Dancing With Myself

Billy Idol (1955–); Tony James (1953–)

Billy Idol and Tony James were touring in Japan with their band Generation X in 1979 when they were struck by the image of young dancers in a disco, all dancing with their own reflections on a mirrored wall, no one with an actual partner. A guitar-heavy version of this song flopped in the UK, but the re-mixed take, released in the US after he moved to New York, was a massive hit, and Billy Idol became a fixture on the newly established MTV. I had thought his name––Billy Idol––was self-aggrandizing, but it’s basis comes from a schoolteacher who used to refer his lazy student as “Billy Idle”. That’s the name he originally considered using, but he was afraid he would be confused with Monty Python’s Eric Idle, who was, um, an idol of his.