by Billy Idol
For the Sex Pistols and our small Bromley Contingent of early punks, it was a much-needed haven. Back then, the way we dressed would have started a riot if we had set foot in any normal club or pub. The DJ often played Lou Rawls’s “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,” and it would always pack the dance floor. It was an anthem for those ladies, and I would casually watch their slow dances and hot, intimate touches from my spot on the edge of the dance floor.
The people who ran Louise’s accepted us, due to the fact that we were part of the group of people from Malcolm and Vivienne’s store, Sex. We were also friends with a dominatrix named Linda, who went to Louise’s regularly with her coterie of girls. Benjamin Franklin once offered advice to his fellow revolutionaries: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” We were a small group of people bored with the repeated clichés of modern life and its stagnant, putrid waters. That is what brought us—and ultimately bonded us—together.
I delivered tools for my dad in the daytime and went to rehearsals and gigs and hung out at Louise’s every night. I would get home at 4 a.m., wake up at eight, and start all over again. This accelerated lifestyle would eventually take its toll, but I had a purpose that drove me to succeed. Referring to overthrowing the czar in Russia, Lenin said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Revolution was on our minds, too.
We nursed ourselves on the lesbians’ rebellious milk, growing strong and attracting like-minded souls. We all congregated there, drinking and socializing, plotting our rebellion. It was our midnight meeting place, our sanctuary. We all walked the same path at that time. Many of the classic-rock bands talked about musicianship but had little to offer us, the disenfranchised and disenchanted. We were youth thrown on the scrap heap.
There was at least one veteran band that spoke to us. The Who insisted, “We’re all wasted,” while the likes of Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop seemed in touch, but what about our own scene?
Those nights at Louise’s gave us hope and made me feel that something special was indeed afoot. I first heard Steve Jones utter the now-iconic phrase “Never mind the bollocks!” there as he sat with Rotten, Paul Cook, and Malcolm. The lost generation was back from the dead! As the gay ladies danced and loved one another, we devised our plans and consolidated a movement. By being like-minded, we ruled the night. We would rock London to its core. The lesbian bar was our spiritual “upper room,” and we, the new aristocracy of the poor, knighted with fire, sallied forth and followed Johnny Rotten into the unknown!
For now, the “unknown” turned out to be Paris, where the Sex Pistols were to play their first-ever gig outside England, at the opening of the Club de Châlet du Lac, Paris, September 3, 1976. I drove my dad’s Ford delivery van and we boarded the ferry at Dover that would take us across the Channel to Calais. Crowded into the van were Steve Bailey, Siouxsie, Si Barker, and Michael, one of a set of twins who hung out with us and who first used the expression “Never mind the bollocks” before Jones, with his don’t-give-a-shit attitude, brought it to life for a whole generation.
We met up with the Pistols at Sartre’s old hangout, Les Deux Magots, on the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and occupied an outdoor table on the busy sidewalk. John was wearing a black beret and a red kids’ jumper slit up the side. Parisians have always had a sense of pride when it comes to fashion, so it was great fun seeing the befuddled looks of surprise on their faces when confronted with a group of oddly dressed punks. This wasn’t just a challenge to their sense of style and taste that could be chalked up to the generation gap; it was an assault on their ideas and attitudes.
That attack continued into the night at the gig, when Siouxsie wore her “Night Porter” outfit, complete with a swastika armband and SS cap. She’d taken the look from Liliana Cavani’s controversial 1974 film of the same name, in which Charlotte Rampling played a concentration camp survivor who falls in love with her Nazi guard/torturer, played by Dirk Bogarde. Siouxsie’s hair was cropped short, as Rampling’s was in the film, and her makeup was extreme. She would become both famous and infamous for the getup. We were all used to strange looks, but the crowd’s response to Siouxsie’s outfit at the Club de Châlet du Lac that night was particularly unpleasant.
The French audience had no way of knowing in those early days that clothing as a performance art statement was part of the punk culture and couture. We all co-opted images and logos that, when mixed together, would force an observer to react and feel the rejection of all things human that we felt. We tried to challenge preconceived notions. Some of Vivienne Westwood’s designs mixed communist and fascist imagery to assault the onlooker. Just as we felt marginalized, we wanted to lash back and hurt so that we could, as the Doors’ Jim Morrison put it, “break on through to the other side.”
All we wanted to do was shock, because that was all we felt was left to us. During those early days, within our little universe, an understanding of other people’s interpretations of our actions was beyond us. On this night, though, the taunting crowd was becoming downright hostile.
The Pistols came onstage, with Rotten sporting a Westwood-designed black parachute bondage outfit with straps from elbow to elbow, leg to leg. We felt repressed in every way, so the prism of sexual bondage spoke to our belief that most people simply embrace and accept the chains and whips of society.
“The problem is you—whatcha gonna do?” John taunted the crowd in “Problems.” The French audience watched the show impassively while scowling at us. “We hate long hair and we don’t wear flares.” Rotten twisted, turned, and grimaced as he leaned on the microphone stand. The black outfit of restraint seemed to electrify his look and galvanize his attitude. A true star, John dominated the room with his presence and wild stare, punctuating his lyrics by burning a hole in the audience with his eyes. He might ignore them one moment, then launch into a tirade the next, practically frothing at the mouth, following it up with a look of disgust at the lack of response from the overwhelmed crowd.
Meanwhile, the Sex Pistols were coming together as a band. Steve Jones was getting noticeably better, and Cookie was adding beat, becoming tighter timewise. Glen Matlock held his end down well, adding tasteful runs that Sid Vicious, his eventual replacement, could and would never accomplish.
“We’re vacant and we don’t caaaaaare,” caterwauled John. We had been led into a nowhere world where black was white and white was black, where no one fit if you challenged the norm. Proof of that was this Paris audience, getting increasingly incensed at us. Obviously, The Night Porter wasn’t very big in France.
As the band thundered to the end of the set, things started to get even uglier. We tried to ignore the rowdy crowd, but Siouxsie was glaring and giving back as good as she got. Soon, a whole section of fans started throwing stuff at us. When it looked like they were about to attack us, we managed to run across the stage and find refuge with the band in their tiny dressing room. We later found out it was the anniversary of the day France declared war on Germany in 1939. Siouxsie sure had balls; she refused to remove the offending armband, and continued to wear it the rest of the evening at the after-party.
The City of Lights held a wild promise. To walk through the “rue Morgue” and drink in the Gallic nightlife was stimulating, but the gig I had just seen stayed with me, lodged in my brain. I don’t remember too much after it except waking up in the driver’s seat of my van looking onto the River Seine, a peaceful Saturday morning, the calm before the proverbial storm.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GENERATION X MARKS THE SPOT: WILLIAM BROAD BECOMES BILLY IDOL
Portobello Road, London
THE SUMMER MONTHS OF DRIVING for my dad during the day and rehearsing at night reinforced the desire in my heart and mind for an artistic life. I couldn’t stand the idea of working for someone else’s dreams. Even the fairly benign slavery of working for my father was not my idea of a life. I had come to the realization that I had no inter
est in selling a product unless the product was me. I had the blues about society and wanted to express myself, even if I didn’t quite yet know completely how to accomplish it all.
Rehearsing with Chelsea was a beginning. My company of like-minded souls from Bromley fortified these ideals, as all we wanted was to control our destinies, and rock ’n’ roll was one helluva way to do it. The Pistols served as our flagship, showing us the future, that the world could be ours if we so chose.
We couldn’t just blame our parents. It was on us. We knew we wanted to put society on trial whether or not anyone would listen. We congregated and started making music to express this self-inflicted mission, to stand next to the greats, display our hand, and take on the world.
Growing up, I developed a lack of self-esteem that tortures me with doubts about my ability. At times, it cripples me, but alternatively it sets me free. My focus is much different from my parents’. It sees possibilities where they see doom and disaster. It hates with passion, where they simply dislike or ignore. It struggles over decisions that they would easily make. My ideas of right and wrong are skewed, where they see things clearly. But I’m ultimately set free by a dream for a life that overcomes my limitations and can make me glory in any success I might have that proves me right.
Where did all these feelings of alienation start? Lou Reed said, “I know I’m not dumb because I know I’m not smart.” My fear was of mediocrity, of being just another cog in the relentless system that would eventually grind our spirits down to dust. I refused to be a prisoner in a gilded cage from which there was no escape, like Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six in The Prisoner. I was determined to overcome my limitations, to stare my mediocrity in the face, to step up and dare to fail big, to go for the gold, live on the edge of uncertainty. At least I’d be alive to feel my own pain, as John Lennon had commanded. Dive rather than sink, and dare the current to take you!
* * *
AT THAT TIME ENGLAND WAS a soulless world of few possibilities, especially for its young. Gangs of police roamed London and the major cities, inflicting hell on the immigrant population, which had been reviled for taking jobs away from “those who needed them.” They patrolled the streets, armed with the “sus” law: the suspicion of anything—drugs, weapons, any wrongdoing—provided sufficient grounds to stop people and harass or detain them. They harassed the young who were out of work and on the dole, while real criminals roamed free. The feelings of freedom, love, and peace engendered in the ’60s had given way to a police-state mentality. A cold wind froze the hope and shriveled the testicles. We would need to grow bigger balls to deal with it.
One night, the police pulled us over, driving in my dad’s van. They had their truncheons out, but burst out laughing as Siouxsie, Steve Severin, Si Barker, Bertie Berlin, and Little Debbie all tumbled out of the van, one after another, dressed in fashions too wild for them to understand. We set out to confuse the straights with our look and attitude. We were not going to take it anymore.
The left-wing liberalism of the previous decade had given way to a reinvigorated right wing that appeared to be gaining in strength and fanaticism in England’s hour of need. The glam-rock and prog-rock movements were tolerated because they posed no threat to the establishment, with both offering escapes into either fantasy or musicianship. The politicized reggae of the Jamaican soul movement, thanks to mass immigration, was beginning to emerge in Britain. Dub-style dance-hall sounds reinforced the experimental nature of breaking down a recorded track into a wild, abandoned experiment into the possibilities of sound deconstruction, a new edge right on our own doorstep.
Amid this maelstrom, Chelsea rehearsed in a warehouse owned by John Krevine, our manager and the owner of Acme Attractions, located at the end of Portobello Road, near the Jamaican area in London. This was where dreadlocks lived in red, gold, and green, their Rastafarian looks representing a nonconformist style, the stores blasting “a wide selection without objection” of reggae. There was an uprising on the street that would inspire the Clash song “White Riot,” where the dreadlocks were made to retreat in the face of police superiority in numbers “down the back end of Portobello.” We watched from the top-floor window of our rehearsal space as rocks were thrown and scuffles broke out. The incident inspired our song “Youth Youth Youth,” a punk-rock call-to-arms anthem, as the rude boys and rebels were referred to as “youth” in reggae culture. It was the second song Tony and I wrote, after “Ready Steady Go,” a rallying cry for our band and for the young people out there in bedsit land.
Don Letts, a young dreadlocked London rude boy, worked behind the counter at Acme Attractions, playing his mixtape cassettes of all the latest and far-out reggae, then giving me copies. This new music was a far cry from the skank of the ’60s. The deep, slow-moving rhythms passed from the mind deep into the soul, encouraging us to refresh rock ’n’ roll and make it relevant again, as they had done with reggae.
A girlfriend offered to strip my hair of color and dye it black with blue highlights. But she forgot to bring the right stuff, so I left it peroxide blond. Gene October went nuts at the next rehearsal, insisting I change it back, which made me resolve to keep it that way, if it had that much of an effect on him. My small single-pickup guitar was black, so it looked good in contrast. My new look was the first inkling of my new identity.
Just as we had claimed, Tony and I had started writing songs together. We were all mightily influenced by the Ramones’ eponymous first album. Only the Pistols didn’t speed up their tempos; they kept to their original midpace speed. We rehearsed and played our first gig at the Chelsea Potter pub. I played guitar, tuning it up before the gig and hoping it didn’t go out while I played. Of course, it was punk rock, so it hardly mattered. I remember we did a version of the Equals’ “Baby Come Back” at superspeed, so I could play straight eights.
I still remember the wild excitement and adrenaline rush of nerves we all shared at that first gig. We only had a twenty-minute set at the time, which we could stretch to a half hour by playing songs twice. There weren’t any originals in the set except for “Ready Steady Go.”
Gene was the lead singer, and I joined in on backup vocals with Tony on bass and John Towe on drums. The semi-drunken audience leered at us, and we leered right back. Sometimes you have to plant your feet and deliver your ideas with as much personality as you can muster. Stare into the jaws of defeat and snatch victory. It was weird playing our first show on the floor along the side window of the Potter, but I was used to performing in the canteen coffee bar at Sussex, so it was no problem. And then it was all over in a flash.
* * *
I WAS VERY NEARLY IN an early version of Siouxsie and the Banshees. I told Malcolm McLaren during the Screen on the Green Festival in Islington, August 29, which featured the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Buzzcocks, that he should book the band Siouxsie, Steve, and I were forming for the show he was promoting at the 100 Club on September 20. By the time of the 100 Club show, I was already committed to Chelsea and couldn’t play with both, so the band performed with Marco Pirroni (later of Adam and the Ants) on guitar and Sid Vicious playing drums, which set the Banshees legend in motion.
John Krevine also managed the art-rock performance band Throbbing Gristle. Our next gig was supporting them during an art exhibit at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts on October 18, which consisted of, among other things, used bloody Tampax placed in frames along the walls. We called ourselves L.S.D. for that particular gig, though we went back to Chelsea afterward. The gig was reviewed by New Musical Express’s Tony Parsons, the first time I’d ever been mentioned in the music magazines that I had been reading, like gospel, since I was twelve.
Before the Internet, music publications like Melody Maker and NME carried the desperate hopes of a large number of adolescents in England, for whom music was a primary interest. Ever since Elvis Presley, youth culture started to have a true voice of its own. John Lennon was spot-on when he said, “Before Elvis, there was nothing.�
� Teenagers with money had become a cultural force, using music and the arts to express their inner feelings. Rock ’n’ roll gathered power with every changing of the guard, and now it was our turn.
The malignant power of rock ’n’ roll turned me on. Being onstage was like a quick wet fuck—short and sweet, scary, but oh so neat. The magic of punk—or its blessing—was that nobody really knew what it was, exactly. Like a theory or an undiscovered land, it was there to be explored in rehearsal and onstage. That’s where it happened, a deepening sense of the possible, a tidal wave of emotional politics set loose in Merry Olde England. It was all we were left as Britain descended into hell. We were forced to act. The loss of a future meant we had to carve one out with our own actions. Punk had been explored in rock in the early ’60s, and its very simplicity rendered it the perfect vehicle for young adult bile and spleen.
Chelsea played a gig at the Electric Circus in Manchester that was our one and only gig outside of London. Our next gig was at the Nashville on November 21 supporting the Stranglers, the last one Tony and I would ever play as Chelsea. After writing “Youth Youth Youth” in rehearsal one day, Tony and I looked at each other and realized that Gene couldn’t sing the song because he was already thirty. For a twenty-year-old, that was ancient. I didn’t want to be an adult. I didn’t want to be in control.
We realized we were writing songs for me to sing. Tony was writing a lot of the lyrics, and I worked on the chords and melody. Gene didn’t like the fact that a young kid with peroxide-blond hair was upstaging him as we began to attract more fans of the new punk music. He wanted us to write a song with the title “Mad Dog,” which we just couldn’t do. It felt forced, and not in line with the idea Tony and I had for a group named Chelsea.
