Jon Small dies at 79, Billy Joel remembers longtime friend and collaborator

Picture Courtesy/Billy Joel`s Instagram account

Singer-songwriter Billy Joel is mourning the death of his early bandmate and longtime collaborator Jon Small, who died of cancer at the age of 79, Billboard reported.

Joel announced Small's death in a tribute shared on social media. Small, a drummer and noted music video director, shared a decades-long musical and personal history with Joel that began in Long Island rock clubs and continued through some of the most difficult chapters of Joel's early career.

Before Joel became one of rock and pop music's most recognised singer-songwriters, he and Small played together in the Long Island band The Hassles. The group released two albums in the late 1960s and was inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2025, Billboard reported. The pair later formed Attila, a hard-rock duo featuring Small on drums and Joel on organ.

The group released its self-titled album in 1970. Their partnership, however, came to an abrupt end after Joel fell in love with Small's wife, Elizabeth Weber, while he was living with the couple. The painful episode, which became part of Joel's personal history, was revisited in the recent documentary ‘And So It Goes'. "Elizabeth was very important to me, but I think I was not the guy she hoped I would be," Small said in the documentary.

"I kept seeing that Billy was not the same guy. Something was the matter. And Billy one day came up to me, became a little honest, and said to me, ‘I'm in love with your wife.' So it was a very devastating thing for me, because these were basically my two best friends," Billboard reported. Joel also reflected on the affair and its consequences.

"I felt very, very guilty about it. They had a child. I felt like a homewrecker. I was just in love with a woman, and I got punched in the nose, which I deserved. Jon was very upset. I was very upset," Joel said. The affair contributed to the breakup of Attila and temporarily ended the friendship between Joel and Small. Joel later married Weber in 1973, with the couple divorcing in 1982. Despite the painful rupture, the two eventually reconciled. Small said he came to understand the depth of Joel's remorse. "He never really said anything to me," Small said.

"The only practical answer I can give as to why Billy took it so hard was because he loved me that much and that it killed him to hurt me that much. Eventually I forgave him," Billboard reported. Small later worked behind the camera on several of Joel's projects, including the concert films Live From Long Island and Live at Shea Stadium. He also directed Joel's "Baby Grand" music video. Beyond his work with Joel, Small built a successful career as a music video and concert director.

His credits included videos for Reba McEntire, Enrique Iglesias, Brooks & Dunn, The Highwaymen and Garth Brooks. He directed Brooks' "Standing Outside the Fire" video and several of his concert specials, as well as Run-DMC's "Walk This Way" featuring Aerosmith. Small's death comes as Joel's early years are being revisited in and So It Goes, which chronicles the singer's journey from his pre-fame bands to his rise as one of the most successful recording artists of his generation.

Joel has 43 entries on the Billboard Hot 100, including 13 top 10 hits and three No. 1 singles - "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me," "Tell Her About It" and "We Didn't Start the Fire." He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, Billboard reported. Small is survived by his wife of more than 40 years, Jeanine, as well as a son and a daughter.

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