Somersaults and Back Flips

“Billy Joel is doing extremely well following bilateral hip replacement and will be back at his Long Island home by the end of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend,” Joel’s publicist told Rolling Stone in November 2010.

Why both hips? According to his ex-wife Christie Brinkley who was caring for him during his recovery, “Billy said, ‘If I do it one at a time I know I’ll never go in for the other.’”

A couple years later, a New York Times interviewer wondered if Billy’s vigorous stage performances (see the accompanying photos) had anything to do with the deterioration of his hips.

Billy replied, “In the old days, when they took a baby out, sometimes they used forceps. I was a breech baby, so the theory was that they displaced my hips.  Over the years, jumping off the piano, landing on a hard stage certainly didn’t help.  Way back in the early ’70s, I used to do somersaults, flips off the piano.  I would climb up the cables and hang upside down, anything to get attention.  When you’re an opening act, you gotta do whatever you can.  But over the years it got excruciating.  I couldn’t walk at one point.  I had one of those little scooter chairs, banging into furniture.  By the time I finished the tour with Elton in March 2010, I was in a lot of pain, and over that year it got worse and worse and worse.  I’m glad I did the surgery, because my life changed.  I’m able to be ambulatory again.”

And if that weren’t enough, in 2021 Billy was back in the operating room for back surgery.

Oh, the deeds of our youth that we pay for when we get older.