You may not have heard anything from Billy Idol for a long time, but you are gonna to see his face soon: he has an upcoming studio album ‘Kings & Queens of the Underground’, set for an October release, and a book, aself-penned autobiography named after his most famous song ‘Dancing with Myself’, also due for a release this coming month.
On his website, Billy posted this very rock ‘n’ roll introduction to the book:
‘I came to New York in the spring of 1981, my Country Gentleman guitar in one hand, a suitcase in the other, the trunk with my pink Elvis ’50s-style jacket and the sum of my effects on my back. Surely this city, with its skyscrapers reaching into the ozone, touching hitherto unknown heights, might welcome yet another stranger in a strange land, one more explorer doing his damndest to act unafraid in the face of his exceedingly uncertain future. The heavens blazed my coming to America that first night with shooting stars and a strange halo effect that may well have been the man in the moon laughing at my audacity.
Some thirty-three years later, I come to you again, with a story to tell. You know me as Billy Idol, the hell-raising rebel who’s lived life to the full—sometimes fuller than life would allow. But I am also William Michael Albert Broad, a working-class kid from the suburbs of London: a dreamer with his nose forever in a book, cursed with feeling too much, dreaming too big, and suffering slights too deeply. Life gave me a golden key when I fell in love with rock ’n’ roll (thanks to the music in my Irish mum’s blood), and a whole new world opened up to me. With this world came every opportunity, and every temptation under the sun; around-the-clock excess.
I am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, I am putting it all down, every bit from the heart. I am going out on a limb here, so watch my back.”
Billy idol has seen it all and he has lived the dream, he witnessed the birth of punk rock in England where he was part of Bromley Contingent with Siouxsie Sioux (a group of fans of the Sex Pistols), and he became MTV’s superstar once in New York. In his book, Idol promises juicy stories about sex, drug and rock ‘n’ roll (what else?), adventures with his manager Bill Aucoin (who also launched Kiss to stardom) and his romance with English actress, dancer, choreographer, singer, and model Perri Lister.
I saw him last year, as he was playing with a unique punk rock all-star band (Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, Generation X’s Billy Idol, Blondie’s Clem Burke and Bow Wow Wow’s Leigh Gorman) formed for one time only, at the occasion of the opening of Shepard Fairey’s exhibit about Sid Vicious. Billy Idol looked amazingly green, he was incarnating the quintessence of the hard-tough-punk rocker with spiked platinum blonde hair, a face who wanted to eat his audience alive whilewearing a black leather jacket with chains hanging everywhere… and I am sure he will not disappoint his fans who will be able to have a close encounter with the rock star very soon. Idol will embark on a book tour in October and you will be able to meet him at:
Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ on October 6th
Barnes &Noble in New York, NY on October 8th
Book Soup in Los Angeles, CA on October 11th
Changing Hands in Tempe AZ on October 13th
‘Dancing with Myself’ will be released on October 7, 2014 via Touchstone, go here for more details.
