His real name is William Broad. The name Idol is based on a report card he received that said, "William is an idle student." He was going to use the name "Billy Idle," but decided an an alternate spelling of the surname so it wouldn't conflict with the Monty Python cast member Eric Idle.
Before launching his solo career in 1981, Billy Idol fronted the punk band Generation X, one of the first acts to emerge from the London punk scene. "I saw the Sex Pistols in May 1976 at the 100 Club and I thought, 'Wow, here we go,'" Idol told Uncut magazine. Inspired by the raw energy of the Pistols and the growing punk movement in New York, he and a few friends set out to create their own version in London.
At the time, Idol was still at university, playing '60s covers in a cafeteria band on Friday nights, but his punk instincts didn't fit the setlist. "I couldn't talk them into doing punk rock," he said.
So he left school, teamed up with Tony James to briefly join Chelsea, and by November 1976, the pair had formed Generation X, taking the DIY spirit of punk into their own hands.
He suffered serious injuries in a motorcycle accident in 1990. That's why you see him only from the waist up in the "
Cradle Of Love" video.
Billy Idol played himself in the 1998 Adam Sandler movie The Wedding Singer, but a decade earlier he nearly landed a much bigger role as the shape-shifting T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
"I did do a screen test with James Cameron," Idol told Uncut. "He was serious about me doing it; in Stan Winston's special effects studio, they even had drawings of me as the T-1000."
But his motorcycle accident put a kibosh on their plans. "I had a limp," he explained. "There's one point in the movie where the T-1000 has to chase after Arnold in the car park, just run really fast. James said, 'I can't trick it up with CGI, you've got to be able to do it.' I told him, 'I can walk, but I can't run at the moment,' so I couldn't do it."
The role ultimately went to Robert Patrick, but somewhere in the archives, there are sketches of Billy Idol as the liquid-metal assassin who might have been.
Idol is the voice of Odin in the animated movie Heavy Metal 2000.
After a show in London in 1989, Idol was attacked by a fan who ran after him and stabbed him in the leg.
Billy is a vegetarian. He doesn't eat meat, but does wear leather.
While working on his self-titled debut solo album in Los Angeles, Billy Idol rented a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Boulevard. On March 5, 1982, he awoke at 3 a.m. to discover there was nothing to drink, so he destroyed his room. Later that day the police arrived and a naked Idol surrendered. He later learned they were not there for him, but were investigating another Chateau Marmont resident, actor John Belushi, who had overdosed and died that same night.
In 2020, Idol participated in the
"Billy Never Idles" campaign to encourage New York City drivers to shut their engines off instead of idling in an effort to clear the air. As Idol puts it in the spot: "If you're not driving, shut your damn engine off!"
On April 8, 2023, Billy Idol made music history as the first artist to perform at the Hoover Dam. The event was a special stop on his ongoing North American Spring and Summer tour, and featured Idol's longtime band, including lead guitarist and collaborator Steve Stevens.
The show was an intimate experience, with only 250 lucky attendees gathered at the Hoover Dam Bypass, surrounded by the stunning natural beauty of the Black Canyon of the Colorado River and the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. The entire performance was captured on film for a concert movie produced by Lastman Media.
