Fresh from being well received at the inaugural Forever Now festival as well as a surprise appearance alongside Yungblud at his Bludfest festival, William Broad, better known as Billy Idol, is ready to rock the crowd at his only UK headline date of 2025 at Wembley Arena. The expectant crowd are mostly decked in merch, all of which always shows an image of the man himself, Billy is everywhere tonight.
Billy Idol @ Wembley Arena
Support act New Model Army are the perfect warm up and well received, contemporaries of Billy Idol, they are difficult to pin down in terms of genre, but they still get the crowd going with their searing guitars and occasional extra percussion. Particular highlights were Never Arriving and set closer, Green And Grey, lapped up by the crowd.
It’s now time for Billy Idol to hit the stage, decked in a red and black leather jacket with a large screen behind him, which seems de riguer at rock shows in 2025, allowing a dynamic backdrop that changes with each song. Billy appears delighted to be playing to his hometown crowd (he tells us he was born on the Edgware Road) and promises us we are going to have some fun tonight. During a knowing performance of Flesh For Fantasy, at least half the crowd have that fun early, as Billy performs an onstage costume change, facing the drum riser and removing his jacket and T-shirt, to wild screams, and then replacing the jacket, theatrics already!
Billy Idol @ Wembley Arena
Billy’s new album, Dream Into It, is like a chronicle of his life and as he goes on to say, the song Too Much Fun is a punk song about his horrific 1990 motorcycle crash amongst other tribulations, and how he now takes as much as he can from life. The light melody hides real feeling, Billy emotes and the crowd love it. Dry ice sweeps the stage and we are transported back to 1983 and a dramatic performance of Eyes Without A Face has the crowd signing along.
Billy then says he has a couple of covers for us and first, his classic take on Mony Mony gets even the people in the dreaded floor seats up dancing and clapping. Backing singer Jessica Childress is then called forward and joins Billy for a powerhouse rendition of the Rolling Stones’ classic Gimme Shelter, both vocalists really going for it, a fantastic surprise. Finishing up the climactic solo in Blue Highway, lead guitarist Steve Stevens, a note perfect showman throughout the gig, reminds us he was also the guitarist on the Top Gun Theme by Harald Faltermeyer, and that iconic guitar line soars around the arena.
A word on Billy here, he is a much more thoughtful and vulnerable character then his outward image projects, he relates stories from his life in an emotional and endearing way, and is clearly still having fun performing at the grand old age of 69. He recounts the time he was at a party with all the Rolling Stones, well, not Charlie Watts, he was of course sleeping, but they were drinking a whiskey that Billy has not seen before, he liked the name of the whiskey and asked the band if they were going to use it in a song, they said that Billy could use it if he wanted….
The name of that whiskey was Rebel Yell, and Billy and band launch into an amazing performance of that song, the crowd screaming back the More, More, More refrain.
If the crowd thought that this show could not get any better, they were proved wrong for the encore as Billy was joined by his ‘old China’, Tony James, bass player from Generation X, an unexpected treat for the London crowd. They then proceed to rip through two GX classics, Ready Steady Go and Dancing With Myself, by this point the whole of Wembley Arena was bouncing. To hear these punk classics played by two of the original band was a real privilege – I wonder if the object of Billy’s affection in Ready Steady Go, Cathy McGowan, was in the crowd?
A very apt Hot In The City was followed by a turbocharged, muscular singalong version of White Wedding to end a brilliant and heartfelt evening from one of our secret national treasures, keep on rocking Billy.
Live review of Billy Idol @ Wembley Arena, London on 25th June 2025 by Alex Kavanagh. Photography by Kalpesh Patel.
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