Review: 40th Anniversary Edition of Billy Idol's 'Rebel Yell'

It didn’t really matter what tube you were in. In the eighties, you could grok Billy Idol if you were a metal head, a top-40 fluff head, a new waver, or even a less dogmatic goth or punk, particularly if you’d been following Idol since his Generation X days. With his cross-over appeal, personal style that felt more like a personal brand (the bleached spikes; the leather wardrobe; the Elvis sneer), and a sound that was really more pop than anything else, Billy Idol could have been little more than generic “Rocker” for the eighties if he and his hits didn’t exude so much personality. 

Idol’s eponymous debut didn’t give us much of a peek at his punk roots. The key hit “White Wedding” is fairly sinister stuff, but the rest of the album is straight pop with enough variety and tunefulness to keep it fun. However, choruses of “If you wanna rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub” and a closing number that sounds like it could have easily fit on a Tina Turner album help build a case that Idol needed to tap more into the darkness of “White Wedding”.

He managed to do that without alienating the hit parade on 1983's classic Rebel Yell, which is both atmospheric and tirelessly catchy. Idol’s compadre Steve Stevens, who’d been pretty restrained on Billy Idol, gets to show off his six-string flamboyancy to his heart’s content as Idol gets to do some legitimate sneering on the bourbon-soaked title track, the beautiful/absurd “Eyes without a Face”, and the appealingly sleazy “Flesh for Fantasy”. Those are the hits, but album tracks such as the brooding “Daytime Drama”, the crazy catchy “(Do Not) Stand in the Shadow”, and the celestial “Dead Next Door” are excellent too. The only misstep is some farty sax on the flop single “Catch My Fall”, but cut him some slack. It was the eighties.

Billy Idol's contribution to the year that gave us such other blockbusters as Synchronicity and She's So Unusual is now celebrating its slightly belated 40th birthday with a double-LP reissue. Joining the core album is a bonus disc of demos, outtakes, alternate mixes, and alternate versions. The outtakes include a version of the cheesy ballad and soon-to-be-Madonna-album-cut "Love Don't Live Here Anymore", which Idol attempts to grit up with an unusually gravely vocal, and the much cooler synth pop piece "Best Way Out of Here", which would have been a nice addition to Rebel Yell. 

The demos are refreshing alternatives, with "Flesh for Fantasy" speeding along like"Dancing with Myself" instead of slinking along like an alley cat, as the hit version does. The stripped down arrangements of the demos tend to draw attention to the fact that the proper album is a bit overproduced, though the songs themselves feel a bit unfinished.  A remix of "Eyes without a Face" adds nothing to that song's considerable legacy (don't mess with perfection, buddy!), but an early version of "Catch My Fall" is totally sax free, which is a sweet bonus.