Billy Idol was announced as an inductee to the grievously-misnamed Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with fellow rockers Sade and Wu-Tang Clan, so it was a fine time to watch prolific music video director Jonas Åkerlund's recently-released documentary Billy Idol Should Be Dead.
Covering his life and career from childhood to founding Generation X in the wake of the Sex Pistols to going solo to having years of massive drug abuse issues, it combines archival footage, impressionistic animated sequences and interviews filmed in in the harshest, least flattering black & white ever to make everyone appear as old and haggard for some reason. While the film came out in 2026, it includes interviews with Billy's mother, Joan, who passed in 2020.
As an old Gen X and solo fan who once made a Billy Idol logo t-shirt in printing class, most of the early career material was fairly familiar to me and generally superficial. What I wasn't aware of was how deep his drug abuse was and his attempted forays into acting including a major project that collapsed when his manager, Bill Aucoin (who also managed KISS), who'd started smoking crack pulled it away from up and coming at the time producer Joel Silver and that he filmed a screentest to play the T-1000 in Terminator 2, only losing the part due to the lingering effects of his nearly fatal motorcycle crash (whose gnarly scars are shown) preventing him from running as would be needed.
Very little time is spent discussing his music, the 40+ year collaboration with guitarist Steve Stevens or the handful of albums he's put out since the misfire of 1993's Cyberpunk album which may've been ahead of its time. Åkerlund also weirdly edits the beginning starting with a 1984 heroin overdose, then going back to the beginning, then leaping forward to the OD, then going back to the timeline. Foreshadowing is one thing, but why the second preview? There's more time spent on his tempestuous relationship with baby mama Perri Lister and the two kids he fathered with groupies than his music process.
I saw Idol last year in concert and he still had it at 69 years old, delivering an even better show than he did in 2019, in the Before Times. It should be a good Rock Hall performance. While Billy Idol Should Be Dead, it's an adequate primer for those unfamiliar with the Prince of Punk (I made that title up now) or older fans needing a refresher as well as some drama.
Score: 6/10. Catch in on cable/streaming. (Viewed on Hulu.)
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