At one time, Billy Idol was the very definition of style over substance. After getting a small taste of fame with his late-’70s punk rock band Generation X, he held on to the attitude but ditched the revolution for his glammy mass-market solo career.
Still, there was nothing quite like Billy Idol in the early ’80s—an MTV-ready hits machine who still managed to make great singles that didn’t sound like anything else. Unfortunately, the incredible “Dancing With Myself” and “White Wedding” eventually gave way to the empty and pointless “Cradle of Love.”
A couple decades after the height of his fame, Idol is like the bastard child of punk rock and Wayne Newton. Clearly, his life experiences have given him some perspective—he was almost killed on his motorcycle in 1990, and then he beat an addiction to crack and heroin after ODing in 1994. At his Fillmore show on Monday night—the first part of a two-night stand there—he seemed to be quintessentially “just happy to be here.”
Alternating between mock-seriousness and straight-up goofball antics, he was the consummate showman. The guy is a natural-born ham, and appears to be relieved of the pressure of having to front that he’s a tough guy, or any kind of actual rebel.
But he did, of course, play “Rebel Yell,” joking after taking off his shirt that he had ruined the surprise of what song would be coming next. In general, he brought the feel of the arena shows he once played to the club setting, sometimes making fun of his own past pretensions, sometimes just indulging everybody’s whiplash-smile fantasies for the fun of it. Idol flashed his six-pack early on, pranced about in his jacket, and autographed an album during the show. He even changed his Doors cover to “San Fran Woman” for the occasion.
But underneath the “Danke Schoen” type stuff, Idol was definitely interested in establishing his cred. He started off with a Generation X song, “Ready Steady Go” (and played a couple more of them over the course of the night). Then he lit into a fantastic live version of “Dancing With Myself,” with his guitarist of 30 years, Steve Stevens, ripping out that unmistakable riff. That song doesn’t sound the least bit dated, even now; it’s a timeless piece of pioneering pop-punk.
Other songs haven’t fared so well. “Flesh For Fantasy” is like a five-minute wormhole to the mid-’80s. Even “Rebel Yell,” though it was a blast to hear it again, is a nugget of nostalgia at this point. But there’s something stranger and more immediate about “White Wedding,” which he turned into a mini-epic, starting out acoustic and then blowing it up into a full-band attack. As we used to say in the ’80s, rad. “Mony Mony” still has that same power—maybe it helps that it was a cover of a ’60s hit (by Tommy James and the Shondells) anyway, so it never seemed nailed to one era.
Idol played a couple of new songs, which were nothing special except for “Scarred for Life,” which manages to re-capture a bit of that classic Idol feel.
Maybe the weirdest thing about seeing Idol now is that he has kind of a regal Bowie thing going on, when he’s not goofing around. His singing is far more nuanced than it ever was, sometimes slowing down for twists of real emotion rather than sheer adrenaline. Age 55 suits him rather well. Could he end up an elder statesman of rock?
