Billy Joel said goodbye to his longtime bandmate Jon Small with a simple, touching tribute he shared to his Instagram on Monday, September 7.
Joel, who ruled the airwaves in the ’80s with hits from his 4 massive albums, was married to Katie Lee, the very first host of Bravo’s hit cooking competition show “Top Chef,” from 2004 to 2009. In both 2003 and again in 2012, he was honored on “American Idol” with Billy Joel themed nights on which the contestants each sang one of his hits.
Small’s death was announced by a friend in a Facebook post by a friend, which detailed his musical accomplishments. The post recalls how Small and Joel started out with their bad The Hassles before forming Attila. After moving on from music, Small’s friend says he went on to have “huge career as a director and producer.”
Billy Joel Shared Lore About His Early Bandmates in ’90s Interview
In October 1994, Billy Joel discussed his early bands in a Q&A session at Harvard University. One attendee asked to know what happened to the rest of The Hassles and Attila. Joel replied, “Well Atilla’s easy because there were only 2 members. It was me and a drummer. The drummer was a guy named Jon Small, and Jon Small is a very successful video clip producer and director.”
He also shared an interesting tidbit of trivia, revealing that Small was “actually my first ex-wife’s first husband,” before joking, “So very incestuous.” The wife being referenced was Elizabeth Weber, his former manager, to whom he was married from 1973 to 1982.
Joel explained Small was also the drummer in The Hassles. “So Jon Small is very active, and is a very good friend of mine, a close friend, and because we both share an ex-wife, we have a lot of good stories to swap,” he gleefully added, which drew a roar of laughter from the crowd.
He then touched on the other Hassles band members fates, saying the other drummer, Howie Blauvelt, had “just died” of a “massive heart attack,” which majorly scared Joel since Blauvelt was his same age. Joel said the last thing he heard about the guitarist was that he was working for the U.S. postal service.
The “Uptown Girl” singer went on the front man of The Hassles, John Dizek, “became Jesus freak” and wrote him a letter scolding him for his lyrics in “Only the Good Die Young,” a song which was hilariously banned in Boston and other places, leading to a surge in sales.
Joel then laughed about writing a defiant letter to the one of his critics, the Archbishop of St. Louis, telling him “thank you very much” for inadvertently helping to make the song a hit.
Billy Joel Made Rare Comments About His Ex-Wife Christie Brinkley Last Year
GettyIn his July 2025 HBO documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes,” the “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” singer made rare comments about SI supermodel Christie Brinkley, to whom he was married from 1985 to 1994.
He reminisced, “Here I am dating this beautiful supermodel and…me? I’m from Hicksville. What am I doing with her? What’s she doing with me? But that was a very productive time for me.”
Joel then called the blonde beauty a songwriting muse. He went on, “It was like being a teenager all over again. Experiencing those same emotions that I had when I was first discovering romance and love.”
Brinkley and Joel share one daughter, Alexa, born the year they got married.
