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Dan Barry's Times profile of Billy Joel takes the usual tack: Despite the singer's massive and enduring success, bottomless wealth and wife 30 years his junior, he's just an insecure schlub from Long Island who worries about what people think of him:

Mr. Joel looks like every heartbreak, bad review, car crash and attendant tabloid dig has exacted a physical toll, so much so that if those adoring young women [in the front row of his concerts] were to encounter him at the mall, he says, "they wouldn’t look twice at me"...[H]e recalled a tabloid photograph many years ago of him on the beach, reaching up to hold hands with the tall model Elle Macpherson. "I looked like Bubbles the Chimp."

His already lousy self-image couldn't have made it easy to hear what a court-appointed psychiatrist had to say during Christie Brinkley's divorce proceedings with Peter Cook: Dr. Herman said Brinkley needed therapy to cure her of her taste in men. Ouch. Particularly since Joel makes it clear to Barry that he holds no ill feelings toward Brinkley; if he never sings "Uptown Girl" anymore, it's not because he's "mad at Christie," but because he can no longer hit those high notes. Guess scotch isn't so great for the old vocal cords after all!