He’d just moved to the Big Apple from London, and was inspired by the club scene, drippingly-hot air and his own desires.
‘I was literally hot in the city but also I felt sexually alive. I was sexually hot,’ he told Vulture in a recent interview.
‘I remember one night I was walking down some stairs and thought of a hit single Nick Gilder had a couple of years earlier, “Hot Child in the City.”
‘There’s no refraction on his song. I thought, “Why’d you need the child? You could do a song Hot in the City, because not only is it f***ing blazing hot, I’m hot.”
A year later in 1983 – when Billy had a girlfriend he was truly, very into – Rebel Yell was born.
‘I was thinking about my girlfriend,’ he confessed, talking about how he wrote it.
‘She was a dancer, so I made it about the sexual cry of love; this orgasmic cry of love and how great women were.
‘That’s what I was singing about because I was so in love with her. I just wanted to lionize our relationship.’
Billy Idol Tells The Story Of ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore’ In New ‘Beyond The Bus’ EpisodeThe 40th Anniversary Expanded Edition of ‘Rebel Yell’ will arrive on April 26 via Capitol Records/UMe.
In the latest episode of uDiscoverMusic’s “Beyond the Bus,” legendary rocker Billy Idol tells the story behind his cover of Rose Royce’s “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.” The previously-unreleased track is featured on the new 40th anniversary edition of Rebel Yell, out April 26 via Capitol Records/UMe.
He began: “We’re in New York in Electric Lady Studios. We’d done a lot of the songs that are on the Rebel Yell album. Steve Stevens was in the control room. He’s usually standing there in his New York Empire State stack heels with his Ozone torturing bouffant. There I was, standing next to him with my bog brush hair do.”
Stevens added: “I’m a little fella. I’ll take advantage of some heels, plus it makes your a__ look nice.”
Idol then got into the making of the song, saying: “I always look for a song I can cover that people aren’t expecting. I remember this song called ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore’ by Rose Royce. It’s one of those songs, I don’t know why, but I just thought, I could take it, and do something with it dramatically different, and make it my own.”
