Film Review : Billy Idol Should Be Dead

When I was a kid, Billy Idol epitomised the naughty boy we all fancied. He was always a bit cheeky, but we knew that. What we didn’t know was that he was also a heroin addict.

Jonas Ackerlund’s documentary about the former William Broad, who grew up in Bromley and reinvented himself as “punk” singer Billy Idol, is a rollicking little film. It’s imbued with slightly tacky animation, which looks at how he survived an overdose in 1984 at the height of his fame, and a bike crash. It seems he’s made of tough stuff.

Mostly told by Idol himself, there are the usual talking heads like Steve Jones and Paul Cook of Sex Pistols; John Taylor, Nile Rogers and ex-partner Perri Lister, with whom he had his first child.

It’s a strange film in many ways. Although it obviously doesn’t gloss over the drug abuse decade, there’s no discourse on how “punk” he really was- that he was a nice, middle -class boy is only briefly alluded to. His music too was always pretty lightweight – Generation X lacked the spite of the Pistols and the urgency of, say, The Damned at the beginning.

Idol was always more interested in cracking America (his family briefly lived there when he was little) and becoming part of the MTV generation- something he embraced with both hands, while still posturing as a rebel. And his music in the eighties wasn’t really punk, or even rock- more new wave strutting in punk leathers. ‘Dancing With Myself ‘, ‘White Wedding’ and ‘Eyes Without A Face’ are all brilliant pop songs, though.

Indeed, it could just be bravado, but Idol seems remarkably chipper- not to mention cavalier- about his addictions to substances and sex, throughout the film. Lister, a former dancer with Hot Gossip , says that she was seeing other people when he was tom-catting around the USA, but I’m not so sure. She later states, tearfully, that he was the love of her life. Idol even seems remarkably unruffled when he realises he’s a father to Brant, his kid from a fling in the mid eighties during the ‘Rebel Yell’ tour.

The only time we see him crack is when he speaks of his own father, William Sr. He’s emotional, and evidently relieved, that both he and his mother Joan (now both deceased) gave him tough love when he was in the grip of addiction. And the scenes of him with his grandchildren are extremely touching, bringing much-needed sweetness as the film rather loses momentum halfway through.

So, it’s far from perfect, but a watchable documentary for anyone with even a passing interest in punk and its more pretty offspring, the new wave kids.

Screened on Sky Arts.