''Well, he's right,'' Christgau says. ''He's not good enough. He and Don Henley are really notable for how resentful they are about their lack of respect. You don't catch Celine Dion complaining about a lack of critical respect, and she's a lot worse than Billy Joel. But she doesn't care. Billy Joel cares deeply about that respect, and he wants it bad.''

Perhaps as a response to three decades of slights, Joel made a classical album in 2001 called ''Fantasies and Delusions: Music for Solo Piano.'' Influenced by Chopin and credited as the work of ''William Joel,'' ''Fantasies and Delusions'' sold remarkably well, topping the classical charts for months -- though arguably, Joel could smash a piano with a ball-peen hammer for 75 minutes and release it as a live album, and it would still sell remarkably well. But the record -- and the college lecture tour he undertook to accompany it -- didn't reinvent Joel at all. It just convinced the Robert Christgaus of the world that they were right all along.

In 1970, joel tried to commit suicide by chugging half a bottle of furniture polish. The conventional wisdom has always been that this attempt stemmed from the fact that his career was floundering. (His attempt at a psychedelic heavy-metal band -- an ill-fated two-piece called Attila -- had just imploded.) In truth, Joel says, it was over problems in his relationship with Elizabeth Weber, the woman who would become his first wife. ''I was absolutely devastated,'' he recalls. ''I couldn't bring anything to the relationship. That was the driving force behind my suicide attempt.''

Weber is the subject of one of Joel's most famous songs, ''Just the Way You Are.'' It's a love letter that says everything anyone ever wanted to hear: You're not flawless, but you're still what I want. He tells Weber not to try ''some new fashion'' or dye her hair blond or work on being witty. It's a criticism of perfection, but in the best possible way; it's like Joel is saying that he loves Weber because she's not perfect, and that he could never leave her in times of trouble.

The irony, of course, is that Joel and Weber divorced five years after ''Just the Way You Are'' won a Grammy for ''Song of the Year.'' Some would say this contradiction cheapens the song and makes it irrelevant. I'd argue that the opposite is true; the fact that Joel got divorced from the woman he wrote this song about makes it his single greatest achievement. It's the clearest example of why Joel's love songs resonate with so many people: he expresses absolute conviction in moments of wholly misguided affection. This is further validated when he admits -- just 40 minutes after telling me about his suicide attempt -- that he was never really in love with Weber at all, even on the night he tried to kill himself. He thought he was in love, but he wasn't.

''I shouldn't have gotten married,'' he says of his union with Weber. ''She said we either had to get married or our relationship was over, so I said, 'O.K.' I was 24. I was too young to get married, although it ended up lasting eight years. Was I really in love? I don't think so. But when I married Christie, I really wanted to get married and I really wanted to have kids.''

''Christie'' is Christie Brinkley, the gangly sex kitten Joel married in 1985 and lionized in the hit single ''Uptown Girl.'' Brinkley agreed to be interviewed for this article, only to change her mind at the last possible moment. She is the mother of Joel's 16-year-old daughter, Alexa, and is generally perceived to be the love of his life -- although he insists that his six-year relationship with Carolyn Beegan in the 1990's and his more recent courtship of Trish Bergin, a TV news anchor, were almost as deep. In fact, tabloid speculation was that Joel's breakup with Bergin was the reason he spent 10 days in alcohol rehab this summer, a rumor Joel confirms, saying that Bergin was the reason he ''started drinking all that wine.''