John Hood - Idolicious

Idolicious

You can't not dig Billy Idol. You just can't. He's like that neighborhood stray who won't go away. Showing up on your doorstep with tales you know you'd never live, stories you'd have to see to believe. You know the kinda cat: Strange and mangy and magnificent. The kinda guy cat all the girl cats luv. Even when the cat gets a little gray and grizzled .

Not that Idol's a little gray, mind you. So long as there's peroxide, he'll be a spiky blonde. But Billy has become a little grizzled around the edge.

Who wouldn't? Two overdoses, a Cali motorcycle crash that left him slinged and on crutches, and enough road raging that, if prosecuted, would fill all the jails in all the world. Hell, if you'd been through even half of what Billy Idol's been through, you'd be a little grizzled 'round the edge too.

Or you'd be dead.

It was just such a near-dead experience that brought Billy to his senses.

The year was '94. Idol was cold, cold on the chilly reception of '93's icy Cyberpunk, cold of heart and cold of mind. To quench the freeze, Idol did what all Idol minds do; he got into trouble - lots and lots of trouble. Much of that trouble involved drugs - lots and lots of drugs. When Idol skidded through overdose number two and woke-up cold on a hospital gurney, he decided to do something about the temperature. That something was nothing, nothing public anyway. And that something was seeing his kids grow up.

So Idol thawed. Dropped outta the limelight and left the stage to the flannelled malcontents from the Great Northwest. Good thing too. 'Cause had Idol stayed around there's a chance that grunge would've finished him off completely. He had become what he'd once railed against - a cushy, comfy Rock Star.

A decade and change later and the kids no longer need a day-to-day daddy, but the Godfather of punk pop does need the kids. Actually, it seems the kids kinda need him. Desperately. Green Day may have saved punk from mockery, but the Charlottes and the Sums and the Blinks, for all their bluster, have mostly come up Idol-lite. And that just won't do.

Enter The Devil's Playground (C/S Sanctuary), the first all original longplay since that not-quite Cyberpunk. Kids the schoolyard over already are snickering to "Scream" (yes, that's what it's about), their more knowing counterparts already on to the plainly hidden innuendo of "Super Overdrive." Bopping and cracking and knocking and knowing. As if it's 1985 all over again.

But it's the young-spirited adults who'll be surprisingly surprised by the new Idolization. The old boy's back in his depth alright; back in a depth no one would've thunk. "Lady Do or Die" goes where no man but Cash or Cohen or Cave has gone before, it is that deep. "Cherie" could be a Solitary Man's "Cherry Cherry" and probably is. Without sleeves. And the somber "Summer Running" shows a side to Billy no kid could muster, and no kid could ever explain.

This means fans to add to the core fans to add to the sometimers to add to the fray. And this means Billy Idol's back to stay.

And he's back on the road to prove he has the staying power. In March the Sneer kickstarted SXSW, that bastion of underground cred. Then all summer long he alternated between holding his headlining own and showing-up to show up the new young punks of Warped. He pit-stopped only to help relegitimize Lollapalooza, sharing the bill with indie uber-icons like The Pixies.

Cranky citics might scoff that the Idol is now nothing but this day's own Neil Diamond in leather, a sub X Tom Jones with a sneer; those cranks should remember the roar comes with a past that resists both. Diamond's from the Brill; Tommy's from the hills; Billy's from Bromley, and that's a contingency neither can boast. His songs defied a Generation, his face defined its boob tube, and he didn't need a variety show to do it.

He just needed to be Billy. Everyone alive has an Idol moment. Old punks still smell the slam of "Ready Steady Go!" Elder siblings will recall skanking along to "Dancing with Myself." Countless couples cuddle through uncountable snap books of their very special "White Wedding."

Their children, inured by The Wedding Singer, cringe at all the hoke, but sing along just the same. Southern-spirited drinking types raise shot glasses to "Rebel Yell." Way late New Wavers flash their first "Flesh for Fantasy." French horror film fans smirk "Eyes Without a Face." And purists, put off by the cheapening "Mony Mony," keep sealed the PeelSession outtakes of "Your Generation."

When Billy Idol hits the Kirby stage this Wednesday, the Idolizers will all get a moment more. It may not be Kodak, but it sure will be all Billy.