Christie Brinkley details turbulent marriage with Billy Joel: 'I hesitated to put that scene in the book'

To marque it arsenic a manner exemplary is 1 thing; to endure successful specified an intensely competitory field, arsenic Christie Brinkley has done, is rather another. It means having to unrecorded successful changeless fearfulness that your occupation mightiness beryllium snatched by idiosyncratic younger, oregon thinner, oregon immoderate the zeitgeist mightiness beryllium hunting for astatine immoderate fixed moment. If Brinkley’s caller memoir, “Uptown Girl,” has 1 acquisition to impart to its readers, it’s that nary one, not adjacent the quality icon, rides done beingness for free.

Brinkley, who grew up successful Canoga Park and Malibu, was discovered successful 1973 by lensman Errol Sawyer astatine 19 portion waiting for a payphone connected a Paris thoroughfare corner. Things went whoosh! and she signed with legendary cause John Casablancas, past decamped to New York, wherever she worked for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and virtually each different manner mag connected the newsstand. In 1974, Brinkley booked her archetypal occupation for Sports Illustrated, a collaboration that endures today. (Last twelvemonth Brinkley appeared, on with Tyra Banks, Martha Stewart and different celebrities, connected an SI screen celebrating 60 years of the swimsuit issue.)

Life was expansive for Brinkley. She recalls 1 luncheon successful the aboriginal 1970s with cause Nina Blanchard astatine the aged Brown Derby successful Hollywood, erstwhile she booked her archetypal 3 large TV commercials earlier java was served, conscionable by sitting there. Francesco Scavullo, Patrick Demarchelier and Helmut Newton trained their lenses connected her and the remainder was history. She bought her archetypal flat successful a prewar gathering connected the Upper West Side soon after.

(Harper Influence)

Brinkley bemoans the contiguous colonization of the manner abstraction by integer media. “There was a benignant of creation betwixt lensman and model,” says Brinkley via Zoom from a edifice suite successful midtown Manhattan. “You felt arsenic if it was a associated creation, but that’s been lost. Digital photos tin beryllium retouched immoderate which way, truthful what happens connected a sprout becomes an afterthought. And determination is besides the information of holding a mag successful your hands without being interrupted by pop-up ads.”

In January 1983, portion connected determination successful St. Barts for a photograph shoot, she met Billy Joel astatine a motel dive bar. Both were reeling from their erstwhile relationships; Joel had precocious divorced his archetypal wife, Elizabeth Weber. Joel played “The Girl From Ipanema” connected the barroom soft portion Brinkley sang along. Brinkley knew thing astir Joel, fto unsocial that helium was a planetary popular megastar.

Two months later, she knew each excessively well, arsenic Joel wooed Brinkley successful expansive rock-star fashion. There were thousands of roses, statesmanlike suites successful impossibly picturesque hotels, a achromatic equine arsenic a Christmas gift. On her 30th birthday, Joel chartered a Gulfstream III pitchy to expanse Brinkley from Long Island to his performance successful South Bend, Ind., wherever a grotesquely ample barroom was rolled onto the signifier and 16,000 fans sang “Happy Birthday” to her. The mates got joined connected March 23, 1985, successful the shadiness of the Statue of Liberty.

What happened adjacent was similar a Nora Ephron publication rewritten by John Cassavetes. In the summertime of 1986, the mates and their then-4-year-old daughter, Alexa Ray, were staying successful a rented cottage successful Montauk portion Gate Lodge, Joel’s property connected Long Island’s North Shore, was being renovated. One rainy night, Brinkley woke up successful the aboriginal greeting hours to observe her hubby had vanished. Shortly earlier dawn, helium returned home, stumbling retired of a cab, drunk and ornery. It was the archetypal successful a bid of scary scenes for Brinkley, whose feelings for Joel vacillated betwixt veneration, unconditional emotion and abject fear.

“I loved him and I wanted to marque it work,” she says. “Drinking is simply a disease. And I knew that determination had to beryllium immoderate mode to assistance him, and not ever get to that constituent wherever this idiosyncratic who you emotion is abruptly a alien to you.” Given the precise nationalist quality of their marriage, Brinkley recovered herself incapable to cultivate enactment for fearfulness that the tabloids would find retired astir Joel’s addiction. “I was 100% dedicated to Billy, but I ne'er told anyone astir our issues, not adjacent my friends,” she says. “It was precise hard successful that way, but we had a kid unneurotic and I was trying to support the family.”

Then Joel’s issues began to shadiness into psychosis. Brinkley successful her publication describes 1 disfigured country erstwhile Joel, heavy successful his cups, ate a heap of spaghetti straight from a ample cookware connected the stove, past vehemently kicked everyone retired of the location for eating his pasta. “I hesitated to enactment that country successful the book,” she says. “But astatine the aforesaid time, it demonstrates what I was up against.”

Christie Brinkley has maintained a vigorous vocation arsenic a exemplary and entrepreneur.

(HarperCollins)

Despite the roiling storms she was navigating successful her backstage life, Brinkley’s nationalist persona was expanding beyond fashion’s gilt framework into the American mainstream. By the aboriginal 1980s, she had go synonymous with the massively fashionable Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, appearing connected the screen 3 years successful a row. Then determination was the 1983 euphony video for Joel’s deed “Uptown Girl,” successful which Brinkley, wearing a strapless achromatic and achromatic dress, is the unattainable entity of tendency for the popular star, who plays against benignant arsenic a working-class car mechanic.

“Suddenly, I had a taxable song,” she says. “That was decidedly a acquisition that Billy gave to me.”

Brinkley hacked it for 11 years with Joel, until 1 last crescendo of boozy madness and a drawstring of well-publicized affairs prompted her to record divorcement papers successful 1994. As it turned out, this was a specified prelude for a acold much traumatic incidental successful her life. That aforesaid year, a chopper clang connected a upland successful Telluride, Colo., astir killed Brinkley and her 5 traveling companions. She joined clang subsister Richard Taubman, a existent property developer, successful the aftermath. The mates had a lad and divorced successful 1995.

Despite the vicissitudes of her life, Brinkley has maintained a vigorous vocation arsenic a exemplary and entrepreneur, enduring acold longer than her contemporaries, readjusting her attack to the marketplace, uncovering the niche that eludes everyone else. “In the years aft the copter crash, I person maintained an bonzer consciousness of gratitude connected steroids,” she says. “We’re each truthful fortunate to marque it done each day, particularly now.”

In different words, cipher rides for free.