Billy Joel has announced the death of his longtime collaborator and friend, Jon Small, on social media.
“RIP Jon Small,” Joel, 77, captioned the post, featuring a black-and-white photo of the musicians in their youth.
A cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
Small and Joel were first bandmates in the Sixties rock band The Hassles, in which Small was the drummer.
The pair went on to form hard rock duo Attila, releasing their eponymous album in 1970.
However, their creative partnership ended that year after Joel had an affair with Small’s wife, Elizabeth Weber.
Small and Joel’s friendship, as well as the fallout from the affair, was recently explored in the 2025 documentary Billy Joel: 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 film. “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.”
“I felt very, very guilty about it. They had a child. I felt like a homewrecker,” Joel said. “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.”
The episode took such a heavy toll on Joel that he attempted suicide twice. After his second attempt, it was Small who found him and rushed him to the hospital.
“Even though our friendship had blown up, Jon saved my life,” the “Vienna” singer said.
Small added in the documentary, “He never really said anything to me; 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.”
Joel married Weber in 1973, and she went on to become his manager. The pair divorced in 1982, but her influence on his early career remains widely acknowledged.
Joel and Small eventually reconciled in the 1980s, with Small helping make the singer’s concert films, Live From Long Island and Live at Shea Stadium, and serving as producer on his music videos for “Uptown Girl,” “Keeping the Faith,” and “Tell Her About It.”
Small was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992 for directing Joel’s Live at Yankee Stadium concert film, and was also known for his work with Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks, Blake Shelton and more.
In 2025, Small was inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame as a member of the Hassles.
“It’s funny, whenever something is said about Billy, I joke about it, I’m always dragged into it. I can’t get away from this guy,” he said in a 2025 episode of the Glass Houses podcast. “He is really a great, great guy.”
