Review: Billy Idol leaves Vancouver fans wanting more, more, more

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Forty years ago, Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell lit up the charts and launched the spiky blond singer with the curling lip onto heavy-rotation on MTV. The combination of classic rock boogie baked into glam pop with a sprinkle of punk on top proved a perfect formula for rock fans with a never new wave ever attitude.

Blessed with a calling card leftover from his previous band Generation X in the form of the single Dancing With Myself, Idol and his guitar hero foil Steve Stevens wrote a record that became a blueprint for acts ranging from Lords of the New Church to the Cult and many others to follow. None of those acts ever equalled Idol’s single-loaded career high, including the singer.

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The fans who filled Rogers Arena for the opening night of the Canadian leg of Rebel Yell’s 40th anniversary tour knew what they came for and, in case they forgot, were reminded in the opening minutes of the show as a montage of choruses from the album’s top singles played as the lights went down. Over the course of the night, many of those classic videos would be projected up on the backstage screen while the band played the song. Just another way to mainline nostalgia in case the passage of time had dulled fond memories.

Subtlety was not on the menu at this money grab. At one point, Idol even took to the stage sporting his own merch tour tee.

Yet, when it worked, you could almost recall how fresh songs such as Eyes Without A Face sounded long, long ago. With it’s ridiculous lyric, synth-laden groove and crooned delivery blown apart by Steven’s sledgehammer riff mid-tune, the song remains a standout. Ditto the title track of the evening, which still commands an audience to bellow out the “more, more, more” chorus with conviction. Even the almost note-exact cover of Tommy James and the Shondells’ Mony, Mony landed.

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Thank goodness we were spared Idol’s take on the Doors’ L.A. Woman. We still had to endure Cage.

Introduced as a COVID anthem meant to reflect Idol’s disgust at pandemic lockdown life, the newer tune from the 2022 Cage EP is so bad it’s a wonder someone in management didn’t put pause to its release. With a video with effects that were out of date before Rebel Yell was even released probably ordered on TEMU, the song was a major sap to the evening’s energy. So was the brutally disjointed out-of-sync version of Blue Highway. Still not sure how one of the most straight-ahead songs of Idol’s career could get so wonky. It happens.

Stevens’ two extended guitar solos could use a rethink as well. Both were little more than extended standard warm-up exercises played on acoustic with a wee flamenco flair tossed in. Perhaps including a few bars of Led Zeppelin’s Over the Hills and Far Away may have warmed the hearts of some classic rockers.

For this listener, it merely reinforced the fact that Jimmy Page wrote and played without descending into Rock 101 cliché. Seriously, who still throws in Chuck Berry duck walks and playing behind your head into a show anymore?

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Given the inclusion of a couple of non-Rebel Yell tracks in the set list, why not add a few more and trim the tedious showboating?

Either that or give drummer Erik Eldenius some room to romp. His performance was the highlight of the entire evening.

sderdeyn@postmedia.com

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