COLDER "Wrong Baby"

READ the groundbreaking COLDER interview here: http://portable-infinite.blogspot.com/2005/01/colder-interview.html

Ladytron Interview 2008

LADYTRON interview 2008
By alexander laurence

I did one of the first interviews with Ladytron in 2000. They had an EP out
then. I spoke to Daniel Hunt before they had played any live shows. I met
Daniel in New York City during one of his first visits there. Since then they have
released four albums and have toured the world. Recently they have released a
new album called Velocifero (2008).

The members are Daniel Hunt, Reuben Wu, Mira Arroyo, and Helen Marnie. The
band started in Liverpool in 1999. Their albums include 604 (2001), Light &
Magic (2002), and Witching Hour (2005). They have become famous DJs and remixers
over the years. I spoke to Reuben Wu in May 2008, during their recent American
tour.

AL: I did an interview with Daniel Hunt back in November 2000. I had heard
the first single and a version of the first album. What do you remember about
that time, and how is the band different now?

Reuben: It’s very different when we first started. Everything happened very
slowly. Things worked very differently back then. We have learned how to be a
band. When we first started it was a part-time thing. Danny and me still had
jobs. Helen and Mira were still students. It was a very slow process getting
known and getting airplay. It was strictly a studio project at first.

AL: Did Danny write most of the first album?

Reuben: Danny had already been in a few bands before Ladytron. He had built
up a collection of tracks. He had written much of the first album over a few
years. Most of it had been in different stages of being finished. When we
started working on the music, most of the demos for the first album were already
done. In that way, it wasn’t written as an album, but more a collection of
songs. The next album, Light & Magic, was more like an album. As we go along,
the albums are more coherent.

AL: When I first heard Ladytron, I was thinking of techno bands like
Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, and some John Foxx. But when I listen to it now, it sounds
more like indie rock bands of the time.

Reuben: We have never been embraced by the techno world because we are too
song based. We have always been by ourselves and not comparable to other bands.
When we play these festivals that are almost like raves, we stick out because
we are too rock and roll. And when we play with indie rock bands, we don’t fit
in either.

AL: When did the band start playing live?

Reuben: It was some time after the second album. Our earliest shows were not
live at all. We had a playback tape. We were just miming back then. We didn’t
start out as a live band. We couldn’t go out on the road because we all had
jobs. We could only do one show at a time. That has pretty much changed over the
years. We are pretty much a live band now.

AL: Now bands have to tour if they want to survive.

Reuben: Exactly. I realize more and more that an album is like a yardstick,
or merely a blueprint, for the live show. We have played all over the world. We
have toured consistently for three years.

AL: When you first started playing, everyone one was calling this music
Electroclash. All these bands like you, Adult, Fisherspooner, Peaches, and others
didn’t really have anything to do with each other. What did you think of all
that?

Reuben: Exactly. That was more about a group of bands that came out of
Williamsburg at that time. But it seemed to embrace a bunch of bands from all over
the world. We had never known about that area and about those bands. They
seemed to be more about doing music with keyboards. We were never a band that
talked about instrumentation. We were always about songs. There are bands now that
electronic bands and have keyboards, and they are not called Electroclash.
Although these labels were frustrating at the time, it all brought that music
more into the mainstream a bit. There are bands now like Soulwax Nite Versions
and LCD Soundsystem who would have been called Electroclash back in 2001. They
have seemed to have leapfrogged the whole thing.

AL: Many of these Electroclash bands are not around anymore.

Reuben: We were doing our own thing. When we were in Los Angeles doing our
second record, we were oblivious to all that. We were more concerned with being
ourselves and not reflecting anything going on. It was such a relief when the
second album came out. We wanted to distance ourselves from all that. The
second album was like a bookend to the whole Electroclash thing.

AL: Has the last few albums been more collaborative?

Reuben: Yes. They have been. Each record has been different. But it’s good to
have all members contributing to the band when you have four members in the
band. Things have evolved over the years. I think that the next record will be
way different. Over the years I think each record gets better and better.
Velocifero is the most diverse and most cohesive record we have done.

AL: You don’t worry about the singles?

Reuben: We do identify which songs are potential singles, but, to be honest,
I think we are much more an album band. I like to think of us as making a
collection. It’s a package without any filler.

AL: What new influences shaped the making of the new record?

Reuben: For Witching Hour: we were happy with the sound of it. But we wanted
to work more on the bass end of things. We wanted a harder drum sound. On this
new record we worked on the production. We are all big fans of the prog-rock
band Goblin. They were an Italian band in the mid-1970s that did a bunch of
horror soundtracks. I was listening to Goblin when I did the track “Black Cat.”
I feel like the album is more psychedelic as well. We started to do some of
this on Witching Hour. Those songs worked better at this time.

AL: I heard that you already have another album ready to go?

Reuben: We were on tour for so long, that we wrote thirty songs. We had to
select songs to be on this album, and that left fifteen songs. I am not sure
what it is going to be yet. It is just a collection of demos at the moment. It is
more downtempo. It’s more like a soundtrack. We haven’t been able to work
on it, but the songs are there. We hope to release it in the next six months.

AL: These are songs that didn’t fit in the album, but had a cohesion in
themselves?

Reuben: There was a different energy. It’s just a bunch of demos at the
moment. Hopefully we have some down time in the next few months to work on these
songs some more.

AL: What is the live show like? You still play with six people?

Reuben: It’s always been six people. There is the four of us with a live
drummer and a person who plays bass guitar and keyboards. I think that we have
become tighter as a band over the years. We incorporate much more sounds from the
album in our live show.

AL: What was going on before?

Reuben: Before any electronic sounds were triggered by drum samples. We still
have triggered drum samples and other sounds that can’t be created live. We
are such a complicated band and we have so many layers of sound. It’s very
tricky to reproduce those sounds onstage, especially live.

Vetiver Interview 2008

VETIVER INTERVIEW 2008
BY Alexander Laurence

Vetiver is a folk band based in San Francisco. They started around 2003. Andy
Cabic writes most of the songs and has been the main person in the band all
these years. Andy Cabic moved to the Bay Area and met up with people like
Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson. Their first album Vetiver came out in 2004.
They toured with Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom that summer. The second
album found Vetiver defining its unique sound more. To Find Me Gone (2006) moved
away from being a Devendra Banhart side-project, and became something in its
own right. The Vetiver band as we know now it was assembled around this time,
with Cabic (Guitar/Vocals), Brent Dunn (Bass), Sanders Trippe (Guitar/Vocals),
Otto Hauser (Drums, and Kevin Barker (Guitar). Vetiver started several long
tours at this time. Cabic also was a member of Devendra Banhart’s touring band at
the same time.

Now they are releasing Thing Of The Past (2008). It is a covers record with
songs by Loudon Wainwright III, Biff Rose, Ian Matthews, Garland Jeffreys,
Hawkwind, Townes Van Zandt, and Michael Hurley. The record features the Vetiver
band, plus appearances by Michael Hurley and Vashti Bunyan, as well as Dave
Scher, Jonathan Wilson, Emma Smith, and The Chapin Sisters. Vetiver is off for a
two-month tour of Europe. I spoke with Cabic at its sold out show at the
Troubadour in May 2008. He was just excited having seen Mudcrutch at the Fillmore.

AL: I saw you play a very early show as Vetiver in 2003. It was you with
Alissa Anderson and Jim Gaylord. The band is a lot different now. When did this
band start to come together?

Andy: Right after To Find Me Gone came out, I started to put this band
together. I had toured with Kevin and Otto before in Europe, with Devendra and
Alissa. We all played on the second record. Sanders and Brent are old friends of
mine from North Carolina. We also did a short tour with Viking Moses.

AL: Why did you do this covers record?

Andy: I didn’t have a record of my own stuff ready to go. I was still writing
the next album. I wanted to try out some stuff with this new band, and with
Thom Monahan. This new band hadn’t tracked anything. We had recorded some stuff
in a studio in Sacramento. We recorded some stuff live. We hadn’t done that
before. The first two records were done in layers. We added in some guitars.
The first record me and Devendra would play live and add stuff. It was fun to do
this record. Some of the songs we had been playing live, and others I thought
we could bring something to them.

AL: I remember you used to do a Randy Newman song. Some of these people like
Garland Jeffreys, I hadn’t heard that name in a while.

Andy: I know. I know most of these artists through their records. I have
never seen any of these artists play live.

AL: How did you curate this album?

Andy: I just chose songs that I thought we could do well. These are songs
that I love. These are songs that meant a lot to me, but I didn’t hear anyone
discussing these artists. At the time, it was having fun. At the time I wasn’t
analyzing it too much. Now I am being asked a bunch of questions about it.

AL: How long have you been listening to Garland Jefferys?

Andy: Everything weaves around to something else. Jeffreys’ first album was
on Atlantic. His backing band was called Grinder’s Switch. Grinder’s Switch
played on an early John Cale record, that also had a song by Garland Jeffreys. I
must have found out about Jeffrey through John Cale. I found his record in a
store and fell in love with a few tunes on there, like “Eggs” and “Lon
Chaney.”

AL: Who does that song “Houses?”

Andy: That is by Elyse Weinberg. That is on a re-issue that Orange Twin did a
few years back. That song wasn’t on the first record. It was on a second
record she did with Neil Young, and it never came out.

AL: Some of these people like Michael Hurley actually played on your record?

Andy: Hurley? Yeah. He stopped by a session to help out and he stayed with us
for a while. We have toured with him before. We have toured with Vashti.




AL: Vashti Bunyan played on the record?

Andy: She did. She sang on the record.

AL: Jonathan Wilson played on the record. He is a guy who plays in Los
Angeles a lot.

Andy: Yeah. He played on one track. We have done a lot of shows with him.

AL: Have you toured a lot this year?

Andy: Things have just started. We played with Gary Louris. We played with
him as his backing band and supported him.

AL: You played with Jolie Holland?

Andy: Yeah. We played a couple shows. Last time we played in Los Angeles was
with Bright Eyes, but before that was with Jolie Holland.

AL: Are you playing with Devendra Banhart this summer?

Andy: I am going to miss some of the shows. He is playing some festivals this
summer. He is playing at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and the Hollywood
Bowl. We are playing Glastonbury at the same time. I haven’t seen the lineup
but we will only be there one day.

AL: What do you think of the European Festivals?

Andy: It varies from country to country. I had the best time playing the
Greenman Festival in Wales. That is the best festival that I have been too. We
haven’t played a ton of festivals.

AL: What about the “Been So Long” remix. How did that come about?

Andy: That was me and Thom experimenting. We were trying to do different
things. Those were two songs that I thought had some possibilities that had
possibilities.

AL: It was like a dub version?

Andy: Yeah, one is like that. The other is like a techno shuffle.

AL: What do you think of this “Freak Folk” label?

Andy: I don’t think too much about that. People should revisit that concept
and improve upon it. It seems like a weak and lazy category.

AL: Now that all those bands have a few albums out, it seems to ..

Andy: Things are changing. It’s more about the lens of people writing about
it and how they chose to look at it, rather than the artists themselves. It’s a
false construct. It’s a straw man. I treat so lightly. I don’t even care at
this point. It makes less sense when we come out with each new record.

AL: You make fun of labeling with Myspace.

Andy: Yeah. I did that when I first signed up for Myspace. I don’t care for
the labels.

AL: When are you going to start on the next record?

Andy: We started on the new record recently. Hopefully we will have it out by
next year.

AL: Do some songs you have recorded don’t get played live?

Andy: We don’t play “The Porter.” Nobody in the band lives in San Francisco,
so we have to rehearse new songs a few weeks before a tour.

AL: Do you practice a lot?

Andy: Not really. Our first few shows are practice.

AL: Are there any new bands that you like?

Andy: This band from San Jose called The Mumlers. I think they are good. I
like the new records by Sebastian Tellier and Panda Bear. We are playing with
Kelley Stoltz.

AL: How is it in San Francisco?

Andy: I try to check things out when I am there, but I am gone a lot.

AL: People like yourself and Joanna Newsom and Noah Georgeson started out
there, but have moved on.

Andy: They don’t live there anymore. Noah is in Los Angeles and Joanna has
moved back to Nevada City.

AL: Has there been a lot of hometown support in San Francisco?

Andy: Everywhere is the same. It’s been very organic. We have been steadily
becoming popular. But we have bigger audiences in SF, LA and New York. That is
how it is for most artists.

AL: So what is it like to go to the South or the Midwest?

Andy: We are doing that more with this record. We hope to go to new places in
America with this record and the next record. We haven’t done that before
with the new band.

AL: What is the plan for the rest of the year?

Andy: This record is coming out. We might do a follow-up EP. We recorded more
songs than the album. We are going to tour more and finish this album. We are
touring the east coast in August.

AL: You played in Iceland. What was that like?

Andy: It was great. Everyone in Iceland is amazing. They have the standard
rock clubs there.

AL: Any good books to recommend?

Andy: Black Mass by John Gray. Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald. I used to
read so much more, but I have been bogged down by touring.

Playlist 6-12-08

Playlist 6-12-08 Downtown Artwalk

MGMT "Kids"
The Ting Tings "That's Not My Name"
The Duke Spirit "Send A Little Love Token"
Crystal Castles "Vanished"
Generation X "Ready Steady Go"
Santogold "Creator"
MIA "Paper Planes"
Supergrass "Diamond Hoo Ha Man"
Wall Of Voodoo "Mexican Radio"
The Kills "CHeap and Cheerful"

Bow Wow Wow "I Want Candy"
Bowie "Golden Years"
BRMC "Whatever Happened To My Rock and Roll?"
MGMT "Electric Feel Good"
The Ting Tings "Shut Up and Let Me Go"
Klaxons "Golden Skans"
Hot Chip "Ready For The Floor"
CSS "Alala"
Kim Wilde "Kids In America"
Soft Cell "Tainted Love"

Hot Chocolate "You Sexy Thing"
Arcade Fire "Rebellion Lies"
My Chemical Romance "Song 2"
The Rapture "House of Jealous Lovers"
Lene Lovich "Luckey Number"
LCD Soundsystem "North American Scum"
Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly "D.A.N.C.E."
Violent Femmes "Gone Daddy Gone"
Crystal Castles "Crimewave"
The Dandy Warhols "Bohemian Like You"

Yaz "Don't Go"
Grace Jones "Pull Up To The Bumper"
Echo and The Bunnymen "Rescue"
Dio "Rainbow In The Dark"
Junior Boys "In The Morning"
Portishead "Silence"
The Subways "Rock and Roll Queen"
Interpol "Obstacle 1"
My Bloody Valentine "Only Shallow"
Autolux "Blanket"

Blonde Redhead "En Particulier"
Siouxsie and The Banshees "Hong Kong Garden"
Bloc Party "The Prayer"
Gary Numan "Cars"
John Foxx "Metal Beat"
Kraftwerk "Numbers"
Rocky Horror Picture Show OST "Science Fiction"
The Rutles "Doubleback Alley"
Dead Kennedys "Kill The Poor'
Roxy Music "Virginia Plain" (Headman)

CSS "Let's Pretend Were Dead"
The Go! Team "Bottle Rocket"
The B52s "52 Girls"
TV on The Radio "Wolf Like Me"
Ian Dury "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick"
MGMT "Time To Pretend"
The Ting Tings "We Started Nothing"
Kate Nash "Foundations"
The Strokes "Take It Or Leave It"
Primal Scream "Country Girl"

Modest Mouse "Float On"
The Kooks "Ooh La"
Sniff and The Tears "Drivers Seat"

Billy Idol Interview

                                                     Cover photo by Bryan Adams

Billy Idol Interview
By Alexander Laurence

Billy Idol is a punk legend. He was the singer in Generation X, one the
original London based punk bands. They were the first punk band to be on Top of The
Pops and tour Japan. He was also one of the first UK rock stars to move over
to the USA and have another solo career over here. He became one of the first
stars of MTV, with his signature blonde spiked hair. His album, Rebel Yell
(1983), was a major success.

Billy Idol, now 52 years old, looks as good as ever. He plans to release a
greatest hits collection with four new tracks, and more tours in the summer of
2008.

I asked him if he ever saw any of the Bromley Contingent. He said that he
played with Siouxsie and The Banshees a few years ago at Inland Invasion. It was
an early morning for Billy. He was waking up and we were chatting during his
wardrobe changes and makeup.

He was born William Broad in 1955. England was still bleak back then, still
affected by World War II. When Idol was three years old, his family moved to
Long Island, New York for five years. He remembered America back then having
much more color. He said “We had two channels on TV, and in America your had
five.”

When he returned to the UK, Billy was a Beatles fan. The first single he
bought was “She Loves You” in 1963 and it was number one for two months. He was
depressed when the Dave Clarke Five knocked it off the top of the charts. Back
then, Billy told me, there were no record stores. So you bought records at
places that had washing machines for seven pence.

He remembered a time when JFK visited London and he saw him driving by.

Billy Idol had also seen Black Sabbath before they came out with their first
album.

When they started Generation X, Tony James was 24 and the guitar player Bob
Derwood was 17. Back then Tony James seem much older. They called him “Old man Tony.”

Generation X was on the Marc Bolan show. They got to meet Marc Bolan. Their
gear didn’t arrive to the studio so they were able to borrow gear from the
other bands. Derwood got to use Marc Bolan’s guitar on the live version of “Your
Generation.” Most of the producers were more worried about David Bowie, who
was living in Berlin, and was doing his TV show in a while. Marc made sure that
Generation X still went on. Bolan died a few weeks later.

I have always wondered who invented the spiked hair look. Idol claimed that
Johnny Rotten was the first one to do it.

Billy Idol is definitely one of the originators of the punk movement.
Generation X is one of the few bands that young kids discover year after year when
they get into the punk rock culture.

***

AL: There is this movie Punk’s Not Dead. It’s 2008. What do you think about
that?

Billy Idol: Punk’s definitely not dead, it just smells funny.

AL: You were in the Don Letts movie too? When did you do that?

Billy Idol: The original one was called DOA. It was filmed in 1976 and 77.
Then it was updated. There is the footage from the early days. I watched that,
and there was some footage that I hadn’t seen. I was wearing a black shirt. I
looked great. I saw DOA before, but he has mixed it up, and there was stuff on
there that I hadn’t seen before from that time.

AL: Many of the English punk bands like the Clash, and the Sex Pistols, and
The Damned played in America, but Generation X never came over here.

Billy Idol: We never came to America. We had a bunch of hit singles like
“Ready Steady Go” and “Wild Youth.”

AL: Did you have the idea of doing a solo career and coming to America so you
could bring the ideas and energy of punk to a wider audience?

Billy Idol: Yeah. It was all about survival. Once Generation X broke up, your
career in England was over. Things in England pass through so quickly.
Sometimes in America a single takes several months to make an impression. But in
England it’s over in three weeks. Once Generation X had broken up, it was hard to
restart something in England. It was fun to come to New York in 1981, and
come see the place where Lou Reed and the NY Dolls were from. It was cool to come
see a new scene. It was fun to see the American reaction to what we were
doing in England. That was what it was all about. There were no jobs in England.
It was all about survival and coming to America and being new again. That was
exciting for me.

AL: From the American perspective, the audience for punk and new wave wasn’t
really there until 1982.

Billy Idol: The good thing about the last Generation X record and my own
music was it was more dance oriented. We started making dance rock with songs like
“Dancing With Myself.” When I got to America I realized that I was big with
this new wave-punk-dance chart. That kept me going and gave me a lot of hope.
I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got to America. When I saw how
excited people were about “Dancing With Myself” I thought “Great. I only have to
be myself.” I didn’t have to change or be different. I just had to find out
more what was going on inside myself. That was what punk was all about. Being
yourself and not changing yourself. It was great to find out that people were
knocked out by us even though our records weren’t being played on the radio.
Things were changing at that time.

AL: At that time MTV came along and gave a bunch of new bands a chance for
exposure. The older bands from the 1970s didn’t want to do videos. You were one
of the first artists to embrace videos and work with a big director like Tobe
Hooper. What was that like?

Billy Idol: That was the great thing about MTV: it gave people like me who
were nobodies in America a platform. At that time they wouldn’t play anyone with
spiky hair on the radio. They wouldn’t play punk rock. We actually didn’t
put my picture on my first record. “Hot In The City” was number 18 in the
American charts but nobody knew what I looked like. When we put my picture on
“White Wedding” they wouldn’t play it. It happened that college radio was playing
“White Wedding.” We made a video and it got played on MTV. It kept people like
me alive. The media didn’t want to know about punk rock. MTV connected with
the kids that did want to know about punk rock and the people who were involved
with it. They were excited by it. MTV kept America alive in terms of new
rock.

AL: Many of the original punk bands had broken up by 1982. You were still
going and becoming more popular. When did you think, “Hey I am a success, and I
can relax now”?

Billy Idol: It was after Rebel Yell. Rebel Yell was a number 4 album. “Eyes
Without A Face” was a number 6 single. It was wild. I was a guy from England.
It was great to be embraced in America like that.

AL: There are people like Robbie Williams who never really made it over here.

Billy Idol: There are a lot of bands like that. I was lucky. What is
different is that I moved to America. I wasn’t just here to tour and take your money.
I was paying taxes. In England they take all your money, so I thought maybe I
should come over here to America, where there are less taxes.

AL: How long were you associated with Bill Aucoin?

Billy Idol: We just got involved with Bill Aucoin. He managed the last phase
of Generation X. When we broke up, he managed just me. I met Steve Stevens
through Bill. He was managing both of us, and he was looking for a band to put
Steve, and we got together and it worked out great.

AL: The working relationship with Steve Stevens is still solid?

Billy Idol: Yeah. You are ordinary people. Relationships are bound to go up
and down. When you have written songs with people there are bonds that go
beyond silly arguments. Not that we have had a lot. We are still playing
twenty-five years later. He is a great guitarist and I can’t think of anyone better to
play with.

AL: What do you think of this big audience for punk rock now? There are older
people like myself who were fans of Generation X and Sex Pistols when those
records came out. Now there is a whole new generation of kids who love this
stuff. Maybe there are 8 year old kids who listen to Generation X and Billy Idol
records.

Billy Idol: It’s one of those things that you couldn’t have imagined thirty
years ago. You wouldn’t thought that it would have lasted this long. I am just
so glad because it means that our initial energy was right. It has some
credibility because it appeals to young people today. That is exciting.



AL: So that means that there will be kids who are ten now, who will revisit
this music in twenty or thirty years too.

Billy Idol: It gives people hope. If you have an ordinary job where people
tell you that you can’t be artistic. One of the things that punk taught me was
that you can be artistic. You can write songs. You can do something artistic
with your life. You don’t have to be a slave to the machine. You can create your
own machine. That was what punk was about.

AL: How did you stay so fit all these years later? Some of these older punk
rockers have a beer gut now. Tony James once said that “He wouldn’t have a fat
person in a band.”

Billy Idol: I am really lucky. I have girls in my audience. It’s worth it
keeping yourself together when there are ladies in the audience. Some of the
other groups didn’t have any ladies in the audience. They didn’t have to worry
about it. I ride a motorbike, so you have to have the strength to lift a
700-pound bike. Also when I get onstage, I don’t need a bouncing stomach in front of
me, if you know what I mean. It doesn’t help the singing. I do work out at the
gym because I go on these long tours. You just want to have your energy. You
have to have some stamina to be a rock and roll singer.

AL: Some of these guys from the punk era, like Richard Hell, have claimed to
have sex with at least 1,500 women. Do you, Billy Idol, ever put some numbers
together about your past exploits?

Billy Idol: So many. It would be ridiculous to count them all.

AL: If we created some website that asked “Who slept with Billy Idol?” Maybe
we would get a thousand women answering back?

Billy Idol: There has to be more than that. I am sure that there was a
thousand in the first few years.

AL: Were you ever married?

Billy Idol: No. I have two kids though. One girl and one boy.

AL: You are attracted to mainly American women?

Billy Idol: Yeah. Women from everywhere. When I was in Generation X, we did a
tour of Japan. We checked into a hotel. All these girls were checked into the
same floor as you. They would leave their doors open. It’s like one big
brothel. It was fantastic.

AL: You also went to Bangkok for a while too.

Billy Idol: I stayed there for a month but it felt like three years. We asked
this cab driver to get us some coke. And when he came back it wasn’t coke, it
was china white. It was a huge vial. We weren’t leaving there very quickly. I
had just broken up with Perry Lister and I was getting my revenge. You could
go to these places and pick women. It was just incredible.

AL: Number 5?

Billy Idol: Number 5, 29, and 61. We did this in 1989. They had the army
escort me out of the country. We were causing so much mayhem. I was strapped to a
gurney. It was six soldiers and an armed guard. They took me from the hotel
and took me to the airport. I had a choice of getting on the plane or going to
prison. I was lucky. It was very rock and roll.

AL: Are you playing some shows this summer?

Billy Idol: Yeah. We have a greatest hits record called IDOLIZE YOURSELF with
two new songs. One is called “John Wayne” which is an ode to the duke. We
are touring this summer. After that we will be doing a new record. There will be
a new record.

Photos at the SF Fillmore by Alexander Laurence