A calmer Billy Idol owns up to wild days; signing memoir at Bookends in Ridgewood
OCTOBER 5, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY JOHN PETRICK
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
BOOKS
INVISION/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Billy Idol in a spring performance in Atlantic City.
WHAT: Musician Billy Idol signing his memoir, “Dancing With Myself” ($28, Touchstone Publishing)
WHEN: 7 p.m. Monday
WHERE: Bookends, 211 E. Ridgewood Ave., Ridgewood.
INFO: book-ends.com
A surprising dichotomy emerges in “Dancing With Myself,” the new memoir by ’80s punk rocker Billy Idol. There’s the well-spoken guy who’s had his nose buried in books from the time he was a suburban middle class Brit kid in his high school uniform. And there’s the crack-smoking sex maniac who nearly died several times on drugs or on a motorcycle.
Working on the book – without the aid of a ghost writer — forced him to take a good long look at his undeniable tendency of going to extremes. “I am my own nemesis,” Idol said in a husky voice during a telephone interview last week from Los Angeles, where he lives. “You try to come to grips with your past, and face up to yourself, for all of the good and the evil. There are sort of two disparate elements in my character that help me to achieve my art. There is a difference between William Broad [his birth name] and Billy Idol.”
The writing style in his memoir reflects Idol’s literate side. “I have always loved books. I gravitated to books from the time I was very young, gobbling them up. Especially histories, or biographies. There was always a dream of mine to write a book. So when this chance came along, I thought to myself, I’m in this place in my life right now where I can look back a long way, and hopefully, still look forward, too,” said Idol, who will be at Bookends in Ridgewood Monday. “Some of the memories were just beginning to become corroded, and so I thought, god, if I don’t do it now, I’ll never be able to do it.”
Friendly, witty and articulate, Idol, 58, is not exactly what you would at first expect. At least, not compared to the sneering, demented-eyed, spiked blond, black leather bondage guy known for pumping a fist into the air and crying, “More! More! More!” with a “Rebel Yell.” That was one of his many hits from the mid 1980s. Others included “Eyes Without A Face,” “Dancing With Myself,” “Mony Mony,” and “White Wedding.”
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/arts-and-entertainment/music/a-calmer-billy-idol-owns-up-to-wild-days-signing-memoir-in-ridgewood-1.1102730#sthash.h5Hbe34D.dpuf