In the space of six days last week, Billy Idol sang his classic “Rebel Yell” with Carrie Underwood on TV’s “American Idol,” popped out for a surprise performance of “Eyes Without a Face” with Sombr at the Coachella festival and was named a member of the Class of 2026 set to be inducted later this year into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“Keeping busy,” the singer said — blond hair still spiky, upper lip temporarily unsnarled — at his home in the Hollywood Hills during a break from all the action.
Idol, 70, emerged as part of London’s seething mid-’70s punk scene; after his stint fronting Generation X, he went solo and became one of the biggest rock acts of the MTV era with hits like “White Wedding” and “Dancing With Myself.” Somehow, he’s never quite gone out of style since then: He played the Kia Forum and Madison Square Garden just last year, while “Eyes Without a Face,” the dreamy-sinister ballad that became Idol’s first Top 10 pop hit in 1984, has taken up a seemingly permanent place on TikTok and Instagram.
“Billy is such a legend,” says 20-year-old Sombr, who calls “Eyes” one of his all-time favorite songs. “He’s managed to blur the lines between rock and pop in such a timeless way. His songs are a huge inspiration to me.”
Idol tells his story — including the details of a debilitating drug addiction — in a new documentary, “Billy Idol Should Be Dead”; this summer he’ll take his songs back on the road for a tour scheduled to stop for a week at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.
With some questions to ask about his endurance, I sat down with the singer and his longtime guitarist and co-songwriter, Steve Stevens, in Idol’s dimly lighted living room, where books and VHS tapes lined one wall and a humidifier hummed quietly in the background. We ended up talking about shirtlessness, Geese and Idol’s complicated relationship with John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten), whose old Sex Pistols bandmates Steve Jones and Paul Cook team up now and then with Idol in a group called — what else? — Generation Sex.
Why do you reckon “Eyes Without a Face” is having a moment?
Steve Stevens: The lyrics, the melody, a bit of crazy guitar — it’s got everything a great Billy Idol song should have.
Did doing a ballad at that time feel like a risk?
Billy Idol: Until we got the guitar break, yeah. Then you had both sides: the croon and the explosion. With Keith Forsey’s production, as well, we avoided some traps — very obvious sound effects that got other bands trapped in an ’80s world.
Stevens: Billy was listening to a lot of reggae. I remember you saying the bass had to be like a Lee “Scatch” Perry thing. All of these bass players would come in and it would be “Next!” until we found —
Idol: Sal Cuevas. He was playing for the “Dreamgirls” show, and finally somebody got it right.
What inspired the image in the title?
Idol: I was just trying not to write an obvious love song. It’s the opposite of what a lot of other ’80s songs were like. Instead of “True Colors,” it was: This is the end of the world — and it’s getting worse.
You talk in the documentary about how the big idea at the outset of your solo career was fusing rock and dance music.
Idol: Rock ’n’ roll was always dance music — music to f— to, really. That’s what rock ’n’ roll meant — it was a euphemism for sex. I was in love with someone, Perri Lister, and I was having a lot of sex that was opening my mind beyond just being a teenager.
Steve, how did you think about guitars fitting into a dance groove?
Stevens: It was a great opportunity to do something new. By the time Billy and I met, it was the era of the California shredders — Eddie Van Halen and then a lot of bad Eddie Van Halen copies. But I never was one of those guitar players who lived for the solo. With Billy, if you’re gonna have a guitar solo, have a reason to do it.
John Sykes from the Rock Hall says in the doc, Billy, that you always understood the importance of the visual. Why did you?
Idol: Growing up, watching the Beatles and the Stones and Bowie later on, we learned from what they were doing. “A Hard Day’s Night,” they’re running and jumping and going crazy in a field — it showed that you don’t just have to be standing there playing your instruments. In my case, I had a book about horror films, and it had the Boris Karloff one where he’s a priest or something — he’s got a black altar with white crosses. And I just thought: I’m gonna take that for “White Wedding.”
Did you feel comfortable in the role of a sex symbol in those early MTV days?
Idol: I was doing it a bit deliberately — the shirt off, showing my body, then later really working out and making it look great once I got beyond the drugs. I was trying to put a sexy element into punk because that’s one thing that was missing from it. In England, Johnny Rotten was saying that sex is just a bunch of squelching noises — a kind of revulsion. But I was having a sexual time, and I wanted to project that.
Steve, did being looked at come naturally to you?
Stevens: I mean, you can’t stand next to Billy Idol onstage in a flannel shirt.
Who do you see as a younger musician carrying on what you guys do? Yungblud comes to mind.
Idol: He always reminds me a little bit of me. Moves about more than I did — one day he’ll realize he can stand occasionally.
I can’t recall ever seeing him wear a shirt.
Idol: He’s doing the no-shirt the whole night. I used to take it off for “Rebel Yell.”
Billy Idol, right, and his longtime guitarist, Steve Stevens.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
You can take the success of a Yungblud or a Sombr as a sign that rock is thriving in 2026.
Idol: I saw that band Geese the other day — they’re not playing to the lowest common denominator at all. They’re doing their own thing, as if they don’t care what the audience wants, and the audience is super connecting. They’re singing all the words — I couldn’t even hear half the words.
What motivated you to go see Geese?
Idol: I’d been hearing about them but hadn’t seen them. Then we were in Paris for an Ann Demeulemeester show — I was gonna walk in it — and they were playing. Their success is a good sign because it shows that you don’t have to be up there just trying to copy what’s on the charts.
In the doc you talk about how Generation X was born out of a sense that young people had no future in the U.K.
Idol: We were being told that — that’s why Johnny sang it [in the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”].
Young people in America now describe a similar feeling here.
Idol: I think Americans are suffering in the same way the British were suffering in the ’70s and ’80s. People are realizing that the [financial] crash that happened in 2008, maybe that was the end of the American empire. Also: Discourse is gone, and people are just entrenched — they’re looking for something and not exactly finding it. It could be why rock ’n’ roll is coming back.
You in touch with John Lydon at all these days?
Idol: We played a festival together in England last year, so I saw him — I didn’t talk to him but I did go and watch Public Image. I know he didn’t think it was right when I did the Generation Sex thing because he didn’t like the idea of me singing Sex Pistols songs. But I was just trying to find a way for Jonesy and Cookie to play — we weren’t thinking about trying to usurp Johnny or anything like that. Jonesy and Cookie wanted to go and play to the fans, and now they’re having a great time [touring] with Frank Carter. That could be Johnny — it should be Johnny. But he doesn’t want to do it.
Old grievances either recede or get stronger with age.
Idol: Look at Pink Floyd: David Gilmour and Roger Waters can’t stand being in the same room, let alone make music. A lot of things are going on like that, where you see old bands sue each other or whatever. It’s a shame when they were so together at one point.
What could push one of you to sue the other?
Stevens: We’re not that kind of people. And we don’t have that kind of people around us either.
At the height of Billy’s addiction, Steve, did you ever resent him for endangering your career?
Stevens: I was as guilty as he was — I was no angel.
Last thing: Do you think the Rock Hall has properly recognized punk?
Idol: They did the MC5 year before last. And Iggy [Pop] is in. But the New York Dolls still aren’t, and there’s a lot of other punk rock groups that haven’t been thought about at all.
The Sex Pistols famously didn’t show up for their induction.
Idol: Axl [Rose] too. I heard a lot of negative things about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but when we were there for the Ozzy [Osbourne] induction [in 2024], I didn’t feel that at all. Running into everybody backstage, it was a really fun night. We even hung out with Kool & the Gang — Kool was getting loaded, and he’s like 80 years old.
Stevens: I think where the hall is currently is very different from its initial inception. You get a lot of people saying, “Well, they’re not rock ’n’ roll” — inducting Salt-N-Pepa, for example. But I think that’s a good thing.
Someone described it to me by saying the nominating committee went from the Rolling Stone crew to the MTV crew. Did you feel embraced by that older Rolling Stone establishment?
Idol: Well, they did put me on the cover. I just think people were so invested in the ’60s and ’70s that they couldn’t believe anything good was gonna happen in the ’80s.
More to Read
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com
