Billy Idol reveals classic song was inspired by “serial killer”
Billy Idol is a punk legend, but there was always much more to his work than simply spiky hair, leather jackets, and contorted facial expressions. He put an artful spin on the blueprint, and this, in tandem with an expansive hard rock sound, confirmed him as one of the vanguard of the ‘Second British Invasion’ that took America by storm in the early-mid 1980s.
With songs such as ‘Dancing With Myself’, ‘White Wedding’ and, of course, his rallying battle cry, ‘Rebel Yell’, it didn’t take the South London native long after leaving his position as the frontman of Generation X to ingratiate himself as a key strand in the new decade’s cultural fabric. Yet, for all of his 1980s bombast, the bleach-haired musician was also adept at more tender moments, something which would have been unthinkable to fans of his old band, but it should have been clear as the decade wore on that snotty first-wave punk was just a thing of the past for him, and culture itself.
The most notable slower song that Idol created is ‘Eyes Without A Face’, the hit second single from his second studio album, Rebel Yell. Arriving in 1984, the track cut a different thematic and sonic figure from what fans were used to from the singer and showed once more his artistic scope. The song’s title referring to the English title of the French 1960 horror film Les Yeux sans Visage subtly displayed Idol’s position as a consumer of visual art alongside music.
Now, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Rebel Yell, Idol has shared The Making of ‘Eyes Without A Face’ (Vevo Footnotes) on YouTube in an exclusive partnership with Vevo and revealed more details about the song and iconic video. Famously, the track was a smash hit and was his first top-ten success in the US, ultimately reaching the fourth spot on the Billboard Hot 100.
In the clip, Idol explains that he set out to write an anti-love song as the era was filled with saccharine hits. He also revealed that he drew inspiration from various silent films, noting their similarities in achieving an immense impact with limited resources. While some key moments of the examination were him recalling falling asleep with bleach in his hair the night before the shoot and Miley Cyrus telling him she believes his videos are among the “sexiest”, it was the silent movies he looked to for inspiration that adds a fascinating dimension of darkness to the song.
Idol explained: “I liked a lot of silent movies because you knew they were doing things with paint, wood and glue; you know, it’s very sort of cheap in a way, but with maximum effect. It was an old book I had that had a lot of old stills, you know, Boris Karloff movies like The Black Cat where he’s in front of an altar with a lot of crosses behind him. So, a lot of these things were influencing me with the ‘White Wedding’ video or ‘Eyes Without A Face.’ That’s what I was sort of bringing into my videos: this kind of old influence of movies one hundred years before.”
He then revealed that the character portrayed in the song and the video was meant to be a sort of “serial killer”, based on a German silent horror from 1920. Idol said: “It was more something like The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari; a silent movie where everything was painted, so there was a psychotic element, because he was supposed to be some sort of serial killer.”
Idol also said of the track: “I think I was deliberately trying to write not a love song because the 80’s was full of love songs, all drippy, soppy love songs. So I thought maybe I just write an anti-love song. It’s almost a murder song; it’s what I was thinking about, something like a serial killer.”
Watch the clip below.
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