by Billy Idol
The inevitable break with Chelsea was a good thing for us. It brought Tony and me back to our original idea of a group with a social conscience, but brash and fun, with more of an up-to-the-moment image than Chelsea’s ’60s style. We wanted to play this new music for our twenty-something souls. We didn’t want to be in any retro group. Though we gained some valuable experience out of the association, it was time to break off from Gene. We kept John Towe as drummer and Krevine as manager for the time being.
At this point, it seemed like everyone was reinventing themselves, cutting their hair, altering their look and their names. I thought changing my name would free me from the shackles of family and also protect them from possibly being embarrassed by my wicked ways. I intended to use the name Billy Idle, which had been bestowed on me by a disapproving chemistry teacher who had written on my report card: “WILLIAM IS IDLE!” in giant block letters, I-D-L-E. I had been using that name on the ID card required for entry into Louise’s. But Monty Python’s Eric Idle already had this name. When Melody Maker journalist Caroline Coon interviewed me for a story she was writing about the Bromley Contingent, she asked me to spell my name. I realized I couldn’t be I-D-L-E. I had to decide right then and there. It occurred to me that I-D-O-L would work just as well. With his bleached blond hair and punk-rock pedigree, Billy Idol emerged.
Tony and I were at my house one day, working on song ideas, when I showed him a book called Generation X about ’60s youth culture in Britain that my mum had found at a garage sale a couple of years earlier. We immediately thought it could be a great name for this new band, since we both felt part of a youth movement bereft of a future, that we were completely misunderstood by and detached from the present social and cultural spectrum. We also felt the name projected the many possibilities that came with presenting our generation’s feelings and thoughts.
I asked most of my friends what they thought of the name, and since no one liked it, I decided it must be good. Tony began to write some lyrics for the song that became “Your Generation.”
TRYIN’ TO FORGET YOUR GENERATION / USING ANY WAY I CAN / THE END MUST JUSTIFY THE MEANS / YOUR GENERATION DON’T MEAN A THING TO ME
Then I started writing the chords and melody. A B-bar chord with the fingers lifted—D-A-D-A-D-A-D-A—led to the familiar pattern of what would turn out to be our first single. It was a takeoff on “My Generation,” but for the moment, we chose to deny our musical influences and embrace the now.
IT MIGHT MAKE OUR FRIENDS ENEMIES / BUT WE GOTTA TAKE THAT CHANCE.
Tony and I wanted a real hot-shit guitarist for Generation X, but the punk scene was still pretty small and there weren’t that many good players around. Where would we find a fourth member? We decided to just hang out on the scene and hope to hell we’d discover one. Had I blown my chance by turning down the Banshees’ gig at the 100 Club? I sure hoped not.
The punk scene began growing in leaps and bounds, with ten becoming twenty and then a hundred. You could reach out and touch it. To us, it was everywhere. The Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK” would soon hit record-store shelves, and the Damned’s “New Rose” had just been released and was selling well, alongside a trickle of records by a number of lesser-known English punk bands. Every night was a nonstop party.
One evening, I ended up with some North London punks we knew at Fulham Youth Club, where a band called Paradox was playing. They were doing covers of Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple, and they turned out to be pretty good. I took notice of the group’s guitarist, a seventeen-year-old whiz kid named Bob “Derwood” Andrews, who had this serious, cool charisma. Afterward, I complimented his playing and asked if he’d like to try out for our new band.
The following day, Derwood joined me, Tony, and John at the Portobello rehearsal space, and we went through our repertoire, along with some covers. We thought he was great. Symbolically, I gave him the black single-pickup guitar I’d been using, proclaiming the group a whole.
Derwood was a true punk, six years younger than Tony. His nickname referenced the ’60s TV show Bewitched: Derwood was what Agnes Moorehead, playing Elizabeth Montgomery’s mom, would mistakenly refer to her son-in-law, Darrin, as played by Dick York. Funnily enough, I learned years later that “Derwood” wasn’t his real nickname—it was “Dobbin,” and that he only told us it was Derwood as a retort to Tony and me when we asked if he would change his name, as so many in punk were doing. He was taking the piss out of Tony and me with a fake nickname, and he’s been stuck with Derwood ever since.
Bob was the real deal, the same age as the Sex Pistols sang about in “17.” He had a motorbike he fixed himself, and a naturalistic look that was unself-consciously cool. He was technically a better musician than both of us. Bob made Generation X viable because of his personality as much as his ability, which was considerable. He was good-looking in a way that really, really appealed to the girls—and bird-pulling power should never be underestimated when putting a band together.
Now we started to feel we had the makings of a band that could really play, and that opened up the field of possibilities in terms of songs and the forms the music could take. Despite the idea that punk songs should be short, fast, and to the point, we felt that some subjects required a longer time length. We refused to limit ourselves to an outlook that precluded all possibilities. We hadn’t done a thing yet, so why rule out anything?
The warm autumn days gave way to the frosts of November, but in our trade, “Have leather jacket, will travel” is the rock ’n’ roll motto. I was hanging out more and more with Tony. We saw quite a few of the earliest Clash gigs. Tony was best mates with the band’s Mick Jones from their days together in the band London SS. The group was beginning to cause their own revolutionary stir on the scene with their political rock, featuring exciting, fast-paced songs like “Hate and War,” “I’m So Bored with the USA,” and “Garageland.” I saw their second-ever public gig with my Bromley pals at Screen on the Green and was at their infamous show at the ICA on October 23 with Tony when Shane MacGowan (later of the Pogues) got his earlobe bitten off. I was standing right behind him as the girl he was with took a chunk out of it. There were probably no more than fifty people in the audience at the time. I could see the blood, and while there was no real violence, the journalist who wrote about it exaggerated it into yet another sensational punk-rock gore story, an urban legend that grew in retelling from just the lobe to the entire ear being chewed off.
A punk-rock circuit was beginning to form. A few more bands started cropping up, like Slaughter and the Dogs, coming down from the north of England. It was great to know more people who cared about punk music. The stuff Mick and Joe Strummer were writing for the Clash had a fervor that made me want to work even harder to write great punk-rock anthems that could change the world—or at least the one we inhabited.
The Pistols, the Clash, and the Damned embarked on a small tour of England as we prepared for Generation X’s first gig at the Central School of Art and Design on Friday, December 10. Our set list consisted of originals like “Youth Youth Youth,” “Your Generation,” “Ready Steady Go,” and a song called “New Order.” The gig went well, although my nerves were off the charts at the beginning, falling away as my adrenaline rush took over. All those Friday-night gigs at the university cafeteria and the few we’d done with Chelsea had gotten me used to playing in front of people. This was my dream, and it was beginning to come true.
* * *
THE NOTORIETY AND POTENTIAL FOR violence was beginning to concern the club owners. The final straw was when the Sex Pistols and Siouxsie appeared on British TV, on Bill Grundy’s Today on December 1, 1976. Grundy was a square talk-show host looking to boost his ratings with some outrageousness, but he got more than he bargained for. He was clearly egging on Johnny Rotten when the frustrated singer muttered, “Shit,” under his breath. Provoked by the host to say it again, John obliged. When Grundy tried to incite Siouxsie by talking suggestively to her, Jonesy called him a “dirty fucker”!
Britain predictably reacted with outrage—the headline THE FILTH AND THE FURY blared across the Fleet Street tabloid the Daily Mirror and would later become the title of a 2000 documentary about the band, directed by Julien Temple. The story made the front page of every national paper. Follow-up stories the next day included one about a lorry driver who, in a moment of disgust at what had become of England’s youth, threw a brick through his TV screen. Grundy was soon fired, and the Sex Pistols turned into a national sensation—or nightmare—overnight. Suddenly, what had been a tiny scene exploded into the consciousness of every young British kid. Club owners, fearful of staging punk shows with the added concerns of protests and security, reacted with an unofficial ban that included London’s Marquee and the 100 Club. Suddenly, there was no place to play.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A NIGHT AT THE ROXY
Neal Street, Covent Garden, London
CULTURE’S ROOTS REGGAE LANDMARK Two Sevens Clash, a political statement record, was on my turntable, as the Rasta reggae rebels anticipated the significance of the two sevens in the coming year. Our new band, Generation X, was just starting to get going, but, like all the other punk bands, we needed somewhere to play, someplace to call our own. The punk scene was growing fast, because what else was there? The Bay City Rollers? Yet there was no authentic, purely punk club run and staffed by punks and featuring punk rock, a place where you could wear your safety-pin bondage pants, DESTROY T-shirts, and crazy-colored hair with pride barefaced to the world.
Looking back today, I can see that punk caught on when it did because it would be the last time there would be a generation gap between parents and their kids, where social and political disagreements ran according to age, before today’s uneasy détente. We didn’t want to listen to the music of our parents. It was the last time the wants, needs, and belief systems of a generation would be so opposed to those of the one that preceded it. We had seen at Louise’s what it meant for those lesbian girls to have a place to indulge themselves without judgment. After violence erupted during two Pistols gigs at the Nashville and the Marquee, the unspoken ban on punk by the London club owners had become doctrine. Starting our own venue was the only option.
Tony and I had always agreed that a band should have a place to hang out and rehearse. If we wanted to play and capture the feeling of English youth at the time, we’d need a home base. We wanted to start afresh, exploring this new music that was taking the country by storm. This new location would give us a headquarters, somewhere we could congregate, a place to play and work.
Gene October and I knew of a club that had closed down in London’s Covent Garden area called Chaguaramas, a seedy gay club and soul-boy hangout that had long since fallen into disrepair. I told Malcolm McLaren’s accountant, and our soon-to-be manager, Andy Czezowski, about it. He and Tony’s friend Barry Jones, who would be running the place, checked it out and then agreed to rent it from the owner. We all believed that, with the number of punks and bands looking for a place to gather and play, it would generate enough income to guarantee the place would turn a profit. With the two of them handling the business, Tony and I were left free to write songs and focus on the band.
In the coming months, the sweat would mingle with blood, spit, and sexual juices in this tiny room, which was redubbed the Roxy. The club had a small entrance off Neal Street, where patrons would walk past a pair of small offices, a coat-check room, and a small couch, which served as a reception area, before descending down into the bowels of the basement club.
Around this time, I embarked on a torrid romance with Jeannette Lee, whom I first met at the Kings Road shop where she worked with her boyfriend, the aforementioned DJ Don Letts. We spent a great deal of time together in the squat I shared with Steve Strange, another early figure on the punk scene. It was dingy, but we didn’t care. We were together. The world could have stopped revolving and we wouldn’t have noticed. At that time, Jeannette was the coolest chick I had ever been with.
Yes, she was somebody else’s girl, but we forgot about that momentarily as I stared into her depth of being. She embraced a way of thinking that was far more mature than any I had experienced. Her tight minidress; small, shapely, beautiful figure; and stunning smile—my mind could not take it all in without rushing to a sensual overload. We would meet in this sordid love nest while we pretended the outside world didn’t exist, and time was suspended in that forgotten downstairs room on a filthy mattress with sheets stained with love.
But the Roxy and the future soon called, which distracted me. They broke me from faraway love, tore me from her embrace, dashed my hopes on the rocks of desire as the sea poured into our kingdom, washing her from me. The cold, stone-green sea greeted with envy my belief that hopes can come true, even for the briefest of dreamy moments in which we murmured our deepest thoughts and spoke unsaid visions of a love that was forbidden. Jeannette and I had to move on.
In my mind, I still see her small frame disappearing around a corner of the West Hampstead tube station. Just a glimpse of a smile and she was gone. A possible future for me disappeared with her, but my deep desire to make music overrode my emotions, as always. I had learned this skill—overriding my emotions—when I was young, as my family continually moved around. I’d had to learn to adjust to each new home. We were uprooted every few years, through no fault of my parents, but the moves always hurt a little. I was accustomed to living with loss by disposing of it into the ether.
* * *
TONY AND I WENT TO meet Barry Jones and Andy Czezowski at our new hangout. We discussed building a stage at one end of the dance floor in the lower basement. The idea that in the Roxy we were creating our own Max’s Kansas City or Cavern Club spurred us on. It was a place for the new scene to take root. Don Letts supplied his mixtapes of far-out roots reggae and a selection of punk old and new from New York and London, and any previous bands that seemed relevant. Of course, the legal capacity was barely 250, but that would be stretched to the limit on many a night.
We took control of the keys for the place soon after and began to redecorate it into a hellacious punk hangout. I helped Barry with the stage, erecting a black backdrop that somehow said anarchy, and we beefed up the sound system. In the end, though, it would be the punks themselves who would decorate the Roxy—with spray paint, spit, semen, and blood from a junkie’s needle.
AND MY SPRAY CAN IS THE GUN THAT SHOOTS THE MAN.
—“WILD YOUTH”
We began to plan an opening of sorts. We’d been using the club as a rehearsal space for Generation X and really wanted to play a show that reflected the do-it-yourself nature of punk long before indie was a word in today’s rock vernacular. We set up our gear on the basement floor. We usually gathered in a circle to best communicate musically with one another, eye contact and body language being very important to help catch those spur-of-the-moment happy accidents that can come and go in the blink of an eye if you’re not paying close attention. We rehearsed “Youth Youth Youth,” “Your Generation,” “Ready Steady Go,” “Listen,” “Prove It,” “Save My Life,” and others.
Tony and I were writing constantly in order to have enough songs for a forty-minute set, which would often shrink to less than half an hour when we played fast enough. Tony would come up with a lyrical idea, and I would follow with the chords and tune, although trade-offs often occurred where, in search of the best idea, we both threw in suggestions from all over the musical spectrum. True collaboration ruled: it was all for the music and achieving the maximum effect live.
We planned a preemptive, low-key opening in December to get word of mouth started. I talked to Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin, who said the Banshees would open the club with us. We were hoping the bill would be a good draw, since punk was something a majority of punters had heard about but hadn’t actually seen, due to the lack of available venues. Manchester’s Slaughter and the Dogs opened for us the following night. We made some homemade posters advertising the club and went around in
the dead of night posting them in Notting Hill Gate, Portobello, Deptford, and Kings Cross, as well as any other areas of London where punks might hang out. Hardly anyone showed the first evening, but word spread. The combination of advertising and word of mouth traveled fast, and the various hip cliques, hungry for somewhere new, quickly decided that this was the place to see and be seen.
Don Letts was the DJ, and Jeannette was back with him, so I had to control my emotions. She was his girl, but I couldn’t help feeling we had something personal and special, too. Still, this allowed me to play the field, which was growing larger every day, as punk became an unstoppable wave.
For much of the ’70s, a battle had played out between the government and the unions. An ongoing garbage workers strike buried London in piles of rotting rubbish. Trafalgar Square was a mountain of black garbage bags twitching with rats. Girls turned up at the Roxy in black garbage bin liners, high heels, and ripped black hose with the over-the-top goth eye makeup popularized by Siouxsie. The Roxy became a hive of activity, spinning the fresh sounds of punk. New acquaintances kept arriving from all over London and other parts of England with the era’s equivalent of viral messages. The place’s energy was fueled by former outcasts jazzed at finally finding a place where they were welcome. The feeling was so palpable, it hung in the air, infecting all with an excited lust for whatever was coming next.
Free to pursue my own romantic interests, I was taken into the toilets by a girl named Zowie, who proceeded to give me a suck in full view of everyone, performing the deed with relish. My eyes bulged like those of a wolf in a Looney Tunes cartoon as orgasm overwhelmed me. If this was rock ’n’ roll freedom, give me more, more, more. I learned Zowie felt lost, but in punk had found a purpose, a direction, a way to think, a belief system, a philosophy. Many women of that era saw punk as the next step in sexual liberation. Women were liberating themselves and then doing the same for us. Zowie scowled at the world around her but beamed upon hearing Patti Smith’s Horses. I was a fan too, and we would fuck our brains out to “Rock n Roll Nigger” from her Easter album.
