Rolling Stone
Rebel Yell
Billy Idol
Rating: ****
BY Parke Puterbaugh | January 19, 1984
Equal parts hard rocker, glam rocker and punk rocker, Billy Idol has managed an estimable synthesis of the music of three decades on Rebel Yell, his second solo album. From the Sixties, he's brought a fair measure of pop economy and a kaleidoscopic palette of sound effects. From the Seventies, he's taken the larger-than-life sound of big guitars, thunderous drumming and industrial-strength singing. And from the Eighties, he's adapted the sonic Bauhaus architecture of new music, with its straight, streamlined edges. In short, Rebel Yell is a ferocious record, sharp as a saber, hard as diamond, as beautiful and seductive as the darker side of life with which it flirts.
Idol must share some of the credit with guitarist Steve Stevens, with whom he's established a partnership whose chemistry is not unlike that between Iggy Pop and James Williamson. Idol's lyrics partake of our deepest subconscious, sexual and nocturnal drives; his saturnalian cravings find musical expression in the wide array of sounds Stevens is able to coax from his instrument, be it the unnerving metallic march of "Daytime Drama," the lurching, out-of-focus psychedelia of "Flesh for Fantasy" or the skittering, arpeggiated runs that frame "(Do Not) Stand in the Shadows."
Rebel Yell occasionally toys with decadence, taking fleeting glimpses behind doors that are better left unopened. But this is part and parcel of Idol's lust for life, which seems almost indiscriminate in its thrill seeking yet full of boundless pleasure with each new world that rolls over the horizon — and this isn't decadent at all. At a time when too much of what comes over the airwaves is all sweetness and light, or mere undifferentiated head-banging, Rebel Yell is an intelligent assault upon the senses, and a rallying cry to the reckless enthusiasm of youth. Worth a good, lusty holler for sure.
Smash Hits
Billy Idol: 'I did what I wanted, with the weapons of rock'n'roll'
It's 30 years since Rebel Yell, the album that made Billy Idol a worldwide star. In the midst of Idolmania in 1984, Neil Tennant met him for Smash Hits – in a piece taken from Rock's Backpages, the home of online music writing
It's midday in London and Billy Idol's just got out of bed. He's sitting sweating in an old, shredded punk T-shirt and a pair of tracksuit pants, clutching a can of some soft drink. Two minutes after starting to talk to me (actually, he's talking at me), I'm beginning to suspect that he's completely bonkers.
He rants in a throaty voice full of resentment about his father. It seems that one of the main reasons for his visit to England from his home in New York is to prove something to his dad.
"He gave me hell when I wanted to be in a rock'n'roll band. I want to give him hell for the fact that he didn't believe me. He chose not to talk to me for two years because I had long hair. When? I dunno. In the 60s or 70s. Before David Bowie, even. My choice is that I can give him my American platinum album as his 60th birthday present. BAM!"
He bangs the table and pauses for dramatic effect.
"There you are, Dad. A million Americans have bought my record. Five hundred thousand Canadians have bought my record. So many hundreds of people in Australia have bought my records. And you told me I was a fool. My dad, he might be 60 years old, but my choice in life is to tell him: I was right. I've done something more than you can ever do. Which is that I did what I wanted. And I did it with the weapons of rock'n'roll."
Billy Idol is 28 years old now, and a veteran of the original punk movement. In 1976 he left his family in Bromley, moved up to London and joined Chelsea, one of the first punk groups. By the end of 76 he was fronting his own group, Generation X, their name taken from an old 60s paperback.
"It was a massive joke to us," he says now. "We were playing the Roxy in London and there were all these record company people giving us their cards."
By the following year Generation X were becoming Top of the Pops regulars, unashamedly more glamorous and more "rock'n'roll" than most of their punk contemporaries.
Although they had such hits as Your Generation, Ready Steady Go! and Valley of the Dolls (the latter which he now describes as "negative, awful music which I really hated"), Generation X were "ripped off by their manager and never recovered from a bitter, two-year dispute with him over their contract.
"And after we got rid of him, we found out that we were no longer together. It had split us up."
They made a final LP under the name Gen X but it didn't sell. Billy, now with a huge chip on his shoulder, decided to move to New York.
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"It was a move I had to make to relearn what it's like not to be in anybody's papers, to actually try to get a group together because you really care, just to be your own self. I really went through hell – but I needed to. I needed to be ripped off and to go through hell because that way I was going to understand and be strong enough to do what I'm doing now and actually last doing it."
He slept on friends' floors in New York, "just like I did when I first came up to London from Bromley", and wrote some songs with a guitarist called Steve Stevens, who's still in his group. He got a new manager, Bill Aucoin, who also managed Kiss, and set about recording. His first solo single, Mony Mony, ran into problems when American radio stations wouldn't play it because of his picture on the sleeve, all spiky hair and patented punk snarl.
"So we took my picture off the next single, Hot in the City, and they didn't know who it was. So they played it and it went to No 24."
The new American rock TV channel, MTV, gave him his big break, just like Duran Duran. The video of his next single, White Wedding, was regularly shown on the channel and suddenly American teenagers discovered this hunky blond punk with a record that filled the gap between English pop and heavy rock.
"Ordinary people started to have a relationship with me. I wasn't some punk rocker from England anymore, I was someone they understood."
As he is so keen to point out to his dad, he's now hugely popular in the USA and Canada with a hit album, Rebel Yell, and single, Eyes Without a Face. But he hasn't lost the chip on his shoulder that provokes him into spasms of rage.
"All people did was laugh, and I can remember that. I remember people laughing at rock'n'roll – even when punk was happening. Now I see people laughing at rock'n'roll. But they will learn. People sit there and talk about me as if I deserted them. I deserted an England that never believed in rock'nroll. As far as I can see, they really wanted Boy George."
The phrase "rock'n'roll" crops up with an obsessive frequency as he talks.
"Somehow rock'n'roll makes people higher," he declares, with the fervour of a religious maniac. "What I'm involved in makes me feel bigger and larger than life. That's why I'm very lucky. And I chose that. I didn't choose heavy rock. I didn't choose blues. I didn't choose disco. I chose rock'n'roll."
He envisages rock'n'roll as some kind of international force. "It's really a world that exists and it talks about love and beauty; it talks about suffering, pain, dying, loving things. It's country-and-western music. It's to do with black people and white people. It's to do with a type of soul that England's totally rejected. You can hear it in reggae music. You hear it in Jewish songwriters. You hear it in loads of different types of culture which have been repressed. But I don't hear it in English music right now."
Is it important to him to repeat his American success in Britain? He shrugs.
"If people here don't want to believe, then they can leave me alone. I don't have to try – but I want to, I want to. I've got a lot of spite against England but I've got a lot of love as well. Deny it to me and I don't need you. It's as heavy as that."
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With all his resentment and frantic "rock'n'roll" life, Billy's behaviour can be unpredictable, to say the least. After a recent concert in Canada, he serenaded a crowd of fans with an impromptu version of Rebel Yell, standing naked on his hotel room window ledge. After the photograph accompanying this piece was taken, he stormed out of the photographer's studio, shouting and kicking lights over. Asked live on Countdown, the Australian equivalent of Top of the Pops, what he'd being doing since his arrival in Australia, he replied: "Having sex." He was asked to leave the Radio 1 Round Table studio midway through the programme a few weeks back for swearing and behaving in a threatening manner on the air. But the BBC still invited him to wander on to Top of the Pops the next week.
"Billy Idol – what are you doing here?" asked Steve Wright. And Billy paused for a second, as though he'd been wondering much the same himself. Then he remembered.
"I've come here," he declared, clenching his fist, "to ROCK'N'ROLL!"
Of course.
Robert Christgau
Rebel Yell [Chrysalis, 1984]
Videos have been the making of this born poser's career and the unmaking of his music. Not that they've changed how hard and hooky it is, much less turned off the unwitting many who find sexism sexy. But if you've got no taste for the sound of the sneer, the visuals definitely aren't fantasy enough. C
AllMusic
Billy Idol
Rebel Yell
AllMusic Rating ****
Review by Steve Huey
A slick, carefully crafted follow-up to his debut, Rebel Yell was Billy Idol's catchiest, most consistent fusion of synth-driven new wave pop and hard rock guitar pyrotechnics (courtesy of Steve Stevens). The eerie ballad "Eyes Without a Face" gave Idol his first U.S. Top Ten hit, while "Flesh for Fantasy" and the title track became MTV staples. Like much of Idol's solo output, it's all calculated for maximum appeal, but Rebel Yell also works too well not to be an infectiously guilty pleasure.
Audiofidelity
Billy Idol
Rebel Yell
"... a landmark album, an eclectic stew of punk, pop, new-wave, and metal."
There's a cool aggression to 1983's "Rebel Yell," Billy Idol's second album that is equal parts new-wave, metal, punk, and pop. Although his debut was a hit and remains a classic, it was "Rebel Yell" that is his masterpiece. The album reunited Billy with the hit-making team of producer, Keith Forsey and the atmospheric guitarwork of Stevie Stevens that can only be called rock & roll nirvana.
The album reached #6 on Billboard's Top 200 propelled by four hit singles including, "Rebel Yell," the eloquently gorgeous "Eyes Without a Face" with the haunting female backup singing of Perri Lister, and "Flesh for Fantasy" all of which were hit music videos. With a permanently snarled upper lip and the perfect matinee-idol blond hair, Billy Idol made punk rock palatable for MTV and the masses.
"...Idol's best written and most consistent album. It also stands as one of the best albums from the 1980's."
Amazon.com
With a permanently snarled upper lip and the perfect matinee-idol blond hair, Billy Idol made punk rock palatable for MTV and the masses. He did so by watering down punk's aggressive attack with dance grooves and stretches of keyboards where no self-respecting punk would've dared. Essentially, he made pop music with a spare razor blade tossed in for fun. When it clicked, as it does on the anthemic title track of this, his career highlight, well, only an anarchist could complain. "Eyes Without a Face" and "Flesh for Fantasy" are two other early '80s radio stapes found here and they went further to establish Idol as a potential Vegas balladeer. This reissue contains some worthwhile demos. --Rob O'Connor