White Wedding: Billy Idol Live & Unplugged!!!

       In the early 1960's lots of bands from the UK came to the shores of America and became famous.  That era has been remembered in history as The British Invasion.  One of the unique features of those bands is that they were, in fact, bands.  Most of the biggest American rock and roll acts of the day were individuals.  While many of them had regular backing bands, performers like Elvis, Little Richard, & Chuck Berry were all primarily known as individual stars.  On their records most of their music was performed by session musicians and the singers came in later and laid down the vocal tracks.
     The Brits were different. The Beatles, Stones and most of the rest wrote, recorded, and played all of their own music.  Sure Mick Jagger was a front man in a similar fashion to Elvis or James Brown but he was first and foremost a member of the Stones and nobody ever doubted that.  This revolutionized how American teenagers saw rock and roll and how they related it to themselves.  The British Invasion led to a million garage rock bands forming in every city and town in the USA.  Some of those bands reached stardom which spurred the next generation of kids to form bands in their garages and so on.
      Eventually most of the biggest American rock and roll acts were, like their British predecessors, bands instead of stars.  That is pretty much how things stayed until MTV lit up TV screens all over the world.  That spawned a partial devolution from bands back to individual stars.  Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince were, like their late 50's early 60's forebears solo artists whose individual fame eclipsed any band they happened to be standing in front of.  This was also true for many of the British acts that formed what MTV dubbed The Second British Invasion.  Elvis Costello, Paul Young, & Adam Ant were all musicians that fronted bands but became famous as individuals.
      One of the most successful of these artists was a blond punk rocker from the suburbs of London named William Broad.  He changed his name to Billy Idol early in his musical career when he was with the band Generation X.  GX reached UK stardom and enjoyed some spill over onto American AOR radio before disbanding.  That band took their initial inspiration from The Clash, The Sex Pistols and Siouxie & The Banshee's but started moving in the direction of New Wave and Glam.  Eventually creative differences split them apart and Idol went solo.

Idol & Gen X 1977

       With his spiky blond hair and endowed with the best sneer since Elvis Presley, Idol was born to be an MTV star.  His early recordings built upon the music of Gen X including his cover of their song Dancing With Myself which went into heavy rotation on MTV's hit list.  This was quickly followed up on the radio with his cover of Tommy James and the Shondells Mony Mony and then a song he penned called White Wedding.  Idols music was built upon the strength of his husky baritone and growling shrieks as well as distinctive tunes and high quality musicianship.  In those early years, as a rising MTV star, he was accompanied by an excellent guitar player named Steve Stevens who is probably best remembered for the Gammy Award winning Top Gun Anthem from that movie.  The Top Gun video features keyboard player Harold Faltermeyer who was also working with Idol as a session musician.

Steve Stevens

      The song White Wedding has been the subject of much speculation over the years.  At the time of it's writing Idol's sister was pregnant and looking forward to her wedding.  From that perspective the lyrics suggest Idol was angry at the man who impregnated his sister, resentful of the shotgun wedding, and weirdly incestuous.  Another popular interpretation has Idol being jealous that a former girlfriend was marrying another man despite Idol still being in love with her.  Still a third interpretation claims that White Wedding is a reference to cocaine addiction which is something Idol has been rumored to struggle with throughout his life.
      Whatever the true story behind the lyrics, Idols anger and resentment at the world is palpable.  He convey's a deep need to return to a place, probably back home, that is presumably fair, certain, and safe.  That frame of reference definitely suggests a jilted lover finding himself addicted to drugs and love searching for a place of new beginnings.  That explanation would still make the song somewhat autobiographical because Idol was, at that time,
 living through circumstances that loosely parallels that explanation.
      The song combines elements of glam with a revved up Peter Gunn punky rhythm.  The version presented here is taken from the VH1 series called Storytellers which, in the full length version, includes Idol talking about his songs and performing them "unplugged".  Nothing is really unplugged but the music is given an updated and intimate feel by Stevens playing acoustic electric.  Idol's vocals are spot on and, of course, he still looks like a decadent punk rocker.  At times he refers to himself in the third person which could be seen as a conceit  although it seems more likely he's drawing a distinction between himself and the performer/band.  This is an especially good performance of the song featuring a seated Stevens playing solo on what appears to be a Gibson acoustic/electric cutaway guitar and Idol standing at his shoulder singing.  He is wearing Jim Morrison black leather pants and riffs on his own history by slapping his own ass to the beat of the music which was done by 3 under dressed bosomy girls in the 1982 video.

Please enjoy this superlative excerpted recording of

Billy Idol White Wedding