Steve Stevens is a loyal man. He’s been working with Godin Guitars for a quarter-century — a collaboration being commemorated with the launch of his new Godin 25th-anniversary signature guitar — and he’s been with his wife, Josie, for more than 25years. But the guitar legend’s longest relationship has actually been with his musical soulmate, Billy Idol. It’s a four-decade partnership so enduring and fruitful, in fact, that when Idol enters the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, he won’t be alone: Stevens will be inducted into the Class of 2026 right alongside him. Stevens and Idol will also be jointly inducted into Hollywood’s Guitar Center Rockwalk on June 23.

It’s a match that, on paper, shouldn’t have worked: Stevens, a Brooklynite raised on prog rock, flamenco, glam, and ‘60s folk, and William Broad, a Londoner from the ‘70s British punk movement, brought together by KISS’s manager and Donna Summer’s producer. But because of their “chemistry, collaborative efforts, and mutual respect,” as well as an egalitarian publishing deal that Stevens calls “punk-rock,” it most definitely worked. Stevens ended up co-writing all of Idol’s 1983 breakthrough album, Rebel Yell, which featured the pop-crossover hits “Eyes Without a Face,” “Flesh for Fantasy,” “Catch My Fall,” and the fist-pumping title track. And the rest was rock ‘n’ roll history.

Stevens stresses, “When [Idol and I] work together is when we’re both at our best,” but he is Hall-induction-worthy on his own. His career has also spanned collaborations with Michael Jackson, Robert Palmer, Joni Mitchell, Ozzy Osbourne, and, perhaps most notably, Harold Faltermeyer on “Top Gun Anthem,” which beat Stanley Clarke, David Foster, Genesis, and even The Tonight Show band’s “Johnny’s Theme” to win Best Pop Instrumental Performance at the 1987 Grammy Awards.

In a Q&A that is as wide-ranging as Stevens’s discography, he reflects on his history with Idol and feeling like an “idiot” for parting with Idol for several years; getting sober right around the time he reunited with Idol in the early 2000s; the 40th anniversary of the Top Gun soundtrack; designer suit-shopping and martini-sipping in Milan with Palmer; impressing the famously steely Mitchell with his deep Laurel Canyon knowledge; who he’d like to see enter the Rock Hall next; the surprising song he hopes to perform at November’s Rock Hall ceremony; signing up for the bizarre, Housewives-style E! reality show Married to Rock that also starred Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, and the Cult’s Billy Duffy; and even meeting Bubbles the chimp and witnessing Jackson’s spot-on David Lee Roth impersonation on the set of the “Dirty Diana” music video.

Sadly, according to Stevens, a remake of the “Dirty Diana” video shoot didn’t make it in Michael Jackson’s recent biopic. But with stories like this, Stevens clearly needs a biopic of his own.

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LYNDSANITY: Congratulations on everything, especially getting into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame! I don’t think a lot of people realize that it’s not just Billy Idol being inducted, but you as well. That’s somewhat unusual. How did it come to be that you and Billy are a package deal?

STEVE STEVENS: Well, I think it’s the fact that I have been there from the beginning, have contributed musically to some of the biggest hits, and we continue to work together. It’s not up to me to say how it works with some bands, but I think it’s pretty obvious when it’s a key musician that’s been part of the key musical contributions. That’s the only way I can think of it. … It’s great that they’re including me, and I’m really happy for Billy. I think that he’s an important figure, certainly for our generation, and the music is held up over time. And to me, that’s all the rewards that I need.

I know that Billy came to New York after his punk band Generation X split up. His solo career started being handled by KISS’s manager, Bill Aucoin, and Aucoin kind of set you two up on a blind date. And it became a marriage made in rock ‘n’ roll heaven. Tell me about that first meeting, because your backgrounds are different. You’re from Queens, he’s from London; he was punk, you were more hard rock. How did it all start?

Well, actually I’m proud to say I’m born in Brooklyn! I grew up in Queens, but I grew up in Rockaway, which is very different from Queens. Rockaway was… I mean, my dad had a boat and we went fishing. When you say you’re from “New York City,” they don’t think of my brother having a surfboard and things like that. But yeah, as a guitarist, I was really influenced by the early-’70s English rock stuff. I was a real Anglophile, and a lot of that stuff included progressive rock and glam-rock and Sweet and Bowie and all that stuff. And my band came to the attention of Bill Aucoin. This is before Billy came to New York. I needed other musicians; I needed people to work with that were songwriters. I had the facility on the guitar, but hadn’t really gotten the songwriting thing together. So, I left the band, continued to be managed by Aucoin, and we were going to put a band together around me.

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What was the name of your old band?

It was a horrible name, the Fine Malibus. And actually, consequentially, our ill-fated record, which was never released, was produced by Jimmy Miller, who is being inducted this year into the Hall of Fame as well! So, serendipity there. So, I continued to have a kind of development deal with Aucoin, and three months later, Bill calls me and says, “Do you know who Billy Idol is?” By then, “Dancing With Myself” was being played in every club in New York, and also I was aware of him through Rock Scene magazine. I’d seen Generation X, and [music journalist] Lisa Robinson would go over [to England] and profile those bands. And Bill said, “Well, he’s moved to New York. We’re managing him. You guys should meet. See if there’s anything there.” And we did.

I think that what really clicked for us is Billy loved the New York stuff: Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, the Dolls. I went to the High School Performing Arts, but I dropped out at the time when CBGB was happening — because I felt that was my education. What I was learning in school really didn’t resonate with me. So, I knew all those [New York] bands, and one of my favorite musicians, Robert Fripp, had moved to New York and was hanging out with Debbie Harry and all of what was called “new wave.” And I thought, “Wow, my prog hero is now in New York and part of this!” And then Billy and I started to talk and he said, “Do you like Lou Reed?” And I said, “I know the whole solo from ‘Coney Island Baby’!” I think that got me the gig. … And then when his producer Keith Forsey came to New York, he heard us rehearse and told Billy, “It’s better to have a guitar player who’s got the capabilities, because what you want to do is not what you did in Generation X. … Steve could play anything that we needed, rather than having to push someone to the height of their capabilities. And hey, he might play too many notes, but we could always ask him to play less!”

Were you already fan of, or familiar with, the first-wave U.K. punk scene that Generation X came from?

I was in a cover band. I played the same circuit as Twisted Sister, played all those clubs, four nights a week, and there was a cover band that had short hair, which was unheard of! And they played “God Save the Queen,” and I went, “What the f*** is that?” The guitar player goes, “This is a new band out of England, the Sex Pistols.” I went out and bought the Sex Pistols’ album, and then I discovered the Jam, who I loved, and then things that soon followed that I became a big fan of, like XTC. And then Billy turned me on to things like Siouxsie and the Banshees and John McGeogh, the brilliant guitar player in that band, who’d also played on the Gen X album. And then I remember reading that Keith Levene from Public Image said his favorite guitar player was Steve Howe from Yes. And I said to Billy, “Hey, the guy in Public Image likes prog too!”

Billy is the most successful artist to come from that early wave of U.K. punk, in terms of record sales, charts, radio, and MTV play. I don’t know if you consider yourself the throughline here, but unlike most of his peers, he took his career to this whole stadium, mainstream rock level. Do you feel like he got on that path because you connected the punk and hard rock worlds for him?

Well, also, our producer came from doing Donna Summer’s records with Giorgio Moroder, so we had the dance side of things as well — Keith Forsey knew how to do remixes and groove. That’s the thing about the Billy Idol records. They have groove to them and a certain warmth to the bass and drums, which are locked in — which the rock records really didn’t have. I think that amongst the rock bands, maybe Def Leppard had that emphasis on locked-in-ness and sonic capabilities that could sit against dance records, and even some Depeche Mode and the Cure had this kind of warmth to their music. Whereas a lot of the heavy rock records, they didn’t sound that great; the musicianship was fantastic, but they didn’t have that thing that dance records had. And I think Keith was really instrumental in that. So, you had three guys, different specialties, that respected each other and knew that the end gumbo or whatever was going to be something unique.

The musicianship angle is interesting too, because in early punk it was not “cool” to know more than three chords. But you know a lot more than three chords, and I think it’s safe to call you a guitar hero. It’s very interesting that you were working with Billy, who was coming from this world where being a virtuoso was actually considered uncool.

Yeah, we used to call it the” punk police”! … But you have to believe in the song first and foremost, and you have to believe in the artist you’re working with. And I had no problem taking direction. As an example, Billy always felt that the first guitar solo that I played was going to be the best one, because it’s instinctive. You can hear me discovering. There might be bad notes in there, might be some mistakes, but anytime I’d always say, “Oh, I can do it better” and I’d go back and maybe “perfect” it, we’d go back and listen to the first one and all go, “Yeah, there’s something about that one.” … It’s good to have an objective person who can recognize what the best element of that is, and that’s really served me well. And also, here’s the thing: Billy has always been fair with me as a songwriter. We co-wrote the songs, and we split everything evenly as far as the publishing. So, he’s honest — and that’s punk-rock, because I know a lot of musicians in the metal world who got screwed out of their publishing. Billy always thought, if you’re in the room — and we’re still like this, if we cowrite with people — we split everything. Because that’s punk-rock. And how can you not want to be part of that team?

Given the nature of how your unique partnership turned out, was there ever any discussion about you having a band name, like Loggins & Messina, but like “Idol & Stevens” or “Stevens & Idol”?

No. I mean, from the moment I met him, it was his record deal. But in some ways, being the sideman made me approachable to other people, so I was able to work on other projects. Like, I remember reading that David Lee Roth really had a problem with Eddie Van Halen doing [Michael Jackson’s] “Beat It.” But when I won a Grammy for Top Gun, Billy was proud of that! There was never any animosity.

What was the first song that you and Billy wrote together?

I think it was “Dead on Arrival” on the first [self-titled] record.

Did you know in that moment that you guys were on to something?

Maybe not in that moment, but I think by the time we got to “Hall in the Wall” and “Shooting Stars,” we really had something with that first record. It was really when he played me the demo of “White Wedding” that it just took everything to the next level. Because we didn’t have a single — everything else was written, and Keith locked Billy away in the studio in L.A. and said, “You gotta come up with a single!” And he came up with “White Wedding” and knocked on my hotel room door at whatever time it was, 6 in the morning, with a boombox. He put the cassette in and said, “I think I got it!”  And it was all there. I went, “That’s the starting point. That may be the single from this record. But the next record has to be at that level for the whole record.”

You and Billy parted ways for a while, and reunited about 25 years ago. It’s been going strong ever since; in fact, your second time together has been much longer than the first run. Why did you take that break from each other?

Well, first of all, Whiplash Smile was a difficult record to make. We wanted to embrace the technology at the time, so it was a lot of time for me spent programming synths and drum machines, and it was very hard to marry my guitars with those machines. Now you can do it with ProTools, you can press one keystroke and everything lines up, but back then it was really difficult. And there was a fair amount of drugs and alcohol thrown into it. The pressure of following up a big record was certainly there.

Drugs and alcohol on both your parts?

Yeah. I was no angel, certainly not. But one saving grace is that I’m useless if I’m stoned; I can’t play guitar. So, I’d have to wait till after the session most times. So, at the end of the Whiplash Smile tour, he decided to move to Los Angeles. I still had family in New York, I had just bought my first apartment, and I didn’t want to move to L.A. I was approached by Warner Bros. by Ted Templeman, who was the head of A&R, who was also Van Halen’s producer as well as for the Doobie Brothers. I was signed to a solo deal and just thought I should give this a shot. And there was some outside influence. … I’m sure people were saying to Billy, “If Steve stays in New York, you don’t need him!” And people saying to me that I don’t need Billy, that I can do my own thing. And you start to believe the hype. But at the end of the day, you go, “What an idiot!”

 I mean, Billy did have hits after you left, but not at the same level. I must ask what you thought of Billy’s ahead-of-its-time, rather misunderstood, and not-well-received Cyberpunk album from 1993. That was a huge departure for him.

I liked it. It’s funny because I’m always the first one to say, “Hey, we should pull out some of these kind of more obscure tracks to play for people,” and I really enjoy playing the [Cyberpunk] stuff. We did “Shock to the System” off that record. Look, I’m a Billy Idol fan, whether it’s got my guitar-playing or not. I think the guy’s fantastic, and he’s made great records with me and without me. I love what I bring. I bring a sense of drama to the music — I almost approach it like a film score. I really try and delve into, first of all, the words. I probably drive him crazy with, “What are you trying to say here? This line, what is it?” Because that’s my roadmap. That tells me everything that I need to know about how I should approach guitar, whether it’s going to be really over-the-top rockin’, or if it should be sensitive. So, I think when we work together is when we’re both at our best.

How did you come back together?

He called me. He had the motorcycle accident and I had heard about that, and even after I was no longer in the band, I came to his son’s baby shower. So, we kept our friendship up. He had his motorcycle accident [in 1990] and I said, “Hey, do you need me to come out? What the f*** are you doing? What’s going on?” So, the door was open. We never slagged each other off. We didn’t have to make amends when we got back together. And I think he felt that he missed my musical contributions. I came out to L.A., and I had gotten sober when I came back to work with him. Actually, [Sex Pistols guitarist] Steve Jones drove me to my first AA meeting! And I said, “You know what? I could live here. I think this is kind of cool.” So, I think that was a great influence. All the people that I knew in New York were dying. They were continuing to live that crazy lifestyle after the ‘80s and they no longer had careers. They were just drug addicts at that point. They weren’t being creative. And I thought, “Well, if I come out to L.A., I get to work with Billy again.”

How did you get sober? What inspired you to do so?

Probably a combination of things. Reigniting the love of the music and feeling that I’m very fortunate to do this. I’m very fortunate to still have relationships with people. And I’ve been with my wife now for over 25 years, and I don’t want to f*** that up. Drugs and alcohol would just get in the way of my relationships with everybody. I really value my friends and my work, and you just reach a point where you go, “Yeah, it’s no longer fun.” It was no longer fun.

Since you mentioned your wife, Josie, I was a big fan of Married to Rock, your E! reality show from 2010. The musicians in it were you, Duff McKagan, Billy Duffy, and Perry Ferrell, and it was like my fever dream of reality TV. I especially loved the Hello Kitty episode, when Josie redecorated your tour bus with girly, pink Hello Kitty merchandise and your bandmates got mad.

[Hello Kitty company Sanrio] came down on her about that! They thought that she was besmirching the image of Hello Kitty! The way that show happened was someone from the production company came to [a gig by] Camp Freddy, an all-star band, and they saw us four knuckleheads onstage with our girlfriends and wives hanging out and went, “Hmm, there’s a reality show here somewhere.” So, they approached us and we were already together as friends, so it was just a matter of documenting, putting cameras in our houses.

I’m kind of surprised that you all agreed to do it. There might have been some people in the rock world who would’ve sneered at such a thing. What made you sign up?

I always felt my wife was larger-than-life. She should be on TV! She’s a character. I just thought it was a great opportunity for all the women. And also, it didn’t require a lot of work on my part because I was on the road. She did all the work, really.

I think you should have kept the Hello Kitty bus.

I know! A mistake! And the poor Jeremy [Coulson], our drummer, E! told him: “You’ve got to be the guy to say, ‘What the hell is all this stuff?’” And in real life, he’s the sweetest guy. He loved the Hello Kitty stuff.

OK, let’s jump from the small screen to the big screen. You mentioned your Grammy-winning work on “Top Gun Anthem,” and we just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Top Gun soundtrack a few weeks ago. “Top Gun Anthem” is so over-the-top-‘80s in the best way. It really sets the tone for this high-octane movie. How did you come to do that track?

Harold and Keith Forsey has worked together in Germany with Giorgio Moroder on the Donna Summers records, so Harold came in as the keyboard player for Whiplash Smile. And he mentioned to me, “I’m working on this movie about a fighter-pilot school with Tom Cruise.” I think I’d seen Risky Business; that’s all I knew about [Cruise]. And then Harold showed me some footage, and at that time, even though there was no CGI back then, it was kind of state-of-the-art. He said, “I’ve got this theme and we need this historic guitar thing.” I think we finished the Idol session on a Saturday at about 7 o’clock, and Harold put the multi-track on for Top Gun and it took about three hours, all told. I played the solo and the whole thing. And then lo and behold, I kind of forgot about it afterwards because we were back out on the road with Billy Idol, and then Harold called and said, “Hey, we’re nominated for a Grammy!” I was like, “Cool, but we’ll never win.” And Harold goes, “We’re going to win.” As it turned out, I was already going to be at the Grammys in Los Angeles because we were performing with Billy doing “To Be a Lover,” so our category for Top Gun was announced in the afternoon. And I went over, and we won. I came back to the hotel and said, “I just won a Grammy!”

You say when you recorded with Billy, even if you did multiple takes, your first solo was usually always the best. Do you know which one made “Top Gun Anthem?”

Well, the melody was the first take. … My hands were warmed up from playing the session with Billy that day, so it was just like shifting into another gear. I was already revved up and ready to go. I believe most of the solo for that is the first take. Maybe the tapping part at the end was something I had to kind of perfect. That’s not my area of proficiency, but this is the ‘80s, so I gotta to have some tapping guitar in it!

You’ve played with so many other people. It’s funny that you say David Lee Roth didn’t like it when Eddie Van Halen played with Michael Jackson, but you were on Michael’s “Dirty Diana.” And I have heard that you got to meet [Jackson’s pet chimpanzee] Bubbles at that time. Is that true?

I did! We did the video, which was an all-day shoot, and I drove up and I’m at the soundstage parking lot, and I see this tricked-out minivan with swings and all this stuff and toys. And I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s really cool that they have some place for their kids to play.” But no — it was the Bubblesmobile. It was for Bubbles. So, then I get in and we’re hanging out and Michael says, “Oh, do you want to meet Bubbles?” I go, “That’s what I’m here for, Michael. I’ve gotta meet Bubbles!”

I would be a little scared, because you hear stories about chimps snapping and tearing someone’s face off or going on the attack. But I assume Bubbles was pretty domesticated.

Yeah. The wildest thing was they had sprayed Bubbles with Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion perfume. Make of that what you will.

What other memories do you have of that session? I haven’t seen the new Michael biopic yet, but I feel like there should be a bonus scene with you meeting Bubbles in the movie.

So, evidently there was shot for the movie a remake of the video that we did for “Dirty Diana”! But it’s not included in the film. I haven’t seen anything, but that’s where the film ends, evidently. What Michael and I talked about mostly was he was getting ready to do his first big [solo] tour, and he wanted it to be a rock-style tour. He mentioned that he had seen Queen, he had seen Mötley Crüe, and was asking me about sound and lights. So, I said, “I’ll put you in touch with our lighting company, our sound company. This is who we use. They’re really state-of-the-art.” And what was really funny though, is he goes, “Oh, I like Van Halen,” and then he proceeded to imitate David Lee Roth. Now, imagine Michael Jackson doing David Lee Roth: “Look at all the people here tonight!”

Was it a good impression? Did he get it right?

Yeah, he got it right.

That is absolutely hilarious. What other work have you done, outside of your work with Billy and the other projects we’ve already discussed?

My nylon string record, Flamenco a Go-Go, was really important for me, because it was a way of reigniting the spark of why I picked up the instrument to begin with. I had finished the Vince Neil tour and it was the height of excess and that’s when I decided to get sober. … And then working with Robert Palmer. I met Robert probably two years before Billy; the band I was in [ the Fine Malibus] went down to the Bahamas to record, and Robert lived across the street from the studio and we became friends. And when he’d come through New York, we’d go to the guitar shops together and hang out. … I spent a lot of time just hanging with Robert, and when I went to Italy and was in Milan with him to record [“You’re Amazing,” off Palmer’s 1990 album Don’t Explain], he took me suit-shopping at Versace or something.

Please tell me you still have those suits!

I don’t think I do. But he did take me to a hotel where he claimed it was the best martini in the world. Now, Robert was a world-traveler, and he liked to drink a bit, so I trusted him that this was going to be the best martini in the world. I didn’t like martinis, but I will tell you, it was a damn good martini.

You also played with Joni Mitchell. What was that like?

She had contacted Billy to duet on a song [1988’s “Dancin’ Clown”]. .. Billy was in the studio with her and must have suggested, “You’ve got to get Steve on this song. He’d be perfect.” So, my phone rang at about 1 in the morning: “Hey, I’m in the studio with Joni Mitchell. She wants you to come down and play.” I said, “Yeah, absolutely. I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

Were you intimidated by her?

Well, I started playing guitar at about 7 and a half years old, and it was all acoustic stuff. I went to three years of summer camp playing James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel. Those records were such a big part of my development as a guitar player. And also, if I could learn those songs, it was a way to meet girls! A lot of female acoustic guitar players [at summer camp] were influenced by Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, all the folk stuff. So, when I met Joni, I said, “You don’t understand. You are such a big part of the development of my guitar-playing — Ladies of the Canyon, ‘Big Yellow Taxi,’ ‘For Free,’ and all this. I know I’m a rock guitar player, but I have this foundation of folk stuff.” … She was really surprised that I had that background, even though I was in Billy Idol’s band. I think I won her over by having that foundation.

Do you have any other pinch-me moments in your career where you got to work with a hero of yours?

I collaborated on the last two recordings of Ozzy Osbourne’s career. Actually, we recorded those in my living room when I was living in Los Angeles. Billy Morrison, the second guitarist in Billy Idol’s band, was Ozzy’s best friend and called me up and said, “Ozzy wants to record some tunes, can we come over to your studio?” I said, “Sure, come over. I’ll make coffee for you guys.” I didn’t expect anything and I had no expectations; it was like hanging with some friends. And lo and behold, we came up with some really good tunes. Obviously the minute that you put a microphone in front of [Ozzy] and you put the headphones on and you hear that voice, there’s nothing like that. It’s like with Billy — you hear that voice and you go, “There’s only one in this world.” I found them to be very similar in respects. They love history and that English sense of humor. I have to say, the Brits make the best rock stars. It’s that kind of androgynous thing they have, and maybe it’s to do with the English education system. They seem to have a lot of stuff to write about, references throughout history, that I find is lacking in some of the American artists — not the intelligent American artists, but the knuckleheads. And there was a lot of knucklehead music in the ‘80s.

And then you and Billy helped induct Ozzy into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024. Who are some other artists you’d like to see inducted?

I think Keith Emerson should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. … He was the first to bring out a synthesizer on tour. He was the first to have a synth solo in a song. You can’t just look at Emerson, Lake & Palmer — I don’t really care if Emerson, Lake & Palmer are in the Hall of Fame, but I do care about Keith Emerson, because I think he’s an important figure and he was just a brilliant musician and an incredible showman. And Grand Funk Railroad… man, they sold out Shea Stadium faster than the Beatles! For me as a kid, they were such a huge band. I know the critics didn’t like them because they were really meat-and-potatoes, but they were a big band and they influenced a lot of people. They are one of the great American rock ‘n’ roll bands like Creedence, and I believe that Grand Funk should be in the Rock & Rall Hall of Fame.

Who would you like to have induct you and Billy at November’s Class of 2026 ceremony?

It’s really out of my hands, but Billy has the final say on that. I trust it’ll be somebody cool. But I will tell you one thing: We were very adamant that our band, members who have been with us for some 15 to 20 years, will be playing with us. It was very important that we have our band with us.

Have you given any thought to what songs you want to play at the ceremony?

I want to have a Generation X song in there. I’d throw in “Kiss Me Deadly.” To me, that’s an important song. Punk-rock bands weren’t doing songs like “Kiss Me Deadly” then. Wouldn’t it be great to play something like “Kiss Me Deadly” at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

From your lips to the Hall of Fame’s ears! I would be thrilled about that. And I’m so thrilled that you’re getting in, because you’ve had such a storied career yourself and clearly have many stories to tell. Have you considered writing an autobiography?

It’s been talked about. What would be interesting is that before I met Billy, I lived in Manhattan in a Music Building, 10 floors of musicians. I mean, [New York Dolls guitarist] Sylvain Sylvain gave me my stage name, and we used to see Johnny Thunders hanging out. Cyndi Lauper lived in the building. … Alan Vega from Suicide lived upstairs from us. I will tell you that on the weekends, it was a party — each floor specialized in a different substance! This is New York in 1977, ’78. You had Basquiat and the art world happening. And it was amazing. Nobody had any money, and it didn’t matter.

I feel like this interview could keep going, but maybe you should save some stories for that book. In the meantime, thanks for his conversation and congrats on your new Godin 25th anniversary guitar, and you can let the brass at Sanrio know that as a big Hello Kitty fan and collector, I in no way thought Hello Kitty was being dishonored on Married to Rock. I actually own a Hello Kitty guitar.

So do I! [laughs]

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Wow! I’ve love to see you play that at the Rock Hall’s Class of 2026 ceremony! But before I let you go, tell me about your 25th-anniversary model for Godin.

When I decided to do my Flamenco or Go-Go record, I went to the NAMM Show and introduced myself to Robert Godin and said, “I’m Steve Stevens. I’m going to do this kind of flamenco/modern mishmash, and I heard you have a guitar that does that.” And they sent me one, and that started it all. … They approached me [this year] and said, “Hey, our partnership has been going 25 years. What would you like to see in a guitar that we don’t currently have?” And I said, “Well, let’s make it purple and high-gloss! Let’s make the case all jet-black with a purple interior!” I asked for silly things, like purple tuning pegs. And I don’t know any other guitar that comes with purple tuning pegs.

This Q&A, which has been edited for brevity and clarity, originally ran on Gold Derby. Watch Steve Stevens’s thoroughly entertaining interview in full via the video at the top of this page.

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It’s a good week to be Billy Idol. Not only is his acclaimed documentary, Billy Idol Should Be Dead, finally getting a theatrical release, but he was also just nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026. And unlike like his grumpy punk peers the Sex Pistols, who boycotted their 2006 Hall ceremony, Idol is genuinely excited about the honor.

“I was part of Ozzy Osbourne’s induction [in 2024], and I really enjoyed it. It was a great night,” the punk icon says, flashing his famous lip-curled smile. “There was like, Dionne Warwick sitting over there, and then Dua Lipa over there. You’ve got this vast expanse of people who’ve been in music for a very long time or are just starting out, and I’m somewhere in the middle So, it’d be fantastic [to be inducted].”

Idol was shortlisted for the Rock Hall in 2025 and passed over, but this year — following the release of both Billy Idol Should Be Dead and Dream Into It, his first full-length album in over a decade — his chances are looking much brighter. The film in particular makes a compelling case for his 50-year legacy, demonstrating how he was at the forefront of two key cultural movements on both sides of the pond: the first wave of punk in 1970s Britain (initially as a member of a tabloid-famous gang of Pistols fans called the Bromley Contingent, then as the frontman of pioneering punk group Generation X), and what became known as pop’s “Second British Invasion” in America in the 1980s.

“We wanted our own look, our own music,” Idol says of both eras. “It’s like, what was our generation going to do? We saw what the people in the ‘60s did, so what’s our reply? That’s a big part of what we thought punk was about.” As punk morphed into new wave, Idol once again optimistically looked the future. “We were on a mission, really. People like me, Madonna, Prince, we were on a mission to make the ‘80s great. We kept being told by the people from the ‘60s and ‘70s: ‘The ‘80s suck!’ That’s what we were being told. So, we were like, ‘No. We’re gonna f***ing show you!’”

Idol had recently teamed with frequent Giorgio Moroder collaborator Keith Forsey and KISS manager Bill Aucoin, and “was already thinking about where I could take the energy of what I’d done in punk,” when he fatefully moved to New York in 1981 — the same year that MTV debuted. Upon his arrival, he amusingly wrangled with another member of his management team over his Anglocentric fashion sense. “He tried showing me Rick Springfield’s Working Class Dog imagery, saying, ‘This is what goes over in America,’” Idol laughs. [Fun fact: Springfield's “Jessie’s Girl was No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 the week MTV debuted.] “But I said, ‘I’m not brushing my hair down and becoming David Cassidy for anyone! This is really me, and this is what I love. I don’t think I’m going to change a thing.’”

Idol later famously threatened to give his stolen Rebel Yell master tapes to his heroin dealer if his U.S. record label didn’t let him use the album cover photo he wanted, so when it came to his persona and brand, he clearly never compromised. “Something I always felt David Bowie or Lou Reed or Iggy Pop would tell you is, ‘Find out who you are, and be it,’” he explains. And of course, Idol was right — as were Bowie, Reed, Pop, and perhaps especially Aucoin.

“Bill had tipped me off to this 24-hour TV music channel that was coming, and he said, ‘You’re going to be perfect for it.’ And I was really lucky,” Idol recalls of the timing. “Because when I came to America, I had no idea what was going to happen. When I thought about the music that was on top of the [U.S.] charts then, there were a lot of pop-rock bands doing these very high-harmony songs — REO Speedwagon and people like that. How could I fit into that? But I had to restart my career. I couldn’t stay in England. If I’d stay in England, I would’ve just ended up propping up a bar, because everything goes through England really fast and you’re considered ‘over’ pretty quickly. So, I had to do it.”

And so, while other punks dismissed making music videos as “selling out,” Idol fully committed to the medium (so much so that he literally nearly blinded himself when his contact lenses became fused to his corneas during the three-day shoot for “Eyes Without a Face”). He signed up as the peroxided posterboy for the cable network’s early “I Want My MTV!” campaign, and eventually became an MTV pioneer — enlisting Texas Chainsaw Massacre filmmaker Tobe Hooper to direct his first big clip, “Dancing With Myself,” and creating all of his video concepts.

“For me, video was the extension of the music. The initial wave of punk was over, so it seemed like a natural thing to me,” Idol recalls. “I liked putting imagery with my songs, and it was all coming from me. Like with ‘White Wedding,’ the graveyard set and everything, I’d seen a Boris Karloff film from the ‘30s where he was playing a priest or something, on this kind of blackened altar with all these white crosses behind him, and I just thought, ‘Let’s do that! Let’s do it in color!’ I was just enjoying it.”

Looking back on the launch of his solo career, Idol admits, “I didn’t know if I was going to go mega. I had no idea if people were going to connect to my music, until I went to a pub on the west side [of New York] in 1981, after I’d been in America a couple of months. I found a load of people dancing to ‘Dancing With Myself,’ and I started to realize, ‘Ohhh, it’s this big dance song on this new wave dance chart!’ And I went, ‘Man, this answers a load of questions. I don’t have to change a lot of stuff. I don’t have to find this ‘new Billy Idol.’ I just have to be the Billy I’ve always been, really.’ And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

One of Idol’s most iconic videos, shot at the height of his solo stardom, was the David Fincher-directed, VMA-winning “Cradle of Love.” But Fincher had to film Idol from the waist up (and turn Idol into a pop-art painting) because the rocker had nearly lost his leg in a serious motorcycle accident three months earlier and was still unable to walk at the time. This was just one of his several near-death experiences chronicled in the aptly titled Billy Idol Should Be Dead, but it was the one that finally scared him straight. “I was lucky. I only have minimal kind of problems. I’m not too bad. But when you hit the concrete, it leaves its mark — psychological scars and physical scars. I think the accident gave me both,” Idol muses.

Idol says was “a bit of a drug addict” at the time of the 1990 accident, which inspired his 2021 comeback single “Bitter Taste.” But after he was hospitalized for a month and underwent seven surgeries, the crash turned out to be just the wake-up call he needed. “I had to really think about my future, where I was going,” he explains. “It was a bit of a watershed time for me. I had to change my life, had to think about things. I mean, I was kind of destroying myself, really. And I had young children as well at that time. I was thinking, ‘What am I saying to them by continuing to be a drug addict and nearly having an accident that seriously hurt me and possibly could have killed me?’ … I needed to get ahold of myself. I was going to kill myself, or I was going to go crazy, or be locked up forever. The motorcycle accident was a good sign of: ‘You’ve got to stop.’”

We won’t know until April if Idol will make it into this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class, but regardless, he never stopped believing in the power of music, and his legacy as one of rock ‘n’ roll ’s true survivors is well-established. “I never worried about [accolades] too much, because I was making the music I wanted to make, and it was all really about that,” he insists. “But if I did get in, I would get the chance to say thank you to the fans. Because that’s who’s really kept me here.”

This story originally ran on Gold Derby. Watch Billy Idol’s interview with composer J. Ralph about his documentary’s theme song, “Dying to Live,” below:

Billy Idol may be known for his tougher-than-red-leather image and menacing punk-rock sneer, but when he first watched the animated end-credits of his new documentary, Billy Idol Should Be Dead, accompanied by his string-laden and unexpectedly sensitive ballad “Dying to Live,” he started weeping.

“I did, actually,” the 70-year-old rock rebel sheepishly admits to Gold Derby, speaking via Zoom alongside one of the movie theme’s writers, three-time Oscar nominee J. Ralph (Chasing Ice, Racing Extinction, Jim: The James Foley Story). “It had an emotional buildup, showing everything that had happened. … It got me. Watching my life in a three-and-a-half-minute montage made me feel everything that the documentary had been showing you. And the fact that it made me feel like that, I thought, ‘Well, it’s going to make other people feel like that.’”

Ralph, who co-wrote “Dying to Live” with Idol, Idol’s longtime guitarist Steve Stevens, Tommy English, and Joe Janiak, isn’t surprised by the rocker’s intense reaction. “I think he’s a profound artist, and an incredible lyricist and incredible singer,” Ralph states. “I think people often focus on the ‘showman’ and the persona and the ‘rock star,’ but he’s incredibly sensitive and poignant. You can’t be that big and that ubiquitous and that enduring without having a real sincerity, you know what I mean?”

Billy Idol Should Be Dead, as its eyebrow-raising title indicates, details the new wave legend’s many harrowing near-death experiences, including several drug overdoses; a battle with heroin addiction (“Boy George said an interesting thing about how you feel when you’re coming off heroin, that it’s like a skeleton is trying to get out of your body, and that’s exactly what it’s like,” says Idol); and a motorcycle accident that nearly cost him his leg and finally scared him straight.

@rileyidol billy idol should be dead trailer!#billyidol #billyidolshouldbedead #80smusic ♬ original sound – riley

“I had young children at that time, and I thought, ‘What am I saying to them by continuing being a drug addict and nearly having an accident that seriously hurt me and possibly could have killed me?’” Idol recalls of that “watershed” moment. “I needed to get ahold of myself. I was going to kill myself or I was going to go crazy or be locked up forever.”

It’s a wonder that Idol even made it to age 70 (unlike many of his less fortunate peers), and that he not only survived but thrived — releasing his first full-length album in more than a decade and receiving his first Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination in 2025, after nearly a half-century in show business. Idol credits his unflagging passion for music, dating back to his ‘70s London adolescence when he was following the Sex Pistols around Europe and founding his own groundbreaking punk group, Generation X, for keeping him going.

“I just really cared about the sort of music revolution we were growing up alongside. … That’s the kind of ‘door’ I’m singing about,” says Idol of those early punk days, referring to the “Dying to Live” line, “The door was open, calling/They said I was foolish/I had to walk through.” Idol elaborates: “We [punks] didn’t really think there was much of a chance of really doing something like this, of having an artistic life. It looked like that wasn’t really on the cards, because in England they were telling you there was no future. In our case, we decided, ‘Well, if there’s no future, let’s do the thing we love!’ And I think starting from that premise, that’s what’s given me the ability to still be here today. Because I’m actually doing something I really love and care about, and that I really believe in. That gave me a future. That gave me something to hope for. … And I think, maybe, that has kept me alive.”

Idol went on to become the most successful artist to emerge from the first-wave U.K. punk movement. Generation X were one of the first punk bands to appear on Britain’s massive chart show Top of the Pops, and Idol’s heartthrob potential was even more evident when Generation X appeared on ‘70s pop star Marc Bolan’s variety series and a seemingly threatened Bolan jokingly introduced them with: “They have a lead singer named Billy Idol who’s supposed to be as pretty as me. Let’s see, now!”

“Well, Marc’s definitely prettier than me. I’m handsome,” Idol chuckles. That 1977 Marc show appearance almost seemed like a torch-passing moment of sorts (eerily, it was taped just weeks before Bolan died at age 29 in a car crash). But it was when Idol went solo a few years later, moving to America just in time for the launch of MTV and linking up with KISS manager Bill Aucoin, Giorgio Moroder-associated producer Keith Forsey, and rock guitarist Stevens, that he completely went mainstream — eventually selling 40 million records.

Unfortunately, pop-crossover success coincided with a drastic diminishing of Idol’s punk cred. “[Sex Pistols guitarist] Steve Jones says it in the documentary: People didn’t always take me as seriously as I wanted to be taken, and that had a lot to do with the way I looked,” notes Idol. “I mean, I was the ‘male Debbie Harry,’ in a way.” But Ralph points out that Idol “created a genre unto himself; it became a reference point of sound,” which wasn’t as easy as Idol made it seem. “Some of the contemporaries of Billy were focused on negative,” Ralph explains. “What Billy did was he created monstrous success out of positivity. And that’s very hard to do; it’s actually harder than just doing minor-sounding, dark stuff.”

As Idol’s star rose in the ‘80s, he struggled to separate his offstage life as William Broad from the larger-than-life “Billy Idol” persona MTV had created, and that was one of the reasons why he increasingly turned to drugs to cope. “I had a lot to find out about myself. One of the things David Bowie or Lou Reed or Iggy Pop would tell you is, ‘Find out who you are, and be it.’ And for a while, I didn’t know exactly who ‘Billy Idol’ was,” Idol recalls. Eventually, he realized that his distinctively gravelly voice was meant for much more than just punk-rock — that it was perfectly suited for softer songs like “Eyes Without a Face,” “Sweet Sixteen,” and eventually “Dying to Love.” His voice was also, as he cheekily notes, tailor-made for “music you’d want to have sex to.”

“I found out what I could do with my voice. I could go into different dimensions. I suppose people would call them ‘eras ‘today,” quips Idol. “The way I sing was different to other punk-rockers. It enabled me to do ballads and stuff. It just enabled me to go into places that I think some other people couldn’t go, or didn’t want to go. I wasn’t frightened of embracing certain sides of feelings and emotions, while maybe some other people in punk were sort of denying that. … They were all about the revolution, and in some ways they’d kind of shut themselves off by making themselves a little narrow with their viewpoint. … Like, Johnny Rotten would say, ‘I’m in love with myself, my beautiful self,’ but we were starting to go beyond that in the ‘80s. I’d fallen in love with my girlfriend [Hot Gossip dancer Perri Lister, with whom Idol later had a son], and I wanted to sing about that.”

Idol continued to push himself artistically, with varying degrees of commercial and critical success. “I wasn’t frightened to use synthesizers,” he points out, referring to 1993’s largely misunderstood but very ahead-of-its-time Cyberpunk album (which surprisingly gets a lot of screentime in Billy Idol Should Be Dead, with Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump, of all people, passionately defending the record). “And then I wasn’t frightened to do something like [“Dying to Live”] with [Ralph], trying a string quartet.”

“Billy didn’t run from that. The risk of that was so exciting to him,” says Ralph of the “Dying to Live” recording session. “I mean, if you fail doing this, there’s nothing to hide behind. It’s acoustic instruments. The lyrics are right out in front. His vocal is mixed at least 50 percent of the volume of the track, of the density. If the lyrics suck, if the voice sucks, it’s blatantly obvious. So, the risk of that is immense, in terms of putting something out there like that. You need to be confident in what you’re saying and how you’re singing. And he was up for it. And, I think, to me, it’s a landmark recording.”

If “Dying to Live” were to receive a Best Original Song Oscar nomination, it would be a major moment in Idol’s cinematic career — which, aside from an adorable cameo in The Wedding Singer and “some talk every now and again” about a Billy Idol biopic (comedian Matt Rife wants to portray him), never took off like he’d hoped. In the mid-‘80s, Idol was working with producer Joel Silver on a film adaptation of Nik Cohn’s novel King Death, but the project fell apart due to tensions between Silver and Aucoin; in the early ‘90s, his role in Oliver Stone’s The Doors was greatly reduced when he was sidelined by his motorcycle accident; and that same accident caused him to miss out on being cast as T-1000 in James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Additionally, his Cyberpunk album was originally intended to be the soundtrack to Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, before those plans also fell through.

Idol already knows if he were to win an Academy Award — or finally get the respect that once eluded him and get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which he thinks “would be fantastic” — he would “probably be up there for about half an hour” at the podium thanking people, including Stevens, Aucoin, his former Generation X bandmate Tony James, and “the fans, because that’s who’s really kept me here.” Idol doesn’t seem to have his hopes pinned on Oscar recognition, but after his long career, he still believes anything is possible.

“What a nut!” Idol chuckles, when asked what his big stock-taking takeaway was after viewing Billy Idol Should Be Dead. “But you have to be, really. You have to be a little crazy. That’s the thing I said to my dad: ‘I was crazy to think I could do it.’ There’s an element of that, because when you start out [in music], you have no idea whether you can really, really pull it off. You’re just going for it. And you find out along the way whether you can really do it or not.”

This interview originally ran on Gold Derby. Watch Billy Idol and J. Ralph’s full conversation in the video at the top of this article.