Has it really taken Generation X frontman and solo star Billy Idol this long to write an autobiography? What’s he been doing with his time? Well, Drugs and debauchery seem to have occupied quite a bit of it. Dancing With Myself opens with Bill at a crack-fuelled low in LA, resolving to turn his life around, before taking us on whistle-stop tour of the early years: a boyhood partially spent in the forward-looking USA before being thrust back into the dismal reality of Worthing and Bromley in the ‘60s and ‘70s, a greyness that turns Day-Glo when punk provides Idol and his fellow misfits with a climate they can flourish in. He’s done this without a ghost writer, and his prose can be a bit variable – some passages are of such a purple hue that one can only hope they’re meant ironically – but it’s written with energy and an endearing sincerity, and gives another slant on the already well-documented punk years.
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