The Piano Man backs out of $3M memoir

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'Piano Man' Billy Joel decided to back off his $3 million memoir following the death of his father.

Billy Joel's fans may carry around an image of the singer/songwriter as a leather-jacket-wearing, motorcycle-riding Long Island tough guy. But the Stranger is a softy when it comes to details of his personal life.�

In the wake of Joel's decision to pull the plug on his $3 million memoir, "The Book of Joel," which was slated to be published by HarperCollins on June 19, a source close to the Piano Man tells us Joel's decision was influenced in part by the death of his father.

Last week, Joel, 61, released a statement to the Associated Press announcing his decision to cancel the book just weeks before its publication date.

"It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I'm not all that interested in talking about the past, and that the best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music," he said in the statement.

HarperCollins has since declined to comment on the matter, but according to our source, Joel had just suffered a definite down: the death of his father, Howard Joel, in Vienna on March 7.

The source says the milestone "definitely" influenced his decision to stop publication.�

Though Joel was estranged from his father, the source says, he was unable to attend the funeral because he is still recovering from double hip-replacement surgery in November.

"He is in mourning," says the source.

Given Joel's complicated relationship with his dad, which we hear was explored in the book, he may have had second thoughts about revealing so much so soon after his father's death.

But that's clearly not the only reason Joel decided not to publish his memoir. The source also said that he became "dissatisfied" with expectations that "The Book of Joel" would be a tell-all about his marriages, including one to Christie Brinkley, and his battle with alcohol.

"It was never supposed to be a tell-all," the source says. "There were interesting stories about his parents and the music business, but it wasn't a tell-all in terms of what we're used to being fed as a society." Last year's hypodermics-and-all Keith Richards memoir, "Life," is considered the current state of the art.

According to our insider, when Joel saw the media was "interpreting" the book as a work in the same vein as Richards' opus, "he was not interested."

The question circulating within the music industry is whether the book was interesting enough to justify a $3 million deal. One source who read the manuscript tells us Joel's memoir "didn't feel like he was giving it up. It felt distant and you didn't feel like you were getting to know the guy better."

Joel's fans will have to reserve judgment until a bootleg version surfaces.

Contact Gatecrasher:
Frank DiGiacomo: fdigiacomo@nydailynews.com
Carson Griffith: cgriffith@nydailynews.com
Molly Fischer: mfischer@nydailynews.com

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