Billy Joel Mourns Longtime Friend and Collaborator Jon Small
Music video director and producer Jon Small has died, according to a brief Instagram post from longtime friend and collaborator Billy Joel. As reported by NME, a funeral service is scheduled for Wednesday, September 9, in Great Neck, New York. No cause of death has been announced.
Small and Joel first crossed paths as teenagers in New York in the 1960s, launching a decades-long relationship that moved from garage bands to MTV-era music videos.
From the Hassles to Attila
The two met as teens and became bandmates in the Hassles, with Small on drums, releasing two albums in the late 1960s. After the group split, Joel and Small formed the hard-rock duo Attila, putting out one self-titled album in 1970 before disbanding the following year.
The breakup followed a personal rupture: Joel began a relationship with Small's then-wife, Elizabeth Weber. The episode is recounted in detail by all three in the 2025 HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes, in which Small recalls Joel telling him, "I'm in love with your wife" — a confession he says was devastating, since the two were best friends.
Joel has said in the documentary that he felt "very, very guilty," comparing what happened to breaking up someone else's family. The documentary also reveals that, overwhelmed by guilt, Joel drank furniture polish in a suicide attempt, and it was Small who drove him to the hospital. That experience later became the inspiration for "Tomorrow Is Today" on Joel's 1971 debut solo album, Cold Spring Harbor. Joel and Weber married in 1973 and divorced in 1982.
An Early Music Video Pioneer of the MTV Era
Small and Joel later reconciled and collaborated repeatedly on music videos, including "Uptown Girl," "Keeping the Faith," and "Tell Her About It." As one of the earliest music video directors and producers of the MTV era, Small also shot videos for artists including Whitney Houston, Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Run-DMC, and Aerosmith, including Run-DMC and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way."
Tribute posts on social media also cited his collaborations with Sting, Meat Loaf, and Taylor Swift, as well as his induction into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. Small was nominated for a Grammy in the 1990s for Joel's Live at Yankee Stadium video, and spent his later career focused mainly on concert film production. A friend's Facebook tribute noted that his influence on pop music from behind the camera extended "far beyond just one artist."