Billy Idol has revealed he nearly died from a heroin overdose just days before he was due to perform on Top of the Pops, a new documentary has revealed. The punk rocker, who shot to fame in the 1980s with hits such as White Wedding and Rebel Yell, said he turned blue and had to be revived by friends after snorting strong heroin known as Persian Brown.
In the documentary, Billy Idol Should Be Dead, Idol recalls: "I did OD and nearly died. I was due on Top of the Pops. I nearly ruined it and nobody knew. Everybody did a line and they all nodded out except me and a mate and we did a few more lines. I was basically dying. I was turning blue. So they put me in an ice bath and walked me around on the roof of the building."
The two-hour film, which premieres on Sky Arts later this month, chronicles Idol's anarchic beginnings in the London punk scene and his rise to superstardom in the MTV era. It features his late mother Joan, long-term girlfriend Perri Lister and his three children. The film also reveals how a DNA test led to Idol discovering his love child son Brant.
Born William Broad in Bromley, south London, Idol was a bespectacled teenager when he saw The Sex Pistols play. "When I was 14, it was when the music scene exploded," he says. "We all wanted to be David Bowie. I saw The Pistols and that's what we were waiting for." After forming Generation X, he moved to New York when the punk dream ended, and was soon introduced to hard drugs in Manhattan clubs.
Idol recalls throwing up over his idol David Bowie in a club, an incident witnessed by Chic star Nile Rodgers, who remembers Idol saying "Hello mate!" after being sick. Eventually, Idol's father flew to New York with a stick to bring him home, and later he moved to Los Angeles with Perri Lister. Now 70 and clean, Idol says: "There are elements of my life that I probably should not have survived. I am still here and I am still rocking and in love with what I do."
