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Billy Idol | Dare to Dream

Via Issue 198, Can't Let Go

Written by

Hannah Bhuiya

Photographed by

Ian Morrison

Styled by

Chandra Dyani Chavez

No items found.
CELINE sweater. NICOLINA ROYALE choker. Talent’s own earrings and ring.

“A disapproving chemistry teacher once wrote on my report card, “William is idle!” in giant block letters, I-D-L-E…We’ll see about that, I thought.”

William Michael Albert Broad, AKA Billy Idol, in his memoir, Dancing With Myself, 2014. 

“I came here because I make music for the sheer hell of it. I like music. I think it’s fun. I want records to mean a little bit more just than a little poxy bit of cardboard, you know? A bit of plastic. When you put it on your turntable man, it gets to your soul. It gets to mine.”

Billy Idol promoting “Rebel Yell,” interviewed by Karyn Hay on New Zealand Television, 1984. 

“The shadows dance upon the wall, by the still dancing fire-flames, made; and now they slumber moveless all![...] I dream thee with mine eyes, and at my heart I feel thee!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “A Day-Dream,” written circa 1807. 

What would a BILLY IDOL biopic look like? START in LA, of course, a hand-held camera rocking through the city at night: Billy astride the SUNSET TOWER and running out of NED’S LIQUOR, a video film crew at his heels. On his shining chrome beast, a Harley-Davidson Wide Glide, racing along Sunset Boulevard past the Chateau Marmont. John Belushi being wheeled out in a bodybag with Idol looking down from his trashed hotel suite, naked. A brazen MTV montage, fires, and hooded priests and girlfriends strapped to crucifixes. A recording studio turned into a sex club. FLASHBACKS to grey suburban England, writhing with repression and angst. Kids cutting up their clothes, safety pins, and non-safety razors. And then all those years living it up in NEW YORK. The glowing power tower of the Empire State Building, grimy gutter puddles splashed by limousine wheels. A Rebel Yell becomes a primal scream. Back to LA: Billy guns his motorcycle through a stop sign, smashes into a truck on Fountain Ave. A near-death experience on the roadside. Just before passing out, he makes sure a passerby knows he’s got health  insurance: “Take me to Cedars-Sinai.” A hospital bed, a leg crushed and almost severed below the knee. ZOOM IN. A face in pain, then calmed by hardcore anesthesia. Pull back, out of the anodyne white room and over LA, all palm trees and glittering mirrored buildings. CUT. What a wild ride that would be.

ANN DEMEULEMEESTER top and pants. NICOLINA ROYALE necklaces. BOTTEGA VENETA shoes. Talent’s own rings.

But it didn’t stop there. Not at all. These dramatic episodes are all gleaned from Idol’s 2014 autobiography, Dancing With Myself, a New York Times bestseller. Because Idol, now 69, has lived a truly Charmed Life, aptly the title of his 1990 album he was recording at the time of his almost fatal accident. Erudite as well as outrageous, he wrote the book himself, in which he details his philosophy, which he describes as “the credo of self-discovery through self-destruction.” This is a brand of jubilant, sexy nihilism that he’s made all his own. Because Billy Idol is an icon. The crush object of multiple generations, he’s the British punk that American Pop adopted. A nice boy from the suburbs, finding punk (and peroxide) changed his life. “With a record collection and a mirrored reflection,” he’s always been playful, provocative, but he’s serious about everything that matters. A career defined by ‘consistency’ and ‘longevity’ was perhaps not what anyone would have imagined for him starting out, including himself. From being a kid carrying a plastic bag full of clothes to play in dive bars, with nothing to his name but his attitude, he’s emerged as no caricature but a true classic. In 2021, he rocked Lollapalooza with Miley Cyrus, looking the same as always: spiked hair, black leather, chains. (Their co-written track “Night crawling” appears on her Plastic Hearts album.) Cos the kids know he’s still got that thing—that perpetual performance swagger that broke him out, and breaks through each gig. 

SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO jacket.NICOLINA ROYALE choker. Talent’s own earring.

Today, no longer caught up in a whirling vortex of chemicals or casual entanglements, Billy Idol wakes up bright and early (not just when he’s still awake from the night before). And so do I. Moments later, ‘Billy Idol is entering the chat.’ Billy Idol and Zoom, two nouns I’d never thought I would put in a sentence together. He’s prompt and present and ready to take us on a ride through his historic new album, DREAM INTO IT, which dropped April 25th, 2025, from Dark Horse Records. So Let’s Go!

SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO jacket.NICOLINA ROYALE choker. Talent’s own earring.

Good morning to you, Mr. Idol. Or Billy, or as you prefer?

Billy is fantastic.

So we’re here to get into your brand new album, Dream Into It. Would you say you’re at that point in your career now where you’re reminiscing on it all?

Well, we’ve been making a documentary for the last few years, since 2019. We kept getting interrupted by the Coronavirus, which wasn’t such a bad thing in the end because we were able to improve it. But [the documentary] made me realize that I’ve been doing this for 50 years. And that I’m in a position where I can really see “the landscape of my life” and talk about me in the past, me today, and kind of [myself] in the future as well. It’s not just about the past; it’s about all of those three things. It’s just as much about me today as it is about me reflecting back.

I started to write about the different eras of my life, and then we realized at the end of the album that I could actually sequence it in that order. In the old days, you used to sequence an album with the hit song first and the second single second. But with Dream Into It, I thought, ‘No, I can sequence the album in order to follow the pattern of my life.’ This process began by bouncing off what we were doing for the documentary, which isn’t such a bad way to go about writing songs; life experience is the best thing to write songs from.

ANN DEMEULEMEESTER vest and tank top. JOHN ELLIOTT pants. BALENCIAGA boots. CHILDE sunglasses. NICOLINA ROYALE necklaces and bracelets. Talent’s own ring.

Ok, so the track listing is chronological. I can see that now. You begin with “back when I knew hunger,” and then the title line comes in with, All I knew was to dream into it. And then in the next track, “77,” you evoke the time of being in London when everything was popping off, politically and creatively. Would you tell me a bit about that time in your life?

“Dream Into It” is a song that really covers my whole life, and it’s bookended with “Still Dancing,” which also tells the story of my life but also proclaims, “I’m not giving up. No, we’re gonna keep on rocking till we drop. That’s what we’re gonna do.” On “77,” Avril Lavigne actually sings a version with me that will be a single. The first verse becomes more about today’s outsiders—the kids at school who don’t fit in with the cliques there. They are like we were in 1977; feeling the same, looking out for like-minded people, “This is your time, this is your shot,” sort of thing. It all got me thinking how things are not so different today in America from what it was like in England in the 70s. England’s always been, in a sense, a microcosm for what happens in America 30 years later, you know? There, people were very, very polarized between conservative and liberal, the unions were fighting the government, and then other people were taking exception to the immigrants. It had been going on since the late 60s, with Enoch Powell and his “Rivers of Blood” speech. Even the Beatles wrote “Get Back” [as a satire] then because that was a headline. As in, “Why don’t they get back to where they belong?” It just made me think, “Wow, that’s what’s going on in America today.” So I thought I could sing about that. And then we both came together on the chorus, where it’s about these same things happening. Voltaire said something like, “It’s not history that repeats; it’s man who repeats it,” you know?

ACNE STUDIOS sweater. NICOLINA ROYALE necklaces. Talent’s own earrings.

Absolutely. [I later check up on the quote from the incendiary Enlightenment philosopher and it comes up as: “History never repeats itself, but man always does,”— Billy knows his stuff.]

That was reflected in the sort of warfare that went on between the youth groups. You had the skinheads, who were kind of Fascists and right wing and National Front, and they hated us punks as we were more inclusive of the immigrants and the oddballs in society. Then, the Teddy Boys just didn’t like the fact we were wearing some of the same clothes they did, just not “correctly.” But the gear all came from Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die [Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s World’s End concept store]. It was a rockabilly shop originally, you know, before it became “Sex.” And originally, they sold stuff to the Teds too. You were politically aligned with the look you wore. There was this warfare between the young people; they would meet and fight on the King’s Road. And that’s kind of what “77” is thinking about.

At that time, you were a kid from the London suburbs, just out of high school. It wasn’t just about “discovering punk” but finding punk within you. It must have felt like a revelation at the time to find something to express yourself with first visually, in clothing, and then musically, at that time.

England was incredibly depressed after the Second World War. It didn’t really recover. It might have appeared more rosy in the 60s, but it plummeted again by the 70s. I’d seen The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and all that when I was seven years old; I’d already fallen in love with rock and roll. I wanted to be in a group because they looked like the people who were having the most fun. We’d been gradually following The Velvet Underground and then Iggy and The Stooges and then David Bowie and Roxy Music and stuff like that. We were aware of the CBGB’s scene in New York and wanted to have a scene like that in England.

Watching this tiny little scene, but never thinking it was gonna be big, you know? No, we had no idea. Then, when I saw the Sex Pistols, I saw there were other guys like me. They were around the same age. They had just really pulled together as a group around then, getting better every week playing as a band, and even then they weren’t that great. That made you realize, “Man, we can do it.” You know, this “just get up there and do it” sort of thing. And so I dreamt into that really, and that’s what the “Dream Into It” song is about. We were young, and we were being told “There’s no future, there’s nothing for you.” One day, it just happened. Punk opened a door for a lot of us. And then here I am nearly 50 years later. Next year, it will be 50 years.

CELINE sweater. NICOLINA ROYALE choker. Talent’s own earrings and ring.

Let’s go to 1984, when you really break out as Billy Idol in the USA, and all over the world too. There is a viral interview clip from that time in which the interviewer Karyn Hay asks you about “Rebel Yell,” and you begin to discuss America in relation to your lyrics. “She don’t like slavery / She won’t sit and beg / But when I was tired and hungry / she sees me to bed.” You go on to say, “Hate Reagan, but don’t hate the other people. Hate politics, but don’t hate ordinary people.” Can you talk a bit about that moment, and expressing yourself with that song?

Yeah, that is pretty much my ethos, I suppose. With “Rebel Yell,” the lyrics all come from the fact that I was very much in love with my girlfriend at the time, Perri. [Perri Lister, dancer in racy troupe Hot Gossip, choreographer and British music muse]. I was just super in love with her, so I wrote a love song to her about all women. She was very liberated as a woman, as a person. She was very confident, and she wouldn’t have accepted any kind of mental slavery in a relationship. No way. We had to be—we were—equals, participating equally in a loving relationship. That’s what you’re looking for, really. You’re looking for someone who’s just as wild as you, just as excited about life as you. Someone who is worth going to the ends of the world for. That’s the place I was in. I was just so in love with her at that time, you know? She was lovely. It was lovely. The song is all about that moment—we were having incredible sex, and that’s the source of the “rebel yell”—it was this orgasmic cry of love that we both made at times. It was really a beautiful time in lots of ways. Not only was my career exploding, but I was in love, I was having a really great time. And then she came to America and was with me, so we were both living that time together. A lot of the songs on the albums would’ve been about her in some way or other—Sweet Sixteen” is about her. We broke up for a time in ’87, but I was always bouncing off our relationship in lots of ways, writing songs.

For me, the love song on the current album would be track four, “John Wayne,” where you duet with Alison Mosshart of The Kills. “Come and save me…Tonight I’m going to be John Wayne…” It’s a really sexy song.

Or “Gimme The Weight.” In some ways, it’s a love song too, even though I’m singing about putting drugs and stuff in the background. The songs on the second half of the record, “People I Love,” “Gimme The Weight,” “I’m Your Hero,” they’re all about the kind of love you have for your family. And just how much I still love what I do. I got this chance to walk through a door that was open, got to go around the world… and maybe I only saw bathrooms, bars, and hotel rooms…[laughs]. But you know, it’s been a fantastic ride so far, and I’m still really enjoying doing it.

In “Gimme The Weight,” you do say “When it’s hardcore I only want you more.” What really comes across in the record is that you tell it like it is.

I think with this album, we really worked hard to keep it fresh so that every song was as powerful or as strong as we could make it. Maybe that’s why it’s only a nine-song album—but nine songs fits nicely onto vinyl. Old school. It’s a really solid record, and I felt we got there. From what you’re saying it sounds like it’s hitting you in the right way. We didn’t want to redesign what we do. Because obviously I could listen to what’s going on in the charts today and try and copy it, but what would be the point of that? I think what people really want from me is a great, classic Billy Idol album, you know? And so I  thought that what we need to do is play to our strengths.

ANN DEMEULEMEESTER top. JOHN ELLIOTT pants. NICOLINA ROYALE bracelet. Talent’s own earrings.

This new album comes out late April, so then you’ll be taking it on tour around America. You’ve even named the tour It’s A Nice Day To…Tour Again! Can you say something about going out on a major tour, and still enjoying that aspect of it?

Yeah, I fell off stage, but I didn’t die, you know? [laughs] I just love playing live. I’ve got a great band. Steve Stevens is an incredible guitar player. He’s playing better than ever. We used to have a lot of keyboards on our records in the 80s, but this album is virtually all guitars. There’s all the Steves on this record. When I’m playing live, with my band, it’s so souped up it’s like you’re surfing on a wave, or riding in an incredible sports car, and it’s roaring at a million miles an hour. It’s the high. The music is the high. It’s the best thing about it, it’s a high that you can get every night. Actually, it always was. A bigger high than the drugs was the music, playing it. You just get high from doing it on stage. All the adrenaline. We like to do a high energy show, even today. We’re not taking any prisoners up there [laughs].

I actually caught your show in Amsterdam in 2014 when I lived in Europe. It was really cool. Now I live just a few streets from Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, and I think a lot about the history of the Sunset Strip. Even though today there’s no one walking around much anymore, I know that there was an insane scene here. When you came to LA in the 80s, what was it like?

I was actually staying at the Chateau Marmont doing the first Billy Idol solo album when John Belushi died there. You know, I just actually smashed up my room that night [laughs]. So when the police arrived I thought they’d come for me. So yeah. There you go.

ANN DEMEULEMEESTER coat and cuffs. Talent’s own rings.

No way. That’s like the ultimate rockstar moment, checked into the Chateau in March ‘82. Tell me some more about your first memories of the Strip. 

My introduction to the Strip would’ve been during the very first time I came to Los Angeles, which was in 1978. I was doing a sort of press tour for the first Generation X album. I went to the Whiskey a Go Go, I saw the Germs and the Dead Kennedys and afterwards I met Joan Jett there some- how, and hung out with her. It’s just her and 20 other girls who were all dressed in little go-go boots and tiny little miniskirts and you know, a total LA chick sort of thing [laughs]. And then later on in 1982, we played at The Roxy. There’s actually a live album of us recorded when we were playing there. A year or two ago, I added it to the re-release of the Billy Idol solo album. And then I moved to Los Angeles in ’87. So I’ve ridden my motorcycle up and down the Sunset Strip forever. I’ve really lived it.

[Still rocking as hard as Billy, Joan Jett appears on the new 2025 album on the fifth track, “Wildside”]. If I may call your attention to an epic Strip moment, which I found on your YouTube VEVO. In the 1987 video for “Don’t Need A Gunfrom Whiplash Smile (1986) you took over the rooftop of the Sunset Tower and had a helicopter flying around it, filming you on the top of the building.

Yeah, I think Errol Flynn lived there in the penthouse for a bit. That place. You know, you’re right. That video was done there. I kind of forget a lot of things like that now.

Well I checked the credits, and the clip was shot by British director Julian Temple [Absolute Beginners, The Great Rock n Roll Swindle, and father of actress Juno Temple]. There was a subplot of a drama in at Ned’s Liquor in Hollywood Boulevard being robbed, and a riot with police in the parking lot, but mainly it’s you and Steve Stevens playing guitar on the very top rooftop of the Sunset Tower with floodlights strafing you from the helicopter circling overhead. It really captures the excess of LA in the 80s. All of your videos are beyond iconic.

Well with the videos, it was really important that I put my stamp upon them, you know? That was one of the things I did. With the early videos, we had zero money. There was no budget at all, really. So I would think back about the 30s, or the silent movies where they were doing everything with only a backdrop and paint, wood and glue. I had this horror book that had stills from films like The Black Cat (1934)—Boris Karloff at a black altar with white crosses and he’s dressed as a vicar. And I thought, “Maybe I can make that. Let’s take that idea and let’s make it in color.” And that’s the “White Wedding” (1982) video. It’s like a graveyard of crosses with an altar. I took some of these things that you’re seeing in old movies and put them into the videos and it really worked. Because they were all done very simplistically with very basic stuff, you know, wood and glue and paint. That’s it. When you knew you could do something like that yourself, that was fantastic. I also worked with a lot of great film directors. Julian Temple was incredible to work with because he was so immersed in punk rock as well, and I knew him from the punk rock days. I deliberately got Hooper to do “Dancing with Myself,” because he’d done the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). And David Fincher, whom I worked with before he really even became a movie director, that all happened after. He did Cradle of Love and LA Woman, (both 1990).

You abandoned your philosophy studies when you chose to pursue a career in music. But I also noticed that you haven’t really abandoned what you learned, because in interviews ostensibly about your music, you’re often quoting figures like Rousseau or Coleridge. Can you tell me something about going to university to do philosophy of literature at the same time you were getting into the punk scene?

Well, the thing was then, I wanted to do Literature, but I wanted to also do American literature. At University of Sussex, you had to do a philosophy course, semantic philosophy, to be able to go on to do the American literature papers. The course was basically about the difference between knowing and believing. I was like, “Oh God, who cares?” It was very, very dry. So I didn’t really go there for the philosophy [laughs]. I did it expressly because I didn’t want to be stuck reading only British writers, I wanted to engage with Hemingway and American authors as well. I’m someone who loves history, too. I like when it’s told with a literary bent, well and with style. We did poetry and Greek plays, we were doing Oedipus and all that. But I got a lot of stuff from it. My mum said to me, before she died, “Why did you do Literature at university? You should have done history, with your knowledge.” I said to her, “I was thinking it might help me write lyrics,” and she went, “Oh,” like, she rolled her eyes [laughs]. I’d really just thought doing literature, studying poetry and those things, would help in writing lyrics. Hopefully it did.

It really did. I think “Dancing with Myself” (1981) or “Eyes Without a Face” (1983) are profoundly philosophical songs. They’re about reflection on yourself, on “the self,” which is the main tenet of philosophy. So let’s talk aboutStill Dancing,” the last track on the album, which is a lyrical reply toDancing with Myself.” In the video, you’re in a New York club alongside the punk kids of now?

Ever since The Roadside EP (2021), I’ve been working with Steven Sebring, the artist who has been doing my videos. He thinks a little bit outside the box, so it’s a lot of fun working with him. We’re mates, and it’s great. With the “Still Dancing” video he got all these young people into a bar where they—we—could all just rock out to the song, and they were really enjoying it. These kids are all very free-spirited and seeing them react instinctively to the song—it was exciting to see that. They weren’t just getting into it because they’re being paid, it was ‘cos they were really into the song, especially as we played it so many times, like you do shooting a clip. They’re not so different from when I was young. That’s the thing. A lot of young people are in a situation exactly like when I was 20, where you weren’t being handed a lot at all. I have thoughts now like, “What’s the world gonna be like for my grandchildren?” Because now they’re only very young, but they’ll be 80 when the new century starts. What will the world be like for them if there’s global warming and stuff like that? Will they be wearing hazmat suits to go out, you know? And then there’s also the possibility of reincarnation. Coming back to a world like this? Fuck [laughs].

Billy Idol Two. The sequel. Actually, regarding your grandkids, I was wondering about the line in “I’m Your Hero”: “In your eyes. I’m brand new, I’m pure...I’m reborn.” Is that about meeting them and hanging out with them?

Yes, it is, really, because they only know me as “granddad.” They’ve seen what I do. They know I play on stage and stuff, but at the same time, they sort of don’t know me, you know? They know this me, and they don’t know all my backstory. They just accept you for who you are. In that way, you feel reborn, you feel renewed. I see how much they love being alive; even their eyes are shining.

That song also includes the statement, “I closed the door on my days upside down.”

You know, I hope so. You can be struggling with yourself for a long time in a lot of ways, and you never know what’s really gonna happen.You never know if you’re gonna dive off the diving board again—but I hope not. No. I think that what’s going on around me is grounding me, and I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying being a granddad. They’re only just gonna be five, and they only know a few people so far. And I’m one of them. They’ll be going to school soon, so the world’s gonna open up. But for now, it’s you.

That’s amazing though. You deserve cozy fireside nights in with the grandkids, after everything. Just from your lyrics, or from knowing something about that era, you really pushed it to the limit of your limits. And then some. There’s a line in track three, “Too Much Fun,” about “pick[ing] your poisons.”

Yeah, I mean, I did. I pushed a lot of stuff at times. Went out on a limb and threatened to have it sawn off behind me, you know? But somehow I came through it all and with my music intact. That’s what I really always come back to. How lucky I was that I got to do this thing that I’ve dreamt about. I got to live my dream out, and a lot of people don’t get to do that. So I think that’s what’s fuelling the album too. That I’m really lucky. And that’s the energy you feel.

ANN DEMEULEMEESTER coat and cuffs. RARE ROMANCE choker. Talent’s own rings.

While this your first full length album in over 10 years, you played a crazy gig on the edge of the Hoover Dam in 2023, including some of the tracks on Dream Into It, which is now a full-length concert film called STATE LINE. [The Hoover Dam sits on the border of Nevada and Arizona.] What was it like making music against that huge negative void, where you’ve got nature’s amplifier right behind you? How did that come about?

We were just looking for somewhere to do an incredible concert, and we were nearly gonna do it on a very famous bridge in Los Angeles. But I don’t think the authorities would let us do it there. Then, in Los Angeles, while it does rain every now and again, the reality is that really, we’re in a constant drought, a 30-year drought. A couple of years ago it got really extreme for a bit. Our water is supplied by one river, the Colorado River, which comes from the Hoover Dam. Playing there just made sense because it was something that could combine talking about water conservation at the same time as putting on a great show. The authorities at the time there let us do it, let it happen the way I wanted it to. I don’t think they’re gonna let anybody else up there now; the people who allowed it have already been thrown out, what with the regime changes. And it sounded great too; it’s all being held in [the concrete Dam], so the sound was pretty yummy.

It’s truly an American landmark. But then, so are you, in a way. In a November 2018 social media post from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, you were announced as becoming a US citizen. The link I found says, “Name: Billy Idol. Country of Birth: UK. Occupation: Rockstar.” They asked you about your first years in the US and you mention your brief time here as a child, and then they ask, “What does being an American mean to you?” And so I’d just like to ask you that question again, in light of today’s political atmosphere. How does it feel to be “an American” in 2025?

Well, I’m not really American, I’m British. You know what I mean? I’ll always be British, you know. It was really so I could vote because of being on a green card for a long time, I wasn’t voting in America. I’ve always thought of America as a place of freedom and a great country. But then it’s also a massive country that has a lot of problems. We’re seeing it, dealing with [problems] right now. And look, it’s not always going in the best direction…I mean, America struggles with itself. I think it’s always done. And I think people are searching for a lot of things, just as in the 70s in England. No one really knew what the answers were, and whatever answers they got, I dunno if they a hundred percent felt, this is “The Answer.” I just get the feeling it’s a little like that here in the US now. People are struggling a little bit, hoping something’s gonna work rather than knowing that it will work.

America is a place of great contradiction. Would you agree with that?

Yes, yes. It’s always been like that. At the same time it has a liberal aspect, it’s very conservative, puritanical.

ANN DEMEULEMEESTER top. Talent’s own sunglasses and rings.

And so rock music and punk have always been a direct form of resistance to this, that can really touch people, can get messages out there. How do you feel about being part of the resistance to authoritarianism?

I think that’s why we created punk rock music. The situation was that we didn’t feel that we were—I mean, the modern parlance is—“being seen.” We were being ignored completely, being told there was nothing for us. And forget even having hope. You’d talk to someone about having some kind of future there, and they’d tell you there was no future. “There’s nothing for you, no future for you.” I mean, that’s exactly what Johnny and the [Sex] Pistols were singing about. At that point it was really true. We just felt that all we had left was what we could manage on our own. Some people at that time protested in a different way, but we did what we could create ourselves, doing it in a musical way. To use music to be a sort of a news broad sheet pounding out the news of the times in guitars and drums and vocals, and using rock and roll music to tell people what was going on, to us. And then with the Black kids, who started rap music, there was similar rhetoric about what was happening to them. We were all reacting on our own level, responding to the authoritarianist systems trying to tell us what to do. Or to tell us “Forget it, you’ve got nothing. Just go along. Don’t try to think out of the box.” But I think we did. Punk opened a door for a load of people, not just me. Some picked up a camera and became a photographer and some people, because the establishment wouldn’t let you in to be a journalist, they’d make a fanzine and write about the scene. Adrian Thrills did his own fanzine, and he became a bona-fide journalist, and still writes for newspapers today. Initially, we were all just thinking along the lines of “Look, we might do this for six months, a year or two years. We don’t care how long it lasts, but we’re gonna just do it.” We just felt it was necessary. We had to do it, you know? All the groups had a different take on what was going on. The Clash had a more political view, Siouxsie and the Banshees had a more artistic point of view. The Pistols had their street-level sort of point of view. And then with Generation X, we were about teenage social issues that were going on in England, singing about that.

And you were doing it in a very glamorous, attractive and fun way. Because within all the staging that you envisioned, the main thing from the early days through being right in the center of the MTV screen, was always you and your look.

That’s how I do things. We were sort of the poster children of Glam Rock as well. Yeah, we were glamorous. It was fun [laughs]. That era came just before us and so we got a little bit into the fashion side of it, using it to express ourselves in a new way, really. That was just our way of doing it.

***

After diving into Billy Idol’s intense world, it’s clear the chemistry teacher at school who dismissed “William is Idle” was completely wrong. Because Billy never idles. Rather, he’s been blessed with enough magnetic personal chemistry to ignite the world with his words and fuel a 50 year career. He’s been busy from the very first moment he started to curl his lip, flying the flag and keeping the “rebel yell” going since the day he found his calling in the rough rawness of the British DIY scene. It was his own dream

he stepped into. And America clearly needed a cheeky, charming, eternal punk rocker who took the music seriously but not himself. Idol’s not only still standing, despite the excesses of the era that he has been honest about indulging in, he’s still dancing with as much verve and spirit as ever, across continents, non-stop. Billy is fantastic. When he says, “I’ve got everything I need next to me, from LA to Tokyo,” he means it. If he had the chance, he’d most definitely ask the whole world to dance. If he rocks hot into your city on his next tour, take him up on it.

ANN DEMEULEMEESTER vest and tank top. JOHN ELLIOTT pants. BALENCIAGA boots. CHILDE sunglasses. NICOLINA ROYALE necklaces and bracelets. Talent’s own rings.

Photographed by Ian Morrison

Styled by Chandra Dyani Chavez

Written by Hannah Bhuiya

Grooming: Mitzi Spallas

Digi Tech: Michael Seeley 

Photo Team: Justin Seeley

Lighting Tech: Max Gray Wilbur

Cinematography: Timothy Shin 

B Cam Operator: Kendall Pack 

Flaunt Film Editor:  Sidney Fix 

Flaunt Film Colorist: Jacob Barajas-Santos 

Styling Assistant: Blake Hyland 

Tailoring: Estevan Ramos

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Flaunt Magazine, Billy Idol, Issue 198, Cant Let Go, People, Dream Into It, Hannah Bhuiya, Ian Morrison, Chandra Dyani Chavez,
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