by Billy Idol
Zowie sank back into the bed in the same squalid squat where I had lain with Jeannette. The door was open, as were our sexual adventures in that dusky place, to the world outside. The booze helped ease our shyness in the light of the afternoon sun as the day turned to dusk, and shadows danced on our naked bodies as sweat dripped and songs flipped, the winding bass hitting the spot. I couldn’t touch her without feeling the wild sensations that coursed through her body, which were overwhelming. Caught in an orgasmic warp, she experienced torrents of sexual ecstasy that took her to a special place I could only sit back and marvel at.
Zowie was sixteen, blond, and a bit of a scrubber, but the sort of girl you just can’t stop fucking. Her sad blue eyes told a tale of misuse by men, but I enjoyed her undiminished love for them wholeheartedly. She’d hang around the Roxy while we rehearsed or go fuck off with her friends, only to return for the evening’s performance, both musical and sexual.
The club swam with flotsam, jetsam, and various and sundry bodily fluids—every kind of activity went on in each corner of the place. People lived out the novel experience of being part of the London punk scene, many bringing their own personally created lifestyle and fashion choices to this violent playground in the heart of Covent Garden. Leather jackets and spiky hair for guys; girls in miniskirts or men’s shirts as dresses, with a tie worn loosely at the neck, bondage leather wristbands, garish facial makeup, crazy-colored hair teased into formidable shapes when not hacked off, and towering fuck-me pumps to finish the overall effect.
Both sexes pounded back the booze and danced in spasmodic fashion with exaggerated moves, paying little attention to anyone else getting in their way. They’d ditch the dance floor for the back alley, vomit, then resume the ritual. Speed fueled the intensity, making their eyes bug out of their heads as they spun uncontrollably like tops to the sounds of the crash-dive music. The interior of the Roxy resembled a centrifugal nightmare, as if a painter had squeezed all the colors of his palette into a flow of spatter onto the canvas of the club walls. Graffiti became the artwork sprayed in defiance. The new art needed no frame to separate it from the outside world, because it was part of the ever-expanding punk cosmos. The look of punk, its mishmash of rock ’n’ roll styles with sheer defiance, would become the style of the future. Someone smashed his head through a glass window, adding blood to the mélange, while the human detritus collided with the furniture, destroying it in their frenzy.
The pogo was the dance of choice as punks aped Sid Vicious jumping up and down at the 100 Club, banging into whoever was around him, including fellow members of the Bromley Contingent. Vicious thought we posed too much instead of simply letting go to the music, and this precursor to the American slam dance was his way of getting everybody to participate with wild and joyous abandon. It seemed we were beginning to find our voice as we came of age.
The Roxy scene continued to grow despite attempts by the local authorities to shut us down. The dim lights of the bar threw amorphous shapes onto the faces of punks who drank hard, trying to squelch the effects of the speed they had just swallowed. Future Pogues star Shane MacGowan, missing an earlobe, danced in a pool of booze before throwing up in the middle of the tiny dance floor. Johnny Rotten scowled disconcertingly at a scene that was taking its own shape, but he felt that way about most everything. The Pistols were the kings of the scene, but the underlings were busy doing their own thing and played on regardless. Hadn’t Johnny said he wanted a scene full of all different types of punk bands? Here it was, taking shape before his very eyes, and he didn’t look too pleased about it. Sure, at times it turned ugly, but it was the bastard child of the hopes and dreams of a disenfranchised British youth that was promised “no future,” so how could it be otherwise?
* * *
A MORE ELABORATE CLUB OPENING was planned for New Year’s Eve to ring in 1977. Tony got the Clash to agree to play with the notorious Heartbreakers from New York, featuring ex–New York Doll guitar-slinger Johnny Thunders. Generation X was the support group for both nights. Everybody who was anybody on the scene came to check out the official opening: Johnny Rotten and the Pistols, Malcolm McLaren and Bernie Rhodes (who managed the Clash), Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin, and the Damned and Keith Levene (who had just left the Clash). The blood from the hypodermic needles was splattered over the toilet cubicle walls, creating fresh Rorschach patterns to be discerned. Punk graffiti. This was all captured by Don Letts with his ever-present camera, which he used to document these passing times before they were gone for good. The young faces filled with passion flooded his lens and found their way into the future, where we can see them today. I was one of those captured in Super 8 and 16mm Kodachrome for posterity. The crush of the crowd downstairs was pretty bad, with what seemed like a thousand punks packed shoulder to shoulder. As we played, from my vantage point onstage, I could see the gathered glitterati of punk, their faces turned toward a twenty-one-year-old Bromley kid sweating on a stage he built with his own hands, trying to find his way, his own sound and expression. As a performer and a singer fronting a band, I was so new to this, I was learning as I went along.
After the New Year’s Eve gig, Mick Jones, Tony, and I stood on the steps of the Roxy alone. The crowd was gone. We laughed and joked about the scene we felt so much a part of and all its vagaries. We surveyed the past wild year, which had seen our bands rise where nothing stood before. Was it all a dream? Would we awake tomorrow and find it was just a passing fancy? “Not bloody likely!” would have been our answer. If this was a dream, I just wouldn’t wake up, because this dream was too good. We parted, and I turned in to the night to traverse the wet, winter London streets, a vampire lover of a nubile sixteen-year-old who loved to fuck. I was alive to stalk the dank evening.
With the Roxy as our base, we could easily meet and bounce up the motorway to any of the out-of-town gigs around London or that were starting to multiply in the midlands, such as Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Halifax, or Liverpool, where local colleges were anxious to book the new punk bands for one of their social nights. We might have had “no future,” but the present was about to become ours.
CHAPTER NINE
PUNK COMES OF AGE WHEN THE TWO SEVENS CLASH
West Hampstead, London
PUNK WAS JUST STARTING TO become the driving cultural force of the New Year, pulling in not only the British youth but adults as well, as the twister carried aloft the whole country. Two Sevens Clash called for action in this year of predicted unrest. Punk seemed to fit the bill as much as the soul rebel reggae, which connected us in the struggle. Punk was inclusive, but there were a large number of reactionary forces that would rear their collective hydra heads in England—fascists, in the form of the skinhead revival, and the teddy boys, who were lovers of old ’50s-style rockabilly as well as the queen and the royal family, conservative in their politics—reactionary forces directly opposed to our beliefs about social and political liberation.
We were also faced with the “muso” bands of the ’60s and ’70s, who felt threatened by the new music and put up fierce resistance from inside the record industry, always putting down the new music and keeping us from the gatekeepers at radio and television except for the most sensationalistic stories. The opening of the Roxy had given us a central London address and a place to play regularly. We were the house band for months, and this gave us valuable preparation time. From our very first gig in December, we received offers from a variety of record labels, but Tony was really savvy about our business strategy. All the major companies wanted to cash in on punk, but we didn’t want some short-term commitment. We preferred holding out for a longer deal. Tony had previous dealings with Bernard Rhodes, who managed the Clash, as I had with the Sex Pistols’ shrewd mentor, Malcolm McLaren. Both men had a plan when it came to dealing with offers, and we learned plenty from them. In addition, we had each read practically every rock ’n’ roll book, detailing other bands’ successes and mistakes in business as well as in music. We studied the past le
st we repeat it.
One of Tony’s acquaintances was Neil Aspinall, who ran Apple for the Beatles. He started out as a roadie but became an accountant dealing with some of the band’s business after the death of manager Brian Epstein. His advice also was to hold out for the best deal. If we had “it,” it wouldn’t disappear, and if we believed in ourselves, we could have a nice, long career. So we decided that was what we should do. Neil was nice enough to meet with us at his house, and it was great to meet someone on the inside of the Beatles’ dealings.
At this point, I was still living at home with my parents in Bromley, although when I wanted to stay in London, I squatted in West Hampstead with Steve Strange, along with Jean-Jacques Burnel of the Stranglers and Wilko Johnson, who was playing with a pub-rock band called Dr. Feelgood. Steve had no money, either, and was hanging out on the punk club scene as well, with a bleached-blond look just like me. Staying there allowed me to rehearse and then go clubbing at night. Steve was a tireless networker who knew what was going on, eventually forming the New Romantic group Visage, riding a camel down Sixth Avenue in New York when the band was later signed. Punk was everywhere.
I really enjoyed seeing Wilko, a great guitarist with an exciting, unique stage presence. It was fun getting to know these people one-on-one as a colleague, a member of a band, not just an awestruck fan. Since there was only a single bed in Steve’s room, we slept together, which gave the others in the flat the idea that somehow we were lovers. I was the last to realize this, but I didn’t care, because for me, it was a means to an end. In fact, I quite liked the idea that people had thoughts about me that emboldened my image. It was the beginning of blurring the lines between William Broad and Billy Idol. I could see that sometimes you had to not give a fuck what others thought or you’d never do anything to advance yourself. I also got a small sense of how bisexual or gay people feel as society makes its judgment, and they have to live with it. In my case, I was mates with Steve and that was all that mattered to me. This was a brave new world, and it was fun to shake everybody up, however you did it.
Generation X played the London pub the Hope & Anchor on January 11, and then began to venture outside the city. We played the Middlesbrough Rock Garden on January 22, and Liverpool’s Eric’s on the 28th, then arrived back in London the next night to play at the Roxy, where we were supported by a new, female-fronted Newcastle band, Penetration. Everything was new and exciting, as the punk scene began to explode and we all discovered one another for the first time. By playing gigs, we were networking. It was all brand-new, the excitement, the camaraderie, rolling up the motorway in a rented Ford transit van packed with our gear, playing the gig, then returning to London at dawn. We drew lots to see who would get to lie on Tony’s long bass cabinet or in the front seat on the trip back, because those were the most desirable places to sleep.
During these early, heady days of punk, the band and fans were bonded as one. Our youth, desires, and needs and the rush of energy engendered by the joining of like minds crested into a tidal wave of exploding passion. We did a brief interview with New Musical Express’s Tony Parsons, which came out the last week of January 1977. He wrote: “Generation X may well be the ‘punk rock’ group that many people have been waiting for; songs with lyrics about change and revolution, but with melodies cute enough for ‘boy meets girl.’ ”
I don’t really think we were singing about political revolution—more a personal one, though we certainly demanded real social change. In “New Order,” we sang about rock ’n’ roll giving us a purpose. By rocking out, we were saving lives, giving kids like us hope for something better. I felt we left the more overt political commentary to bands like the Pistols and the Clash, who were already doing it so well by making it part of their individual band manifestos from the start. Generation X was a book about sociology. We felt we should make that study of British youth culture the basis for our song ideas. These were the things affecting us as young adults.
The English winter dragged on through the early part of the New Year, its freezing rain stinging the eyes and reddening the noses of the populace, but we didn’t notice, rehearsing in the afternoon warmth of the Roxy’s empty womb. Getting to know each other and putting our ideas into action dominated our time, filling our moments.
Adding to the rise of the punk scene was the voice of the fanzine. Mark Perry, a young lad from Deptford in London, put out a xeroxed, stapled publication called Sniffin’ Glue, and other homemade zines sprang up, like Ripped and Torn out of Glasgow and Shane MacGowan’s Bondage. All reported on everything that was happening, including information about the latest bands on the scene, the stuff that didn’t make it into Melody Maker or the NME. They represented the beginning of word-of-mouth and viral marketing, and allowed us to spread the punk gospel.
Bands kept sprouting like grass after a rain shower. The Saints from Australia; the Vibrators; the B-52’s from Georgia; Glasgow’s Rezillos; the Police, another dyed-peroxide trio with Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland; and Paul Weller’s Who-style mod power trio the Jam. Wayne (now Jayne) County, the transgender star from New York’s Max’s Kansas City, played the Roxy along with Cherry Vanilla. A young preteen band called Eater put out an album. Tony and I went to see Iggy Pop play at the Aylesbury Friars with his post-Stooges band, including the Sales brothers and David Bowie on keyboards, doing stuff from Iggy’s Berlin-inspired album, The Idiot, which anticipated the electronic dance music scene by about three decades. Jimmy Osterberg was the granddaddy of the punk scene, even though he had just turned thirty.
Tony and I drove our usual trasportation to the Iggy gig, the blue Ford van I used to deliver tools for my dad. On our way back through Bromley, a drunk driver barreled through a red light and smashed into the right-hand passenger side of the van, directly in the center of the brittle chassis frame, which probably saved Tony’s life. Turned out the guy was going sixty miles an hour and was well over the legal limit for intoxication. It was yet another brush with death, at least for Tony, if not me. The vehicle was totaled. It was the same set of wheels I’d been driving since the summer, the very van we’d taken to Paris for the Sex Pistols, to Louise’s, and to Chelsea rehearsals.
We continued playing in and out of London. One memorable gig was at the University of Leicester on Friday night, March 11. Punk was drawing detractors as well as hard-core fans. On this night, some heavy metal fans started to throw glasses at the stage. At the start of “Ready Steady Go,” a wineglass hit Derwood in the head. He kept playing those fast eighth notes as he collapsed to the floor, with blood oozing from the cut on the top of his forehead. I thought it commendable that he didn’t miss a beat, even as his eyes closed and he blacked out. I was standing right next to him as the beer cans and bottles rained down. He had to have medical attention. War between rival rock music fans was just beginning. People were starting to get polarized by the different scenes around them.
On March 28, I saw Sid Vicious play with the Pistols for the very first time at a gig in Leicester Square. Sid replacing the Dickensian Glen Matlock proved to be a real turning point for the band, with a darker tone creeping in. Sid was concentrating and played great that night. If only he had managed to sustain it. Having seen the Pistols from the very beginning, I felt they were ready to take it to the next level, maybe even conquer America. We went to a nearby pub with them afterward, and I could see that John already seemed bored of being fawned over by his admirers.
On Thursday, March 31, after a gig in Plymouth at the Leisure Centre, we played the Marquee for the first time, an industry showcase. To impress the label reps on hand, we brought in our own punters to cheer us along. Usually, you had to have a record out to play the prestigious venue: the fact that a punk showcase was booked at the Marquee was emblematic of punk’s evolution from marginalized subculture to emerging commodity. The punks went absolutely nuts.
By this time, the Sex Pistols had already been thrown off EMI, their first label, and signed to A&M, but they were pa
id off to leave that company due to their outlandish behavior just before the release of “God Save the Queen.” That single ended up coming out on Richard Branson’s Virgin Records, going to number one on the BBC chart. But the powers that be refused to list it, leaving the space blank when the chart was shown on Top of the Pops. That year was the Queen’s Jubilee, and the Pistols were now the band most feared by the authorities, the epitome of bad taste. The Clash put out their first single, “White Riot,” in March, and their debut album the following month. Both bands put a lot of preparation and time into their music so that it wasn’t released until it was just right, giving us further incentive not to throw out something half-assed. The proof was right in front of our faces: the credibility factor for both the Pistols and the Clash was gigantic. The excitement was running high. Because of his friendship with Tony from their London SS days, the Clash’s Mick Jones always shared his thought process with us. He didn’t pull any punches when giving us advice, but he was also incredibly kind and supportive.
He told us about recording the Clash’s third single, “Complete Control,” with the legendary reggae producer Lee “Scratch” Perry, who “smoked a lot of pot and waited for the vibes to be right.” In fact, Jah himself had to come down before they could begin recording. To this day, when we’re working on something in the studio and it’s not quite right, I say, “We just have to wait for Jah to come down.”
Tony and I were fascinated by this mix of cultures, wondering if the reggae dub echo and spin ideas could be used in rock ’n’ roll. But we were, first and foremost, a punk club band, with raw energy and the message “Believe in yourself,” direct and up front.
