NEW YORK — Jon Small, the drummer who played alongside Billy Joel in the 1960s bands the Hassles and Attila and who later directed and produced much of Joel’s video and concert-film work, died Friday, Sept. 4, The Music Universe reported, citing a Facebook post by a longtime friend. Joel confirmed the death Monday.
Joel’s verified Instagram account posted two photographs of the pair — one from their teens, one recent — under a three-word caption, “RIP Jon Small.” The post had about 9,100 likes and 129 comments by Monday afternoon.
No cause of death has been released, and no age was given. The Music Universe described Small as being in his late 70s; TMZ put him in his 70s. Stereogum and The Music Universe both reported a funeral Wednesday in Great Neck, New York.
Small’s is one of the odder arcs in American pop: he was the man Joel wronged, and then the man who filmed Joel for three decades.
The two met as teenagers in New York City and played together in the Hassles, a psych-rock and soul band that released two albums for United Artists in the late 1960s, with Joel taking over lead vocals on the second, 1969’s “Hour of the Wolf,” Stereogum reported. They left to form the hard-rock duo Attila, whose lone self-titled album came out on Epic in 1970. The duo dissolved the following year when Joel began a relationship with Small’s wife, Elizabeth Weber, who divorced Small and married Joel.
Both men described the fallout on camera for the HBO documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes,” released last year. “Billy one day came up to me, became a little honest, and said to me, ‘I’m in love with your wife,'” Small said in the film. “So it was a very devastating thing for me, because these were basically my two best friends.”
Joel, in the same film: “I felt very, very guilty about it. They had a child. I felt like a homewrecker.” Joel has said he attempted suicide in that period by drinking furniture polish, and that Small drove him to the hospital. Stereogum notes the episode became the basis for “Tomorrow Is Today,” on Joel’s 1971 solo debut, “Cold Spring Harbor.”
They reconciled and worked together for decades. The Music Universe reported Small was the primary director and producer on nearly all of Joel’s major music videos and on three concert specials between 1982 and 2011.
The credits on Joel’s two best-known 1983 clips are inconsistent across sources. Stereogum lists “Tell Her About It” among the videos Small directed; the Internet Music Video Database credits Jay Dubin as director of both “Tell Her About It” and “Uptown Girl” and files Small on each as producer, through Jon Small Productions, with a writing credit on “Tell Her About It.” IMDb credits him as director of the 1986 Ray Charles duet “Baby Grand.”
Outside Joel’s orbit, Stereogum and The Music Universe both credit Small with directing the 1986 Aerosmith and Run-DMC “Walk This Way” video, though IMDb’s page for the video lists no credits. He built a second career in country, directing Garth Brooks’ “The Red Strokes” and “Standing Outside the Fire” and Reba McEntire clips, and producing the 1997 “Garth: Live From Central Park” special.
One video he did not make is the song “This Region Knows Best.” Joel’s 1982 “Allentown” was directed by Russell Mulcahy, per IMDb’s credits, with choreography by Kenny Ortega.
Reaction has been small and warm. Irwin Mazur, who wrote under Joel’s post that he managed the Hassles and Attila, said he reconnected with Small last June and found him “still the warmest, most humble and classy guy as he was back then.” On r/BillyJoel, a thread with 120 votes drew nine comments, most of them about his drumming rather than his films.