Nov. 10, 1983: a day of musical infamy, when Billy Idol unveiled his iconic Rebel Yell album to the world. A project that, funnily enough, he’d tried to stop his label from releasing with a blackmail heist.
In a Q&A with The Guardian, Idol opened up about the history behind his stand-off with Chrysalis Records. He revealed that the whole thing started over a disagreement with the album’s cover art.
How the Album Artwork Almost Thwarted the Entire Project
“It was because of the cover,” Idol explained. “I was saying: ‘There’s a flaw in this picture. If we blow this up, it will get worse.’ The record company started to say: ‘We’re leaving it. It’s not that bad.’ I just thought: ‘I’m just not going to let this happen. It’s so silly. They just need to reprint the picture. I’m not listening to what the record company guys say. In fact, I’m gonna blackmail them.’”
Idol said he went down to Electric Lady, the studio where he recorded the album, “in the middle of the night, and got to where I knew the tape boxes were. I took them and left the studio and gave them to my h***** dealer.”
Next, he “phoned the record company and said: ‘This guy I’ve given them to, he’ll have them out on the street bootlegged in a couple of days if you don’t change this picture.’” Ultimately, Idol said the record company “relented,” adding, “Don’t let them walk all over you.”
Pulling Inspiration From Broken Romances to Latvian Stonemasons
Elsewhere in the Q&A, Idol was asked about the background of “Eyes Without a Face,” from Rebel Yell, and “Sweet Sixteen” from Whiplash Smile (1986), two “musically distinctive and hauntingly beautiful songs that “seem atypical” of his traditional style.
“With ‘Eyes Without a Face,’ I was just trying to not write an obvious love song,” he confessed. “And with ‘Sweet Sixteen,’ a couple of years later, I’d broken up with Perri Lister [a singer and dancer with Hot Gossip], with whom I was very much in love. So I was really singing a song about her.”
“And I used the story of this chap from Latvia called Edward Leedskalnin, who’d been jilted by his sweetheart at the altar,” he continued. “He came to America, built a homestead, and then started to build this big place called the Coral Castle, made of huge slabs of granite. And when he took people around it, they’d say: ‘Why did you build this place?’ And he’d say: ‘It’s for my sweet sixteen.’”
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