I'm not an alcoholic, says Joel

Singer Billy Joel told today of his battle with drink – but insisted he was not an alcoholic.

The Grammy winner said he checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic last year to “cool out” after drinking too much.

“I can abuse alcohol. If the demons get me, I’ll go on a bender,” he told US network NBC in an interview to be screened tonight.

“It’s happened to me before. That’s why I went into rehab. I was on a binge. I said ’This is stupid. I gotta stop’. And I went and I did stop.”

He told interviewer Katie Couric that he does not consider himself an alcoholic.

“If you drink too much, no matter who you are, whether you’re an alcoholic or not, you’re gonna do harm to yourself.”

In January Joel crashed his Mercedes into a tree outside New York, his second car accident in seven months.

His former wife, model Christie Brinkley, said she was concerned about the safety of their teenage daughter who had been a passenger in the car a few hours earlier.

But Joel, 54, said he had not been drinking before the accident.

“I would never put my daughter in any kind of danger like that ... And that’s really the truth of the matter.”