“It didn’t sound like a big guitar song, so I wound up playing keyboards. Eddie Van Halen played keyboards on Jump, so I figured I could too”: How Billy Idol seized upon the success of Rebel Yell – and Linn Drums – to take his sound to new frontiers

Steve Stevens pictured in 1986 with his Hamer S-Style.

Following the 1981 breakup of his punk band Generation X, singer Billy Idol left the U.K. and began a solo career in New York City. There, he hooked up with Manhattan’s best-kept guitar whiz secret, Steve Stevens, and the two got off to a fast start with the dance rock hit White Wedding, off 1982’s Billy Idol.

A year later, things broke wide open with the multi-platinum Rebel Yell, which included a trio of radio and MTV smashes: Flesh for Fantasy, Eyes Without a Face, and the blitzing title cut.