Billy Idol LIVE!
June 5, 2010 at Luzhniki Sports Arena, Moscow
by Rodion Goloshchapov
Guest Staff Writer
He did make it to Moscow, it finally did happen. In mid-Eighties Russia, when subculture tribes were only starting to appear, and were often in confrontation with each other, Billy Idol was loved by everyone – from body-builders to punks and metal heads. His charisma just couldn’t leave anyone indifferent. Even at the time when his videos weren’t shown on Russian TV, everyone knew that here was a true rebel, a real rock macho and an Idol.
The message of his image resonated with personal life stories of young people growing up at the time of big political change which ultimately led to the collapse of the iron curtain. Now everyone called “idle” at school (this is also how Billy’s teachers called him for underachievement) could become an IDOL.
Twenty-seven years after the release of Rebel Yell the relentless rocker Billy Idol together with guitarist Steve Stevens have finally played in Moscow. Given that Idol’s audience is mostly comprised of people over 40 who prefer to spend their weekends at home with beer in front of their TV, Idol has managed to fill 70% of this 7000 seat venue. And younger people were in the audience too, showing that Idol’s music is capable of going over generation lines.
The first part of the show was big hits galore, including “Eyes Without a Face”, “Flesh for Fantasy”, and “Dancing with Myself”. Despite the fact that Idol has seemingly decided to spare his vocal chords during the first part of the show (sometimes simply saying the words as opposed to singing them), the show did happen: the audience was ecstatic, and even people in the VIP seats were dancing.
A group of elderly hippies sitting next to this writer tried to keep their composure during the first 20 minutes, but after that simply couldn’t hold back anymore, getting up and beginning to dance, erratically waving their arms and legs. Fans at the front of the stage could never calm down either – people were throwing paper plates at musicians throughout the show, catching them back autographed.
Toward the middle of the show the crowd was told they couldn’t take alcohol into the arena from the venue’s bar any longer, which was probably the right decision on the part of the organizers, given how volatile and explosive the atmosphere was becoming.
The show went without any glitches or stops, the sound was good, which can’t be said, however, about the light. The light was on a budget – far from the unforgettable light show done at the same venue by Nine Inch Nails just over 3 years ago. That said, Idol’s show was in this respect still better than Ozzy’s, who didn’t bother to do anything in terms of visuals the last time he played in Moscow.
“Hot in the City”, “Sweet 16”, “Shock to the System” – hits tried and tested by decades were continuing to bombard the arena, reducing respectable concert-goers (and most of them were indeed respectable middle-class concert-goes) to the level of giddy teenagers who have just discovered who Billy Idol was.
Steve Stevens did solo extensively at one point, but it wasn’t spectacular: fast passages on an acoustic guitar, an obscure mixture of flamenco, rock and indie. But one thing was special about this number – it was played by the legendary Steve Stevens. Many in the audience didn’t expect any less from him than they expected from Billy Idol. Some, in fact, expected more.
Slowly the atmosphere was going down the way a cell phone battery goes down at the end of the day: elderly hippies are hanging off the barrier rails exhausted by their own marathon dance, teenagers at the back are sliding off their seats; one of them is about to fall asleep. The stalls still kept going, but much less enthusiastically compared to the beginning of the show. People in the VIP seats are all sitting down, some are eating.
And then something happens. It can only be described as the End of the World, Apocalypse and Judgment Day all rolled in one. The band starts playing “Rebel Yell”. And the crowd immediately comes to life again – but this time with double force. In a second it all starts anew – the roaring and jumping stalls, the screams of pure joy, the hot wave of elation, and I feel like I’m 18 again.
Translated by Alissa Ordabai