No Rock And Roll Fun

WITH A REBEL YELL...: Billy Idol, who has chosen to take it upon himself to launch a comeback, has managed to get himself into a lot of silly bother by appearing on CNBC's The Big Idea and yammering away about swastikas:

"We were young kids and all we wanted to do was piss off the people who fought in the war who were teaching us," Idol recalled. "Then we found out how terrible it was and we never used it again."

So... let me get this straight, Bill - you knew that the swastika would annoy and upset the older generation, but you didn't know it was terrible? Apart from not really knowing how anyone who was a child in the 1970s could not have known what the swastika meant anyway - TV being filled with Colditz and Secret Army, and every newsagent selling war comics like The Victor of an "Achtung! Englander!" type - what Bill demonstrates here is how quickly punk let itself down; from being a youth movement with a degree of intelligence and individuality to a bunch of guys in bondage pants who didn't apparently have the brains to think why what they were doing was getting a reaction.