A 20-minute documentary, 1971: Billy Joel's Lost Interview, pairs a genuine radio interview from December 1971 with AI-generated pictures of the people in it. It was chosen to open the Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame's music documentary festival on September 25.
The sound is original: a quarter-inch reel of a show recorded at C.W. Post's WCWP station soon after Joel's first solo album, Cold Spring Harbor. The images are new, with a 22-year-old Joel, his manager Irwin Mazur and interviewer Ed Mann rebuilt using AI. Adam Ripp directed and Mann produced; citing People, the outlet says Joel himself had no part in it.
The festival's director acknowledged that AI in entertainment divides opinion but presented the film as a careful use of it to keep music history alive. Ripp calls the tape the earliest known recorded interview with Joel, and Mann said the recreation matched the young man he remembered.
Sources · 1