HE CRIED MORE, MORE, MORECredit:Sunday Herald Sun (Cue)
Date:Sunday October 6th, 2002
Site::SHSAdam Zwar enjoys a blast from the past as he chats with Billy Idol
They told me Billy Idol was looking great - said he hadn't changed since the heady days of 1980s hit albums Rebel Yell and Whiplash Smile.
So I sat there, on the top floor of South Yarra's Como hotel, waiting for some sort of preserved punk Adonis to bounce up the stairs and throw my tape recorder through the window.
Later that evening, Idol would threaten my tape recorder. Later still, he would pour a cup of cold water over The Panel's Tom Gleisner before rubbing it into his scalp.
There's two ways of looking at this: Billy Idol has remained loyal to his punk beginnings or he has turned into an amusing 46-year-old father of two living out his past in cabaret.
"Some people seem to think that we're some sort of throwback act," says Idol with a smile that turns into a deep guttural laugh.
"I don't think so. The girls who still go to our concerts are young. Well, that's what it's like in America. I don't know what it's like here. Maybe it's going to be all old fogies here."
He gives another guttural laugh before adding, "I don't think so."
Sitting on the couch - the length of his legs boosted by a pair of pump-soled shoes - Idol does, indeed, look great.
"Great" in the way that George Hamilton and Julio Iglesias look great. Excessive use of a sunlamp can mask a multitude of sins.
"Good genes," he says by way of explanation. "I've been very lucky to have had good genes, but I think it could be about to collapse at any moment."
Idol is in Australia to perform at the inaugural M-One festival, a nation-wide rock, sport and comedy event organised by the Triple M networks. Add to his schedule a world tour promoting his new greatest hits album and all systems are go for the bottle blonde.
It was a different story in 1993, when the washed-up perpetrator of such classics as White Wedding and Mony Mony retired to a Los Angeles poolside after two decades of drug and alcohol abuse and a near-tragic motorcycle accident in which he almost lost a leg.
"You can't stay at the top of your game all the time without going back to the drawing board and reworking it," he says.
"You have to change. Yeah, I think it was a necessary break."
In 1998, boosted by the wave of popularity following his cameo in The Wedding Singer, Idol assembled "a kick ass band" and headed back on the road.
"It's taken me three years to get the line-up we've got now though. It's exactly right. It's easy to think that anyone can play this music but they fucking can't. Otherwise they'd be doin' it and they're not. I am - at 46.
It's better than it was 10 years ago."
How do you know? Do you listen to live recordings?
"I can tell, man," he says. "I can just tell. No need to check it."
Born William Albert Michael Broad on November 30, 1955, Idol began his music career as a member of the Bromley Contingent, followers of the Sex Pistols, which included members of The Clash and Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was in this period that he changed his name to Idol after perusing a school report card in which a teacher proclaimed his as being "idle" in class.
He then went on to form Generation X, which became Gen X, spawning the international hit Dancing With Myself. But the band soon lost popularity and Idol headed for New York.
"I had a five or six-year career with Generation X," he says. "Then I got a phone call from Kiss's former manager (Bill Aucoin) and he said he wanted to manage me, and the record company started encouraging me to change directions as well.
They said, 'You've done it in Britain, Billy. Why don't you do it in America?' And I'm like, 'Whoooaaa! Try and stop me!'
Why would I want to live in England anyway? Tiny little place.
Albums are over in three weeks; careers over in three years."
Idol's new package came with many perks, including former Elvis Presley bodyguard Ed Parker.
"He was a nice chap but he was crazy," he says.
"One week he told me this big story about how he had seen Elvis Presley's ghost. The next week I asked him about it again and he said he didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. I thought: 'This is so weird. Get him away from me.'
"Nice chap, but I think there was a screw loose.
"He was one of Elvis's 'yes' men - you don't need that. You don't need 'yes' men."
Collaborating with veteran guitarist Steve Stevens, Ido released the all-conquering Billy Idol, Rebel Yell, Whiplash Smile and a best of album, Vital Idol. After Charmed Life (1990) and Cyberpunk (1993) Idol drifted into semi-retirement.
Despite Idol's career-boosting appearance in The Wedding Singer, he says he has little interest in acting or film.
"I had good fun doing The Wedding Singer - as well as The Doors movie," he says of Oliver Stone's 1991 hit. "But I never wanted to be an actor. My dream was to write my own music, write my own script, make my life a movie in itself. You have to do that - that has to be the central dream.
"I know I can only be Billy Idol on film and when people do a film, that's the last thing they need... you know, my eccentric habits.
"That's the problem Mick Jagger has on film. He can't help but be Mick Jagger. I can't help but be Billy Idol. I don't want anything else - to deny that, I'm wasting my time."
Beyond the snarl, pump-soled shoes, hair and tan, it will be a considered an mature Idol that lines up on the main stage at Colonial Stadium on Saturday with Garbage, the Whitlams, Midnight Oil, Lifehouse, Goo Goo Dolls and the Tea Party.
He says he is devoted to raising his two children and remains a self-styles Trotskyist.
"All human beings are political animals," Idol says. "I had a teacher who told me to vote for anything I was against. I always did that 'cos you can never vote for anyone you want - so you just vote against them."
It's about now that the new Idol adopts his old persona. He sneers for the camera, picks up my tape recorder and goes to throw it through the window.
Problem is - he stops short.
In the early '80s Idol would never have stopped short.
(M-One is at Colonial Stadium this Saturday. Tickets: 136 100 or www.ticketmaster7.com)
