Billy Idol

WILLIAM MICHAEL ALBERT BROAD

Pop musician, singer, song writer, actor and author

More famously known as Billy Idol

William was born in Stanmore, North London 30 November 1955. Before he was three years old his parents William and Johanna (Bill & Joan) took him to New York where they stayed for three years before returning to Mickleham in Surrey. William brought back with him early memories of America and an American accent. The family moved to their newly built house in Goring, Sussex in 1963. William joined Worthing High School for Boys in 1967: he appears in a 1967/68 photograph of a first year Rugby XV. Phil Richards, who provided a copy of the photograph, was also in that team and recalls how, in later years, William used to lead the singing in the coach on the way home from a match; he did Elvis impressions too. William transferred to Ravensbourne Grammar School in 1971 when the family moved to Bromley.

Billy was a bright pupil but was bored. A Chemistry master at WHSB wrote the comment “William is idle” on one of his reports, and at Ravensbourne he failed to achieve the grades required for university entrance. Only with the support of his parents and in the more relaxed atmosphere in Orpington College was he able to retake his exams successfully and gain a place at Sussex University in 1975 to read English and Philosophy.

William was drawn into punk rock culture: he followed the Sex Pistols on every gig and dropped out of university after the first year to form his own band – The Roquettes. After a spell in another group called Chelsea, Willam and a couple of other members of that group formed a new group which William named Generation X – a name he took from the title of a book owned by his mother and generally used to denote alienated youth. He had adopted the stage name “Billy Idle”, inspired by the earlier comment of the master at WHSB, but changed it to Billy Idol to avoid mistaken association with Eric Idle of the cult TV series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. That almost accidental change of name proved to be prophetic: it set him apart from mainstream punk which was all about anger, rebellion and ugliness, which Billy had never fully eschewed, and more in keeping with his good looks and the pop-scene adoration he was soon to achieve.

Generation X had some success in the UK but was disbanded in 1981 when William moved back to New York and then on to Los Angeles to pursue a solo career as a singer. He was an almost immediate success there, his 1993 album “Rebel Yell” receiving a double platinum award for two million copies sold. Other successful albums followed, but success was not without its price: like so many entertainers of his ilk, he resorted to excesses in his private life and on top of that in 1990 crashed his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which nearly cost him a leg and could have left him paralysed or even dead. He narrowly escaped death again in 1994, this time from a drug overdose

He might have sunk into musical oblivion had it not been for his subsequent determination to change his life style, and a return to the public eye, brought about by an appearance in a popular movie “The Wedding Singer” in 1998. He made a musical comeback in 2005 with “Devil’s Playground”, followed by “”King’s & Queens of the Underground” in 2014. As recently as July 2016 he made a star appearance in the Ottawa Bluefest and is due to make a string of appearances in Las Vegas in the months following.

By all accounts the attraction of Billy Idol lives on in his on-stage “bad boy” image, yet off-stage he is now said to be gentle, sensitive, knowledgeable, and with a good sense of humour. He has produced revealing memoirs “Dancing with Myself” without the use of ghost writers (available in paperback, hard cover, audio-book and e-book form).