The iconic Billy Idol chats with Race Taylor about his latest upcoming album, "Dream Into It," and the exciting details of "It’s a Nice Day To… Tour Again!" Hit that play button and join the conversation!
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00:00Welcome to the Odyssey Soundspace. My name is Race Taylor from CBS FM in New York City.
00:09We are in the heart of Times Square at the Hard Rock Hotel and the guest to my right,
00:15no stranger to this city with a brand new album, a brand new tour and a lot to discuss.
00:20Please a round of applause from our small audience in the room today for the one and
00:23only Mr. Billy Idol. Welcome back to New York City.
00:30Thank you, Race. Thank you, everybody.
00:32It is so great to see you. I think I should start while I pick up my card with the first
00:36question on everybody's mind. Where is it, this fountain of youth that you have apparently
00:40found somewhere? You look fantastic.
00:42Cheers. Thanks. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's sheer luck.
00:46California, Florida, the dirty rock and roll maybe?
00:50Yeah, doing the thing you love kind of keeps you.
00:53It helps a lot, right? Yeah, it does help.
00:55Brand new album is called Dream Into It. It is out later this month, plus an upcoming
00:59tour with Joan Jett. The nice day to tour again. Let me start with the video, the little
01:05concert teaser. What a fun little vignette filled with stars.
01:09Yes, it's fantastic. We did it with Matt Rife, the comedian, and he's fantastic. He's great
01:15at ad-libbing. So he made it a lot of fun. And yeah, it's just trying to make it fun.
01:21Got a great promo too. We're excited about going on tour, so it's really great.
01:25If I remember, most of his comedy tour video and poster signage was a direct honor to you.
01:33Well, yeah, that's what kind of gave us the idea, because he was using sort of some of
01:37the Rebel Yell, Whiplash Smile logos and imagery and stuff. So it made perfect sense, yeah.
01:45You were so natural in that entire piece. It got me to thinking about a few cameos you've
01:50done, like a little bit of work with Adam Sandler. We followed him all fall, all around
01:55New York and New Jersey filming Happy Gilmore 2. We were wondering if maybe you're going
02:00to be in a celebrity foursome somewhere on the big screen.
02:03Well, it would be fantastic. Yeah, it was great working with Adam in The Wedding Singer
02:07and everything. It was fantastically good fun. I was taking my son to see, my son was
02:13really young at the time, and I was taking him to see Adam's films back then. So when
02:17I saw The Wedding Singer idea, I just thought, well, we're going to see them anyway. I might
02:23as well be in it. It was fantastic. It just cracked me up. The script was fantastic.
02:27That's awesome. We have a brand new album called Dream Into It. How much time in the
02:32studio? How many songs to get to where we have that we're going to listen to in just
02:38a couple weeks here?
02:39Yeah, we just really thought we'd keep it to like a nine song album, which back in the
02:45day, that was kind of how many songs you could get on vinyl, and it would sound really
02:50good. You could only put a certain amount of time on a vinyl record because of the nature
02:57of how loud you could have it. So we just thought, let's keep it to nine songs, but
03:03let's make sure that, as far as we're concerned, every song's killer. And I think that's what
03:08we've got here.
03:09Absolutely. All guitar bass though, am I mistaken? There seems to be a lack of keyboard work
03:14on this.
03:16I think there's a low bass note because nowadays with the subs and everything, but apart from
03:20that, I think there's a Celeste on something, but I don't think there's a lot of keyboard
03:24pads. In the old days, Billy Ida, we always had a ton of keyboards. Steve's done it all
03:30with his guitars, and that's kind of like fantastic here because all the Steve Stevens
03:35are on this record.
03:36The amazing guitar player, the co-songwriter, been with you for decades now, and I understand
03:42he will also be honored should a little ceremony happen later this year with the Rock and Roll
03:47Hall of Fame.
03:48Yes, that's right. We're going to both be inducted at the same time, obviously, if we
03:51get in.
03:52That is awesome.
03:53It would make an incredible cap to the year with this great album, and we're going to
03:58be playing Madison Square Garden and the Forum in LA, so capping off the year with a nomination,
04:06well, even just getting the nomination's great.
04:09How do you find out that you're nominated?
04:11I don't know. I suppose my manager or someone, I suppose they told me.
04:15Because we envision like a white stallion coming up the driveway in a proclamation and
04:19everything else. Something totally grand.
04:22Fanfare.
04:23Awesome. Listen, you can vote if you would like. Vote.rockhall.com. I've checked the
04:31fan vote many times. You're very near the top of the leaderboard, and let me just say
04:34this. If by chance you're a Phish fan and you're half-baked with another tablet, you
04:40spell Phish, B-I-L-L-Y-I-D-O-L. Go ahead, cast that vote multiple times every day. I
04:49have a feeling we're going to see you at the Rock Hall.
04:52I really enjoyed Ozzy's induction, their solo induction. I was part of that.
04:55You were fantastic.
04:56It was a great night, and yeah, the vibe actually there is really great, because there's so
05:01many people there you know, and then a million people I didn't know. It was great meeting
05:06Jelly Roll and working with him, and then Dua Lipa. I met a load of people that I didn't
05:11know. And hanging out with Dr. Dre and Method Man. It was a fun night. It was a really cool,
05:17fun night. I don't think you'd necessarily get that feeling from watching it, but being
05:21there was quite a different experience from watching it. I really enjoyed it. So it made
05:25me really think like, well, apart from that, just thinking about, imagine being in something
05:30with Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, even those guys.
05:37Think about that. That alone, everybody else.
05:39A legendary community.
05:41Crazy.
05:42And all the names that you just mentioned, influenced by you in some way or another.
05:46Yeah, I mean, we grew up with, when I was growing up in the 60s, I was only really little,
05:52you know, but I fell in love with rock and roll when I was seven years old, and you could
05:57only look back, you know, you could only hear what, you know, the Beatles would talk
06:01about Elvis, or they talk about Buddy Holly or Eddie Cochran. And so, you know, we listened
06:06to that music, you know, that's, I found out the other day that Communication Breakdown
06:11by Led Zeppelin, they were playing Nervous Breakdown, Eddie Cochran, and then just turned
06:18it into Communication Breakdown and kind of went, Oh, of course they did. Because that's
06:22where we all came from. We came from, you know, we were, you had to, the only place
06:27you could look back to was the 50s, you know, how it all started.
06:30This brand new album, Dream Into It, also features collaborations. Let's start with
06:34The Wild Side with Joan Jett. This is not the first time your paths have crossed, is
06:38it?
06:39No, we've played shows together, and we've never done a tour together, so that's, this
06:44is going to be fantastic. But I've known, I met Joan in 1978, when we, I was doing a
06:52promo tour for the first generation X album, the punk rock group I was in, in 1978. And
06:58I'd just seen the Germs and Ted Kennedy at the Whiskey and Go-Go and then hung out with
07:05Joan and about 20 other girls who were all like in miniskirts and go-go boots. And it
07:11was, it was that scene, you know, it was really a lot of fun. It was great meeting
07:15her and she's fantastic, so.
07:17Let's stick with that era for just a second. You're in New York City for the first time
07:23around that time of that decade. What is your impression coming here as a punk rock guy
07:31going out to create a solo thing that has not yet become what we would know years later
07:36as the Billy Idol experience?
07:38Well, it was, we were kind of, yeah, for a lot of people it was a new thing that most
07:45people hadn't heard of, you know. And so there was only a very few radio stations into it.
07:50There was one in San Francisco that was super into, they were, it was one of the only stations
07:55playing the new music. Because, yeah, most people didn't get punk rock, they just couldn't
08:02understand it, you know. And, but gradually, so you did feel like you were on a bit of
08:07an evangelizing mission, you know. You knew people weren't necessarily, they didn't know
08:14about it necessarily, but you just knew you had to go there. And of course there was a
08:18lot of people who were involved in the scene who just knew it was important. And so it
08:25was, it was a fantastic, but it was great coming to New York and hanging out and just
08:30meeting people and everything. And just, I lived here when I was a child, I lived in
08:35America on Long Island and I'd come to New York. So it wasn't quite as foreign to me
08:42as it is for some English people.
08:44Right, right. So you carve your own lane, which now finds a new life in a song called
08:4977 with Avril Lavigne, which kind of speaks to those people, the rebels, the misfits,
08:55maybe those who don't necessarily know where their tribe is yet.
08:59Yeah, that's right. That's, that's, I think the first verse that Avril sings, Avril Lavigne
09:05sings, it's really about sort of not fitting in. A lot of people don't fit in with the
09:09sort of cliques or cliques at school and feel a bit of outsiders. And then, but this is
09:16their, this is their youth. This is their time. They've sort of got to grab it. And then I
09:20thought about, well, what about in my time, back in the seventies in England, it wasn't
09:25so different. England's a little bit of a microcosm of what's going to happen in America
09:30because it's a polyglot society. There was a lot of sort of, the country was in a massive
09:36depression and people were very polarized. And that was something that led to a lot of
09:43the youth groups of the time fighting each other because they were following different
09:49sort of political groups. Like the skinheads were very into the sort of National Front
09:54fascists, fascism. And then we were a lot more liberal. We were embracing the sort of
09:58immigrants and stuff who'd come to England and who'd now had children. And there was
10:03a pushback against all that. And so we were kind of, there was a bit of a war between
10:09the youth movements. And that's what I'm kind of singing about in the second verse.
10:13And from that movement came this sound, which you've been true to your entire career. Now
10:20our company throughout the course of the year has a focus on mental health and a special
10:25that we air every fall called I'm Listening. And if you wouldn't mind a question that is
10:29maybe more serious and geared toward that. With decades in this business and having endured
10:36fame and everything that comes with it from not being able to walk outside of your door
10:41to even your last tour, we watched the struggles with some health things. How has the mental
10:48health conversation changed or progressed over the course of your career? What have
10:54you found? Well, of course, people understand a lot more that a lot of people are struggling
11:01with sort of mental health and everything. And I think we were very aware of it back
11:06in the 70s and stuff. But there again, people just didn't know quite how to deal with it.
11:12And maybe they didn't have the sort of, it's taken time to understand, you know, if the
11:18doctors and everybody to really get a grip on how much it affects so many people, because
11:24even I didn't realize just how much it affects so many people. But over the years, I've come
11:29to realize just how, what a struggle it is for some people. How mental health and physical
11:35health work in tandem, and now the ability to talk about it openly, maybe without the
11:41stigma or the criticism. Yeah, it's great. Because that's, yeah, people should try and
11:47understand that. So we're not all exactly the same. So you need to have some empathy.
11:53Absolutely. On the topic of health, how are you getting ready for this tour? It's going
11:57to be a marathon from the dates at, let's say Red Rocks or the Kia Forum, where a portion
12:02of the proceeds will go to the Wildfire Relief to Madison Square Garden. Do you get a hanger?
12:07Are you in an old arena? Are you singing on a treadmill? How does it work for your tour prep?
12:13Yeah, I do work out and stuff. And I do, yeah, this is, in terms of me, my body, this is
12:22the instrument, you know, I look cool. Steve Stevens, my guitar player, plugs into a machine
12:27and then, but yeah, this is the instrument. So I have to really think about taking care
12:32of it to a certain extent. And also, yeah, I need energy, I need breath on the stage.
12:37And you don't want to be up there and finding you don't have the energy, you know, you don't
12:42want to get up there. So you, the thing I have to do today a little bit because of my
12:46age is I just have to parcel out how I'm going to use my energy. And as long as I do that,
12:52I'm fine. You know, because if you, at this age, if you hit, if you push yourself and
12:56you hit a brick wall, when you were young, you could push and go through a brick wall
13:01nonstop and keep going somehow. I don't know, but this age is not quite like that. So as
13:05long as you parcel out your energy and you, and sort of prepare thoughtfully about where
13:11you want to use your energy, actually you can do exactly what you used to do in spades,
13:16but you just have to sort of think about it a bit. Sure. I just saw the 1983 MTV New Year's
13:22Eve interview with you backstage. That was a ball of energy. I completely understand
13:28how that has to be harnessed and partialed out. One final question before we're out of
13:32time. So many people talk about streaming and about new media and about YouTube and
13:38video. I want to bring to light the intimacy and the relationship that people have only
13:47with radio. Do you have a specific radio memory? Maybe it was a song, maybe it was in your
13:53room listening to the King Biscuit flower hour or something like that that inspired
13:57you. Is there a moment that comes to mind with your relationship with radio and how
14:01it maybe helped you down your path? Well, in England, there wasn't a lot of, a lot of
14:08rock and roll and stuff being played on the British radio station, but there was a station
14:12in Luxembourg that used to play all the latest stuff from America. It would play the stuff
14:18the BBC wouldn't play. And, but the thing was, it used to fade in and out. So you, so
14:25you really kind of hearing things, I'd be underneath. Also, I'd be like a seven or eight
14:30year old kid underneath the covers in my bed listening. So this was the lifeline. Radio
14:36was a lifeline to this world that you were, we were like dreaming about, you know, but
14:43we could hear all the latest stuff. So radio was so super important. And then even hearing
14:48my own music on the radio was like, it was incredible. An arrival, right? It was just
14:53incredible hearing it. Wow. Now it's my stuff on the radio. It was nuts. It's so important.
14:59And I think still vital because there is no other medium that makes that personal, intimate
15:06and lasting impression. I can tell you, my friend, I have dreamed of this moment for
15:12my entire life. And in my dreams, I usually end up in the back of an alley with my ass
15:16kicked. This has been such a pleasure. Congratulations. Good luck going forward with the rock
15:23and roll hall of fame. Billy Idol. It's a nice day to tour again, is coming to a city
15:28near you, whether it's LA or New York or anywhere in between. And of course, the brand new album
15:34Dream Into It out later in April. Thank you so very much. Cheers. Thank you, Ray. Thank
15:39you everybody.