Billy Idol Revisits “Eyes Without a Face” in Celebration of 40th Anniversary of Rebel Yell
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the album Rebel Yell Billy Idol recently sat down with Vevo Footnotes to discuss his classic song, “Eyes Without a Face.” The song was Idol’s first Top 10 Hit and during the interview, he revealed many behind-the-scenes stories about songwriting and the production of the music video. Among the details shared in the interview is how Idol recruited talent from Broadway to work on the recording of “Eyes Without a Face.”
“One of the things we were having trouble with was the bassline because I like reggae, you know, so I wanted it to be like a really prominent bassline and we were having a hell of a time trying to find someone who could play my idea until we met Sal Cuevas, who was playing in the Dreamgirls Broadway band, and he nailed it.”
- said Idol
Horror fans will recognize the song’s title, “Eyes Without a Face” as a reference to the French thriller of the same name that shocked audiences in the fifties. It is then no surprise that Billy Idol is a big classic horror fan and takes inspiration from the genre in creating the imagery in his music videos.
“I liked a lot of silent movies because you knew they were doing things with paint, wood, and glue; you know, it's very sort of cheap in a way, but with maximum effect. It was an old book I had that had a lot of old stills, you know, Boris Karloff movies like ‘The Black Cat’ in front of an altar with a lot of crosses behind him. A lot of these things were influencing me with the ‘White Wedding’ video or ‘Eyes Without A Face.’ That’s what I was sort of bringing into my videos: this kind of old influence of movies one hundred years before.”
- said Idol
Idol wanted to write an anti-love song since love ballads dominated music throughout the 80s. To counter the trend, Idol wrote a song from the perspective of a serial killer.
“It’s more something like ‘The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari,’; it was sort of painted, so there was a psychotic element because he was supposed to be some sort of serial killer.
- said Idol
Idol also shared some funny memories including a fashion disaster that happened the night before the video shoot. The singer almost lost his famous blonde spikes.
“Things that we were sort of having a bit of fun the night before, bleaching my hair. Perry bleached my hair, we fell asleep, and when we woke up, it was like, ‘Oh, my hair is really fried. I just had a little bit at the front, and somehow, we made it look like I had hair. And that’s the kind of fun we had in the 1980s.”
- said Idol
“Eyes Without a Face” has a longevity that went beyond the 80s and it continues to gain fans with every new generation. Idol counts current pop stars like Miley Cyrus as fans.
“The thing is, we were really trying to do a lot with nothing. And I think they still hold up and look pretty good. In fact, Miley Cyrus says they’re the sexiest videos she likes to watch. So, thank you, Miley.”
- said Idol
