Hank Bordowitz almost addresses this central Billy Joel dilemma in his pedestrian biography of the musician, but he does so superficially. The book isn’t exactly a thoughtful critical analysis of Joel’s career, and for someone who is indifferent to the piano man, it might be a little difficult to get through. For Billy Joel fans, though, it’s one more small validation for the forces of righteousness.

For the most part, Bordowitz sticks to the facts. Joel was born on Long Island in 1949, and his father abandoned the family when Joel was seven, leaving Mrs. Joel alone to raise Billy and his older sister. Young Billy studied classical piano until he got sick of the long hours of practice; he became a teenage rebel, sneaking out at night, drinking wine on the village green, playing in rock bands, and generally being a delinquent. Fortunately, his talent saved the day, and after a few musical false starts he released a solo album, Cold Spring Harbor, that gained the attention of record execs and a few early fans (despite the fact that the record was mastered at the wrong speed, making Joel sound like Alvin the Chipmunk).

A few years later, Joel released a second album that contained the critically reviled “Piano Man,” and the song became an instant classic. He followed that up with The Stranger and the equally critically detested “Just the Way You Are,” and the album made Joel into a bona fide superstar. During the rest of the 70s and 80s, he was the best-selling male solo artist, and he put his name in the ranks that included Elvis Presley before him and Garth Brooks after.

Bordowitz also includes all the controversies and seedy details, which are many, considering Joel’s attempts to make his private life as private as possible. There is the breakup with his first wife/manager and the subsequent installation of that ex-wife’s brother as Joel’s new manager, an illogical move that resulted in near-bankruptcy when the ex-brother-in-law embezzled millions from Joel’s accounts. There is Joel’s marriage to model Christie Brinkley, followed by their divorce, after which Brinkley very quickly married, had a baby with and divorced a millionaire playboy with whom she had been cavorting while still married to Joel. Then there is Joel’s post-Brinkley struggle with a drinking problem, his retreat from pop song writing and his marriage to a woman just five years older than his daughter, Alexa.

Bordowitz constructs all of this in a workmanlike manner, stringing together facts from previously published articles and interviews, as well as his own interviews with peripheral characters in Joel’s life. It’s all moderately interesting, but the most compelling thread is Joel’s consistent battle for validation in the eyes of critics; Bordowitz talks about it, largely without editorializing, and he misses an opportunity.

Joel, in fact, has been subjected over the years to the easiest and most irresponsible sort of music criticism. Back in the 70s, the elite critics, such as the late Robert Palmer of The New York Times, were champions of punk, postpunk and New Wave. The problem was that those forms were only valid in contrast to something else - punk as music is, let’s face it, pretty pathetic - and the critics needed a whipping boy, an anti-punk foil with which to make the New York Dolls seem important. Along came Joel, with his sappy “Just the Way You Are,” his classical piano training and his sincerity; Palmer and crew had their man. Pere Ubu is good, they said, because Billy Joel is bad.

Bordowitz points this out, along with the eventual rehabilitation of Joel in the eyes of some critics, without judgment. He doesn’t take the critics to task for their unfairness, nor does he take Joel to task for his weakest music (“Just the Way You Are,” “My Life,” and the entirety of The Bridge album, in this reviewer’s opinion). He also doesn’t praise Joel for his best work (The Nylon Curtain and River of Dreams, again in my opinion).

The book’s biggest flaw, however, is that Bordowitz had no access to Joel himself. He mines published interviews for the musician’s thoughts, and Bordowitz’s own interviews are mostly with friends and business associates who knew Joel decades ago. Worst of all, he relies heavily on the testimony of Bruce Gentile, a former musician and current sign inspector from Joel’s Long Island hometown, who knew Joel only tangentially and who seems to have spent his entire life trying to grab hold of his former neighbor’s coattails; Gentile’s observations are crude and of dubious veracity, and when Gentile, a former drug addict himself, implies that Joel is a lifelong drug abuser and that his mother is an alcoholic, the whole book takes on the distasteful tinge of trashy tabloid opportunism.