sour notice in full. Producers claimed the move was a low blow and scuttled the traditional purpose of an out-of-town bow - that is, to work out kinks away from the glare of the New York press. Newsday defended itself by citing Joel's huge appeal to it readership on Long Island.

The Tribune critic, Michael Phillips, was invited back in last August and published a sort of re-review on August 22nd, 2002, which included comments by Tharp. "The guiding principle was this," said Tharp. "If it's confusing, cut it out." According to the article (which a show spokesman confirmed was accurate), the number "I Go To Extremes," which had followed "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" in the opening sequence, has been cut. The latter number, which once featured Keith Roberts and a bevy of females, now involves the male leads.

In other changes, the main characters, including Brenda (Elizabeth Parkinson), Eddie (John Selya) and Tony (Keith Roberts), are more clearly introduced in the opening number, "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant." Eddie is not partly responsible for the death of another character, James (Benjamin G. Bowman), as he was earlier in the run. And the role of the character Judy (Ashely Tuttle), a war widow, has increased in importance. The cast of 27 is completed by Andrew Allagree, Mark Arvin, Aliane Baquerot, Alexander Brady, Holly Cruikshank, Ron De Jesus, Melissa Downey, Pascale Faye, Scott Fowler, David Gomez, Meg Paul, Laurie Kanyok, William Marrié, Rod McCune, Jill Nicklaus, Rika Okamoto, Karine Plantadit Bageot, Lawrence Rabson, Dana Stackpole and John J. Todd.

The principals are a group highly steeped in dance, as opposed to theatre. Parkinson and Wise were both featured dancers in the Broadway revue, "Fosse." Wise first made his mark in Jerome Robbins' "Broadway," winning a Tony for his work. The two hoofers are husband and wife.

Roberts was also in "Fosse" as well as Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake." Selya is a veteran of many seasons at "American Ballet Theatre." Tuttle also has dozens of "American Ballet Theatre" ballets to her credit. Much of Bowman's work has been at the "New York City Ballet."

All are members of Tharp's own dance group, "Twyla Tharp Dance."

The Chicago-to-Broadway route is the same one used by "The Producers" and, with less fortunate results, "Sweet Smell of Success."

Designers are Santo Loquasto (sets), Suzy Benzinger (costumes), Donald Holder (lighting) and Brian Ruggles and Peter Fitzgerald (sound).

Stuart Malina is the music director on the venture.

Matinees of "Movin' Out" will feature different leads and a different singer than will the evening performances.

Night shows of the dance-heavy piece will star Elizabeth Parkinson and John Selya as Brenda and Eddie, Keith Roberts as Tony, Ashley Tuttle as Judy and Michael Cavanaugh as the vocalist belting out Joel's songbook.

On Wednesday and Saturday matinees, Brenda and Eddie will be played by Holly Cruikshank and William Marrié, while David Gomez will be Tony, Dana Stackpole is Judy and Wade Preston is on vocals.

At all performances, Scott Wise will play Sergeant O'Leary and the Drill Sergeant, and Benjamin G. Bowman will portray James.

The shifting line-up, which is detailed in the show's program, was no doubt devised to afford the lead performers a break from the physical workout provided by Twyla Tharp's choreography.

During evening shows, Cruikshank and Gomez are part of the ensemble. Marrié and Stackpole are swings.