by Billy Idol
Cyberpunk was originally supposed to be the sound track for a film. I was introduced to the film director Brett Leonard by Tony D. He had made the original cybermovie, The Lawnmower Man, and let us sample any effects we wanted from the film for the record. He talked of a sequel called Mind Fire, for which we started to write songs. The thinking was that the album would be the film’s sound track, not just a regular release. So I wrote with that in mind. This process sent me deeper into the cyberworld. The script for Mind Fire was really imaginative, a futuristic love story. At one point, the two lovers are locked up together, so Robin and I wrote a song called “Prisoners of Love,” which we didn’t use in the end. We were well into the album when Brett informed me that the film studio didn’t want to give him the money to make the new film bigger and better than the first one, so the entire project stalled. The studio cut the film’s budget in half and made what turned out to be a flop with another director, which we declined to be a part of. That left Cyberpunk on its own, as a Billy Idol album.
Released on June 29, 1993, it was my least successful album to date and was mocked and labeled a failure in both content and concept at the time by critics. Musically, the album was ambitious in style, but the direction was scattered. My creative instincts and possibly even my taste seemed to abandon me this time around. Even so, I am still proud of the album. The ideas and themes I was exploring and the methods I insisted on using to record, promote, and share the album with my fans have proven to be far ahead of their time, as they would come to dominate the record industry in the years ahead.
Cyberpunk was recorded entirely on software such as Pro Tools and featured songs that dealt with the oncoming onslaught of technology on our daily lives. I was the first artist to include his or her e-mail address on an album jacket, and I used early online communities like The WELL and Usenet to connect with my fans and solicit ideas from them. The first single, “Shock to the System,” was released on a floppy disc, a medium that is a precursor to the MP3 that is now the norm. We were the first to release a digital press kit for an album on a diskette, which featured clips from the album, artwork, lyrics, and commentary: all elements that are staples of modern music websites that are naturally taken for granted now but that seemed strange to many at the time.
I’m not sure if it was an inability on my part to explain the album’s themes fully, or an overarching hesitance amongst the public to accept the themes as realistic, or both. Or it may have just been that people didn’t like the inconsistent music. But the result was that the press and probably many of my fans found my attempts to do something new like Cyberpunk, and promote the impending prevalence of technology in music and daily life, as comical and reason to subject me to ridicule. Even the small yet burgeoning 1993 online community, which I went to lengths to embrace and present in a new and relevant light, accused me of attempting to co-opt their world and use it for my own selfish gain.
The immediate reaction to the album humbled me, and I declined to speak much further on it at the time, but now I hope that those who initially criticized what I was doing with Cyberpunk can at least appreciate how much I was going out on a limb to do something different and push the envelope, challenging myself and my audience, even if it led to failure. As I said in an interview around the time of the album’s release, I feel that I was honoring my DIY punk roots by moving ahead and making an album entirely on computers at a time when—especially for a prominent artist—to do so was exceedingly rare. I feel that having the courage and commitment to use the computer extensively as creative tool, despite being a novice in the computer world, was a move in the tradition of the punks who had the courage and the commitment to write songs and play music on instruments, when they more often than not lacked musical skills.
Being an artist is about putting aside your fears and going for it. This was my code in 1976, and in 1993, and it still is today.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
BITTER PILL
Southern California
AFTER CYBERPUNK, I WOULDN’T MAKE another album for twelve years.
Toward the end of 1994, I was asked to write a title song for the Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper movie Speed, so I used the opportunity to call Steve Stevens to see if he wanted to work with me on it. I was delighted when he agreed. Steve is a massive part of the Billy Idol sound and, quite simply, he’s a virtuoso with staggeringly proficient technical skill. I really liked Mark Younger-Smith’s Texas-blues-rock style, but in the end, no one can hold a candle to the incomparable Steve Stevens.
We began to work in Steve’s apartment off Sunset Plaza and finished writing “Speed” in just a few hours. It ended up being the title song to a very successful movie. Steve and I decided to keep going, mulling over recording ideas, going through tons of work tapes, and actually wrote quite a lot of material in addition to “Speed.” One day I would love to look back on those ideas and listen to what we were doing. “Speed” was a fun song to write, and I hoped we would reunite with Keith Forsey to produce it. Unfortunately, the chap selecting the artists for the movie wanted to produce it, and I didn’t think the end result was as good as our usual singles. I think that was reflected in its chart position, although it seemed to do really well in Europe’s former Eastern Bloc countries, as they had all just opened up to MTV.
Steve and I wrote a lot of good music around this time, but somehow we never moved beyond the demo stage with those songs. As a result, for a while we were in a kind of self-induced limbo. I am inclined to look back at this period of my career with disappointment. Why, you may ask? Well, I wanted to move forward into something different creatively and not be stuck repeating myself over and over, and Steve felt the same way. It was easy to write “Speed” because “a sound from the past” is what the music supervisor and the producers wanted, so we gave them what they asked for. But if Steve and I were going to make another album together, then we had to break some new ground. I had reached the twenty-year mark in my music life and career, and it’s true that many artists hit a fallow period at different times in their careers. This has to be overcome by sheer persistence. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” Thomas Edison said. But that did not mean that we should compromise.
Steve and I kept at it, writing songs together until the late ’90s, but none of the creative roads we tried to go down seemed to click. Looking back, I think a combination of factors led to this period of discombobulation. I found myself, for the first time in my career, unsure about which creative direction to turn in next. I had lost the musical thread of what we had been doing prior to Cyberpunk and was struggling to come up with my next move. Nonetheless, I continued to try.
* * *
AS I WAS WONDERING WHAT to do next, I received a script to read that would lead to one of my most enjoyable experiences working on a movie to date. Even at a young age, Willem was a fan of Adam Sandler movies, and we used to watch them together. I enjoyed them, too, and liked Adam’s work on Saturday Night Live. I received a script called The Wedding Singer, a spoof ’80s movie that would star Adam and Drew Barrymore. Drew used to come to my New York club gigs when she was ten years old. On reading the script, I found it used “White Wedding” as a central motif and that it was quite amusing. I enjoyed the idea of playing myself, but also sending myself up. As time goes on, one can’t help but see the cliché side of what happened musically and culturally in the ’80s.
I turned up on the day of shooting to find Adam had a guitar, drums, and bass set up in his trailer so we could jam between takes, which was a fun idea. Many comedians from this period loved rock ’n’ roll and wanted to be musicians. Like Sam Kinison, Adam could play guitar.
My part called for just a one-day shoot, but those first scenes went well, and soon Frank Coraci, the director, and Adam decided to ask me to come back for another day. I was tasked with continuing to help Robbie, Adam’s character, finally get with the love of his life, Julia, played by Drew. So my character was given addit
ional lines on the airplane near the end of the movie where I pretend to be the captain of the plane speaking to the passengers over the PA system explaining how “We let our first class passengers do pretty much whatever they want,” bringing Julia and Robbie together. I was, in effect, playing a rock ’n’ roll cupid! Frank told me he would have liked me to play the best man when they marry at the end, but that scene had already been shot.
I always thought, somewhere in my imagination, that I could be good in a movie, and in some ways here was evidence of that, although I was playing myself—not much of a stretch. I really enjoyed the camaraderie and the comedy of the film and the shoot.
* * *
WHILE MY EXPERIENCE WORKING ON The Wedding Singer was a great diversion, musically, I felt unmoored. Compounding the problem during this time, my label, Chrysalis Records—which had been a strong supporter of my work from the days of Generation X—was beginning to fall apart. They had fought fiercely to remain independent for many years but succumbed in 1991 when half the company was sold to EMI. In 1992, EMI acquired the other half and systematically proceeded to tear the company apart until it no longer existed. EMI became my label through no choice of yours truly. But then I heard that Gary Gersh, the president of Capitol Records, a part of the EMI family of labels, wanted me to be on his label. That suited me fine, as Gary was a friend of my manager Tony D. He had also been the executive who had first signed Nirvana when he was at Geffen Records. The added bonus was that the Capitol offices were in Los Angeles. Gary hooked me up with producer Glen Ballard, who was hot off his multiplatinum Alanis Morissette album. Steve Stevens joined in and we got halfway through making a record. We even played a proposed single, “Bitter Pill,” which had a distinct rockabilly feel, at the European Midem convention. But just as we were finishing, Gersh was fired from Capitol. The new regime dropped me from the label without even listening to the album we were working on with Glen. That was the end of that. After negotiations with EMI, I did manage to hold on to the rights to the recordings, so it still could be completed one day; in fact, a new version of “Bitter Pill” will appear on my latest album, Kings & Queens of the Underground.
* * *
IN LATE 1998, I BECAME very interested in the idea of a new digital music model, somehow utilizing the people power of the Internet. During the making of the Capitol album that was never to be, we recorded a song called “Sleeping with an Angel,” a ballad I wrote with Billy Steinberg. On being unceremoniously dropped by the label, I took the song and gave it to a free Internet service called MP3.com, founded by a guy named Michael Robertson, who clearly had the major labels in his crosshairs. I thought this syrupy tune might end up being a bit revolutionary in its release, helping promote, as it did, the breakdown of the record company monolith. John Diaz, who later worked at MP3.com, knew the people over there, so it was easy to make happen.
As a result, I was one of the first wave of prominent artists to make their music available for free on the Internet. Later, I gave MP3.com another song, called “Find a Way.” It was fun to see the music come out instantly, and to add weight to the growing insurrection.
Shawn Fanning had yet to launch Napster, while Facebook was still several years down the road, waiting to be born in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room, but my punk roots were showing, and I was beginning to daydream of a way to mainline the music directly to the listener. Twenty-plus years prior, mainlining the music meant performing inches in front of fifteen people on a tiny stage I helped build, exchanging sweat and saliva. Disenchanted with record label conglomerates, I began to ponder a digital parallel.
I appeared on NBC Nightly News, interviewed by Tom Brokaw as the first major artist to go digital. “Sleeping with an Angel” was downloaded more than 100,000 times in the age of the dial-up Internet connection, when a single song often took fifteen to twenty minutes to access. Releasing the song and in effect pirating my own music was a Christmas gift to my fans and a middle finger to Capitol. While my manager, Tony D., quickly came around to the idea, he was aghast when he first learned about it, which was why we buried it during his year-end holiday!
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
MY ROAD IS LONG, IT LINGERS ON
Redwood Valley—and beyond
FOR SIX YEARS, I DIDN’T set foot on a single stage. Performing in front of a live crowd had been central to who I thought I was for most of my adult life. The backlash following Cyberpunk made me think it was best to take a break from the road, and even once I was able to put that album in my rearview mirror, I had no desire to tour again unless I had something new and relevant to say. But an experience born out of my insatiable love for riding motorcycles helped get me back onstage, launching the next chapter of my touring career.
In January 1999, my friend John Diaz introduced me to Stephen McGrath, aka Evil McG. Steve had his own recording studio, and I was looking for someone to help me bring mine up to snuff. I immediately liked his friendly, outgoing personality, and as we talked, we found we have many things in common. In addition to being a musician, like me he’s a voracious reader and loves to ride Harleys. We decided to take a ride together to the Redwood Run biker rally in Northern California. Since my early childhood I have been fascinated by the images of the redwood forest that I saw in books, never expecting that one day I would see those trees in real life. On our way, we stopped in Ukiah, California, and spent the night at the house of a friend of McG’s.
The next day we rode farther north on 101 and into Redwood Valley, en route to the rally site. McG and I had a fantastic trip to the redwoods and California hill country, south of Eureka. We posed for a photo right in the middle of one of those majestic trees, together on our bikes. You can actually drive through one of the trees, and I had once seen a truck with a trailer going through it in a children’s picture book. Visiting this natural temple was a wild feeling; it was easy to imagine a bit of what the settlers must have felt when they came across the many natural wonders of America.
Once at the rally, we pitched a small tent next to our bikes in the campground. A stage had been set up where various local and blues bands were going to play. Later that evening, Los Lobos took the stage. I ended up onstage with them performing “Train Kept a-Rollin’.” As the music picked up pace and I got into it, I found myself having a semi-out-of-body experience, feeling as if I’d been transported into another realm of feeling and consciousness. Quite honestly, I felt like a spinning top. It was a powerful sensation and I thought, If this is what being back onstage feels like, I need more, more, more! It was too good a feeling to miss. McG and I took many road trips together that summer and became close friends.
Back in L.A., I began to make plans to return to the road and live performing, and in December 1999, I reunited playing live shows with Steve Stevens, with McG as our bass player. We have been touring the world fairly consistently ever since.
In addition to Steve Stevens and McG, my touring band in the early 2000s also included keyboardist Derek Sherinian and drummer Brian Tichy. Brian is also a songwriter, and the two of us collaborated on many songs, some of which appear on my 2005 album Devil’s Playground.
Brian had worked frequently with Ozzy Osbourne and was partial to hard rock, heavy metal, and classic rock. So apart from making music in the Idol vein, we also experimented with some styles that didn’t make it onto Devil’s Playground. Two of these songs, “Hollywood Promises” and “Whiskey and Pills,” were recorded with Trevor Horn for my Kings & Queens of the Underground album.
I was also writing with Steve Stevens around this time, so with the songs I wrote with Brian, plus my own solo contributions, three songwriting teams combined to produce Devil’s Playground.
Most of the songs I wrote with Brian had been written around his guitar riffs, including “World Comin’ Down,” “Super Overdrive,” “Body Snatchers,” “Cherie,” and “Evil Eye.” Sometimes when you sit with demos you become very attached to them, and you come to believe all ideas on the demos must make it
to the finished record. I was certainly guilty of this when it came time to record Devil’s Playground, and so this meant that Steve Stevens sometimes needed to emulate Brian’s guitar licks and reiterate them exactly as on the demo. This didn’t give Steve much opportunity to come up with his own take, and I know that was frustrating for him. He did what I asked, without complaint, but the situation would eventually lead to friction between Steve and Brian, particularly when we went on the road.
We recorded Devil’s Playground at the Jungle Room in L.A., with Keith Forsey once again at the helm. The Jungle Room is run by Brian Reeves, who engineered the first Billy Idol album, so it was the old team back together for this one. Brian is an excellent engineer and fun and easy to work with. It was especially helpful that Keith Forsey was involved, because at that moment we needed someone who could bring the album to fruition by helping the varied sources of material jell properly.
Many of the lyrics on this album deal with a sense of impending doom, or a determination to keep going in the face of adversity, but fortunately, it’s not all gloom. The record also includes “Cherie,” an ode to Perri. She gave me love, and that love produced our son, and she put up with a lot from me in the years we were together. She stood by me during the heady days of the ’80s and was by my side as our romantic journey took us around the world. Venice in the spring; Paris in the fall; all the hot, sweaty, and humid New York City summers we lived through; and London’s winter chill. The song “Cherie” is my way of saying Thank you . . . for everything.
