Billy Idol

Yes, usually as soon as I can.

Yeah some of them came to my video. It was magic. I think there was an open call on the internet.

Not too far off. Is there an LA chapter?

I’d like to go around and meet them.

Kind of, yeah.

It wasn’t really out of choice. It was more of the way things happened. So many weird things came about. I refused to work for the conglomerate America of the 90’s and it took me until 2004 to find an alternative record company. Also I had to wait five years for Capitol to throw me out because I wouldn’t do anything.

They didn’t know why they had Billy Idol. They had me but they didn’t know what to do with me. It’s really weird because I knew what to do with me but they wouldn’t listen. If you don’t listen to me then you will never know what to do with Billy Idol, that was the fucking problem they had. I know what to do with Billy Idol and I’ve just done with this Sanctuary Record. I hope I piss off everyone at Sanctuary; one guy is dead of cancer so he’s already out of the picture. He was in The Zombies and I always hated that band and I hate them even more now. Fucking Zombies get cancer. Rock and roll reaches into the grave, motherfucker. How many bands are you going to stop now? How many times is he going to stop Billy Idol now? Never again, he’s over, done with, finito! Alright that’s that.

Rebel? Well at least I’m fucking trying. It’s pretty rebellious to even try and do rock and roll at this age. I should be a blues artist [laughs]. It’s more like people expect you to give or you don’t care anymore but I have a passion for the music and I have a great band I’ve put together. We put out a greatest hits record in 2001 and we really forged a great band in the crucible of the greatest hits gigs. When we did it we could stand right up against bands like Franz Ferdinand, The Killers and The Music. We weren’t just a retro band because we were playing a new band. When you can stand right up against these others, that proves you are still a rebel. That was really important because even though people are playing much heavier than they used to, so you have to have more power in your band which my drummer provides. We toured for years with that and we played rocker Billy Idol, punk Billy Idol, Danzig Billy Idol, metal Billy Idol and every style of Billy Idol music there is. That helped everyone really see the range that you could have. Fuck me we could go anywhere!!! You could go from Black Sabbath to Velvet Underground to Iggy Pop to Kraftwerk. It was just narrowing it down to what we wanted to do with the record. I really wanted to make a guitar rock record.

Yeah but don’t tell anyone else. That makes this my 30th year in rock.

No I didn’t, well actually it's not that I didn’t know if I would make it to 50, but I didn’t know I would still be playing music. I thought I might be alive. When I used to take a taxi home from rehearsals the cab driver would say “Hey man, I used to be in The Marmalade!”

It’s probably easier. There are just as many things now to piss people off as there has ever been. This political situation must be pissing everyone off because we are almost in a worse situation than we were in the Cold War. It’s weird.

We may have one. We’re going to be at South by Southwest with The Donnas.

I think they are really good. They do a really great version of Dancing with Myself which is not an easy song to play. It sounds easy but it isn’t.

Yeah it’s been great.

We’ve got some other songs which didn’t end up on this album they may well use. Obviously people doing films can have this album so they can use it.

[Drummer] Brian [Tichy] was part of Slash’s Snakepit so he’s always been part of the hard rock scene. Derek [Sherinian] was in a prog rock group called Dream Theater. Stephen McGrath, the bass player, is a motorcycling friend of mine and he happens to also play the bass. Steve Stevens has been with me for 20 years.

I think it does sound more mature. Just the fact that my voice got a bit deeper changes things. It’s the passage of time. You’re listening the past 12 years when you play the album and the fact that I’ve had a life to live. That’s a weighty piece of life. Before that all we had tours, chicks and records which isn’t bad but life was giving us different emotions.

I have to admit there is that wider range of ages because with that greatest hits tour we pulled in a whole load of young followers. What I’m looking at isn’t much different from what I’ve always looked at. Hey Granny, take your teeth out! YEAH!

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck