The Piano Man has hit a bad note.
Singer Billy Joel is canceling his $3 million memoir, “The Book of Joel,” a little more than two months before it was slated to hit bookshelves.
Joel, 61, told the Associated Press that the decision to cancel was his and that it took writing the book for him to realize that he’s not interested in talking about the past. Joel said he preferred to let his music chronicle the ups and downs of his life.
Three years ago, Joel was said to have snagged an estimated $3 million advance from Harper Collins (which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp.). The tome was being billed as an “emotional ride” that would tell about everything from Joel’s battles with drugs and alcohol to the bust-up of his marriage to Christie Brinkley.
This Joel bio was expected to be one of Harper’s big summer books, a 368-page read with a first printing in excess of 250,000 copies. Fred Schruers, a celebrity profiler who once worked at Rolling Stone, was the ghost writer and shared credit on the cover as a co-author.
Joel, who has won six Grammy Awards and whose hits, including “Uptown Girl,” “Piano Man” and “Movin’ Out,” have become anthems for a generation, has had a career of high and low notes. He famously played the farewell concert at a sold-out Shea Stadium in July 2008. and toured with Elton John in 2010. But he also experienced a series of car crashes near his East End home on Long Island, and alcohol played a role in several of them.
In a Rolling Stone interview in February, longtime friend Elton John said Joel’s substance abuse problems often interfered with the tour. He claimed that Joel has never fully confronted his problem and was still wrestling with his demons. John labeled Joel’s stints in rehabilitation clinics as “rehab light.”
One music industry source speculated that Joel’s failure to confront his history may have undermined the memoir. “He never fully confronted the 800-lb. gorilla in the room, There needs to be a lot of dish in rock memoirs,” the source said.
Keith Richards’ long-delayed memoir rocked to the top of bestseller lists last year in part because of its frank, no holds barred look inside his drug-addled past.
Another theory is that Joel did not like the way the finished product was turning out and soured on publishing it. Schruers would not comment.
Presumably, Schruers would have to be paid, but Joel, who would have collected somewhere around $2 million of the estimated $3 million advance, would be expected to refund the money he received from the publisher.
The Joel book was signed by Harper Collins Executive Editor David Hirshey, and represented by super agent Amanda “Binky” Urban at ICM. Neither could be reached for comment.
It’s not the first time Joel has scrapped a book project. Joel decided against doing a book on classical music that he was to have written for the Riverhead imprint of Penguin several years ago.
Hearst board
The board of directors of Hearst Corp. received three new members yesterday, boosting its total to 22.
One of them, David Carey, 50, the president of the magazine group, is seen as the direct replacement for Cathie Black. Carey replaced Black but she remained on the board as the magazine group’s titular chairperson until she resigned to become Mike Bloomberg’s Chancellor of Education. Carey’s arrival on the board comes less than a year after his June 2010 return to Hearst from Condé Nast.
The other new members include Michael Clinton, 57, who has worked at Hearst since 2001, most recently as the president of marketing and publishing, and Duncan Edwards, 47, president and CEO of Hearst Magazines International.
The appointments make the executives virtually made men.
Unlike most major corporations, where executives vanish when given the gold watch upon retirement, Hearst executives tend to hang around for life – except for the odd manager given a boot out the door, which happens about every decade or so.
Past magazine group president Gil Maurer, for instance, is still on the board, even though he last headed magazines in the early 1990s. Frank Bennack, 78, the current Hearst Corp. CEO, had relinquished the CEO job in 2002, but stayed on the board. He is close to the Hearst family and returned to the top job in 2008 when Victor Ganzi got the boot. Ganzi was also booted off the board of directors.
Under a complicated will left behind by com pany founder William Randolph Hearst, Hearst directors are elected by the Hearst Family Trust, but the business has to be controlled by non-family members under the ironclad will. And the trust eventually dissolves upon the death of the last Hearst grandchild who was living when William Randolph Hearst was still alive. kkelly@nypost.com