Billy Joel's Foolish Suicide Attempt.

4 months ago 20th Jul 10:47

Billy Joel's Foolish Suicide Attempt....

Billy Joel's attempt to take his own life in his early 20s was an embarrassing failure because the singer thought furniture polish would taste better than bleach.

The desperate Piano Man star tried to end it all after the failure of his band Atilla's first album and the break-up of a romance - and so he raided his mother's cupboards, looking for poison.

He tells Details magazine, "I was suicidal.... I just figured the world didn't need another failed musician. You take yourself so seriously - you've got your head so far up your ass you can't see straight.

"I was just lookin' for poison. I looked in my mother's closet and there was bleach, and it had the skull and crossbones, and then there was furniture polish.

"At the time I thought, `Well, the furniture polish will probably taste better than the bleach, so I'll drink the furniture polish.' "All I ended up doing was farting furniture polish for a couple of days and polishing my mother's chairs".

The cover of Billy Joel's first album with rock band Atilla still haunts the Piano Man.

Joel reluctantly posed as a barbarian, surrounded by chunks of raw meat, for the band's one-off 1970 album, and he still cringes when reporters remind him of the cover shot.

More about Billy Joel's Foolish Suicide Attempt. on page 2