Billy Joel needs tough love, Elton John says

Billy Joel responded good-naturedly Wednesday to "tough love" comments that his friend and concert-tour colleague Elton John made in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

"I've worked with Elton for such a long time and I've enjoyed our relationship too much to let something as random as these comments change my affection for him," Joel, 61, said in a statement through his publicist, Claire Mercuri. "Elton is just being Elton."

In interview segments released from the issue being published Friday, John, 63, told interviewer Austin Scaggs, "I always say, 'Billy, can't you write another song?' It's either fear or laziness. It upsets me. Billy's a conundrum. We've had so many canceled tours because of illnesses and various other things, alcoholism."

John also addressed Joel's well-publicized attempts at overcoming alcohol abuse. "He's going to hate me for this, but every time he goes to rehab they've been light," John said. "When I went to rehab, I had to clean the floors. He goes to rehab where they have TVs. I love you, Billy, and this is tough love."

John has made such comments before, telling reporters in a satellite-TV interview last February that he was "bitterly disappointed" that the summer leg of their joint "Face 2 Face" concert tour had been canceled. "I'm heartbroken and very cut-up," John said then. "It's not my decision, it's Billy's decision."

Joel responded in Rolling Stone shortly afterward, saying that leg was never booked.

"The truth is, there's nothing going on. I had made up my mind a long time ago that I wasn't going to work this year," Joel said at the time. "When Elton did that interview, he'd just found out from his booking agent that I wasn't going to be working this summer, and therefore Elton's quote puts a spin on it that I'd changed my mind all of a sudden, or suddenly decided to cancel the tour, which is nonsense."