The night Christie Brinkley met Billy Joel, in a dive bar in Barts, is the stuff of rock ‘n’ roll legend.
But what the supermodel has rarely discussed is that as he wooed her from the out-of-tune piano, she had to compete with two other famously beautiful and far younger women for his attention.
In her new memoir, Uptown Girl, she reveals she was on the exclusive Caribbean island for a magazine shoot in January 1983 – fresh out of a breakup with uber-wealthy Olivier Chandon de Brailles, heir to the Moët-Chandon Champagne fortune.
Despite feeling ‘sadder and lonelier than I had in a long time,’ the 27-year-old still accepted an invitation to a local bar where Billy Joel was said to be drinking.
”Billy who?’ I asked, unfamiliar with the name,’ she writes.
But, while she was completely unaware of his stardom – Joel already had global hits including Piano Man, New York State of Mind, and Honesty under his belt – she was immediately disarmed by his self-deprecating charm.
Brinkley met Joel at a dive bar in St Barts in 1983 – she was fresh out of a break-up and ‘feeling sadder and lonelier than I had in a long time’
She reveals she was on the exclusive Caribbean island for a magazine shoot (photographed for Sports Illustrated 1983 calendar)
Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel on the night they met – at the piano in a dive bar
‘The man was sunburned to a crisp, his face the same color as cranberries and unctuous with oil, which he’d undoubtedly slathered on to sooth the burn,’ she writes.
In this state, he looked nothing like a rock star – though he hoped to ‘work some magic’ on her as he walked over to the piano.
‘But Billy didn’t touch the keys,’ she writes. ‘Instead, he looked directly at me and patted the bench next to him, suggesting I join him there, which I did, scooching beside him on the narrow seat.
”What do you want to hear?’ he asked, flashing me a sly smile.
”The Girl From Ipanema!’ I cried, naming my favorite song, which I had just learned to sing in Portuguese – and which surely wasn’t what he expected, indisputably disappointing the crowd, too.’
She went on to sing the classic, accompanied by Joel on the piano.
But she wasn’t the only woman vying for the star’s attention that night.
‘After I finished singing,’ continues Brinkley in the book, ‘a tall, pretty girl with rich cafe-au-lait skin approached the piano and, looking at Billy, announced that she could sing, too.
Joel asked Brinkley to be on the line when he called Elle Macpherson to tell her that he wanted to be exclusive with her (photographed: an early Polaroid selfie)
‘A tall, pretty girl with rich cafe-au-lait skin approached the piano and, looking at Billy, announced that she could sing, too’
That woman turned out to be a young Whitney Houston, who was on the cusp of signing a major record deal
‘Go away, kid – I’m trying to work my magic here, Billy thought, he told me later, but always the consummate gentleman, he simply nodded and started playing what she asked him to, which was Respect by Aretha Franklin.
‘The young woman, it turned out, was Whitney Houston, a 19-year-old model from New Jersey who, in January 1983, was in St Barts for a shoot and, one month later, would sign a worldwide record deal that put her on the path to becoming ‘the voice’ and one of the greatest singers in music history.’
While Houston was belting out the karaoke classic, yet another stunning 19-year-old love rival walked into the bar.
‘At first, Elle Macpherson draped her beautiful body over the back of a chair,’ writes Brinkley, ‘then eventually, right across the piano, making eyes at Billy.’
Brinkley soon left the crowded bar, and didn’t get together with Joel on that trip – in fact, after they were married two years later, they would joke that they both went home with the wrong people; Joel with Macpherson and Brinkley with a young sailing captain called Clay.
But when they did finally start dating, ‘he asked me to be on the line when he called Elle Macpherson to tell her that he wanted to be exclusive with me.’
The celebrity couple were married for nine years, and had one daughter, Alexa Ray. However, Joel’s drinking – and rumors of his affairs (which he has always denied) – took their toll, and they separated in early 1994.
That April, still in love and hoping that absence might make the heart grow fonder on her husband’s side, Brinkley decided to take a trip heli-skiing in Colorado.
It was a decision that almost cost her life: the helicopter she was in crashed at 12,000 feet.
‘The helicopter smacked into the granite mountain with such terrible speed and force that it split in two,’ she writes in the book.
‘Trapped inside the shattered cabin, the six of us began to bounce violently across the saddle, glass, metal, and other debris flying everywhere, as we tumbled like bodies in a washing machine set to the spin cycle, with such centrifugal force that it sucked off my watch.’
‘At first, Elle Macpherson draped her beautiful body over the back of a chair,’ writes Brinkley, ‘then eventually, right across the piano, making eyes at Billy’
Joel and Brinkley were married for nine years, and she famously starred in his Uptown Girl video
The couple had a daughter together, Alexa Rae (photographed in Paris, 1987)
Still in love and hoping that absence might make the heart grow fonder on her husband’s side, Brinkley decided to take a trip heli-skiing in Colorado (photographed with Joel in the mid 80s)
Miraculously, no one died in the terrifying smash – a fact she puts down to the small vial containing sacred chimayo soil that she’d picked up two weeks before and wore on a necklace.
The pueblo Indians believe it protects anyone who touches it – and while the charm flew off in the crash, it was found later among the helicopter wreckage.
Lying in a Colorado hospital – covered in painful contusions but, astonishingly, with no broken bones – she was stunned to see Billy Joel come to her rescue, ‘just like a knight in shining armor.’
‘In that moment I thought my prince had finally come to rescue me, and I waited for Billy to say the words I so badly wanted to hear: ‘I almost lost you, I can’t live without you, I love you.”
He swept her off on to a private plane, to get her back to Long Island.
But, while drifting in and out of drug-induced unconsciousness, she overheard what felt like the ultimate betrayal.
‘I think Billy must have thought I was asleep when he made a phone call,’ she writes, ‘but I was very much awake when I heard him say the words I didn’t ever want to hear.’
‘No, don’t worry, I’m not going back to her,’ he allegedly said to the person on the other line. ‘I just need to see her through this.’
‘And just like that,’ she writes, ‘the dream broke apart like debris. I knew then that our separation was real and that while I had wanted to believe he couldn’t live without me, apparently he could.’
Uptown Girl by Christie Brinkley is published by Harper Influence
