It’s easy to sneer right back at Billy Idol. He shakes
his fist a lot. He wears leather underwear. He shampoos with glue. The
appearance of snarling Idol replicas in David Lee Roth and Talking Heads videos
reflects his successful construction of a visual signature, which is nearly a
prerequisite for Eighties pop stars. But Idol’s rebellious pose lacks humanity.
Until now, he has hidden behind the frozen emotion of a sneer. On his new
record, Whiplash Smile, he tries to establish some distance from his image. With
Rebel Yell, Idol’s third album following the demise of his punk band,
Generation X, Idol joined the cover-story, multiplatinum, Grammy nominee circle
of megastars. But the compromises he’s made along the way seem to have made him
ambivalent about his success. And the end of his seven-year relationship with
dancer Perri Lister may have helped to put his stardom in perspective for him.
During the painful, introspective year and a half Idol spent making the record,
he returned to the music he grew up with. He covers William Bell and Booker T.
Jones’s Stax-era “To Be a Lover” (a wise choice for the first single, since
pianist Richard Tee’s gospel punctuations and a female backing chorus
distinguish it from Idol’s past work), and his own lyrics refer to Elvis
Presley, Gene Vincent and Johnnie Ray and recycle images and song titles from
Bob Dylan, Jackie Wilson, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and the
Rolling Stones.
From “Dancing with Myself” to “Flesh for Fantasy,” Idol’s
song writing has had an estranged, almost alien point of view. But on Whiplash
Smile, the chronicle of a “real person working his own life out” (as Idol puts
it in a publicity bio), he brandishes all the confessional humanity he can
muster. Unfortunately, Idol’s repertoire is mostly limited to hackneyed
romantic themes and stale imagery. Tears well up in five of the ten songs, and
when Idol isn’t “crying” (rhymes with “dying”), he’s declaring his “desire”
(rhymes with “fire” and “higher”). The steamy propulsion of Idol’s music, which
takes the rock-disco style of Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” to its sonic limit, is
more persuasive evidence of his personality. Although producer Keith Forsey and
guitarist Steve Stevens receive much of the credit for the thrill of Idol’s
records, the mediocrity of many of their outside projects (including Forsey’s
handling of Charlie Sexton’s debut and Stevens’s work on the Top Gun soundtrack
as well as his sessions with the Thompson Twins and Ric Ocasek) indicate that
Idol galvanizes their collaboration. On Whiplash Smile, Forsey records the
synthesized and sequenced rhythm tracks with as much force as possible, and
Stevens’s robot noises pierce the metronomic pulse.
This absorption with his own stardom is a strange fate
for Idol, who chose his surname in ’76 when he was just another London punk
spitting at established rock stars. Now that he’s a media idol himself, his
moniker has ironic repercussions that invite accusations of hypocrisy and
compromise. Idol is smart enough to recognize this quandary, and he’s sincere
enough about rock music to want to produce more than just a smattering of great
singles. But even though Whiplash Smile is as forceful and dynamic as any album
made this year, its trite lyrics prevent it from being the breakthrough he so
clearly hoped for.
By Rob Tannenbaum
