I’m really a singer, so I love songs and I love singing. I like rap music, but I didn’t grow up freestyling. – Billy Idol
The world goes on, you go on and you change. You want to show the fans those changes, and you want to be able to verbalize them. – Billy Idol
They wouldn’t play my records on American radio because I had spiky hair. They said, ‘Punk rock doesn’t sell advertising, it won’t make any money.’ – Billy Idol
When I started out, everyone seemed to be adopting these names… Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious. I wasn’t really Rotten or Vicious or Nasty, so I wanted something a bit more funny – yet something that seemed real rock ‘n’ roll… something that acknowledged my ambition. – Billy Idol
Part of the punk attitude was that you should project your music through your whole body… show your personality as much as possible. – Billy Idol
I am quite a romantic person, really, and I should have put that into my music earlier, but I was probably denying it… I didn’t want to be soft because I felt I had to be so hard to get people to believe in me. – Billy Idol
There was a time when my whole life was in chaos, really, and I didn’t help myself sort it out. But one day I came to my senses, and I think I was lucky because a lot of people don’t. – Billy Idol
My hair used to be real long, and my parents were encouraged when I cut it. They thought I was going ‘straight,’ but I was just getting weirder – at least in their eyes. I was getting into the punk thing. – Billy Idol
My dad was one of the reasons I got into rock and roll, because I was learning the ropes of his business, which was selling powertools, and I was looking for a way out from under his heel. I was like, ‘Where’s the fun? Where’s the glamour?’ – Billy Idol
I’m not trying to hide from my past. I want to roll in it. Like a dog, rolling in feces, I’m rolling in the feces of my greatest hits – that’s a bit of a wild way of looking at it, but I am a man, and we do like rolling in our own feces at times. – Billy Idol
It’s like, what happened, I was always leading fashion, and then the grunge thing kind of came along. And because I’ve been so on top in the ’80s you know, I, you know, what can I do? Suddenly go grunge? – Billy Idol
It doesn’t matter about money; having it, not having it. Or having clothes, or not having them. You’re still left alone with yourself in the end. – Billy Idol
