Billy Idol 'Devil's Playground' album

It’s not like Billy Idol has been locked in the basement for twelve years composing songs for DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, his first album of original material since CYBERPUNK in 1993.

No, the first generation punk (Chelsea, Generation X) and undisputed alpha male Life Force of MTV’s Golden Age needed to crawl out of the trench that trips up so many after an ascent to fame, needed to sandblast the excrescence of stardom off his persona, needed to chisel away all that wasn’t pure gleaming rock & roll, before loosing his artistic self on the 21st Century.

“I had an overdose in 1994 when my son and daughter were quite young,” says Billy. “A friend said to me, ‘They would never have forgiven you. They would have spent the rest of their lives thinking that you didn’t care about them enough to stay alive.’ I was in a nihilistic place, oblivious to what life is really about, and I’m still reflecting on how I pulled myself out. People around me were saying, ‘Isn’t Billy Idol about life?’ My own songs seemed to be pointing the finger, too. Rearranging the senses with drugs can work for a while, but then it’s off to zombie land. Which is a shame. Rock & roll is about energy. That craziness was not.”

So that was Epiphany Number One: It is better to live than to die.

“In 1995, I ran into a brick wall. I had no band anymore, and the music business was getting quite soulless. It seemed like the big record companies were mostly interested in eating each other and promoting music as product. They didn’t really believe in rock & roll anymore. How was someone like me going to fit into that? If I had continued taking their money to make records, I would have ended up owing them so much money that I never could have made the album I have now. They wanted my soul in hock, and I refused to fall into their trap. I just stopped putting out records when I knew they would turn out shitty, and I waited until I found a company [Sanctuary] that really wanted a Billy Idol record. IT’S NOT JUST A FUCKING JOB! You can’t go out there with people you hate and music that sucks. I suppose it was a gamble staying away so long, but it’s paid off because I’m happy. I’m happy to be Billy Idol with a quality Billy Idol record. How’s that for a marketing tactic?”

That was Epiphany Number Two: IT’S NOT JUST A FUCKING JOB!!! OKAY?!!?

You need the right band, you need a record company with social skills and musical sense to balance the profit motive, and you need inspiration. Ideas. Confidence. Some sense that the world still holds a place for Billy Idol to foment his pagan idolatry amongst the orgiastic masses of rock & roll.

“It must have been the summer of ‘99. I’d been doing a lot of motorcycle riding, going on these bike runs that give you plenty of time to think. At the end of the Redwood Run in northern California, they had a stage and Los Lobos was up there, and I just jumped in with them, like I did when I was 20 with people I didn’t know and nothing rehearsed. We did ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’ and it was one of those magical moments when I went out of my head. Woooooooh, ecstasy world! And I watched the audience come alive, as they followed us. We rocked the fucking house. And I thought, ‘This is it. This is why it’s worth staying alive. Man, you can still do it! Don’t get down on yourself!’”

And that’s Epiphany Number Three: Rock & roll is inherently worth doing.

It needs no other justification. And if you’re Billy Fucking Idol, who howled “Rebel Yell,” growled “White Wedding,” rocked the “Cradle of Love,” and manhandled “Mony Mony,” you don’t need any other reason to continue swinging on the monkey bars in the Devil’s playground, exactly three rocks from the sun in this isolated corner of an indifferent cosmos of randomly colliding subatomic particles. More playground, less Devil.

Epiphany Number Four became obvious about a minute after he stepped offstage:

Billy Idol must rock with his own band. It turned out that he and Steve Stevens, his guitarist and writing partner over the course of all those monstro-hits in the ’80s, didn’t hate each other as much they thought and could even be friends again. Brian Tichy, a killer drummer boiling over with song ideas, also came aboard and the band was complete with motorcycle mate Stephen McGrath on bass and Derek Sherinian on keyboards. They toured medium-sized clubs, gradually warming from ‘80s nostalgia to a shit hot rock & roll band. After a Greatest Hits collection (EMI was expecting sales of 100,000 and it exceeded all expectations when the CD went platinum-plus), a VH-1 Storytellers and Behind the Music, the Fifth and Final Epiphany was unavoidable: They needed some new material. With Keith Forsey (Billy’s producer since Generation X) again at the board, both star and support system were complete. The recording began in November of 2003 and ended in November 2004.

Which brings us to the 13 songs comprising DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, which captures the Dionysian frenzy of Billy Idol on the path of excess while offering the occasional glimpse of Billy Idol in the palace of wisdom. The boy can still boogie massively and, contrary to Jim Morrison, someone got out of there alive to tell us about it.

Super Overdrive: I was thinking of the Richard Branson rocket, especially that first flight when it started to wobble just as it was leaving the atmosphere. Rock & roll is like that--very fragile, and it can kill you, but you can ride it to places you’ve never been. Brian had the riff and I said, ‘Well, what are we going to call it?” And Steve looked down at his distortion pedal and said, ‘Super Overdrive’? We were laughing because it was so brilliantly dumb. I was in super overdrive with my music, but I’ve also been in super overdrive when I was just crazy.

World Comin’ Down: That’s kinda written from a kid’s point of view. I remembered all the things that I went through as a kid, and how school is just the world in microcosm. There are times for everyone as you grow up to resent authority, but you have to break the rules to be true to yourself. Now, they REALLY penalize you for that. I’ve never been able to learn anything that I wasn’t interested in, just couldn’t make myself care why the litmus paper was changing colors.

Rat Race: That’s the adult me talking to myself. Our public lives turn into rat races, but then you discover that your private life is a rat race too, and the problem is inside yourself. It’s so easy to get sucked into things and then wonder why you’re doing them, which can cause damage. Somehow you’re not going to be the same person again, the person you’re proud of.

Sherri: I wrote it from a girl’s point of view, something I’d never done before. I’d pretty much done everything by the age of 16, so I know how easy it is to run away from things and then discover that there’s really no place to run. You’ve got to make the best of what you’ve got right here. It’s difficult to tell anyone what to do, especially when you’re Billy Idol, but then, we all grow up a little don’t we?

Plastic Jesus: I was playing this thing on acoustic guitar one day and Steve Stevens said, “That sound’s like ‘Plastic Jesus.’” And I said, “What’s that?” We couldn’t find a recording of the original, so I’m sure the melody is different. We just downloaded Ernie Marrs’ lyrics, which had the feeling of a hillbilly song. I identified with the guy being an alcoholic carrying around his booze in the plastic Jesus. There might be a little Donovan in the chorus. The weirdest stuff comes out when you squeeze the sponge.”

Scream: Totally filthy. Its three o’clock in the morning and the sex beast is on the prowl. It’s such a Billy Idol song, it’s almost funny. But it really roars.

Yelling At The Xmas Tree: My dad never came home drunk like that, but I did a few times. And I did spend an entire Christmas once yelling at the tree like it was my manager or somebody. I don’t think my mother ever had sex with Santa Claus. But maybe. Who knows?

Romeo’s Waiting: A few years ago I found myself in a strip bar with all the other losers, and I started to see it from their point of view. They’re the most romantic people in the world, because they’re thinking that the chick is dancing for them, that they’re going to save her. Romeo was always a bit of a loser. A total loser, when you think about it.

Body Snatcher: My mother was an O’Sullivan and she always said that people with an O in front of their name heard the Banshee wail. And I have heard the Banshee wail. I’ve been in that place when I thought the body snatchers were coming. I’ve nearly killed myself on the motorcycle, and I’ve nearly killed myself with drugs, so I’m very lucky to be here. But this is more about something dark taking over your soul, the melancholia thing.

Evil Eye: Continues the same theme as “Body Snatcher.” Heroin is a relationship drug. That’s how I got into it. I fell in love, and we fell into heroin. That was a long time ago, and it took a long time to shake it.

Lady Do Or Die: A mix of Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen. You’re on the road, and you decide that playing music for living isn’t so bad. Music as a way of freeing yourself from prison--it’s done that for me. Do that or die.

Cherie: The challenge was writing a song that says “I Love You” and making it real. I did it by flashback to my childhood in the punk revolution. You have everything but you’re still looking for something more, so you lose what you had. And yet you’ve still got your memories, even after you fuck up so badly. So I’m saying, “Thanks for helping me. You made my life great, even if we’re not together anymore.”

Summer Running: I was riding my motorcycle and rejuvenating the life I nearly destroyed in “Body Snatcher” and “Evil Eye.” When you ride, it’s almost like meditating and you can ask yourself all the important questions: What do I really love? What do I really believe? What do I really want to do? You can answer those questions if you just find a place where you can stop and think. For me, that was the motorcycle. For somebody else, it might be a Winnebago. I learned that I had to get back to having a great band again, writing great songs again, celebrating those moments when you’re alive and healthy. You go on for all the people who can’t do that. You do it for them, I think.”

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Billy Idol - Devil's Playground