Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" (1983): Track by Track

<v Speaker 1>Hello, and welcome to the Surely You Can't Be Serious
<v Speaker 1>Podcast with Jason Colvin and James Steve Graves. This is
<v Speaker 1>Melissa Mingle, friend of the show and Patreon member. Quite
<v Speaker 1>certain that today, as always, they will give us a
<v Speaker 1>bit of a laugh and blow all minds. One quick
<v Speaker 1>secret not really British, but sometimes after I listen to
<v Speaker 1>the show, I feel like I could be Thanks guys.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely you Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious Podcast. And the music you are hearing might
<v Speaker 2>make you dance with yourself. You could be dancing with me,
<v Speaker 2>you could be dancing with Jason. But either way, as
<v Speaker 2>long as you're dancing, we've done our job here.
<v Speaker 3>That's right. I just want everybody to know it's a
<v Speaker 3>nice day to start again.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, I'm starting with black leather. I went ahead
<v Speaker 2>and bleached my hair completely blonde, spiked it up, I
<v Speaker 2>grew the beard out for this easy top episode. I'm
<v Speaker 2>now full punk rock.
<v Speaker 3>I like the peroxide. You gotta go on it nice.
<v Speaker 3>Do you know that was accidental, by the way, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I did. Actually, yeah, you sent me that clip. I
<v Speaker 3>could not believe that they were gonna do blue. It
<v Speaker 3>was gonna be blue, right, you gotta bleach it all
<v Speaker 3>the way to add the blue coloring. And his girlfriend,
<v Speaker 3>whoever it was that was gonna do that for him,
<v Speaker 3>she bleached it white and then looked at her. Person's like,
<v Speaker 3>oh crap, I forgot the blue. I guess you'll just
<v Speaker 3>have to be white for a couple of days, and
<v Speaker 3>he's like, you know, what's kind of works. I kind
<v Speaker 3>of like it.
<v Speaker 2>Well, he went to band practice like he was. He
<v Speaker 2>had started with Generation X at that point and they
<v Speaker 2>had a different lead singer, and the lead singer immediately
<v Speaker 2>came over. He's like, you're not gonna leave it like that, right,
<v Speaker 2>your hair is He's like, no, it's gonna He's like really,
<v Speaker 2>because you can't leave it like that. He's like, no,
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna He's like it's important they did not stay
<v Speaker 2>like that, and he's like, okay, I'll change it. But
<v Speaker 2>by the time the conversation was over, he was like,
<v Speaker 2>he's worried about me stealing the thunder. That's it, And
<v Speaker 2>sure enough he'd done did steal the thunder because he
<v Speaker 2>took over his lead singer not too long after that, like,
<v Speaker 2>I am changing this, no way, no how it provokes
<v Speaker 2>a reaction even by all of the radio stations of
<v Speaker 2>the early eighties. Sure.
<v Speaker 3>Sure, today we're covering Billy Idol and we're going through
<v Speaker 3>his second album, Rebel Yell.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, yeah, yeah, I love the yells. I love that
<v Speaker 2>he's got a great sneer and a great yell. So
<v Speaker 2>I'm excited to talk about this. This is one of
<v Speaker 2>those pivotal albums of my youth. Nineteen eighty three, big time,
<v Speaker 2>This was all over MTV. He was as much of
<v Speaker 2>an icon as the Zzy Top guys, I mean their
<v Speaker 2>beards and sunglasses. He had that kind of image logo
<v Speaker 2>just as much with his bleached spiked hair and his
<v Speaker 2>leather punk style.
<v Speaker 3>Let me ask you this, so we both agree that
<v Speaker 3>image for both of these groups that we're talking about
<v Speaker 3>last week this week was huge, especially on early MTV.
<v Speaker 3>So are they the same band without the image.
<v Speaker 2>In this time period in history, There's no way to say.
<v Speaker 2>Because image became synonymous with sound.
<v Speaker 3>It was everything.
<v Speaker 2>It was everything, And then in the nineteen eighties, with
<v Speaker 2>the birth of MTV, if you had an unimpressive image,
<v Speaker 2>you were not going to do as well, even if
<v Speaker 2>your music was better. Just ask John Oates. That's true,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I mean, that's just and he I can
<v Speaker 2>still remember the interview where he was complaining about it
<v Speaker 2>and Madonna was sitting next to him and she's like, listen,
<v Speaker 2>we put on stage shows. This has always been a
<v Speaker 2>visual medium as well as a sound medium. This is
<v Speaker 2>the way it is now. You need to just buck
<v Speaker 2>it up.
<v Speaker 3>It sure is. You know Nikki six talked about this
<v Speaker 3>when we did our Girls Girls Girls episode. There was
<v Speaker 3>a time period from about nineteen late nineteen eighty one,
<v Speaker 3>I would say until about eighty five eighty six when
<v Speaker 3>every kid in America listened to the exact saying, quote
<v Speaker 3>unquote radio station and that was MTV.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, before we get going on Rebel Yell, track by track,
<v Speaker 2>we are going to talk about our top three songs
<v Speaker 2>that are not on Rebel Yell. All right, yeah, yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 2>So we'll treat these like our top five episodes. Guys,
<v Speaker 2>if you haven't heard those episodes, there are some of
<v Speaker 2>our most fun episodes to do. But what the way
<v Speaker 2>we do it is we tease it up a little bit.
<v Speaker 2>See if we can get the other guy to guess
<v Speaker 2>what we're thinking. All right, and I can't wait, I'm
<v Speaker 2>starting this one. I'm not gonna let you steal the
<v Speaker 2>thunder from Okay you ready? Yeah, Okay. This video for
<v Speaker 2>this song was directed by David Fincher.
<v Speaker 3>I love that nugget. Let's punt that one down the
<v Speaker 3>road for a minute.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna keep going and you just tell me when
<v Speaker 2>it comes up because I don't have the Okay, So
<v Speaker 2>for the for the people out there who don't know yet.
<v Speaker 3>The clips from the movie Ford Fair Lane were.
<v Speaker 2>Used in this movie, but they didn't have any of
<v Speaker 2>Andrew dice Clay because he had been banned from MTVS.
<v Speaker 3>Right he had been.
<v Speaker 2>The young lady who appeared in this video was eighteen
<v Speaker 2>or nineteen, so you don't have to feel quite as
<v Speaker 2>bad about how you might have felt about her when
<v Speaker 2>you watch this video. Yeah, and the clips of Billie
<v Speaker 2>idol Well were all on picture frames from the waist
<v Speaker 2>up because he was still suffering the effects of the
<v Speaker 2>motorcycle accident he had.
<v Speaker 3>Had earlier that year, Shining from the waist up.
<v Speaker 2>The song, of course, is credit of love.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So this one came off the Charmed Life album in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen ninety. Man nineteen ninety I'm fifteen years old. I
<v Speaker 2>could not get enough of this video.
<v Speaker 3>This girl was basically my age and I was like, man,
<v Speaker 3>this girl is smoken hot yep. And I think it
<v Speaker 3>got an award at the MTV Music Awards, like Sexiest
<v Speaker 3>Video or something like that.
<v Speaker 2>It was the best Video from It was nominated for
<v Speaker 2>several things, one Best Video for Music from a Movie.
<v Speaker 2>But Billy Idol and the actress her last name is
<v Speaker 2>George Betsy George Betsy Lynn, George Betsy Lynn, George Betsy
<v Speaker 2>lynz God.
<v Speaker 3>She was in Point Break. She was a party girl,
<v Speaker 3>girl at party. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>But they recreated the sexy scene for the MTV Video
<v Speaker 2>Music Awards.
<v Speaker 3>My number three go four all right, So this video
<v Speaker 3>has people slapping their butts to the beat. You have
<v Speaker 3>a bloody ring, and of course you have longtime girlfriend
<v Speaker 3>Perry Lister as the bride.
<v Speaker 2>Not only was Perry Lister the bride in this one,
<v Speaker 2>and not only was it really her finger actually getting cut,
<v Speaker 2>which they edited out of the MTV video because they
<v Speaker 2>didn't want to see that, but she also switched clothes
<v Speaker 2>and she was one of the black leather butt slappers.
<v Speaker 3>If you will. This of course is white wedding.
<v Speaker 4>You had a no s day or a wide wedding.
<v Speaker 4>It's a nicety to stop again.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, number two.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, this is the last one left for me because
<v Speaker 2>I had white wedding on my list as well.
<v Speaker 3>Let shoot.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, it's probably a foregone conclusion since we haven't mentioned
<v Speaker 2>it yet. But the idea for this video came about
<v Speaker 2>when Generation X was touring over in Japan and they
<v Speaker 2>saw some of the young residents of Tokyo at a
<v Speaker 2>disco dancing in front of mirrors, looking at mirrors.
<v Speaker 3>They were, in fact dancing with themselves. Got its.
<v Speaker 5>Sha dance little with my set, no one else.
<v Speaker 4>I'm a crowd. Well it's so long, I'm.
<v Speaker 3>Dance little with my set. Okay. My number two is different?
<v Speaker 3>Oh whoa we got yeah, we got we got one
<v Speaker 3>stray here. Now I will tell you this. This came
<v Speaker 3>out in nineteen eighty seven. I think it hit number
<v Speaker 3>one in nineteen eighty seven. Okay. It was played at
<v Speaker 3>all my junior high dances, right.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So this is of course Mony Moony. You know
<v Speaker 2>why he Redidy Mooney?
<v Speaker 3>I do? I tell me that story. So when he
<v Speaker 3>was fifteen years old and he was losing his virginity
<v Speaker 3>to some unknown girl in the back of a warehouse.
<v Speaker 3>The song playing in the background was Mony Mooney by
<v Speaker 3>Tommy James and the Chardells in the charts, which, by
<v Speaker 3>the way, I don't know if you know this or
<v Speaker 3>not money money, you know what that is. When Tommy
<v Speaker 3>James wrote this song, he was driving past a billboard
<v Speaker 3>that said Mutual of New York. True story Wow, Mony
<v Speaker 3>Mony Wow. And then my number one, of course, is
<v Speaker 3>Creditle of Love.
<v Speaker 2>All right, you need to jump into the album track
<v Speaker 2>by track dive in. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we were
<v Speaker 2>about to begin the story of young William Michael Albert Broad,
<v Speaker 2>a literature student studying at University at Sussex.
<v Speaker 3>His parents were devout Anglicans, you know, and a very
<v Speaker 3>nice British folk. I didn't know we're going to slip
<v Speaker 3>into the actions. I'm trying.
<v Speaker 2>But before we go into all of the historical details,
<v Speaker 2>let's just jump into the song. But normally we play
<v Speaker 2>a little bit and then we talk about it, but
<v Speaker 2>I got to say something on this one. Yeah, before
<v Speaker 2>the music starts here. This song began with the beat
<v Speaker 2>that a boom boom at the beginning, it didn't have
<v Speaker 2>that little intro though that Steve Stevens does, and the
<v Speaker 2>manager of the band said, we need to kind of
<v Speaker 2>give them a hey, here's what's coming feel And it's
<v Speaker 2>very small, but if you listen, it's just like the
<v Speaker 2>army is approaching, you know, here it comes.
<v Speaker 3>Get ready for it.
<v Speaker 6>Bu boom.
<v Speaker 3>That's my lip curls up just listening to this song.
<v Speaker 3>My fist goes up. I'm pumping, I'm jumping. This is
<v Speaker 3>an incredible song from the early eighties. Right here, this
<v Speaker 3>is iconic.
<v Speaker 2>You can't help but like start bobbing your head because
<v Speaker 2>this is an incredibly great intro to an incredibly great album.
<v Speaker 4>Ala Wore the Rabble.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So before we get into the making of this song,
<v Speaker 3>Keith Force was the producer on this album. Yes, he's
<v Speaker 3>kind of like the third member of the band here
<v Speaker 3>hundred percent.
<v Speaker 2>We've talked about Keith Forcy several times now, big in
<v Speaker 2>the making of Top Gun soundtrack and also our Patreon
<v Speaker 2>episode that we had on Don't You Forget About Me.
<v Speaker 3>We got to talk a little bit about Keith Forcy.
<v Speaker 3>So Keith Forcy was Giorgio Moroder's drummer and if you
<v Speaker 3>remember he played drums and all the Donna summer stuff,
<v Speaker 3>all the disco stuff. He wrote the Irene Karra song
<v Speaker 3>for Flash Dance. Keith Forcy wanted Billy Idol to do
<v Speaker 3>Don't you Forget About Me because he had just produced
<v Speaker 3>his album a couple of years before me. By the way,
<v Speaker 3>do you remember who Keith Forcey's wife is? I've lost that,
<v Speaker 3>I don't remember. Okay, he married Karen Elaine Morton, who
<v Speaker 3>played Jenny in eight six seven, five three oh nine.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that's right, Okay, yes, that's right. Well Patreon episode.
<v Speaker 3>Another Patreon episode that we talked about, and.
<v Speaker 2>She's famous for being Playboy Playmate.
<v Speaker 3>With the Smallest Oops. Yep, that's a miss. July nineteen
<v Speaker 3>seventy eight.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, guys, if you haven't checked out our Patreon page yet,
<v Speaker 2>we cover all kinds of one hit wonders there for
<v Speaker 2>our Patreon members. You can become a Patreon member and
<v Speaker 2>join our happy little community for as little as five
<v Speaker 2>bucks a month and get access to all of those
<v Speaker 2>episodes that we've done and all the ones that are
<v Speaker 2>coming up. And it is a great family that we
<v Speaker 2>are a part of. Those guys, we communicate with them
<v Speaker 2>all and it's just great fun to have our Patreon members.
<v Speaker 2>So if you're interested, go to patreon dot com, backslash
<v Speaker 2>Shirley podcast that's s U R E l Y podcast
<v Speaker 2>and join up, join the fun.
<v Speaker 3>Steve Stevens, who we haven't talked about yet, was the
<v Speaker 3>guitar player for Billy Idol they got together. He was
<v Speaker 3>a vital part of the success because he brought in
<v Speaker 3>that rocker edge to this pop punk thing that they
<v Speaker 3>had going on. They bring it all together. You have
<v Speaker 3>these wonderful punk rop pop songs. Okay, So here's the
<v Speaker 3>interesting thing about Rebel Yell. So Billy is over at
<v Speaker 3>Ronnie Wood's house, Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, Yes,
<v Speaker 3>and it's his birthday party, and he's there with Mick
<v Speaker 3>Jagger and Keith Richards and they're all sharing swigs off
<v Speaker 3>of a bottle of Rebel Yell whiskey.
<v Speaker 2>That is where the name of the song and the
<v Speaker 2>album come from.
<v Speaker 3>So they had been working on this song, but they
<v Speaker 3>didn't have any lyrics. They're just working on the beat
<v Speaker 3>and working on music. And it came back the next
<v Speaker 3>day and ran into Steve Stevens. He's like a dude,
<v Speaker 3>I got the title. I got it, and Steve was like,
<v Speaker 3>what is it?
<v Speaker 6>What is it?
<v Speaker 3>He's like rebel yell, and they were like, oh yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it's perfect.
<v Speaker 2>It's a great one. It's perfect for the album. It's
<v Speaker 2>perfect for the song.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Apparently Billy Idol and Ronnie Wood became fast friends. Everybody
<v Speaker 2>liked to party hard at that time in history, and
<v Speaker 2>those were two party buddies, if you will. I think
<v Speaker 2>Ronnie Wood did like a port like he's a painter too,
<v Speaker 2>you know, he's not just a musician. Yeah, he had
<v Speaker 2>done a portrait of Billy Idol, because well, Billy's pretty man.
<v Speaker 3>He's a good looking dude, and from what I can tell,
<v Speaker 3>he seems like a really genuinely fun to hang out with. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>you and I both agree. He's super smart, he's creative,
<v Speaker 3>he's funny, he's happy. Have you ever seen a punk
<v Speaker 3>guy more happy in your life? Okay, I don't know
<v Speaker 3>if you know this or not. Steve Stevens combined with
<v Speaker 3>Ronnie Wood created an album in the eighties. Oh yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that has never seen the light of day.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, you never know, given what they were into
<v Speaker 2>in the eighties, whether that's a good thing or about right.
<v Speaker 2>So I loved just back to the song, listening to
<v Speaker 2>the intro guitar piece to the song. I love listening
<v Speaker 2>to Billy. Id'll talk about this because of course he
<v Speaker 2>didn't start with Steve Stevens. He had Tony James in
<v Speaker 2>Generation X, which I want to talk about here in
<v Speaker 2>a little bit, and then they split ways, and then
<v Speaker 2>ultimately he ended up with Steve Stevens, and then ultimately
<v Speaker 2>he and Steve split ways for.
<v Speaker 3>A while any long time. Yeah, And I.
<v Speaker 2>Love listening to Billy talk because you know, he talks
<v Speaker 2>about the other guitarists he had after Steve Stevens, and
<v Speaker 2>he's complimentary. He's like, they're they're very good, but right,
<v Speaker 2>Steve Stevens is a step above.
<v Speaker 3>We love the way he put it.
<v Speaker 2>He goes, if you listen to the beginning of Rebel Yell,
<v Speaker 2>it's just Steven a guitar, and any other time I
<v Speaker 2>have to perform that live, it has to be two guitarists,
<v Speaker 2>two guitars.
<v Speaker 3>Steve Stevens is like having two guitar players at once. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I mean he is an unsung hero in the rock
<v Speaker 2>god world.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, for sure. We talked about Steve Stevens when we
<v Speaker 3>discussed Dirty Diana by Michael Jackson. We also talked about
<v Speaker 3>him in our Top Gun soundtrack episode YEP, where he
<v Speaker 3>plays the top Gun anthem once again. I mean, Georgi
<v Speaker 3>err Moroder has had his hands all over that album.
<v Speaker 3>He knows Keith Force, He Keith Force, he knows Steve Stevens,
<v Speaker 3>and you can see how that just slides right into place.
<v Speaker 3>Steve Stevens talks about how that beginning part of Rebel Yell.
<v Speaker 3>He says, I can go anywhere in the world. I
<v Speaker 3>play that little intro before the song even starts. People
<v Speaker 3>recognize it, and as an instrumentalist, it's like my proudest moment.
<v Speaker 2>It's awesome.
<v Speaker 3>This only reached number forty six on the Hot one hundred.
<v Speaker 2>Can't I can't believe what? Well again, though, when we
<v Speaker 2>keep going back and we look at these and I
<v Speaker 2>mean I realized that we just do it when the
<v Speaker 2>in like the top ten or whatever.
<v Speaker 3>Sure, but by way, wait, do you want the top
<v Speaker 3>forty five real quick? Do you have it? No? Okay?
<v Speaker 3>By the way, I was texting with Chris Webber the
<v Speaker 3>other day when we did our Zezy Top episode, and
<v Speaker 3>I said, give me all your love and only reached
<v Speaker 3>number forty five or whatever. He's like, I really thought
<v Speaker 3>you were gonna go through the top forty five. Sorry
<v Speaker 3>to disappoint you, Chris.
<v Speaker 2>But this time in history was the biggest, Like you
<v Speaker 2>had the best songs of all time. Yeah, right, I
<v Speaker 2>mean you've got you've got great stuff for the twentieth century,
<v Speaker 2>for sure, But I mean the amount of money that
<v Speaker 2>the record companies had at this point, the encyclopedic volumes
<v Speaker 2>that musicians had to pull from from the rock and
<v Speaker 2>roll catalog at this point, I mean, it results in
<v Speaker 2>some of the best music in all of history.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, okay, it only got forty six. Yeah, probably
<v Speaker 2>should have gotten higher. I bet if we looked at
<v Speaker 2>the other forty five, we're gonna go.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>A lot of these are old and forgotten. Sure, and
<v Speaker 2>this one lasts.
<v Speaker 3>This one lasts, huge staple early MTV.
<v Speaker 2>We didn't talk about the video on this Oh yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so the video is like a live performance, right, And
<v Speaker 2>they got the director from the guy who did some
<v Speaker 2>of the Who videos. What they did was they put
<v Speaker 2>an ad in the paper in New York and they
<v Speaker 2>were like, hey, there's going to be a concert. If
<v Speaker 2>you're a Billy Idle fan. It's going to be a short,
<v Speaker 2>video produced thing, but come out. And so at that
<v Speaker 2>time in history, he wasn't the guy that he is now.
<v Speaker 2>He wasn't the icon. This is the album that broke
<v Speaker 2>him huge, right right, And so the people that showed
<v Speaker 2>up for that concert were the true Billy Idol fans,
<v Speaker 2>and they basically by being in that video, they set
<v Speaker 2>the stage for what Billy Idol fans should look like. Love,
<v Speaker 2>they set a style.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, so everybody else looking at the video goes, that's
<v Speaker 3>how those fans act, That's how those fans dress. And
<v Speaker 3>so places like Tulsa, Glahoma, we know, Okay, you have
<v Speaker 3>the lip and the fists and that's how you do it. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>You listened to Adam Sandler, who of course put Billy
<v Speaker 2>Idol in one of.
<v Speaker 3>His movies, The Wedding is Heer.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, you listen to him, and he was like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I think like maybe one out of every thirty people
<v Speaker 2>at my high school had the Billie Idol fashion sense
<v Speaker 2>going on.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, one more thing, rebel yell whiskey is no longer
<v Speaker 3>called rebel yell whiskey. To me, that's just insanity because
<v Speaker 3>you have somebody on the radio station every ten minutes
<v Speaker 3>singing a commercial for you. Yeah, exactly. They changed it
<v Speaker 3>to Rebel Whiskey because they wanted to back away from
<v Speaker 3>the Confederate thing. Okay, it seems like they dropped the
<v Speaker 3>wrong word. Was that they call it yell? I don't know,
<v Speaker 3>So there you go. Okay, moving on to the next song.
<v Speaker 3>The next song on the album is called Daytime Drama.
<v Speaker 2>All right, so this song has an awesome bassline.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah right, I mean, it is it is.
<v Speaker 2>It is a sweet little bassline and Steve Stevens totally.
<v Speaker 3>Stolen, I know, right, tell me about it. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So there's a song by the group Yes called Heart
<v Speaker 2>of the Sunrise, right, and it's got a it's got
<v Speaker 2>a bit of an intro to it, but then once
<v Speaker 2>you hear the bassline, once it comes in, you're like, oh, yep, same,
<v Speaker 2>same old baseline.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, if you're gonna steal from somebody, you might
<v Speaker 3>as well steal from the best, right.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, but seriously, think about this. You've got a
<v Speaker 2>pop producer, You've got a guy whose roots are in punk,
<v Speaker 2>but has you know he's got he's got a pretty
<v Speaker 2>big us A chategary I'll say this for Billy Idol.
<v Speaker 2>He is a very intelligent guy. Yeah, like I mean
<v Speaker 2>hedonistic and doing all the rock star stuff. But that's
<v Speaker 2>because that's what he decided he wanted to do and
<v Speaker 2>he did it. But he's a smart, smart guy. So
<v Speaker 2>his music catalog is much bigger than punk. But I'm
<v Speaker 2>a little surprised, and you got rocker.
<v Speaker 3>Of course.
<v Speaker 2>I love listening to Steve Stevens because he's I'm going
<v Speaker 2>to talk about it in a minute.
<v Speaker 3>He's listening for ENDMC back when they were first. I
<v Speaker 3>know it was the scene in New York City if
<v Speaker 3>they have just perked.
<v Speaker 2>Up, right, But then you pull from this progressive rock
<v Speaker 2>group like yes, a very unique sound and make it
<v Speaker 2>into a Billy Idol song.
<v Speaker 3>It's awesome. It's really cool. By the way, I've watched
<v Speaker 3>a whole bunch of videos on Billy Idol. Dude is
<v Speaker 3>always having a great time. He had drugs and girls
<v Speaker 3>and motorcycles. I mean, he had one horrible accident, which
<v Speaker 3>I'm sure we'll talk about, but Motley Crue Vince Neil
<v Speaker 3>killed a guy. You know, guns n' roses. You had
<v Speaker 3>people overdose and almost die, and you had people die,
<v Speaker 3>and you know, I had strokes and it had all
<v Speaker 3>these terrible things. Billy Idol is like the greatest endorsement
<v Speaker 3>for drugs I've ever seen in my life because he
<v Speaker 3>seems like he is having a ball. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>He doesn't really apologize for it either. It was literally
<v Speaker 2>the beginning of his autobiography is just like, yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 2>so I was doing this drug called GHL or something.
<v Speaker 2>I don't remember what it was, but it was just like,
<v Speaker 2>it's a steroid that you can render you chromotose bad
<v Speaker 2>enough that your friends are going to be calling the
<v Speaker 2>morgue because they think you're dead.
<v Speaker 7>And he was laughing the whole time he was telling
<v Speaker 7>about it.
<v Speaker 3>It is great stuff. Hey, I got a nugget for you.
<v Speaker 3>I go ahead, I'm bursting at the seams. You ready
<v Speaker 3>for this? Yeah, So he's well known for During this time,
<v Speaker 3>it's an endless stream of motorcycles and girls and cocaine
<v Speaker 3>and ecstasy and heroin and quayludes and everything you can
<v Speaker 3>possibly think of. Right, So he moves into a bungalow
<v Speaker 3>at Hollywood's Chateau Merrimount. You know the story. No, and
<v Speaker 3>he was out of his mind on drugs and so
<v Speaker 3>he destroys this room. Well, here's police sirens, and he's
<v Speaker 3>like starts to panic. He's like, crap, they're coming for me.
<v Speaker 3>And he's standing there buck naked, waiting for them to
<v Speaker 3>kick in the front door, thinking they've had enough of
<v Speaker 3>this crazy rock star. They're coming to get me, throw
<v Speaker 3>me out on my butt, and I'm baar ass naked. Well,
<v Speaker 3>they run right past his door and he's like, huh,
<v Speaker 3>I wonder what they're doing. Turns out they were going
<v Speaker 3>just a few doors down where John Belushi was having
<v Speaker 3>his fatal overdose.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow, that is the mind blowing fact of the episode, sir,
<v Speaker 2>Wow Wow.
<v Speaker 3>By the way Steve Stevens talks about I mean, he's
<v Speaker 3>well known. He does all these guitar effects in his songs,
<v Speaker 3>and he got it kind of from Jimmy Hendrix, right.
<v Speaker 2>Well, the idea, I mean, Jimmy Henders kind of invented
<v Speaker 2>a lot of sounds, but the idea was, if you're
<v Speaker 2>going to use an effect, use it go all the way, man,
<v Speaker 2>don't don't twiddle with it.
<v Speaker 3>Every time I hear Dirty Diana, I'm like, somebody is
<v Speaker 3>really tweaking that mixing board on that Yeah, Like Yep,
<v Speaker 3>I put in a guitar effect.
<v Speaker 2>You're going to know it.
<v Speaker 3>All right.
<v Speaker 2>Next track on the album Big One Eyes without a Face.
<v Speaker 3>Best song on the album. D I love this song.
<v Speaker 2>It is too beautiful and the title comes from a
<v Speaker 2>French horror movie. Yeah, okay, let's talk about the inception
<v Speaker 2>of the song.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Steve Stevens, as big of a rock god as he was,
<v Speaker 2>literally was living in his parents' basement when they were
<v Speaker 2>recording this stuff, right, Yeah, And he says, the only
<v Speaker 2>radio station that I could get down there was like
<v Speaker 2>the CBS mainstream radio station, which was just playing old
<v Speaker 2>fifties stuff. So I'm listening to all these do wop
<v Speaker 2>and other fifty style songs. But I'm thinking, oh, these
<v Speaker 2>are actually some kind of pretty cool little chord progressions.
<v Speaker 2>And so he one night, you know, listens to that,
<v Speaker 2>figures out a few of them, comes back in. He says,
<v Speaker 2>it's a simple song. So he took those chord progressions
<v Speaker 2>and he you know, augmented him a little bit mad,
<v Speaker 2>you know, made it a seven or a minor seven
<v Speaker 2>or something like that. And he said he's playing with
<v Speaker 2>it whenever Billy comes in, and he's like, let me
<v Speaker 2>see what you think of this, And he played it
<v Speaker 2>in such a way that he wasn't telling him that
<v Speaker 2>this is do wop music, you know sure? And Billy's like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>I like that. I Actually I've got something in my notebook.
<v Speaker 2>And Billy keeps a lyrics notebook with him and he's like,
<v Speaker 2>this is the music that needs to go behind this
<v Speaker 2>idea of eyes without a face from this movie that
<v Speaker 2>I've seen.
<v Speaker 3>Do you know the plot of this movie just in passing?
<v Speaker 2>I mean, there's a woman whose face is horribly damaged.
<v Speaker 2>That's part of what the plot line so here.
<v Speaker 3>It is there's a plastic surgeon and his daughter is
<v Speaker 3>horribly disfigured, and so the plastic surgeon murders people and
<v Speaker 3>like takes part of their face in order to try
<v Speaker 3>and reconstruct her face. But in the end, all she's
<v Speaker 3>left with originally is her eyes, and it's like this
<v Speaker 3>horrible Frankenstein type of thing. By the way, I called
<v Speaker 3>Melissa Mingle Perry Lister is singing background vocals on this song.
<v Speaker 3>That's her in the back.
<v Speaker 2>Billy Idol's girlfriend and baby Mama if we're if we're
<v Speaker 2>not keeping track.
<v Speaker 3>Here, yes, and Burless Dancer and she's the bride and
<v Speaker 3>white wedding and she's all over the place, but she
<v Speaker 3>is saying, le's us sans visage. You got that from
<v Speaker 3>Melissa Mingle? Ha I did I called?
<v Speaker 2>I did there any way we can get her to
<v Speaker 2>send in the sound clip on that one, because I'd
<v Speaker 2>like to hear her say it's.
<v Speaker 3>To her phonetically. I'm like, am I saying this right?
<v Speaker 3>And that is French for eyes without a face. That's
<v Speaker 3>awesome for you. I want to talk about the middle
<v Speaker 3>part of this song. So you have this beautiful ballad
<v Speaker 3>and then you have this really crunchy, heavy rock riff
<v Speaker 3>that comes in in the middle, and then you add rappit.
<v Speaker 3>So this part I think it makes another appearance in
<v Speaker 3>the top gun anthem. They have the same breakdown kind
<v Speaker 3>of it sounds very similar. And because they had gone
<v Speaker 3>to they had seen rundi em seeing concert, they had
<v Speaker 3>seen great master Flash, the Londie had done her thing.
<v Speaker 2>Let me give you the story on that. Okay, So
<v Speaker 2>Steve Stevens is in a guitar store, he's getting his
<v Speaker 2>he's getting his guitar fixed, and there's some other dude
<v Speaker 2>there playing guitar, and I mean Steve Stevens is who
<v Speaker 2>he is. But here's this guy. He's like, dang, this
<v Speaker 2>guy's good. He's really good, and so he goes and
<v Speaker 2>introduces himself. The guy's name is Eddie Martinez.
<v Speaker 6>Ok.
<v Speaker 2>Eddie Martinez played the guitar on virtually all of the
<v Speaker 2>run DMC songs before they pulled in the guy from Slayers.
<v Speaker 3>Right, Kerry King.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, So Eddie is kind of the guy that's like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>you should come see because he said back then, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I would go in and I'd see a show and
<v Speaker 2>it was the first time I was seeing turntables on
<v Speaker 2>the stage. But they still had a drum player, they
<v Speaker 2>still had a guitarist, and he was the guy who's
<v Speaker 2>playing guitar. He would go on, this is for you.
<v Speaker 2>He would go on to be the guitarist for the
<v Speaker 2>big Robert Palmer songs of the late eighties.
<v Speaker 3>Sweet Yes.
<v Speaker 2>But Steve Stephens said after he saw that first run
<v Speaker 2>DMC concert, he immediately bought tickets to the show the
<v Speaker 2>next night because he needed to come back and see him.
<v Speaker 2>He said, seeing those guys in the uniform of the
<v Speaker 2>leather that they had it was like seeing the Beatles
<v Speaker 2>for the first time.
<v Speaker 3>There you Go, Run DMC flashback to our Run DMC
<v Speaker 3>versus Beastie Boys episode we do a Deaf Dave. By
<v Speaker 3>the way, I've got a killer story for you, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>But before I get there, I have to tell you.
<v Speaker 3>This song reached number four in the Hot one hundred,
<v Speaker 3>and I told you last week that I thought Legs
<v Speaker 3>at number eight may have been on the best top
<v Speaker 3>ten of the eighties. Yeah, well, I changed my answer.
<v Speaker 3>Oh okay, I think we've got an improvement, but it's
<v Speaker 3>virtually the same. Tis like one week off. Okay. So
<v Speaker 3>here's the top ten on July fourteenth, nineteen eighty four,
<v Speaker 3>where everybody in the entire country is listening to the
<v Speaker 3>same radio station MTV. Here you Go. Number ten is Legs.
<v Speaker 3>Number nine is Hard of Rock and Roll by Huey Lewis,
<v Speaker 3>number eight Ghostbusters. Number seven almost Paradise by Mike Rino
<v Speaker 3>and Ann Wilson from Footloose. Number six is self Control
<v Speaker 3>by Laura Brannigan, which was a big song in nineteen
<v Speaker 3>eighty four.
<v Speaker 2>I have it downloaded. It's one of my favorites. I
<v Speaker 2>love Laura brand again, tell me more.
<v Speaker 3>Number five is The Reflex by Duran Durant, number four,
<v Speaker 3>Eyes Without a Face, number three jumped from My Love,
<v Speaker 3>number two Dancing in the Dark, and number one When
<v Speaker 3>Doves Cry.
<v Speaker 2>So, boys and girls, if you're listening with your parents
<v Speaker 2>right now, there was a time in history when the
<v Speaker 2>top ten albums and singles were not all by Taylor Swiftly.
<v Speaker 3>Don't get me started on that, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>I gotta talk talk a little bit about the music
<v Speaker 2>on this one, because it is such a beautiful song.
<v Speaker 2>If you look at the personnel on this one, they've
<v Speaker 2>got a different bass player. So Steve Webster was the
<v Speaker 2>guy that they typically used as the bass player. He
<v Speaker 2>was a bass player for Miles Davis who would be
<v Speaker 2>recording there, and they were recording at the Electric Lady
<v Speaker 2>Land studio, and so he was recording there as well.
<v Speaker 2>But for this one he wasn't. He just wasn't getting
<v Speaker 2>the right sound. And there was a guy named sal
<v Speaker 2>Quavis who had done he'd done some Broadway musical stuff,
<v Speaker 2>but he was just a different type of bass player,
<v Speaker 2>and they brought him in. He said he had big,
<v Speaker 2>old guy bass hung low and he had these big,
<v Speaker 2>old thick fingers and when he played it, they knew
<v Speaker 2>in the first two bars, this is our guy. So
<v Speaker 2>you've got a different sounding bass in this one. And
<v Speaker 2>then Steve Stevens said, and we felt like it still
<v Speaker 2>needed something else, And so you've got this. You've got
<v Speaker 2>a unique sounding.
<v Speaker 3>Guitar in here. It's actually a twelve string.
<v Speaker 2>But at the time, Steve Stevens didn't own a twelve string,
<v Speaker 2>so he had to get like a rented one that
<v Speaker 2>he said, the strings were all russ they were like
<v Speaker 2>two feet above the fret board. You know, I'm just
<v Speaker 2>playing this nasty old twelve string guitar, he goes, I've
<v Speaker 2>bought in one for myself.
<v Speaker 3>Since then I heard him talking about that. I'm like,
<v Speaker 3>Steve Steven's freaking rock icon had to rent a guitar
<v Speaker 3>to play on this song. Yeah, it's crazy. So Kathy
<v Speaker 3>and I were listening to Eyes without a Face the
<v Speaker 3>other day, the rap in the middle. She was like,
<v Speaker 3>what is he saying there about reading murder books and
<v Speaker 3>stuff like that, And I'm like, I have no idea.
<v Speaker 3>So we looked through the lyrics. Sure enough, it talks
<v Speaker 3>about reading murder books. Steve Stephens said that he basically
<v Speaker 3>just went right off the top of his head, wrapped
<v Speaker 3>out those lyrics just ad libd it. I'm like, what, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that's how Billy I had rolled man, So to me
<v Speaker 3>that it's amazing that he just rolled out those lyrics
<v Speaker 3>for a rap right kind of in the middle. I've
<v Speaker 3>got a great story for you on this Okay, yep.
<v Speaker 3>So the music video it's all smoke, machines and fire
<v Speaker 3>and you know, bright lights.
<v Speaker 2>And all this stuff.
<v Speaker 3>Do you know the story?
<v Speaker 2>No, keep going.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, you have this marathon three day shoot for this
<v Speaker 3>video and it's one of the iconic videos of the time.
<v Speaker 3>During this time, Billy Idol had stayed up three days. Well,
<v Speaker 3>his contacts fused to his eyeballs, Oh my gosh, and
<v Speaker 3>he had to go to the hospital. They actually had
<v Speaker 3>to remove his contact lenses from his eyes and he
<v Speaker 3>had three days where he had bandages over his eyes
<v Speaker 3>where he couldn't use his eyes. So essentially he had
<v Speaker 3>a face with no ice.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that was pretty bad.
<v Speaker 3>There you go. Okay, we done with that one. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>we gotta keep rolling. We gotta keep rolling.
<v Speaker 8>Down the Blue Highway.
<v Speaker 2>Talk about bringing the pop to punk, baby, this is
<v Speaker 2>pop poppy, hobbity pop pop.
<v Speaker 3>Well, you get the Steve Stevens guitar in there. Eighties
<v Speaker 3>keys are really what kind of set it apart? Is
<v Speaker 3>that that pop feel.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this song is good. This is one of the
<v Speaker 2>better songs on the album for sure. Okay, it's not
<v Speaker 2>my personal favorite, but the solo at the end is amazing.
<v Speaker 6>Right, Ron.
<v Speaker 3>Billy Idol and Keith Forcey said, Steve, why don't you
<v Speaker 3>just close us out with a killer guitar solo? Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>go to town Man.
<v Speaker 2>And so, normally the way that it works when you're
<v Speaker 2>doing a recording, especially with a big guitar solo, is
<v Speaker 2>you're going to mic the amp, right, You're gonna you're
<v Speaker 2>gonna play through the amp, and you're putting a microphone
<v Speaker 2>in front of the amp to get the sound, because
<v Speaker 2>it's that that's the way the best sound is created.
<v Speaker 2>But for a lot of like demos and just basic recordings,
<v Speaker 2>you'll use a rock band box, which is basically you
<v Speaker 2>just plug straight in. You don't you're not going through
<v Speaker 2>the amp or whatever. Okay, And so he was just
<v Speaker 2>trying to kind of get an idea. He's kind of
<v Speaker 2>doing the Steve Luca Thar noodling at the end of
<v Speaker 2>the line of Richie song you know. So he just
<v Speaker 2>plays this rock and solo through this bandbox and he's
<v Speaker 2>happy with it, like he's good. But he's like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>so now that we've got it, let me plug the
<v Speaker 2>aamp in and I'll just replay it.
<v Speaker 3>And Billy Idol's like, fuck you will. That was perfect
<v Speaker 3>and we are not we are not changing it.
<v Speaker 2>So this awesome solo is like a base like it's
<v Speaker 2>a basic it's a we are plugged straight in. We
<v Speaker 2>are not using a mic damp. We are just using
<v Speaker 2>our basic thing, and it's still incredible. They use this
<v Speaker 2>solo when they perform it live. Typically we'll go into
<v Speaker 2>the top gun theme.
<v Speaker 3>I know that kills. I want to see that, you know,
<v Speaker 3>to go right from this song right into Maverick throwing
<v Speaker 3>Goose's dog tags into the the ocean.
<v Speaker 6>You know.
<v Speaker 2>So a lot of the songs on this well, I
<v Speaker 2>mean we've said it before, it's just three guys and
<v Speaker 2>none of those guys are drummers, right, yeah, And so
<v Speaker 2>some of the songs you pretty well just have the
<v Speaker 2>lend drum track and then you've got a live drummer
<v Speaker 2>that might play over it or something from time to time.
<v Speaker 2>With this one, They're like, we really need that live
<v Speaker 2>drummer sound. And they had several guys that they went
<v Speaker 2>through that they just couldn't find the right guy. And
<v Speaker 2>then it just so happened this band named Scandal was
<v Speaker 2>playing next door.
<v Speaker 3>Heck, yeah, Scandal the Warrior. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>They hear those guys play and they're like, hey, who's
<v Speaker 2>playing the drums over there?
<v Speaker 3>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Who is that guy? Because he was loud and he
<v Speaker 2>was good, and once again brought him in. They said,
<v Speaker 2>play over this. They said two bars, we knew this
<v Speaker 2>is our guy had.
<v Speaker 3>Guy's name is Tommy Price. Tommy Price. This sounds a
<v Speaker 3>little repetitive for me. I like it, but we go
<v Speaker 3>through the blue highways, you know, several times.
<v Speaker 2>To me, this is like him trying to give a
<v Speaker 2>little bit of a departure from the punk stuff and
<v Speaker 2>speed stuff that had come before, which I think was
<v Speaker 2>probably good at the time, but I think probably hasn't
<v Speaker 2>aged as well as a lot of these other tracks.
<v Speaker 3>Sure this was added way late, and where they were
<v Speaker 3>working on this song, it's a small rehearsal studio. This
<v Speaker 3>guy held the elevator for him and when he got
<v Speaker 3>on the elevator, he looked over its Miles Davis.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, hello sir, Hey.
<v Speaker 3>You're Miles Davis. Hit stop on your tape player, kick
<v Speaker 3>it out, flip it over. But before you do, d
<v Speaker 3>do you know that if you had the vinyl copy
<v Speaker 3>of this album, huh, side one was actually side three
<v Speaker 3>and side two was side four. Okay why I don't know? Okay,
<v Speaker 3>because you know Billy idol, that's why. All right, well,
<v Speaker 3>hit stop on your tape player, kick it out, flip
<v Speaker 3>it over, side four, and we started off with Flesh
<v Speaker 3>for Fantasy.
<v Speaker 4>Oh, there's a change way of fantasy.
<v Speaker 2>I love this song. I really really I love the
<v Speaker 2>cool intro. I mean, this is an obvious drum machine
<v Speaker 2>that we've got playing here, but then that cool slide.
<v Speaker 2>It's very Genesis sounding to me. Okay, I did it.
<v Speaker 3>I think this is great.
<v Speaker 2>Another song title that comes from an old movie. This
<v Speaker 2>is from an old nineteen forty three movie called Flesh
<v Speaker 2>and Fantasy, starring We're Gee Robinson and Barbara Stanwick. I
<v Speaker 2>think Edward G.
<v Speaker 3>Robinson. If you've ever watched Bugs Bunny, he's the gun
<v Speaker 3>yeahy man, Yeah.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, crash posh.
<v Speaker 6>Rash.
<v Speaker 3>Here's a little trivia tidbit for you on this one.
<v Speaker 3>When he was recording the vocal for this, he was
<v Speaker 3>holding a copy of the book Venus in Furs. Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that's how the Velvet Underground got their name. Yeah, that's right.
<v Speaker 3>I know nothing about this book. But we talked about
<v Speaker 3>how Billy Iile's super intelligent. I mean he majored in literature. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>so obviously a very well read guy. And he was
<v Speaker 3>reading Venus in Furs while he was recording.
<v Speaker 2>Well, and we haven't really talked about that, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like he's always he's for his whole life been the
<v Speaker 2>guy who's like breaking the rules, like kicked out of
<v Speaker 2>the boy Scouts for making out with a girl in
<v Speaker 2>front of the Scout troop.
<v Speaker 3>Sure, why not?
<v Speaker 2>Also a guy who, though he didn't wasn't a particularly
<v Speaker 2>admired student by his teachers, which is, by the way,
<v Speaker 2>where he.
<v Speaker 3>Got his name. And we got to talk about that.
<v Speaker 2>He the teacher wrote Billy is Idol id l E,
<v Speaker 2>so that kind of was a bit of an inspiration
<v Speaker 2>for him. But of course you've got the money python actor,
<v Speaker 2>Eric I that was a little too bit too close.
<v Speaker 2>But hey, if I want to be an idol, I
<v Speaker 2>might as well call myself an idol, and so that's
<v Speaker 2>that's where he got the name. And then of course
<v Speaker 2>he's gone. His dad was a salesman and kind of
<v Speaker 2>had his own company. They lived in the suburbs. Nice
<v Speaker 2>not for life, you know. Tony James, his guitarist, said
<v Speaker 2>the same thing. Were both kids who had a good
<v Speaker 2>life from the suburbs. She decided we wanted to be
<v Speaker 2>in a rock band. But he's up at university in
<v Speaker 2>Sussex and I think it's the drummer. The guy friend
<v Speaker 2>of his basically gets in tune with the punk scene
<v Speaker 2>and sends him this article and he says, I think
<v Speaker 2>this is it. I think this is the wave of
<v Speaker 2>the future, and Billy sees his opportunity to go this
<v Speaker 2>is how I can dive.
<v Speaker 3>Into my rock and roller dream. Yeah, he said that
<v Speaker 3>when he had the conversation with his dad that he
<v Speaker 3>was going to drop out of college and go be
<v Speaker 3>in a punk rock band. His dad never heard the
<v Speaker 3>term punk rock before. Yeah, that's how early on this was.
<v Speaker 3>It really was.
<v Speaker 2>And they I mean punk rock was more than.
<v Speaker 3>Just a sound. It was an attitude.
<v Speaker 2>It was a reaction, it was a rebellion. But what
<v Speaker 2>he wanted to do is absolutely what he did with it.
<v Speaker 2>He wanted to give it a more appealing sound and
<v Speaker 2>a more appealing look, So he had developed that punk style.
<v Speaker 2>But like the Police, he was like, I have guys
<v Speaker 2>who can play their instruments, and I am an intelligent
<v Speaker 2>enough guy to write lyrics that are meaningful beyond just
<v Speaker 2>you know, rebel against the man. And so that's how.
<v Speaker 2>And he also had a dance disability and a good look,
<v Speaker 2>which meant that you had girls showing up. So it
<v Speaker 2>was an entirely different feel. But can I tell this
<v Speaker 2>story now?
<v Speaker 3>Sure, go ahead. We're the gen X generation you and
<v Speaker 3>I yes, tell me.
<v Speaker 2>But for Billy Idol, we probably wouldn't have that name.
<v Speaker 3>He coined that name. No, okay, this is how it goes.
<v Speaker 2>This is this is such a weird kind of coincidence
<v Speaker 2>of events, right, Okay. So they're just starting the band
<v Speaker 2>and they're trying to figure out a name for a band,
<v Speaker 2>and there is a book came out in nineteen sixty four.
<v Speaker 2>The authors are a couple of journalists, one named Jane Deverson,
<v Speaker 2>the other one named Charles Hamblett, and the name of
<v Speaker 2>their book is called Generation X. And it was a
<v Speaker 2>bunch It was a series of interviews with like the
<v Speaker 2>Mad Generation, the really the Baby Boomers. This was a
<v Speaker 2>book about the Baby Boomers called they just called it
<v Speaker 2>Generation X. Okay, Well, as it turned out, Billy's mother
<v Speaker 2>bought a copy of that book. So as they've been
<v Speaker 2>going to band practice and such, they all the band
<v Speaker 2>members come back to Billy's house to grab a sandwich
<v Speaker 2>or whatever, and Tony James sees that book on the
<v Speaker 2>shelf and he's like, what about this? Why don't we
<v Speaker 2>use this as our name? Like perfect, So naming the
<v Speaker 2>band Generation X happened fifteen years or so before they
<v Speaker 2>started calling our actual generation gen X. But here's the
<v Speaker 2>rest of the story. The reason that we're called gen
<v Speaker 2>X is based on a book that came out called
<v Speaker 2>Generation X. Tales from an Accelerated Culture came out in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen ninety one, and the book was by a guy
<v Speaker 2>named Doug Copeland, and he specifically said Generation X. The
<v Speaker 2>name of his book is taken from the aim of
<v Speaker 2>Billy Idol's punk band of the late seventies.
<v Speaker 3>Stop it. That is a gold nugget, right there, man?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, weird sequence of events.
<v Speaker 3>Yep, wow, Okay, so I want to drop this in
<v Speaker 3>really quick. I know, we're still talking about Flesh for Fantasy,
<v Speaker 3>which is the third single, and it reached number twenty
<v Speaker 3>nine on the Hot one hundred, so it's a modest hit. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>you know. Billy Idol was also an actor. Oliver Stone
<v Speaker 3>wanted him to have a prominent part in the movie
<v Speaker 3>The Doors. Yeah, if you're familiar with the movie that
<v Speaker 3>it's the Michael Mattson part. Right, But he was in
<v Speaker 3>this horrible motorcycle accident, which I mean, I guess we
<v Speaker 3>might as well talk about right now. So after he
<v Speaker 3>had completed the Charmed Life album, which had Credit of
<v Speaker 3>Love on it, he went home. Everybody wanted to have
<v Speaker 3>a party, but he was all partied out, which is
<v Speaker 3>very odd for Billy Outel because he was always the
<v Speaker 3>life of the party right right, went home, took some
<v Speaker 3>sleeping pills, okay, because he had been doing so many drugs.
<v Speaker 3>He couldn't fall astole exactly, so it took some sleeping
<v Speaker 3>pills to counteract all the drugs that he did. Well,
<v Speaker 3>it's not working. So like a wise person, he decides,
<v Speaker 3>I'm gonna go ride my motorcycle.
<v Speaker 2>It's going back to the studio to listen to the album.
<v Speaker 3>He wanted to hear the completed album, yeah, which I
<v Speaker 3>can't blame him for that. But as he's going back
<v Speaker 3>to the studio, he gets drilled by.
<v Speaker 2>A car and runs a stop sign.
<v Speaker 3>He runs a stop sign and gets hammered by a
<v Speaker 3>car and breaks his leg in three places and his
<v Speaker 3>tibious sticking out of his skin. Yeah, they almost had
<v Speaker 3>to take his leg. Yeah, it was very, very close.
<v Speaker 2>I can't believe the doctor said this out loud, but
<v Speaker 2>they called him down. The specialist called him down, and
<v Speaker 2>he's like, why are you calling me down for this bum?
<v Speaker 3>Whoa?
<v Speaker 2>And they're like, sir, this is Billy Ida. He is
<v Speaker 2>one of the biggest rock music And he's like, oh
<v Speaker 2>all right, Well, like you're supposed to give better care
<v Speaker 2>to the rock musician.
<v Speaker 3>What wow.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, I mean it was He spent a long
<v Speaker 2>time because it wasn't just the bones being broken.
<v Speaker 3>It was skin grafts. It was all.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, he was in serious danger of losing his leg.
<v Speaker 3>I saw the hole in his leg, like where the
<v Speaker 3>skin where the bone exited his body. It looked like
<v Speaker 3>like an alien egg, you know, the flowering open of that.
<v Speaker 3>It was.
<v Speaker 2>It was nasty, gross, nasty. Yeah, so he lost the
<v Speaker 2>ability to do the part in the movie. This is
<v Speaker 2>why you don't see the bottom half of him in
<v Speaker 2>Cradle of Love, right, And did you know this? He
<v Speaker 2>was supposed to be the T one thousand interminate.
<v Speaker 3>Hoping to drop that bomb on you. But I want
<v Speaker 3>to go to the Alternate Universe video store and rent
<v Speaker 3>Terminator two with Billy Idols the T one thousand. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>Cameron wanted him for that part.
<v Speaker 2>But it came down to Cameron saying can you run
<v Speaker 2>and Billy going no, I can't. And I God bless
<v Speaker 2>him because when he said it, he goes But I mean, seriously,
<v Speaker 2>can you imagine the cold steel face of Robert Patrick.
<v Speaker 2>I couldn't have pulled that off, right, Like, it's better
<v Speaker 2>with him in it instead of me. So, even as
<v Speaker 2>you know he missed it. And crazy as he is,
<v Speaker 2>he's a man with some humility.
<v Speaker 3>I like it. He's great man. I love I love you.
<v Speaker 3>By the way, So somewhere between when Charmed Life had
<v Speaker 3>finished recording, flew to Bangkok. This is before the accident,
<v Speaker 3>So he was in Thailand for three weeks. Okay, so
<v Speaker 3>he's in Thailand for three weeks, and he said that
<v Speaker 3>in Thailand you go the pharmacy or whatever you want.
<v Speaker 3>There's no legality. I mean you, hey, I'll take three
<v Speaker 3>of those and six of those, and nine of those
<v Speaker 3>went one night in Bangkok. So he destroyed a hotel
<v Speaker 3>penthouse cost one hundred and forty thousand. And when a
<v Speaker 3>foreign dignitary came to you know, he was next in
<v Speaker 3>line for the vacancy that Billy Idol was exiting. They
<v Speaker 3>said you need to leave, and Billy I was like,
<v Speaker 3>I'm not leaving, and they said, yes you are. He's like, no,
<v Speaker 3>I'm not. So they called the army, and the army
<v Speaker 3>tied him up, dragged him and escorted him out of
<v Speaker 3>the country on a stretcher, tied him down, strapped him up,
<v Speaker 3>man drug him off. Hannibal Idol, if you will, I
<v Speaker 3>love it. I love it.
<v Speaker 2>So as they're putting together this song, it really has
<v Speaker 2>a very motown feel to it, like it's got a
<v Speaker 2>an R and B feel to it, and they were worried.
<v Speaker 2>They were like, this is not the punk or the
<v Speaker 2>rock or the pop or anything else. This is a
<v Speaker 2>different sound and I don't know that we can get
<v Speaker 2>away with it. And they said it was an A
<v Speaker 2>and R guy that came in, guy named Jeff Aldridge,
<v Speaker 2>and he said, let the song be what it is,
<v Speaker 2>and that's how they get this song. Steve Stevens, I
<v Speaker 2>haven't looked at the chords on this, but I'm Steve
<v Speaker 2>Stevens calls them very strange and complex chords. And if
<v Speaker 2>he's saying that, then they must be pretty really complex, right.
<v Speaker 2>But he said that Billy was able to find a
<v Speaker 2>melody in that and drive it through in an amazing
<v Speaker 2>way that he doesn't even understand. It is truly a
<v Speaker 2>beautiful sounding song. And then the effects that you get
<v Speaker 2>on this one. This comes from several different guys, but
<v Speaker 2>one of the key guys is Andy Summers from the Police.
<v Speaker 2>Andy Summers was doing these kind of ethereal effects on
<v Speaker 2>his stuff as well, and Steve Stevens said the song
<v Speaker 2>Driven to Tears had been a big influence on this one.
<v Speaker 2>He said he had seen Andy's playing it live so
<v Speaker 2>good bought a ticket to watch the show the next night.
<v Speaker 3>Wow, that's awesome. Okay, moving on next song on the album,
<v Speaker 3>the fourth single called catch My fallt.
<v Speaker 6>Uh huh, It's.
<v Speaker 3>Okay. This song was written by Billy Idol by himself,
<v Speaker 3>no Steve Stevens involved at all. Billy Idol wrote this
<v Speaker 3>song on acoustic guitar, brought it to the sessions and
<v Speaker 3>it is his lone credit.
<v Speaker 6>On this one.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I heard Steve Stephens say that this was like
<v Speaker 3>Roy Orbison, like Rob Thomas of Matchbox twenty. Yeah, this
<v Speaker 3>is one of his favorite Billy Idol songs.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, Okay, that's interesting, So there you go.
<v Speaker 3>All right, I like it. This is like the poppyist
<v Speaker 3>of the pop about that sweet sexy sax in this song.
<v Speaker 2>This song, this is how we make this a Christmas episode.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>The guy playing the saxophone on this one is a
<v Speaker 2>guy named Mars Rogers. He is a saxophonist for the
<v Speaker 2>Psychadelic First but he also played the saxophone phone on
<v Speaker 2>a very famous Christmas song by the Waitresses called Christmas Rapping.
<v Speaker 2>Merry Christmas, Everybody, Merry Christmas and God bless us everyone.
<v Speaker 6>Oh.
<v Speaker 3>My wife and I love this one. We seek it
<v Speaker 3>to it every time it comes out. We're like, Merry Christmas,
<v Speaker 3>Merry Christmas. Yeah, and that sacks is same played by
<v Speaker 3>the same guy who plays Sacks on Catch My Fall
<v Speaker 3>Love it nice connection to Christmas, right there. Yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 3>Next song on the album, This song is called crank Call.
<v Speaker 7>Call.
<v Speaker 3>This song is about crank calls, people making crank calls.
<v Speaker 3>This is a lost art for We don't have this
<v Speaker 3>anymore because of stupid caller.
<v Speaker 7>I D.
<v Speaker 3>You don't call places anymore. You just call. You remember
<v Speaker 3>calling like girls in your class and like waiting for
<v Speaker 3>them to answer and then like hanging up just to
<v Speaker 3>hear their voice. That was a little too nerdy for me. Yeah, yeah, sorry, buddy, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>that was just me.
<v Speaker 2>Got a big t Rex influence on this one.
<v Speaker 3>Yep. Yeah, they still play this live. It's a good song.
<v Speaker 6>I like it.
<v Speaker 3>It was fun, pretty eighties, pretty stuck in its time
<v Speaker 3>it is, but it's it's good it is. It's a
<v Speaker 3>good revisit of the eighties. I love it.
<v Speaker 2>And apparently Billy was still trying to sing the lead
<v Speaker 2>track on this one the night before they delivered the tapes.
<v Speaker 3>That is mind blowing. Like the record company's like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>this is due at eight am, and he's still working
<v Speaker 3>on vocals at nine thirty the night before. Yeah, or
<v Speaker 3>seven in the morning, exactly, that's right. Okay, So just
<v Speaker 3>real quick.
<v Speaker 2>We didn't really talk much about Generation X, right, but
<v Speaker 2>there's there's a bit of a history. They get together,
<v Speaker 2>they do Generation X, ultimately he splits off with them.
<v Speaker 2>Chrysalis actually says we're ending your contract at that record
<v Speaker 2>company Christmas, which is famous from Rhuey Lewis Lewis, but
<v Speaker 2>they said, Billy will keep you on as a solo artist. Then,
<v Speaker 2>of course he gets introduced to Steve Stevens and ultimately
<v Speaker 2>Keith Forcy. But before that, when he's just moved to
<v Speaker 2>New York, he is living in a rat and cockroach
<v Speaker 2>infested tenement with Harry Lister. His girlfriend like it's bad, right,
<v Speaker 2>and he's like, and I would just go out at
<v Speaker 2>night and try to soak in the scene. Now, before
<v Speaker 2>this had happened, he remember Dancing with Myself was a
<v Speaker 2>Generation X song.
<v Speaker 3>That blew me away. I did not remember that at all.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Well, so he's it didn't do anything as a
<v Speaker 2>single when the Generation X did it, even though it's
<v Speaker 2>a fantastic song, he didn't do anything, which is why
<v Speaker 2>they contract ended. And he's got no money. He's just
<v Speaker 2>going around walking around and literally after being there for
<v Speaker 2>six months in New York City, he walks into a
<v Speaker 2>disco and they start playing his song. They start playing
<v Speaker 2>Dancing with Myself, and he's like, and it's a twenty
<v Speaker 2>minute remix, and the crowd is going crazy.
<v Speaker 3>He said they were going bananas.
<v Speaker 2>Bananas, and so all of a sudden, that's it. That's
<v Speaker 2>the spark that he goes. And they says, how about.
<v Speaker 3>We do an EP?
<v Speaker 2>And the EP has Dancing with Myself, which they said
<v Speaker 2>they label it as a remix. Yeah, no, it's the
<v Speaker 2>same song, Like, there's there is no remixing to this.
<v Speaker 2>It is the same song, say, people argue with him.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, He's like, guys, I know it was it's
<v Speaker 2>the same song. We didn't do it. It's the same song.
<v Speaker 2>And then the other side of that is Money Money,
<v Speaker 2>which when I heard that, I was like, whoa. I
<v Speaker 2>thought Mony Mooney was like a single from the late eighties, right, Well,
<v Speaker 2>it turns out they didn't do a lot back then,
<v Speaker 2>but then Money Mooney became big.
<v Speaker 3>Later on when they re released it as part of
<v Speaker 3>a new album. By the way, you talk about Perry Lister,
<v Speaker 3>they had kind of an open relationship. Would he would
<v Speaker 3>screw hundreds of girls? Yeah? She love how what she said.
<v Speaker 2>She's like, it's not as though I wasn't aware of
<v Speaker 2>the other women, but they just weren't in my face.
<v Speaker 3>Right well, And so that's interesting because the way she
<v Speaker 3>caught him having an affair. They had a son together,
<v Speaker 3>and they were out by the swimming pool and he's like,
<v Speaker 3>you know what, I'm gonna go check on our boy.
<v Speaker 3>And he goes in the other room and he calls
<v Speaker 3>his girlfriend and he forgets about the baby monitor. And
<v Speaker 3>when he comes out, he's like, she's stark, raving mad,
<v Speaker 3>and he's like, what just happened. There's no way she
<v Speaker 3>could have heard me. And she's like, you're baby monitor. Whoops.
<v Speaker 3>She took off after that. Yeah, he was like cracking
<v Speaker 3>up every time he told this story. He's like, a
<v Speaker 3>forgot about the stupid baby monitor.
<v Speaker 2>He is not apologetic about it at all.
<v Speaker 3>He is not.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, I mean, he will say he's in the wrong,
<v Speaker 2>but it's not like he's got remorse about it.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh. He was like, you know, they were
<v Speaker 3>right to do it. I was terrible, but I didn't
<v Speaker 3>blame her at all for believing exactly.
<v Speaker 2>He ultimately moved from New York, where they were they
<v Speaker 2>were living like vampires, right, you know, sleep all day,
<v Speaker 2>up all night. Moved out to La to you know,
<v Speaker 2>get a little bit of a break. Well, right, come on, guys, you.
<v Speaker 3>Don't move to La to get a break for the right.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe you get a break from the drugs, but definitely
<v Speaker 2>not from the women.
<v Speaker 3>Right.
<v Speaker 2>He had an entirely separate house that he kept. He
<v Speaker 2>said there would just be especially after she left. It
<v Speaker 2>was orgies like of the Roman days of old, like
<v Speaker 2>playboy models, porn stars. Everybody comes out and just goes
<v Speaker 2>but naked.
<v Speaker 3>You know, we haven't really mentioned the name Heidi Flies yet. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>he was a client. He was one of those named
<v Speaker 3>in that little client thing.
<v Speaker 2>When you've got big, big rock musicians going. You had
<v Speaker 2>a little bit of an obsession with sex, and you
<v Speaker 2>know it's got to be bad.
<v Speaker 3>It's got to be bad. Yeah, Okay. Next song on
<v Speaker 3>the album is called Do Not Stand in the Shadows.
<v Speaker 3>So this is a good Flamenco sound.
<v Speaker 2>Steve Stevens is an incredible guitarist in so many different genres,
<v Speaker 2>and this is that flamenco sound. This is actually the
<v Speaker 2>first song that was written for the album.
<v Speaker 3>The Course is great on this one. This actually could
<v Speaker 3>have gone on the previous album. Yeah, I mean it
<v Speaker 3>was around for that long and they were like, hold
<v Speaker 3>off and keep it for the next one.
<v Speaker 2>It's a good link between the two albums. It's got
<v Speaker 2>a much faster beat to it. But my favorite part
<v Speaker 2>about this one is that Steve said, this is one
<v Speaker 2>of the rare songs that we did in the.
<v Speaker 6>Shadow Shadow.
<v Speaker 2>Because we just didn't really do songs in D because
<v Speaker 2>it's pretty high. And he goes, I don't know why
<v Speaker 2>we didn't think that we could just transpose it down
<v Speaker 2>to a different key, just change the key.
<v Speaker 3>I mean people do it all the time, you know,
<v Speaker 3>just change the key.
<v Speaker 2>For some reason that just never occurred to us. And
<v Speaker 2>he said, for this song, Billy's nuts are really clinched.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, next song, last song on the album is called
<v Speaker 3>the Dead next Door Watch this guy for reasons why
<v Speaker 3>our Sunday was Okay. I love this song. Top three
<v Speaker 3>songs on the album right here. Wow. I think it's
<v Speaker 3>so moody. It's antique hookie. It's kind of like the
<v Speaker 3>Chauffeur from the Durandaran album Rio we talked about. It
<v Speaker 3>feels like it needs to be in a John Hughesman.
<v Speaker 3>It does well.
<v Speaker 2>Part of the inspiration on this one was Steve Steven's
<v Speaker 2>love for Tangerine Dream, which we've talked about a few times. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>if you're not familiar, I mean, I love their stuff,
<v Speaker 2>but the most famous thing they have is the music
<v Speaker 2>that's behind the Risky Business Ltrain Moment, which is just
<v Speaker 2>I mean, the name of the song is sex un
<v Speaker 2>a Train, I think it's something like that, but it's
<v Speaker 2>very it's a very electronic sound. And so Steve had
<v Speaker 2>this effects box called a Lexicon PUM forty one, and
<v Speaker 2>when he would play, it would automatically, at its own pace,
<v Speaker 2>play the same note an octave higher and an octave lower,
<v Speaker 2>and that's this really cool guitar sound that you're getting.
<v Speaker 2>But you're really able to adjust the speed of how
<v Speaker 2>quickly the echo effect of those notes happened. So on
<v Speaker 2>this rare song, they couldn't put like a drum machine
<v Speaker 2>to it, and nobody really knew the sound as well
<v Speaker 2>as Steve did. So Steve is the one who's coming
<v Speaker 2>in with those little drum beats that pop in throughout
<v Speaker 2>the out the music of it. Yeah, great capper to
<v Speaker 2>the album. Yeah, It's a great way to exit an album.
<v Speaker 2>It's like a nice goodbye, so long farewell af we
<v Speaker 2>just sing.
<v Speaker 3>See you on Whiplash smile here in a few years. Right,
<v Speaker 3>all right, gee, that's gonna do it for Rebel Yell time.
<v Speaker 3>Now for final judgment, you want to go first?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, So for me at this time in history in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty three, Billy Idol was more in my wheelhouse
<v Speaker 2>for sure, Like because he was in an MTV gym
<v Speaker 2>and because he had that kind of rocker look, I
<v Speaker 2>was more into him than I was in Diseasy Top
<v Speaker 2>and so that's that was a big influence on how
<v Speaker 2>I viewed these two albums. But ultimately, over time I
<v Speaker 2>became more familiar with the zzytops older music. Even the
<v Speaker 2>stuff after Eliminator was not really my cup of tea,
<v Speaker 2>but because I grew to love what they had so
<v Speaker 2>much before, and then was really listening to Eliminator with
<v Speaker 2>a whole new set of ears, going what are they
<v Speaker 2>doing here mixing the blues?
<v Speaker 3>Like how how effectively are they.
<v Speaker 2>Mixing the blues sound with that eighties synth sound that
<v Speaker 2>they were picking up from depeche Mode, And then just
<v Speaker 2>going which one do I just like sitting down and
<v Speaker 2>listening to more. I gotta say Eliminator wins out for
<v Speaker 2>me in this one. I think that they're big songs
<v Speaker 2>on Rebel Yell that are great and iconic, but I
<v Speaker 2>think they don't quite have the stay power that the
<v Speaker 2>songs on Eliminator have.
<v Speaker 3>And so for me, Bick is zz Top Okay, basically
<v Speaker 3>you're still in the words right out of my mouth.
<v Speaker 3>Billie Idol's style is look the sex drugs, rock and roll,
<v Speaker 3>hair metal feel to Billy Idol is more in my wheelhouse.
<v Speaker 3>I kind of felt like zz Top was like my
<v Speaker 3>dad's era and Billy Idol is kind of my era.
<v Speaker 3>But when you lay these tracks side by side, Eliminator
<v Speaker 3>is the better album. Although I love some of the
<v Speaker 3>songs off of Rebel Gal. Yeah, both of these albums
<v Speaker 3>are awesome, but for me, it's Eliminated.
<v Speaker 2>So coming into it before we before you listen to
<v Speaker 2>these two again for the first.
<v Speaker 3>Time, right, what were you thinking of Billy Idol all
<v Speaker 3>the way?
<v Speaker 6>Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>Our study on this has moved the needle for me
<v Speaker 3>to this is the top.
<v Speaker 8>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Well great, Well, we want to hear from you guys,
<v Speaker 3>which one is your favorite? What are your top three
<v Speaker 3>songs from each of one of these artists. We'd love
<v Speaker 3>to hear from you on that. The next week, we're
<v Speaker 3>doing the best of nineteen seventy eight.
<v Speaker 2>I cannot tell you how in love with this idea
<v Speaker 2>I am.
<v Speaker 3>I have obsessed over.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I have a list that is fifty songs long,
<v Speaker 2>and I've eliminated entire albums because we talked about.
<v Speaker 3>Them for I know, right, fifty I gotta I gotta rate.
<v Speaker 2>It in from fifty down to five and two honorable mentions.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know how I'm gonna do it. Come back
<v Speaker 2>and next week if we can find us, by golly,
<v Speaker 2>we'll squeeze in the top five of nineteen ninety three
<v Speaker 2>as well this year before it's over.
<v Speaker 3>If we can't op nteen ninety three, see you guys
<v Speaker 3>next week. Thanks guys,