I've always been a fan of Generation X (the band not the, er, generation). For those who've no idea what I'm talking about, Gen X was a short-lived UK punk band fronted by one William Broad - better known as Billy Idol. Idol, of course, went from being an avid Sex Pistols hanger-on to fronting his own punk band and, in doing so, was able to catch the tail-end of the UK punk craze, hitting the Top 40 with their debut single, "Your Generation".
The band caught a lot of flack for deviating from the tried-and-true punk rock template and were labeled sell-outs very early on by the punk community due to their willingness to not only embrace commercial entities such as Top Of The Pops, but to cover a John Lennon song. Glen Matlock had been kicked out of the Pistols for admitting he liked the Beatles, after all.
While their second album, Valley of The Dolls, featured a Top 20 single in "King Rocker", the album failed to meet expectations and the band began to fracture. By the time the band began work on their ill-fated third album, Kiss Me Deadly, the writing was already on the wall.
That arguably the best song of the group's career, "Dancing With Myself", would come during this time is just short of miraculous. Bassist Tony James describes the writing of the song and the band's last days in a new blog posted on his current band, Carbon/Silcone's website:
"We sat on the back fire escape steps, on the cold concrete, and Billy leaned against the iron railings and played me a driving E,A,B, A chord sequence on his Epiphone guitar, singing da da daaa da da da tune.... Idol always had such a teenage enthusiasm every time he presented something new, seemingly amazed at finding this tune somewhere out of the air..... and it always brought the mood to a frantic pitch of creativity that we both got caught up in.. he la la la’d the next couple of phrases and into the chorus ending with “with the records reflection and the mirrors reflection..and back into the hook.. from the Tokyo seed....."
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Generation X - Dancing With Myself
4 comments:
on hype machine it says generation x featuring billy idol? what does that mean?
this track is much better than idols solo cover of the song since this one features steve jones and paul from the sex pistols.
um, it means generation x featuring billy idol. he was in the band.
if you bothered to read Tony's blog, he also confirms what many have known for years: that billy's version is the SAME EXACT VERSION that appeared on Gen X's "Kiss Me Deadly".
"arguably the best song of the group's career"?
Any song off their first album blows this out of the water.
Unless you're into radio friendly pap
Daddyo, with all due respect, dismissing "Dancing With MySelf" as a great song just because it got radio/video play is a little snobby, dontha think?
I like the first album, but, I'll tell ya, there are certain songs that jump out at you and "Dancing With Myself" is one of those songs.
That's why Tony James is writing a blog about how it came to be some 25 years or so after the fact.
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