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I Knew I Could Count on You Billy Idol
Lessons in aging from the master.
In the last couple of years, I have become a devotee of SiriusXM. As a child of the 80s, I can easily find my jams from the 70s through the 90s with little effort.
What surprised me — and almost made me wreck my car the first time it happened — was seeing the image of the singer. Most times, it is not the person at the age they first performed their song but how they look now.
Let me be clear. This is not a criticism of how they look as older adults. We all age. It is just the shock of your mental image being so thoroughly demolished.
Like when I look in the mirror, I see the 25-year-old me, but the woman at Michaels who asked me if I was getting my granddaughter’s artwork framed sees someone else entirely. Actually, she is not seeing much of anything because I blacked out both her eyes after screaming at her that my daughter was 11. I kid. I kid.
That’s why I did a front seat happy dance when “Cradle of Love” came on SiriusXM. Sixty-five-year-old Billy Idol does not look like twenty-something Billy Idol. But he still looks like Billy Idol. Spikey pale hair, black leather jacket, silver earrings — they are all still in play and the dude still carries them off with aplomb.
I thought, “I could take a lesson from this guy.” So I did.
Find your swagger
Billy Idol has swagger in spades. This is a man who once walked around parties in nothing but a scarf and boots according to his autobiography. Of course, with this came the “never-ending broads and bikes, plus a steady diet of pot, cocaine, ecstasy, smack, opium, quaaludes, and reds.”
Remove the hard drugs and promiscuous sex and you are still left with the attitude, even now.
So maybe I don’t need to enter a room like a beaten waif from a Dickens novel. Next time, I’m going to take a deep breath, hold my chin up and shoulders down, and give my own version of a Rebel Yell. Which is really just an under my breath yodel, but you get the picture.
Wear a nostalgia piece
When I was in college, my friends would tease me about my red jeans. The nights I wore my…
