US News

‘DRUMMED OUT’ BY THE PIANO MAN

Billy Joel hasn’t paid his bills for the longest time, alleges the Piano Man’s former drummer and friend who is suing the rocker for what could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in overdue royalties.

While the famed Long Island singer rakes in the dough touring with Elton John this summer, Liberty DeVitto, 58, of Brooklyn works as a studio musician and leads drum clinics to put food on the table.

“Everybody always assumes that you make a lot of money because you worked with Billy Joel,” DeVitto told The Post. “It didn’t happen that way.”

DeVitto, a married father of three who lives in a basement apartment near Prospect Park, was Joel’s drummer from 1975 to 2005 and, he claims, a creative force on his biggest albums.

He was shocked when he was unceremoniously and abruptly booted from the band.

“People get fired, they get severance or insurance for a certain period of time. I didn’t even get a phone call. It was cold,” he said.

The two met in the 1970s, when Joel was looking for a “New York-style” drummer who could rock the studio and the concert stage, DeVitto recalled. They became such good pals that DeVitto was in the bridal party at Joel’s 1985 wedding to “Uptown Girl” Christie Brinkley, he said.

By the time Joel, now 60, wed the 30-years-younger Katie Lee in 2004, things were different.

“I found out when I wasn’t invited to the wedding,” DeVitto said. “That’s when it was like, ‘Holy s—, I’m not that guy anymore.’ ”

The rift may have opened when he tried to confront Joel about his alcohol abuse. The singer checked himself into rehab in 2005.

“I thought I could say things to him as a friend,” DeVitto said.

DeVitto doesn’t have a songwriter’s credit but insists he was a major part of a collaborative creative process between Joel and his musicians.

“If Billy sang ‘Only the Good Die Young’ like he wanted to, it would have been a reggae song,” DeVitto said.

DeVitto and his lawyer — who filed the suit against Joel and Sony Music last Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court — claim they don’t know how much he is owed because it has been about 10 years since they’ve gotten an accounting of the singer’s sales. Joel’s US sales alone exceed 110 million albums in his career.

“It’s all subject to an audit,” said lawyer Brian Gucciardo. “We’re talking a long period of time and worldwide sales.”

Joel would not comment on the suit. Sony Music did not respond to a message.

But it’s “a matter of trust” for DeVitto.

“I think he’s insensitive to other people,” DeVitto said of Joel, a six-time Grammy winner with 33 Top 40 hits.

“This is what I would tell Billy: ‘If you only had talked to me . . . this probably never would have happened.’ ”

Showing off an original poster from Joel’s 1977 Carnegie Hall concert, DeVitto revealed his conflicted feelings about Joel.

“I can’t hang it in my house, but I keep it because I was actually there,” he said, adding that he doesn’t display the large poster “because I don’t want to see his face.”

kboniello@nypost.com