Billy Idol will be appearing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this Saturday, April 18th at 3:40pm.
The Festival will take place in USC’s Alumni Park, near Downtown Los Angeles. Billy will be interviewed live on stage about his bestselling autobiography, Dancing With Myself, and he will also personally read from the book. His appearance on the LA Times Festival Stage will be followed by a short book signing.
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Vicki Anderson for Stuff.co.nz, New Zealand, 20 March 2015
Spiky peroxide-blonde- haired Billy Idol repeats the word “masturbatory” three times with a sneer.
The leather-clad rocker who led an MTV-fuelled generation is telling me about a disco in Tokyo, Japan, he visited in the late 1970s, when dance clubs were still in the passionate embrace of disco’s Saturday Night Fever.
“We went to this dance club and these kids were all dressed up like John Travolta and dancing with themselves,” Idol says chattily.
“They weren’t dancing together, they were dancing to their own reflections. It was like a masturbatory kind of thing to do. If I haven’t got a partner I can fixate on myself, dance with myself.”
The experience led to the hit 80s hit song Dancing with Myself, which is also the title of his recently released autobiography. He challenged himself to write the book, he says, as his way of evoking something of a punk rock ethic.
“In the days of punk rock we believed in trying to do things yourself. I wondered if I could
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Due to overwhelming demand, a SECOND Billy Idol show at the House of Blues in New Orleans, LA on September 29 has been added!
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House of Blues New Orleans is very excited to announce Billy Idol’s postponed January 21st concert has been rescheduled on September 28th, 2015 at 8pm.
Says Billy: “I’m thrilled to be coming back to rock New Orleans in September with Steve Stevens and the rest of the band! Thanks to all my fans in the Big Easy for your patience. This is going to be a fun one!”
All valid tickets for the January 21st date will be honored at the door on the rescheduled date.
A very limited amount of tickets and VIP Meet-n-Greet ticket packages for the rescheduled show on September 28th will be released for purchase TODAY (April 2) at 12 Noon on LiveNation.com, HouseofBlues.com, and Ticketmaster.com.
For more information, please call House of Blues Box Office at (504) 310-4999.
Billy Idol will be performing at this year’s Outside Lands Music Festival on August 8th in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Tickets on sale now. Details at: www.sfoutsidelands.com/
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Review: Billy Idol – March 24, 2015, Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Harry Williams, thedwarf.com.au
“A lengthy atmospheric instrumental intro and then suddenly he [Billy Idol] runs out of the darkness and onto one of three risers and there he is, bouncing around. The spritely punk is back, as youthful, buffed and boisterous as ever. Resplendent in trademark leathers, with his attitude, ego, sneer and trademark yelps at the ready…
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Billy recently chatted with the Sydney Morning Herald about his new album, Kings & Queens of the Underground, bestselling autobiography, Dancing With Myself and current world tour.
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Billy Idol, Steve Stevens and the band will return to the East coast on May 30 to rock the Sweetlife Festival at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD!
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Billy Idol and Steve Stevens performed a rare acoustic club gig at The Turf Club on January 19 in St. Paul, MN in front of 350 lucky fans to celebrate 89.3FM The Current’s 10th Anniversary. Watch the video of Billy’s interview with The Current’s Mary Lucia below along with live clips from the intimate performance.
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Billy Idol’s North American ‘Kings & Queens of the Underground’ Tour is well underway and Billy, Steve Stevens and the band been playing to highly energized sell-out crowds! Here are some of
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Billy was recently profiled in a fantastic piece by Andy Hermann for LA Weekly.Excerpt:
From the living room of his house, high up in the Hollywood Hills, Billy Idol gazes out across the Los Angeles Basin, remembering when the city was on fire.
“Even in the daytime, you could see the smoke,” he says, describing his bird’s-eye view of the Rodney King riots in April 1992. “And ash was raining out of the sky.”
At the time of the riots, Idol was one of the biggest stars in rock. But privately, his life had been unraveling for some time. In 1989, he separated from his girlfriend of 10 years, dancer-choreographer Perri Lister, a split that sent him plunging deeper into drug abuse. A gruesome motorcycle accident in the heart of Hollywood the following year nearly cost him his leg.
After limping through an international tour with a cane, he was back at home, struggling to stay sober as he toiled on the most ambitious album of his career, Cyberpunk, with neither of his most trusted collaborators, guitarist Steve Stevens and producer Keith Forsey, to guide him.
In the fires of the riots, Idol saw a parallel to his own life. “I’d been polluting myself with drugs. So it wasn’t so different for me to start seeing the world as polluting itself.”
It would take years, but Idol finally detoxed. Now he stands as an improbable survivor not only of drug abuse and motorcycle accidents but
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Billy Idol will be appearing on NPR’s World Cafe on Thursday, January 29th! Billy’s episode of the acclaimed public radio show will include an interview with Billy by host David Dye, and an exclusive acoustic set from Billy and his band. You can hear the online stream of the program on Thursday, January 29 at 2pm ET at xpn.org
World Cafe is broadcast on over 200 NPR Stations nationwide.
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European summer festival and individual tour dates have been announced for shows in the UK, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Sweden, France and Italy, including some of the larger European festivals such as Download Festival, Hellfest, Rock The Ring and Isle of Wight Festival. More European dates will be announced soon so be sure to also follow Billy Idol on Facebook and Twitter for updates!
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18 x 24 inch screen print, numbered edition of 400. Metallic silver ink on grey stock. Signed by Shepard Fairey. Limit 1 per person, per household. $50. Based on a photo by Michael Muller. Release date: Wednesday January 21, 2015.
“I have been fortunate to work with Billy Idol on several creative projects including his “Devil’s Playground” album package and his “Idolize Yourself” greatest hits package. Billy invited me once again to help with the art for his most recent album “Kings & Queens of the Underground.” Billy played the record for me and I was impressed with the stylistic range and especially loved the songs “Can’t Break Me Down,” “Save Me Now,” and “Whiskey and Pills.” I asked my friend, photographer Michael Muller (with whom I’d collaborated on the “Walk the Line” movie poster), to shoot the portraits for the package and he did a great job. I’m happy with the way the album package turned out, and as part of the project I was able to make an illustration of Billy based on one of Michael’s portraits, which I incorporated into this poster to accompany the “Kings & Queens of the Underground” album and tour. I’m very happy with how the poster turned out. On a side note, the “Kings & Queens of the Underground” album is heavily autobiographical because Billy was simultaneously working on his autobiography entitled “Dancing With Myself.” I’ve had the privilege of hearing amazing stories from Billy about his days in the London punk scene seeing the Sex Pistols, forming Generation X, and then moving to NY to go solo. His book tells all of these stories in an amazingly vivid and evocative style. Billy is a superb writer and I’d recommend the book for any fan of rebel music and personal creative evolution. Billy puts on an unbelievably energetic and charismatic live show, so check him out on tour if you have the chance. Oh, Steve Stevens, Billy’s guitarist and long-time collaborator is an absolute shredder. They shouldn’t be missed.” -Shepard Fairey
We regret to announce that the first two shows of Billy’s North American tour, in New Orleans on Wednesday, January 21 and in Atlanta on Thursday, January 22, will be postponed. Billy is unfortunately suffering from a pesky chest infection and is on doctor’s orders to recover for a few days before hitting the stage again.
“I’m really disappointed to be missing everyone this week in the Big Easy and Atlanta. I was excited for these gigs but want to make sure I can give you the full on Idol rock show you deserve. Thank you for understanding while I get over this bug. We’ll be back later this year!” – Billy
All other shows on the tour, beginning at the Tower Theatre in Philadelphia (Upper Darby), PA on January 24, will go on as planned. Fans with tickets to the New Orleans, LA and Atlanta, GA shows should hold on to their tickets until information about the rescheduled dates becomes available in the near future.
Grammy-Award winning virtuoso and long time Billy Idol collaborator Steve Stevens and Knaggs Guitars proudly announce the Steve Stevens Signature model SS2. Tailored to Steve’s specs and preferences, it will accompany the legendary guitarist on Billy Idol’s 2015 World tour.
Limited to only 100 instruments in 3 available colors (Red Sparkle, Cream and Black) the SS2 features a Mahogany body with
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A selection of officially licensed Billy Idol tshirts and apparel is now available! A complete web store will be online soon with additional selections and merchandise.
BILLY IDOL will kick off the new year with a performance at the 2015 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic®–the New Year’s Day outdoor game between the Chicago Blackhawks® and the Washington Capitals®–at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. which will be televised live at 1:00 p.m. ET on NBC (along with CBC and TVA). This performance will come as IDOL prepares for his 2015 tour in support of his critically acclaimed 2014 album KINGS & QUEENS OF THE UNDERGROUND which features the anthemic lead single “Can’t Break Me Down” and its evocative video.
IDOL’s pre-game performance from the main stage at home plate before puck drop will pay
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Steve Stevens graces the cover of the latest (January, 2015) issue of Guitar Plater Magazine with the feature story “How Punk, Electronica and an Adventurous Spirit Forged the Billy Idol Sound”. Available on newstands now and for purchase online here.
From GuitarPlayer.com:
“In the January 2015 issue of Guitar Player, Billy Idol’s sonic superhero Steve Stevens discusses the gear, tones, chops and attitude that go into everything he does, including the latest record. Plus Idol himself talks about his longtime 6-string foil and his creative process.”
Billy Idol’s self-penned New York Times bestselling autobiography Dancing With Myself was selected as #5 on Rolling Stone’s “10 Best Music Books of 2014.” (Actually, #1 of all self-penned autobiographies if we’re keeping track).
From RollingStone.com:
“In 2014, the rock star tell-all autobiography train rolled on with Jimmy Page, Joe Perry, Carlos Santana, Mick Fleetwood, George Clinton, Paul Stanley and Billy Idol among others all getting their turn. But some of the years best books were the
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