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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