Billy Idol

"Rebel Yell" came out as a single on the twelfth of January 1984, on Chrysalis, and reached number forty-six on the Billboard Hot 100. In the United Kingdom it stopped at sixty-two. "White Wedding", released on the twenty-second of October 1982, did something similar: in the United States it got no further than number thirty-six —and that in July 1983, already with a reissue pushing it—, and in Britain it did not chart at all. The two songs that get shouted in stadiums today failed the day they went on sale.

The two of them only reached number six in Britain in 1985, in reissues backed by MTV rotation and by the remix compilation Vital Idol. And "Dancing with Myself", the other title that sounds like an anthem of the era, never entered the Hot 100: the 1983 reissue stopped at number one hundred and two on the Bubbling Under. The icon of the MTV era was not built by explosion, but by accumulation and by reissue. He was an artist whose own label had to relaunch him twice.

Chelsea, 1976, and four names

His name is William Michael Albert Broad and he was born on the thirtieth of November 1955 in Stanmore, Middlesex, the son of William Alfred Broad, from Birmingham, and of Joan Broad, née O'Sullivan, from Cork: the Irish root that almost never gets mentioned. In late 1976, in Chelsea, he put together Generation X with Tony James on bass and John Towe on drums; Bob "Derwood" Andrews, lead guitar, made his debut with them on the tenth of December that year. Mark Laff replaced Towe in May 1977 and, in the final stretch —when the name was shortened to Gen X—, Terry Chimes, the first drummer of The Clash, and the guitarist James Stevenson passed through the band.

On the fifteenth of September 1977 Generation X appeared on Top of the Pops miming "Your Generation". It is worth saying it as it was: they were not the first punk band to go on the programme, but one of the first. The Jam had already been on the nineteenth of May that year with "In the City", and The Stranglers a week later; Generation X arrived four months late. Their best chart placing was "King Rocker", number eleven in Britain in January 1979. The album Generation X, from 1978, reached twenty-nine; Valley of the Dolls, from 1979, fifty-one; and Kiss Me Deadly, from 1981, did not chart. The band split up in February 1981.

"Dancing with Myself" belongs to that period and not to the solo career: it is credited to Idol and Tony James, it came out in October 1980 under the name Gen X and it stopped at number sixty in the United Kingdom. Nor is it about what it seems to be about. They wrote it in 1979, on tour in Japan, after seeing the kids in a Tokyo disco dancing with their own reflection in the mirrored walls instead of dancing with each other. The solo reissues did not save it —number twenty-seven on the American dance chart in March 1981, number one hundred and two on the Bubbling Under in 1983—, even though the 1981 video was directed by Tobe Hooper, the man behind The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, copying the post-apocalyptic setting of The Omega Man.

New York, 1981, and a guitarist from Brooklyn

In 1981 he moved to New York and teamed up with Steve Stevens —real name Steven Bruce Schneider, born on the fifth of May 1959 in Brooklyn—, who has been in that partnership from day one. The first solo release was the EP Don't Stop, from October 1981: four tracks, and "Mony Mony" was the first song he recorded outside the band. That studio version did not enter the Hot 100; it reached number seven on the dance chart and there it stayed. The album Billy Idol, from the sixteenth of July 1982, got no further than number forty-five in the United States, although it was certified Gold, and the single that really opened the radio to him was not either of the anthems: it was "Hot in the City", number twenty-three.

Rebel Yell, the album, came out on the tenth of November 1983, was produced by Keith Forsey and was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York. It reached number six on the Billboard 200 and ended up double Platinum, and its big hit was not the track that gives it its name. "Eyes Without a Face", released in April 1984, reached number four on the Hot 100 and was his first top ten in the United States: it is his biggest hit of his own. The title is not his either, he took it from Les yeux sans visage, the film Georges Franju released in 1960, and the voice that repeats that phrase in French in the chorus is that of Perri Lister, his partner at the time. "Flesh for Fantasy", from August 1984, stopped at twenty-nine.

The bottle the Stones would not lend him

The title of "Rebel Yell" does not come from the American Civil War: it comes from a bottle. Idol told the story on VH1 Storytellers: at a birthday party for one of the Rolling Stones, in New York, he saw Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards passing round a big, dark, brown bottle, with a cavalry officer in Confederate uniform on the label. He asked them whether they were thinking of using that name as the title of a song. They told him no. "As soon as I got home, I started writing the song."

There are two points Idol himself gets wrong. He describes the contents as a Tennessee bourbon, and it is not: Rebel Yell was born in the nineteen-thirties at the Stitzel-Weller distillery in Kentucky, around the figure of Charles R. Farnsley, a former mayor of Louisville. And the irony of the calendar is better than the anecdote: the brand was conceived to be sold only in the southern United States and did not get national distribution until 1984, the same year the single hit the street. In 2020 it was shortened to plain "Rebel", precisely to get away from the Confederate iconography Idol had seen on the label. Of the war, nothing was left in the song: he emptied out the title and filled it with Perri Lister, a dancer in the British troupe Hot Gossip, and turned it, in his own words, into a cry of love. The laser-beam sound that runs through the track was made by Stevens holding a toy ray gun against the pickups of his guitar. And "White Wedding", which everybody reads as a sinister wedding song, came out of his pregnant sister's wedding; the video was directed by David Mallet and the bride is, once again, Perri Lister.

Two Tommy James covers, one on top of the other

Whiplash Smile, from the twentieth of October 1986, reached number six in the United States and number eight in Britain, and it was the last album with Stevens, who left in 1987. That same year Chrysalis released a different "Mony Mony" as a single: a live recording taken over two nights in Seattle. The song is not Idol's —it is credited to Tommy James, Bobby Bloom, Ritchie Cordell and Bo Gentry, and the original is by Tommy James and the Shondells, from 1968—, but that live version gave him the only number one of his career on the Hot 100, on the chart dated the twenty-first of November 1987 and for a single week.

And there is the best joke in chart history. The song "Mony Mony" knocked off the top was "I Think We're Alone Now", by Tiffany, which is also a cover of Tommy James and the Shondells. Two covers of the same sixties group took turns at the summit: Tiffany two weeks, Idol one. The following week both of them were pushed down by "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. He was days away from turning thirty-two; she was sixteen, exactly half. The number one had also been built on an obscene chant the audience invented between verses at the concerts and that Idol ended up incorporating into the show: several American schools banned the song at their dances, and that made it more popular.

There is one correction of the kind that repeats itself on its own. Stevens does play the solo on "Dirty Diana", by Michael Jackson, released on the eighteenth of April 1988 and number one on the second of July that year. But his Grammy is not for that: he won it for "Top Gun Anthem", shared with Harold Faltermeyer, for Best Pop Instrumental Performance at the twenty-ninth ceremony. And it existed because Idol, on hearing the demo Faltermeyer was putting together, let out the line that settled the matter: "There's your Top Gun theme!"

The stop sign in Hollywood

On the sixth of February 1990, in Hollywood, Idol ran a stop sign on his Harley and a car hit him. That is the honest sentence, with his own share in it, and it is the one the kinder version skips. The doctors considered amputating his right leg; they put a steel rod in it, he spent a month in hospital and went through seven operations. The crash cost him two roles: the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day —"they had drawings of me as the T-1000", he has said, but James Cameron needed somebody who could run and the part went to Robert Patrick— and a place in Oliver Stone's The Doors. It also shaped the opposite. When the time came to film the video for "Cradle of Love", which ended up being his second biggest American hit with a number two on the Hot 100, Idol could not walk, and David Fincher filmed him only from the chest up, writing him into the fiction as an image on screens hanging from the walls of an apartment. Charmed Life, from the thirtieth of April 1990, reached number eleven and was certified Platinum.

There is also a court file, and it is a matter of record. On the eleventh of October 1991, at around two in the morning, in a car and after dinner at the Stringfellows restaurant in West Hollywood, Idol struck Amber Nevel, aged twenty-two, twice; she had offered to walk him and his manager to the vehicle. The prosecution charged him on the twentieth of November: one blow to the mouth and another to the forehead, cuts caused by his rings and a slight concussion. He pleaded guilty on the twenty-first of January 1992 to one misdemeanour count of battery and assault, and on the first of April he was sentenced to two years' probation, two thousand seven hundred dollars in fines, therapy and the recording of a one-minute public service announcement on the effects of alcohol and drugs. At the hearing, the prosecution put on record that he had been six months sober and had started drinking again that night. In June 1992 Cheryl Thompson also filed a civil suit over events from 1985: it is a civil allegation, and the sources consulted record no judgment, settlement or dismissal.

The rest is written down, and he wrote it. In 1994 he collapsed outside a Los Angeles club from a GHB overdose, which was legal at the time. In October 2014 he published his memoir, Dancing with Myself, a New York Times best seller, in which he describes the blackouts in clubs and the awakenings in hospitals, and credits the turnaround to the 1990 accident and, above all, to fatherhood; today he describes himself as "California sober". In between came Cyberpunk, from 1993, number forty-eight, and Devil's Playground, from 2005. He is alive, he is seventy, he released Dream Into It on the twenty-fifth of April 2025 on Dark Horse Records and he is still touring.

What to remember

The two anthems failed when they came out. "Rebel Yell" reached number forty-six in the United States and sixty-two in Britain in January 1984; "White Wedding" got no further than thirty-six in the United States and did not chart in the United Kingdom in 1982. The two of them only reached number six in Britain in the 1985 reissues, and "Dancing with Myself" never entered the Hot 100. The only number one of his career is a live cover of Tommy James and the Shondells, and it lasted one week: that of the twenty-first of November 1987, in which it knocked off another Tommy James cover sung by a sixteen-year-old girl. And his biggest hit of his own turned out to be the quietest song in the repertoire, "Eyes Without a Face", number four, with a title taken from a French film from 1960.

What is left is the full account, which is the one that counts: a bottle of Kentucky bourbon the Stones would not lend him, a label that had to relaunch him twice, a stop sign in Hollywood that cost him his right leg and the T-1000, an assault conviction with a date and a sentence in 1992, and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Steve Stevens whose ceremony is being recorded on the fourteenth of November 2026 and which, as this is being written, has not yet happened. When that yell sounds at the start of "Rebel Yell" and a whole stadium gives it back, there is what really happened: a single that at the time did not make the top forty and that took a year and a reissue to find the people who sing it today. If you or someone you know is facing problem drug or alcohol use, in Chile you can call SENDA's Fono Drogas y Alcohol free and confidentially on 1412, twenty-four hours a day.

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Sources

Billy Idol, born William Michael Albert Broad on 30 November 1955 in Stanmore, Middlesex, England; alive, 70 years old. Son of William Alfred Broad, from Birmingham, and of Joan Broad, née O'Sullivan, from Cork, Ireland. British and American nationality (naturalised in 2018). Three children: Willem Wolfe Broad (1988, with Perri Lister), Bonnie Blue Broad (21 August 1989, with Linda Mathis) and Brant Broad, whose paternity he learned of in 2023 through a family DNA match. Generation X was formed in late 1976 in Chelsea, London, with Billy Idol (vocals), Tony James (bass), John Towe (drums) and Bob "Derwood" Andrews (lead guitar, debut with the band on 10 December 1976); Mark Laff replaced Towe in May 1977, and in 1980-81, by then as Gen X, Terry Chimes (drums, first drummer of The Clash) and James Stevenson (guitar) passed through the group. Break-up in February 1981; one-off reunion on 20 September 1993 at the Astoria in London. First appearance on "Top of the Pops" on 15 September 1977, miming "Your Generation" (no. 36 UK); The Jam had appeared on 19 May 1977 with "In the City" and The Stranglers a week later, so Generation X were not the first punk band on the programme. The band's discography, all on Chrysalis: "Generation X" (1978), no. 29 UK Albums; "King Rocker" (January 1979), no. 11 UK, their best placing; "Valley of the Dolls" (1979), no. 51 UK; "Dancing with Myself" (October 1980, credited to Gen X, written by Billy Idol and Tony James), no. 60 UK; "Kiss Me Deadly" (1981), did not chart. "Dancing with Myself" was written in 1979 during a tour of Japan, starting from a Tokyo disco where the audience danced facing the mirrored walls; American video of 1981 directed by Tobe Hooper, with a setting taken from "The Omega Man" (1971); solo reissue of March 1981, no. 27 Hot Dance Club Play; 1983 reissue, no. 102 on the Bubbling Under —it never entered the Hot 100— and no. 39 in Canada. Solo career: move to New York in 1981 and partnership with Steve Stevens, real name Steven Bruce Schneider, born 5 May 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, in the band from 1981 to 1987, from 1993 to 1995 and continuously since 1999. EP "Don't Stop" (October 1981, Chrysalis), with "Mony Mony", "Dancing with Myself", "Baby Talk" and "Untouchables": "Mony Mony" was the first song Idol recorded as a solo artist and reached no. 7 on the dance chart without entering the Hot 100. Album "Billy Idol" (16 July 1982): no. 45 United States, Gold (RIAA), Platinum in Canada. "Hot in the City" (1982): no. 23 United States, no. 58 UK. "White Wedding" (22 October 1982): no. 36 United States in July 1983 with a reissue, no UK chart entry until the 1985 reissue, when it reached no. 6; inspired by his pregnant sister's wedding, video by David Mallet with Perri Lister as the bride. Album "Rebel Yell" (10 November 1983, produced by Keith Forsey, recorded at Electric Lady Studios, New York): no. 6 United States, no. 36 UK, 2× Platinum (RIAA), 5× Platinum in Canada. Single "Rebel Yell" (12 January 1984, Idol/Stevens): no. 46 Hot 100, no. 62 UK, no. 9 Mainstream Rock, no. 10 Canada, no. 3 New Zealand, no. 7 Australia; British reissue of 1985, no. 6; nominated for the Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance at the 27th ceremony. Origin of the title: a bottle of Rebel Yell seen at a birthday party for one of the Rolling Stones in New York, in the hands of Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; Idol describes it as a Tennessee bourbon, but the brand was born in the 1930s at the Stitzel-Weller distillery in Kentucky, around Charles R. Farnsley, a former mayor of Louisville, was sold only in the southern United States and had no national distribution until 1984; in 2020 it was renamed "Rebel". The lyric refers to Perri Lister, a dancer in the British troupe Hot Gossip. The track's laser-beam effect was produced by Steve Stevens holding a toy ray gun against the pickups of his guitar. "Eyes Without a Face" (April 1984 in the United States, 5 June 1984 in the UK): no. 4 Hot 100 —his first American top ten and his biggest hit of his own— and no. 18 UK; Platinum in the UK, 2× Platinum in New Zealand, Gold in Italy and Brazil; title taken from "Les yeux sans visage", by Georges Franju (1960); the voice that repeats the phrase in French is Perri Lister's. "Flesh for Fantasy" (August 1984 in the United States, 21 September 1984 in the UK): no. 29 United States, no. 54 UK. Remix compilation "Vital Idol" (1985). Album "Whiplash Smile" (20 October 1986): no. 6 United States, no. 8 UK, Platinum (RIAA), 3× Platinum in Canada; Stevens leaves in 1987. Live single "Mony Mony" (1987), recorded over two nights in Seattle: no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on the chart of 21 November 1987, one single week; no. 7 UK; no. 19 on the 1987 year-end ranking. The song is credited to Tommy James, Bobby Bloom, Ritchie Cordell and Bo Gentry, and the original is by Tommy James and the Shondells (1968). It knocked off "I Think We're Alone Now", by Tiffany (16 years old), also a cover of Tommy James and the Shondells and no. 1 for 2 weeks, and was itself knocked off by "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes; "Faith", by George Michael, reached no. 1 on 12 December 1987 and is not part of that sequence. Several American schools banned the song at their dances because of the obscene chant the audience interjected. "Dirty Diana", by Michael Jackson (Epic, 18 April 1988), with the solo by Steve Stevens: no. 1 Hot 100 on 2 July 1988. Stevens's Grammy is for "Top Gun Anthem", shared with Harold Faltermeyer, Best Pop Instrumental Performance at the 29th ceremony (1987), and not for "Dirty Diana". Motorcycle accident: 6 February 1990, in Hollywood, when Idol ran a stop sign on his Harley and was hit by a car; risk of amputation of the right leg, a steel rod, 1 month in hospital and 7 operations; he lost the part of the T-1000 in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", which went to Robert Patrick, and a part in Oliver Stone's "The Doors". Album "Charmed Life" (30 April 1990): no. 11 United States, no. 15 UK, Platinum (RIAA). "Cradle of Love" (1990, Idol/David Werner): no. 2 United States, no. 34 UK; video by David Fincher, who filmed him only from the chest up because he could not walk. Criminal case: incident on 11 October 1991, at around 2 in the morning, in a car after dinner at the Stringfellows restaurant in West Hollywood; according to deputy district attorney Mark Vezzani, Idol struck Amber Nevel, aged 22, twice with his hand, once in the mouth and once in the forehead, and his silver rings caused her cuts, bruising and a slight concussion; formal charges on 20 November 1991 for assault and battery, with arraignment on 18 December 1991 at the Beverly Hills municipal court; guilty plea on 21 January 1992 to one misdemeanour count of battery and assault; sentence of 1 April 1992: 2 years' probation, 2,700 dollars in fines, therapy and the recording of a 1-minute public service announcement on the effects of alcohol and drugs. The prosecution put on record that he had been 6 months sober and had started drinking again that night. Civil case: in June 1992, Cheryl Thompson, aged 30, filed a civil suit alleging events from 1985 and assaults over several months in New York and Los Angeles; the sources consulted contain no documented judgment, settlement or dismissal, and it must not be counted as a proven fact. GHB overdose in 1994, outside a Los Angeles club, with hospitalisation; GHB was legal at the time. Album "Cyberpunk" (28 June 1993): no. 48 United States, no. 20 UK. Album "Devil's Playground" (22 March 2005, Sanctuary): no. 46 United States, no. 78 UK. Memoir "Dancing with Myself" (October 2014), a New York Times best seller. Album "Kings & Queens of the Underground" (17 October 2014): no. 34 United States, no. 35 UK. Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023. Documentary "Billy Idol Should Be Dead", by Jonas Åkerlund, premiered at the Tribeca Festival on 10 June 2025. Album "Dream Into It" (25 April 2025, Dark Horse Records): no. 79 UK. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2026, announced in April 2026, alongside Steve Stevens; the induction ceremony is being recorded on 14 November 2026 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, for broadcast in December, and as of the date of this profile it has not yet taken place. On 13 November 2026 "Billy Idol Day" is celebrated in Los Angeles, by decree of councilwoman Monica Rodríguez. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from the archives of UPI (20 November 1991 and 1 April 1992), Deseret News (20 November 1991 and 18 June 1992), Greensboro News & Record, Rolling Stone, Louder/Classic Rock, Stereogum, American Songwriter, Guitar World, Songfacts, Seattle Weekly, Variety, JamBase, hennemusic, Soap Central, the Top of the Pops Archive, theartsdesk, Billy Idol's official site and Wikipedia.