When British rocker Billy Idol was recording his second full-length solo album in 1983, he lived in gritty New York City decades before it became a gentrified attraction for tourists. At the time, the former lead singer of late ‘70s punk band Generation X was enjoying the success of his 1982 self-titled record. Forty years later, Idol says that the experience of living in the Big Apple influenced the songwriting on what would become Rebel Yell.
“The second album was all about me coming to America, coming to New York, and then writing about my life at that time,” he says today. “What else was there to talk about but your daily life at that time? We were just sort of really discovering where we could go with the music.”
Recorded at New York City’s Electric Lady Studio and subsequently released in November 1983, Rebel Yell represented both Idol’s artistic and commercial triumph thanks to such memorable songs as the title track, “Catch My Fall,” “Flesh for Fantasy” and “Eyes Without a Face.” A major turning point in his career, Rebel Yell elevated Idol to a mainstream pop/rock superstar during MTV’s golden age. On its 40th anniversary, Rebel Yell has now been reissued with a bonus disc of previously unreleased tracks and demos.
“We were trying to follow up the first Billy Idol solo album [Billy Idol],” the singer recalls of that period, “which had done well, with “Hot in the City” and “White Wedding” in particular, to sort of really set the style of music we were making.”
And like the Billy Idol album, Rebel Yell was a merger of hard rock, New Wave and pop. It also continued the fruitful collaboration of Idol, guitarist Steve Stevens and producer Keith Forsey — “really closely working together and extending beyond what we’ve done on the first album,” says Idol. “And I think that’s why it’s lasted so well because we were in a great place when we were doing that.”
The singer’s experiences, particularly in the Big Apple, found their way onto the songs for the record – including “Rebel Yell,” whose title was inspired by his encounter with members of the Rolling Stones at a party inside Ron Wood’s Manhattan home.
“At some point during this party, there in front of me was Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards, and they were all drinking this great big bottle [of bourbon],” recalls Idol. “I sort of followed the label up to their mouth, kind of going, ‘What are they all drinking? What is this stuff?’ Then I saw it on the label: a Confederate cavalry officer with a plume in his head riding away. And I could see this stuff’s called ‘Rebel Yell.’ I was just going, ‘Wow.’ As soon as I saw that, I kind of went, ‘That’s a great title.’”
Idol thought to himself that he wouldn’t make the song about the Civil War, but “‘I’ll make it about my girlfriend, Perri [Lister], who’s a dancer. I’ll make it all about our love relationship sort of thing. And the “Rebel Yell” will be the cry of love.’ It’s really about Perri in some ways: ‘Last night a little dancer’ – she was the little dancer.”
After the party, Idol worked on the song the following day and came up with the verse and a bit of the indellible chant of “more, more, more.” “Then I took it to Steve, and we worked out a middle bit,” he adds. “And we put the middle bit at the beginning of the song. Then later on when we were recording it, we added that end piece to it, the ‘I walked the ward for you babe’ and everything. And it just came out fantastic. It was just one of those things where you went, ‘Wow, this is so what we’re looking for.’”
In addition to the title track, “Eyes Without a Face” has become one of Idol’s signature songs. An uncharacteristic ballad with a rip-roaring Stevens guitar solo and a spoken word rap in the bridge, “Eyes” took its name from the 1960 French horror movie Les Yeux Sans Visage. The song’s lyrics, however, had nothing to do with the film’s narrative but about a relationship at the crossroads.
“I just bounced off that title because that spoke about the end of something, that something was missing from something,” explains Idol. “The relationship had ended up foundering. And so if I was going to try and write this kind of murdering love song, it was going to be this title.
“I was trying to not write an obvious song,” he continues. “And it worked. I think my manager took it to some DJ. He was trying to work out which songs would be singles. And this DJ in New York said he thought “Eyes Without a Face” was a single, and he was right.”
Upon its release, Rebel Yell became another hit album for Idol while “Eyes” peaked at number four on the Billboard chart, marking the singer’s debut on the Top 10 in the States. “It was a huge breakthrough,” he says about the reception. “It just cemented this kind of working relationship we had between us: Keith, me, and Steve. We were getting somewhere working together. We were feeling that.”
Equally important to the success of the Rebel Yell album were the stylish videos for the singles. “We really had set the ball rolling with “Dancing With Myself” and “White Wedding,”” he says. “We were sort of flowing in terms of the videos we were making…like with imagery and stuff. And we were continuing that on with this new album.”
The popularity of the Rebel Yell album and its singles transformed Idol into a mainstream rock and pop act–as evidence, he later appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. “We were getting somewhere,” he says. “On the White Wedding tour, it was mainly a club tour. But with Rebel Yell, we went from clubs to small theaters to arenas, which was pretty amazing.”
Along with the demos of the aforementioned hits, the new Rebel Yell reissue contains two never-heard-before songs — one of which is the rhythmic, dance-oriented “Best Way Out of Here.” “I liked Prince a lot, and I’m sure Steve did,” says Idol about that lost track. “I think that’s what we were sort of bouncing off a bit of a Prince: ‘Billy Idol does Prince.’ (laughs) And Steve’s an amazing syncopated guitar player.”
Another unearthed track from the new reissue is Idol’s raw and emotional cover of Rose Royce’s 1978 song “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.” “I’d obviously heard it in the ’70s, and maybe I just sort of somewhere tucked it away in the back of my mind as a song I could probably cover and make my own in some way,” Idol explains. “I was always looking for a soul/R&B song to do as a cover.”
Coincidentally, as Idol was recording “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” during the Rebel Yell sessions, Madonna had done her cover of the same song for her 1984 Like a Virgin album; Idol ended up putting his rendition on the shelf. “We had “Crank Call” and stuff like that,” he says now. “We had a full complement of songs. So it meant we could leave “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.” We were planning on coming back to it for [my 1986 album] Whiplash Smile, but we never did.
“I hadn’t heard her version [at the time],” he continues about Madonna’s cover. “And of course, recently I listened to it and went, ‘Wow, she didn’t do it that much differently to Rose Royce…I really made it my own with an insane vocal that I think would have surprised people, actually.”
In the four decades since Rebel Yell’s release, Idol is still performing the big hit songs from the album and continues to be in the public eye: in 2023, his concert at the Hoover Dam was released as a film titled Billy Idol: State Line. That same year, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And not resting on his laurels, Idol is currently working on new music he considers his finest work. But the importance of Rebel Yell for what it did for his career has not been lost on him.
“I mean, it’s wild,” he says today of that period from 40 years ago. “It was super important to me, that sophomore album, coming to America and trying to have success there. It’s just really exciting.”