Perri Lister: the dancer who helped to inspire Billy Idol’s solo career
For a moment during the second British invasion’s pop conquest of the American charts in the early 1980s, Billy Idol stood as new wave’s premier poster boy.
It wasn’t an obvious trajectory. Forming part of the erroneously dubbed ‘Bromley Contingent’ along with future Banshees Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin, the young Idol found moderate domestic success in the punk group Generation X before commercial fortunes waned following the release of 1981’s third and final album, Kiss Me Deadly. Moving to New York that year and taken under former Kiss manager Bill Aucoin’s wing, Idol would reinvent himself as a solo pop star for the MTV age in earnest.
Success came almost instantaneously. Covering his former band’s ‘Dancing with Myself’ and dropping the monster ‘White Wedding’, Idol’s cartoon sneer and bare-chested, comic book sexuality presented a perfect pop package that carried over punk’s edge while loosely tethered to the likes of Duran Duran’s hyper-glamorous escapism. Idol was an MTV sensation. Yet, eager to maintain momentum, Idol was already dreaming up another number that’d stand as his definitive hit.
Party to a birthday celebration of one of The Rolling Stones, Idol spotted Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards all swigging a large, brown bottle of Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey adorned with a Confederate cavalry soldier mascot. Titled Rebel Yell, named after the infamous battle cry used by Southern forces during the American Civil War, Idol seized his bolt of inspiration and began penning the lead single for his awaited sophomore solo LP.
While US history had provided the title, ‘Rebel Yell’s passionate howl was guided by his relationship with dancer Perri Lister. A core member of the Hot Gossip dance troupe and regularly featured on ITV’s The Kenny Everett Video Show, the pair crossed paths in 1980, and before long, Lister was playing the bride in ‘White Wedding’s promo video. With help from collaborator Steve Stevens, Idol imbued his Rebel Yell single with all the amorous charge of his and Lister’s romantic whirlwind.
“I knew about the American Civil War, but I wasn’t going to make it anything to do with the American Civil War,” Idol told Vulture in 2024. “I was thinking about my girlfriend. She was a dancer, so I made it about the sexual cry of love; this orgasmic cry of love and how great women were. That’s what I was singing about because I was so in love with her. I just wanted to lionise our relationship.”
‘Rebel Yell’ didn’t immediately set the charts alight, but its 1985 re-release saw a peak of number six on the UK charts. While only reaching number 46 in the States, the single, along with the glossy ‘Eyes Without a Face’ ballad, pushed the Rebel Yell album to number six on the Billboard 200. Idol had struck pop gold once again.
Lister would continue to feature in Idol’s work, providing ‘Eyes Without a Face’s French backing vocals and later appearing in the ‘To Be a Lover’ video, before the pair broke up in 1989. ‘Rebel Yell’ would endure as Idol’s enduring hit, an eternal live standard, and a document of the pop world’s seismic shifts during MTV’s cultural upend.
