A Rolling Stone Top 10 Best Music Books of the Year
βThatβs what Iβm talking aboutβ¦Of all these memoirs, Dancing With Myself was the only one that stimulated my envyβmade me want to be Billy Idol for five minutesβ¦.Heβs a genuine romantic, writing in a kind of overheated journalese about his London punk rock rootsβ¦and then falling head over heels for America.β βJames Parker, The New York Times Book Review
In this highly original memoirβfollowing Billy Idol from his childhood in England to his rise to fame at the height of the punk-pop revolutionβthe iconic superstar tells the real story behind the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll that he is so fabulously famous for, in his own utterly indelible voice.
An early architect of punk rockβs sound, style, and fury, whose lip-curling sneer and fist-pumping persona vaulted him into popβs mainstream as one of MTVβs first megastars, Billy Idol remains, to this day, a true rock βnβ roll icon.
Now, in his New York Times bestselling autobiography, Dancing with Myself, Idol delivers an electric, βrefreshingly honestβ (Daily News, New York) account of his journey to fameβfrom his early days as front man of the pioneering UK punk band Generation X to the decadent life atop the dance-rock kingdom he ruledβdelivered with the same in-your-face attitude and fire his fans have embraced for decades. Beyond adding his uniquely qualified perspective to the story of the evolution of rock, Idol is a brash, lively chronicler of his own career.
A survivorβs tale at its heart, this sometimes chilling and always riveting account of one manβs creative drive joining forces with unbridled human desire is unmistakably literary in its character and brave in its sheer willingness to tell. With it, Billy Idol is destined to emerge as one of the great writers among his musical peers.
βI am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, Iβve put it all down, every bit from the heart. Iβm going on out a limb here, so watch my back.β βBilly Idol