Billy Idol - Rebel Yell

With a permanently snarled upper lip and the perfect matinee-idol blond hair, Billy Idol made punk rock palatable for MTV and the masses. He did so by watering down punk's aggressive attack with dance grooves and stretches of keyboards where no self-respecting punk would've dared. Essentially, he made pop music with a spare razor blade tossed in for fun. When it clicked, as it does on the anthemic title track of this, his career highlight, well, only an anarchist could complain. "Eyes Without a Face" and "Flesh for Fantasy" are two other early '80s radio stapes found here and they went further to establish Idol as a potential Vegas balladeer. This reissue contains some worthwhile demos. --Rob O'Connor Amazon.com

Whit Hot!

I loved the song "Rebel Yell" from the 1st time I heard it as a 15 year old on the way to have Pizza and Beer at a friends house stuffed into the backseat of his car on the way..I was ecstatic hearing it on the radio, I had been a punk/new wave fan right from the start and I was just totally excited by what Billy was doing here...a few years later I was just as surprised when I was in Korea while in the Navy, and heard this blasting out of a bar in the red light district!..lol..at any rate..on with my review...Billy Idol was a guy with a vision of himself that he achieved beautifully with this album, it had punk-rock edgy-ness, mixed with some new-wave poppiness, but an unmistakeable sexiness, and confidence..and is one more of those "MUST OWN" 80's classics..the stand-out tracks here are the title tune, and "Eyes Without A Face" is classic stuff.."Flesh For Fantasy" is "White Hot"!..(My girlfriend admitted to me that she thought he was "SOOO Sexy"..I knew then that he had "IT"..this is a great 80's romp..and a must have for people of my generation, and oldies fans..this is a good snapshot of the 80"s.( a blast in my opinion) December 31, 2007

Disappointing remix

I have two audio cassettes of the original version of this I purchased in thrift stores. I wanted to see what the deal about Billy Idol was. I learned to like him.
I'd have to dig out a tape to be sure- but I don't remember the reverb/echo being so strong. I could run the original thru my old stereo guitar effect unit and give it this sound. Or my TV surround stereo could do the same.
Re-equalizing (tone) and gratuatis reverb DOES NOT a good remix make.....
All could have been well, but cheaply applied effects (REVERB)...
Do NOT a good remix make.
Get the original. July 15, 2007

1984. Dead of winter...

Riding bus no. 34 to Junior High School. Glad to have the seat with the "hump" on the floor (the wheel well.) Rock n' roll cranking and crackling through lousy, tinny speakers intended not for music but for telling rowdy adolescents to sit down! Under the din of kids insulting each other, name-calling, farting, and chatting about what was on TV the night before hummed "Rebel Yell." If you had a hump seat, you were close enough to the speakers to hear the music.

Everyone knew who Billy Idol was. Most of us were too young to remember Generation X but we'd all loved "White Wedding" (c'mon, the video had coffins and other dark stuff.) There was a cool aggression to "Rebel Yell," a fitting theme for kids starting to separate from their parents but still "shackled" to home and school.

As winter gave way to summer, "Eyes Without a Face" was part of the summer soundtrack for the rock n' rollers that included the hits from albums like 1984 (Van Halen), Pyromania (Def Leppard), Out of the Cellar (Ratt). Fading to fall, Idol titillated with "Flesh for Fantasy," perfectly suggestive for us sex-on-the-brain teens.

Rebel Yell was (and is) brilliant because it fell neatly between the hard but approachable sonic rock of Van Halen and the edgy, snarly attack of the Sex Pistols (or probably more accurately, Billy's old band, Gen X.) More than just rockin', Billy clearly wanted his fans to dance, putting just a splash of disco into the songs. While being of the 80's, and sounding like it, the album is one of those rare pieces that sounds great 20 plus years after it was made. It should be on every "top 100" greatest albums of all-time lists. April 16, 2007

Billy Idol's sophomore effort goes multi-platinum!

This CD contains the original nine-track line-up(at least in the US) plus a few bonus tracks. Oddly,the defunct LP is labeled sides 3 and 4,since this is Billy Idol's second album. 1986's WHIPLASH SMILE LP would be labeled sides 5 and 6. How strange,don't you think? This sophomore effort went multi-platinum since it spawned four Top 20 hits,the title track,EYES WITHOUT A FACE,CATCH MY FALL and FLESH FOR FANTASY. The other tracks are great. Idol's Chrysalis labelmates include Huey Lewis & The News,Pat Benatar and Blondie, September 20, 2006

FANTASTIC Good old Billy

Fantastic CD yet again from Billy Idol. Every song is a gem, with no week tracks. Rebel Yell is probably one of the greatest Hard Rock songs of all time. I strongly advise anybody that likes this CD to purchase all of Billy's stuff, you won't be disappointed.

Declan Byrne from Ireland
August 2, 2006

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