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 IdolI'm really a singer, so I love songs and I love singing. I like rap music, but I didn't grow up freestyling.
Billy IdolThe 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 IdolMy 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 IdolI am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, I put it all down - I'm out on a limb here, so watch my back.
Billy IdolI'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 IdolIt 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 IdolThere 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 IdolPart of the punk attitude was that you should project your music through your whole body... show your personality as much as possible.
Billy IdolI 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