__ With @eddievanhalen’s passing, I was thinking back to @SteveStevens’ guitar solo for @BillyIdol’s “Rebel Yell”.
Watching the ‘Rebel Yell’ video now, some of the glimmer & magic has given way to seeing thru the ham-up performances playing directly to camera and me realizing this was a film production set for a video, not necessarily a documentary of an actual live concert.
However, watching the video on #MTV as an impressionable young kid my mind was absolutely blown🤯. This was everything I wanted from a guitar solo and what I daydreamed I would do whilst listening to music:
• a blistering rapid-fire cavalcade of musical notes
• eliciting almost sci-fi-like noises and sound effects from the guitar, at one point it even sounds like a he’s firing a machine gun laser into the audience
• all of it delivered in the most theatrical play-it-up to the camera/audience performance possible, acrobatic antics aplenty
• at one point Stevens high-fives an audience member while playing 😆
• he jumps & twirls & dances non-stop, and even adds a Pete Townsend helicopter-arm-swing tribute for good measure.
THIS was the future in the present, man! 😝🤓 and that’s what this post is really about. Something futuristic was in the zeitgeist, and definitely in the Los Angeles air (Diet Coke?) as the waves of Vivienne Westwood’s future-punk chic washed over America circa 1980-83.
For me the finest expression of that pop-punk-metal-synth sound was Missing Persons’ album ‘Spring Session M’. However, the dna was everywhere for what would culminate with ‘Blade Runner’ as one of, if not THE proto sci-fi/future-fi cyberpunk vision.
There are certainly some interesting visual parallels here with ‘Blade Runner’ and Billy Idol’s band.
Most prominent, Darryl Hannah’s replicant/android “raccoon” eyes make-up look echoed by Idol’s keyboardist @JudiDozier, @officialAnnieLennox, @AdamAnt, and many others... even making a comeback in the 2000’s with Michael Stipe’s REM concert persona.
The future looked so far-out and bright back then. We’ve gone past the year 2019 in ‘Blade Runner’ and fashion doesn’t look futuristic at all now. If anything, we have gone kinda retro fashion.
#MTV
|
