March 3, 2022 • 37 mins
Three weeks. Three hotels. Three vices (booze, drugs, and purchased sex). In 1989, rock icon Billy Idol got wild in Bangkok, seeking total oblivion and taking it to a whole new level. Enter the Thai Army and their tranquilizer guns. Was that rock bottom for Idol? Not even close.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of I Heart Radio, Zarin.
You know what's ridiculous? Yes? Did you know only nineteen
authors sold more new books last year than Matthew McConaughey.
He was twenty for the year. Ridiculous, Just ridiculous. Matthew McConaughey, Yeah,
he was the most. He sold more books, more new
(00:22):
books last year than all but nineteen professional writers and authors.
That's completely ridiculous. Just go figure. Well, you know what
else is ridiculous? No blay it on me getting so
blotted that you need to be forcibly removed from your
trash hotel room by armed soldiers. What I love this?
It sounds like some people I know. This is a
(01:03):
Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists
and cons. It's always murder free and one ridiculous, Zaren.
What's your favorite Billy Idol song? Billy Idol the bleached
(01:25):
blonde rocker Let's see White Wedding because I'm a older brother,
you know, and I just love the opening of that.
It's got a crazy hook and there's wasn't it nice
day to start again? I'd always like that. Rebel yells
good one Cradle Love, although that video, oh man, is
a problem. It is not aged well. It is not
(01:47):
aged well. So I'll say not Cradle of Love, and
I will say White Wedding. What's your favorite Billy Idol song? Um?
I really like Ready Steady Go from when he was
in Generation X, kind of deep catch. Well you know,
I'm over here with the MTV hits and you're like, um,
b sides of the Japanese leg. It's a good song.
(02:09):
So we're talking Billy Idol. Right. I want you to
close your eyes, m Isaac and imagine Bangkok in the
fall of nineteen So amoys, so sultry. So imagine you're
staying at the Royal Orchids Sheraton. Can you picture yourself
(02:33):
doing that? What's you say for the sake of the story. Yes, yes,
it's lush, it's gorgeous. You're on the top floor of
the hotel. Your room overlooks this river. See, but you
hear a commotion down the hall. Now you've been hearing
a lot of stuff down the hall in your the
last week of your stay, yelling, smashing of glass, would
(02:57):
lots of shady ladies coming and going and by shady ladies.
Are we talking about professionals? Professionals You've called down to
the front desk a couple of times to complain. Of course,
sounds like, you know, by gum, I am paying a
lot of money for this room, and there's something going on.
There's some tomfoolery and horseplay going on down the hall.
I did not pay no shenanigans. Uh, they've apologized. Perhaps
(03:22):
they sent up a fruit basket. Oh that would have
been nice. Yeah, it's refreshing, um. But the rucks just persists.
And but today when you hear it sounds a little
bit different. So you opened the door to your room
and you peek down the hall and you see this
group of Thai soldiers. They have rifles bayonets on display,
(03:43):
and they're entering that nuisance room down the hall. Get
like so you're thinking, now it's you can't post this
on next door, but it's a good action. You can't
post it on citizen. The tie soldiers they enter the room,
but they have a nurse and some paramedics with them.
You're thinking, okay, this is getting intense. And they all
(04:06):
walk in and there's like a brief shuffle and then
the group comes out and they had their wheeling the
gurney and there's a passenger strap to this gurney totally
out cold like tongue lolling out of the side of
his mouth. You can see the top of his head.
It's a brushy mess of bleached blond spikes. What do
(04:26):
we have here, Billy Idol, You hotel guest, have just
witnessed Billy Idol's three week drug bender come to an
end at the hands of a tranquilizer wielding nurse and
(04:47):
the Thai Army. Three week long bend, three weeks, three weeks,
and that was the third hotel that he'd trashed in
as many weeks. In a minute, if you going to
do a three week vender and this is the third hotel,
think you're not doing this alone, are you? No? No, no, no,
See he's there with his friend. Billy Idol and his friend,
(05:11):
Harry Johnson went to Thailand to take a break from
recording the album Charmed Life. I'm sorry, you're gonna have
to back that up. Did you say his friend was
named Harry Johnson. Billy Idol and his Harry Johnson went
to Thailand and we're tearing up Thailand yeah, just going nuts.
Um what what kind of put this in motion? Is
(05:33):
that Billy Idol. He had a longtime girlfriend, Perry Lister.
They had a kid in they have like a year
old child, a babe in arms, and um. One day
Perry is at home and the baby monitors on. She's
listening to, you know, the sweet coups of Baby Idol,
(05:56):
and then she overhears a phone conversation that Billy I
is having with another woman. Wait a minute, so Billy
is on the phone in the baby's room talking to
another one. I don't know if he was at the baby.
He's like, let me go somewhere private in the nursery
or if you know those sometimes, like the older baby
monitors back in those days, like would pick up frequencies
(06:17):
like maybe he was on the cordless phone. But what's
he talking about with the with his other woman their
new baby. Yeah, he doubled up. So he's got an
eight eight and an eight nine baby, like Irish twins,
but different women women. So Perry is like, obviously not
(06:38):
okay with this, and so she takes the baby and leaves.
He's heartbroken, Billy, because he wants it all, but he's
got a backup baby, Harry Johnson. He's got a backup baby,
one of the two. So but Harry's like, it's okay, Billy,
you know what, you know what, we need to get
(06:59):
your mind off of you carousing around and dipping your
wick all over town. Let's dip your wick in Thailand.
You know, we need to do keep your wick wetter.
So it's like all right, And you know, Billy Idol
had had some drug problems in the past, so he's like, okay.
Harry Johnson says to him, let's go to Thailand. We're
(07:19):
just gonna drink a ton of booze. We're just going
to use the services of a lot of sex workers
and this is going to make you feel really good.
But no drugs. We're not going to do drugs. And
they're like, yeah, of course, no drugs. So a little
bit more about Billy and Harry. They've only known each
other for about a year. Wait, so Harry is a
new friend. Harry is idle make new friends. Well, he
(07:43):
makes them because I think that they got connected through
their love of motorcycles, shared interest, shared interest. Well, and
Harry was a hairdresser, so he's basically like the plot
of shampoo come to life oh so much so, Harry
the Hairdresser became a hairdresser to pick up chicks because
(08:05):
he thought, well, this is just like an inn. I'm
just plentiful, and I'm just I'm just an absolute rascal.
And so he's like, let me be the only straight
dude in a world full of women looking to be pleased. Totally, totally.
But he transitions into another job, which is Billy Idol's assistant.
Not so much. But they love They have motorcycles. They
(08:25):
have these Harley's and they with other guys and they
all ride around together. And they gave their crew a name.
They called themselves the Rude Dudes. Which one is the
name that like a group of golden retrievers wearing sunglasses
would give themselves, The Rude Dudes, golden retrievers and sunglasses
(08:48):
and tank tops. Is sitting on like a the shore
of a lake, cracking back some bruskies, just a couple
of just a bunch of rude dudes. You know, they
got a barbecue going. That's when you tell me, rude dudes,
that's what I'm seeing. I'm not seeing Billy Idol and
some other sort of you know, frosted tips guys on
(09:13):
Harley Davidson's hair dresser who hangs up with Billy Idol
being a rude dude and calling himself that it's easy
to imagine being a rude person. They're a bunch of
food dudes. So yeah, um, so the rude dudes they
decided to go to Bangkok and blow off a little steam.
It sounds like more than that. True. Let me let
(09:35):
me just take a break and collect myself and and
try and get the image of the Golden Retrievers wearing
sunglasses out of my head. And then I'm gonna let
you know how that worked out for them. Cool, I'm
gonna change my shirt. Okay, So, rude Dude one and
(10:11):
rude Dude too, Billy Idol, and I think Billy Idol's
rude dude one, and Harry Johnson is rude dude too.
Number two D two r D two. They go to Thailand.
They want to visit brothels, drink tropical libations, but no drugs,
no sir. They check into the Presidential Suite at the
(10:34):
Oriental Hotel and for the first week they totally stuck
to the plan. They're just drinking themselves silly there and
then dragging their rum soaked bones down to a brothel
and just parades of women and they all they were
apparently wearing numbers, and that's how they would you know,
I'll take a number fourteen Idol and Harry Johnson. By
(10:55):
the end of the night, they may have been wearing.
Maybe they're wearing like a one in a two, like
one too. Okay, let's say they did that. That's a
new that's a new part of the story, and maybe
the sex workers are picking them. I'll take number two.
Don't send me to number two. Um So. Then one
of the other places that they went was Bangkok's hottest disco.
(11:16):
What do you think Bangkok's hottest disco is called um
Nancy pants? Oh no, it's called Bubbles. I was gonna say,
I liked to I like to imagine that they named
it after Michael Jackson's chimpans. The hotted nightclub in Bangkok
is named after Michael jack It's got everything, it's got
(11:38):
weird dude one. So Bubbles. They go to Bubbles. They're
just having a great time, but you know, it's like
alcohol is a depressant and they're getting wiped out with
all their extracurriculars, and so they need like a pick
me up. So they go to this cab driver and
they're like, sir, could you get us some cocaine? But
(12:00):
had branks their rule of no drugs. But you know what,
rude dudes don't really live by the room. Now they don't.
I was the thing. They were going to maybe get
somebody that tie speed whiskey. They're like, nope, straight to
the just sir, cocaine please, And then driver says, oh, yes, yes,
I'm off, and so he leaves, comes back like an
hour later, and he gives them this like eight inch
(12:22):
vial of white powder. Did you say eight? He gives
eight inches of white powder to them, Harry, he gives
it to Harry Johnson. Given Harry Johnson eight inches. That's
exactly why did I know you do that? Sorry? Harry
tastes it. Here's another detail and invented detail that I
(12:43):
like to imagine. Let's say that Harry has like a
super long cokenail and so he dips it in there
and he tastes it and he's like, oh, Billy, this
is not the cocaine. What is this? This is it's
really strong China white heroine. Oh so they didn't say, oh,
excuse me, driver, we need to make a return, could
(13:05):
an exchange? There's been some mistake. If not the drugs,
I ordered know. What they do is they wander around
through all these marketplaces looking for tinfoilo. I need a
little gear. There's a dragon here, I'm trying to chase.
They can't find any because I guess they went to
the wrong markets, or perhaps they didn't know how to
ask for I don't know. Whatever, they don't have any tinfoil.
(13:28):
So they go back to the hotel room and then
they're like mcgivering out because they see a bunch of
candy bars in the mini bar and they take the
foil wrappers and they're like, ha ha, now we can
do super thin paper tinfoil, which is generally kind of paper.
I don't know, maybe like tie candy bars are actually
(13:49):
wrapped in tinfoil. Kay, maybe whatever. That's what they used.
So they that's how they were able to utilize their heroine.
They could they could use it. They get high as kites.
They're just like walking around like zombies. They don't go
to the brothels now they just have the sex workers
sent up to them. They are the brothel. They are
(14:11):
the brothel, but they're just like zonked right, Um, now
this isn't really nice hotel. You know who else was
staying at the hotel that time, The Queen of England. Yes,
and she went up to the sweet No, I think
I'll take some china white knock knock, Do you have
the cocaine? They're like, no, we don't. No. The Queen
(14:31):
was not there, and it was Mel Gibson and his
family coming out of no or coming out of Last Field.
He was there most likely to film Air America, which
is a movie about two dudes and a bunch of heroines.
Ironically it is ironically so Mel's there and um with
(14:53):
his family, does he interact with Billy Billy Idol at
one point must have made it to the elevators and
but he gets in and he passes out, and the
doors in the lobby open up and he's half in,
half out of the elevator and the doors are opening
and closing on him. Just the pool of Billy Idol,
(15:13):
the pool of limp Billy Idol. And Harry's like, come on, Billy, now,
I don't know. I don't think that Harry was British,
so Billy I was like, oh, in a British accent.
And then Harry says, Billy, Billy, wake up, William. It
is time to arrive William. And he's just gone. I mean,
(15:35):
he's alive, but he's just out. And so mel Gibson
and his family come up because they need to go
to their room, and they look down and mel Gibson
apparently was super polite and just said, oh, excuse me,
and then took his family to another elevator. Do you
think he even knew it was Billy Idol? Probably not.
But here's the Okay, this is for yet another imagined
(15:56):
detail of mine. I like to pretend that Billy Idol
opened one eye and mel Gibson's looking down him, and
Billy Idol says, what do you think you're looking at, sugar?
And that's because that's what That's what mel Gibson said
to that cop who pulled him over later, among other
really horrible things. I think maybe that's where that's where
(16:18):
mel Gibson learned it. He learned it from Billy Idol
buying in a pool of his own sick exactly, and
that that phrase just stuck in his head and then
and then in his twisted mind, you know, next time
I'm twisted on drugs and yeah and anti semitism, I'm
really gonna let it rip. So that that's let's pretend. Um.
(16:41):
So the boys, the rude dudes, they're running out of heroine. Um.
And so when you run out of heroin, apparently your
best bet is to go to a pharmacy and buy
up all the tranquilizers. Oh of course. I mean I
was going to say, well, you know, they probably went
to a pharmacy and bought up all the tranquilis. I
didn't they go back to the cab driver. Anyway. This
(17:03):
doesn't mellow him though, Like Billy doesn't get tranquilized. He
hulks out on tranquilizers. They made him crazy. He gets
super angry, so he starts trashing the room. Up until
this point, you know, he's just been lulling about and
you know, just being like heroin, like spirals for eyes,
(17:23):
and it was just you know, now he's just like smash,
he goes nuts. Um. This wasn't as a total side.
This was not the first time that Billy Idol had
trashed a hotel room. I mean, but in two, he
was staying at the Chateau Marmont in l A. He
was doing the drugs, doing the drink as one billy
(17:46):
does at at the Chateau Marmont. Okay, great epic, legendary place.
He's going by the playbook, and he's pretty much helping
to build the mythos of the Chateau Marmont exactly. He's
helping them hit their quota. He then, of course, he
goes he goes over the edge because there are no
rules for rude dudes. So he's going nuts and he
(18:08):
just starts destroying the hotel room. Why because he finds
out that the liquor stores are closed. It's like after
two am, and you can't buy alcohol until six am.
So he just he goes nuts, like I can't wait
four hours. I need my Midori sours. So he goes
crazy and he's just like trashing the place, TV whatever.
(18:32):
He's stripped down, naked and covered in his own blood.
And the manager comes and he somehow convinces the manager
not to kick him out until like officially morning. And
this is because he can't get a drink. Because he
can't get a drink, so instead of the management like
(18:54):
this you know, we don't know. You don't do this
and swatting him with a newspaper. He's like, all right,
I'll give you till ten and then you gotta check out.
So Billy like he gets like he kind of passes
out for a little while, and then he wakes up.
The sun streaming in the front door of the bungalow
that he's in um is open, and he lights a joint,
(19:16):
still totally naked. Now this is so marijuana is not
legal California. No, So he's he's hitting, hitting this joint
naked in the doorway of the bungalow, just chilling with
some jazz cabbage as one totally that's sticky broccoli. And
he sees the cops coming and he doesn't panic because
(19:38):
he's a rude dude, but he's thinking, like, well, here
it goes, I'm gonna get busted for grass. No, the
cops just keep walking. They don't care. Wait what because
there was something more important going on than busting Billy
Idol for could possibly be more important than busting Billy Idol.
A dead John Belushi, a couple of bungalows over Oh
(20:01):
that that happened the night she died was destroying a bungalow,
like you know, just like Death got confused and went
to the wrong door center of chaos. Death is like, oh, man,
so I can't take them both at the same time.
So I just you know, I guess he just snuffs
out the joint. Was like, oh, I gotta blowtown. Now
(20:23):
gets out of there. So anyway, back to our story,
Billy and Harry, Billy's trashed the hotel room. They decide,
we got to get out of Bangkok. This is bad business.
Let's go to the resort town of Pattaya. Why And
I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. Patia Pattaya, Yes, sure,
(20:47):
there's no there's there's no wrong way to be right
in pta Um. Alright, So they decided they make all
they've been making so many good decisions of course, I mean,
just a string of the uns. So they're like, you know,
what would be a good decisions? You know, if you're
a really good decision. Rude dudes, rent jet skis and
(21:08):
play chicken on them, well naked. Oh, the cocaine of
the seas. The cocaine, the jet skis, the cocaine and seas.
So they're playing chicken, and of course Billy crashes and
sings jet ski. So this like family that he had
rented the jet ski from, he has to pay him off.
Do you think Billy is, by the way, just preternaturally
warm blooded red? That way, he's always getting naked, like
(21:28):
doing a toddler who just sheds his clothes like need
to be free. He probably runs hot, you know, And
I think it's just he wants to be liberated. He
needs that cooling air flow constantly rushing over him, otherwise
one of his parts may fall off. And honestly, can
you be a rude dude and be fully closed? I
don't think that's possible. This Golden Retrievers aren't wearing clote
(21:49):
well they you said they were wearing tank tops. Well
that's just formal aware. But there if a Golden Retriever
is wearing just a tank top, he's he or she
is basically porky pig in it. There's no pants, So
that's still rude dude. Uh So, yeah, they're in this resort,
it's beautiful. They've crashed a jet ski. They go back
(22:09):
to the room, and what do you think they do
back in their room? Um to play a sensible amount
of gin rummy, and they talk about their personal lives
and their relationships with the women in their lives. That's
exactly what happened. They helped each other hell the end,
and they did drugs is what happened. Oh, you live
in a fantasy world, dude. They do a bunch more drugs.
(22:30):
Billy passes out and he wakes up and the room
is dark and there are some sex workers with him
and no Harry Johnson. It's always bad and you got
sex workers and no Harry Johnson because disaster that's a
no go. So he's just so mad, Harry, Why did
you do this to me? Why did you leave me?
He wakes up angry with sex workers. He's got sex workers,
(22:53):
no Harry Johnson, and this pisses him off. Yeah, that
pissed him off. So he double hulks out. He just
goes absolutely nuts. He picks up this giant table and
throws it through a plate glass wall of windows, right
and then he smashes the TV, smashes up some really
lovely teak furniture. Furniture right now. Um, the resort owner
(23:16):
not happy, not not pleased. So the owner says, you
gotta get out of here. So they're like, fine, we're
gonna take this rude dude show back to Bangkok. We're
taking our show on the rood later. Let's let's take
a break, come back, and then I'm gonna tell you
what happens next to the rude dudes. I'm gonna change
my pants. Billie Idol and Harry Johnson. Mom, the rude
(23:59):
did they've been uh sent They've sent themselves back to Bangkok.
They've self deported themselves from the time resort back to Bangkok,
and um, they check into the Royal Orchids Sheraton. Remember
we're talking about that. I asked you if you could
imagine staying there, yeah, and I said, no, not really,
but you're going to do your level best. I'm still
(24:20):
doing that. I'm still imagining I'm there in your mind.
The thread count Egyptian cotton. Yeah, is that the smell
of Guardinia there? No, it's Royal Orchids. Um, I gotta
take one of these ropes back home with me. Just yeah, stick.
I don't think that they mind. You're paying that much
for a room, You've better be able to so back
(24:42):
at the Royal Orchids Sherton. Uh. Everyone in Billie Idol's
life is trying to contact him and tell him get
back to Los Angeles now, enough of this. So are
they hearing like international reports is that the lawyers are
going this is getting cost I don't know, I don't
know who's telling him about all the malarkey that's going
(25:04):
down in Thailand. Maybe you know, maybe seeing the bank
account go down and down. Hell yeah, credit card charges
because every time they trash a place, they got to
pay him off, and they have to pay for the
jet skis. His manager is probably seeing like money transfers
and that sort of thing, and he's probably dumb enough
to call manage agents and be like, I need more heroin, right,
(25:30):
and so um, all these people are like you got
to get back here now, this is You've got to
stop this, stop it and stop it bad. And all
these phone calls and he thinks in his you know,
his logic is like, all right, I'll go back to
l A. But I'm going to need at least a
week off of heroin if I'm in a white knuckle
(25:50):
this fourteen hour flight back to l A. He's been
doing enough heroin to get addicted. Well, I think it
just reawakened underlying addiction that makes itself And I mean
that's that's that's heartbreaking, right that like he you know,
he can't escape that. But it's also it's also a
little ridiculous as me. So he's he's like, just give
(26:12):
me a week, everybody, and they're thinking, oh boy, um,
they get a they book a flight, he and Harry. Yeah,
their rude dudes are coming home, going back to l
a uh. And that at the flight is about three
weeks from when they arrived. I've been on a three
week bender. Um it comes time for him to get
on the plane, is like, you can't rouse Billy. He's
(26:37):
changed his mind that Heroin is too good to leave.
I think that I don't even know if he was.
I think he might have been able to kind of
kick it. But he's probably doing all those tranquilizers and
he's just like he's he's hopped up on goofballs. He's
hopped up on Billy Idol exactly. He's high on his supply.
So what happens. You need to get Billy Idol to
the airport, You need to get him out of your hotel.
(26:58):
What do you do? You're the hotel manager, get a
big spatula, yes, and you call the tie army. I
need your help. So this takes us back to the
very beginning when I had you doing that that exercise
and imagination. It's come full circle. Hein, we've made along
(27:19):
the way. So these guys show up in the uniform
with weapons, and a nurse probably in like a classic
nurse's costume and our nurse's uniform, I should say, when
we wear them exactly. So the nurse comes in now,
(27:39):
she had to have used serious tranquilizers if he was
already on right. So I'm sure she had just a
giant syringe and just like plugged it right and do
as rump or how I cat you have your hands
so far apart like it's our cartoon syringe. It's a
giant novelty syringe from party Central. But I also another
(28:03):
imagined detail of false detail that I've created in my
head about this is that she has a holster and
she pulls out a tranquilizer gun and just like knocks
him with a couple of darts. Instead of like she
gives him like stuff that would take down big game
rhinoceros tranquilizing elephant tranquilizer and that's it. So let's pretend
(28:26):
that that's what she did. So she didn't come in
with even the novelty size surine. She just like quick
draw and then he like he looks at her, just
all surprised, double tapped me, why would you do that?
And then off he goes. So then they lift him
up on the gurney, they wheel him out. He comes
to at the airport just barfing all over himself. Probably
(28:48):
still make cool among us, doesn't come to it an
airport barfing all over. They get him on the plane
and he makes it to Los Angeles safely. Can you
imagine being in that first class or I'm in first class?
The smell alone, it's like I paid how much for this?
Do you think he showered in those three weeks? I
mean aside from the time he spent on the jet
(29:09):
ski that was like I think he showered in the
rain of Bangkok. I think he did. So he's he's
on the plane this long plate. He gets back to
l A. He finishes the Charmed Life album as we
all know, Yeah, goes into studio, gets it done a
couple of months. He finishes recording on February five ninety,
So you know it's in the Fall of eighty nine.
(29:31):
Why does that sound familiar, idol, Because the very next morning,
February six, he's on his Harley Rude duding it up
and he runs the stop sign and crashes and he
(29:54):
really messed up his leg and his arms. Oh yeah,
you see the hell out of himself. Totally, totally. I
mean he was just like just smeared on the pavement
and looked and mel Gibson walked up and said, sugar,
how are you feeling. Yeah, so he's just like he's
just a red smear on the pavement. It's arms and
(30:15):
his arm and lager all messed up. He has so
many surgeries to recover and it really I mean the
album is done, um yeah, yeah, but he lost out
on a lot of stuff because of this accident. He um.
You know he was in the movie The Doors. He
plays a drinking buddy of Jim. Yeah, like road guy. Yeah.
(30:37):
He was actually supposed to play Jim's friend Tom Baker
in that movie. So he was like going to have
this big role. But the bigger role that he missed
out on he was supposed to be T one thousand
in Terminator to Judgment Day. Wait, what doesn't even except
Robert Patrick, the liquid Terminator. He's supposed to be that guy.
(30:58):
The whole reason Robert Patrick has a movie careers because
Billy Idle crashed his motorcycle. Where was Robert Patrick on
the morning of February That's what I want to know.
Throwing a spike strip in front of the Harley mohaha.
Now he gets to be the he gets to say
have you seen this boy? This boy? Yeah? And then
(31:19):
he also gets to be in a movie with guns
and roses on the soundtracks Lucky Duck. So yeah, Billy
Idle blows it, he crashes his sled, all goes to hell. However,
he did still tour for the album Charm Life, and
he used a cane for some of the dates. And
then there's that Cradle of Love video. We're talking about
(31:40):
problematic Cradle Love video. He's only seen from the waist
up in that video. That's why he's on the TV
screen and not and they have the whole scene where
she's undressing and doing this. You know who directed that video, uh,
Spike Lee David Fincher. What it's such a bad video
and it's actually kind of finch esque. Now that you
mentioned it, I can see it. It won awards. Yeah,
(32:02):
I'm not surprised. Car and Driver it won v m
as when that was a thing, and Car and Driver
Best Best Video. Um so yeahst in class. And then
you know, later on he goes on to to kind
of like survive. He wrote an autobiography telling all these
(32:25):
wild tales. He uh cleaned himself up. Sure, let's just
say that must be optimistic. I think as of right now,
I'm going to say if he isn't cleaned up, I'm
gonna wish it for him so hard that he is.
I like that about you. Thank you, it's very generous.
Thank you. Yeah. I just want everyone to be okay.
And you know, we all we all kind of have
(32:46):
our craziness. We all have our our demons, and sometimes
they take you to a tie adventure, otherwise not not
so exciting. Um, so that's that's uh. I think our
ridicul This takeaway here is that rock star behavior is
generally ridiculous, and we kind of expected to be ridiculous,
sometimes paid for it. We get peak ridiculous, like from
(33:08):
Billy Idol. Yeah. Um you and I know a lot
of musicians and my friends are musicians. Same. But what's
your craziest debauched musician story, like Billy Idol level crazy debauched. Well, no,
I can't tell that one. Now he will be embarrassed
by that. Uh oh no, okay, I got what I
(33:30):
got one. I can tell that will not compromise anyone's career. Okay.
When I was a boy in Atlanta, I was at
the Atlantos shopping mall. Right, Atlantic Shopping Mall is on
the buck Buckhead side of Atlanta. It's like a nice
shopping mall. So like when celebrities come to town, they
go to the Buckhead shopping mall. Right, So I'm there,
I'm with my dad, and you're like, wait a minute,
how is this the debauched musician story. You're a kid
(33:51):
with your dad in a shopping mall. Stay tuned. So
we're walking through the mall and we see this entourage
just people, and I don't, like, I'm six seven years old.
I don't really know. I just know that my dad
and how other people, all of the adults are acting.
This must be somebody cool. And I kind of go huh.
My dad takes me by the side and he goes
go over there and ask him for an autograph, and
(34:13):
I was like, he doesn't. He doesn't tell me who
it is. I guess he assumes I know who it is,
So that must be important because I can't really see
your dad doing that exactly. Never never wanted to be like, oh,
like I'm gonna I'm gonna go give attention to this celebrity.
That's not his game, right, So that he tells me
go over and ask him for an autograph, and I
was like, okay, pop. And so I walk over to
(34:34):
this entourage and they're still now they're coming at us.
So I walk over and right in front of them,
and I stopped the entourage. The entourage is very kind
about it. They stopped for this little boys looking up
at him. And I basically I noticed amongst the crowd
as it separates, this one figure in a white fur
coat and he looks down at me. And now I'm
six years old. I don't know what cocaine is, but
(34:55):
I know that this man is high as giraffe eyebrows
all right, And he says to me. I said, excuse me,
excuse me, Can I get your autograph? He looks at me.
He says I'm Rick James, of course, no. Yes. He said,
what's your name, little man? And I said Saren And
(35:16):
that's when I realized my dad wanted the autograph because
he has the same name. So I went over and
got an autograph from Rick James from my dad and
he still I assume have it. Because I don't have
that autograph. All I have is the memory of Rick
James highest draft eyebrows looking down at me, going I'm
Rick James of Crosses. It's incredible. So there you go.
(35:40):
There's a safely told debauched musician story. I love it.
That's perfect and perfect, perfect, ridiculous and that that just
you've seen us out beautifully on that one. Thank you
so much for that story. That's gonna stick in my
head for the rest of time. Uh, anyone listening. You
(36:02):
can find us online at Ridiculous Crime, both on Twitter
and Instagram. UM, if you've got a ridiculous crime that
you want to hear about a tip on one, or
if you want to confess, or if if you have
a really bonkers debauched rock star story that can top
Rick James, which it can't, so good luck, you can
(36:25):
email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. I'm
zer Burnett, I'm Elizabeth Dutton. Thank you for listening by.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett,
produced and edited by Dave Poston. Research is by the
Intrepid Marissa Brown. The theme song is by Thomas Lee
(36:48):
and Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Bolden and the
Old Brown. Ridiculous Crime is a production of my Heart Radio.
Four more podcasts my heart Radio visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of I Heart Radio, Zarin.
You know what's ridiculous? Yes? Did you know only nineteen
authors sold more new books last year than Matthew McConaughey.
He was twenty for the year. Ridiculous, Just ridiculous. Matthew McConaughey, Yeah,
he was the most. He sold more books, more new
(00:22):
books last year than all but nineteen professional writers and authors.
That's completely ridiculous. Just go figure. Well, you know what
else is ridiculous? No blay it on me getting so
blotted that you need to be forcibly removed from your
trash hotel room by armed soldiers. What I love this?
It sounds like some people I know. This is a
(01:03):
Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists
and cons. It's always murder free and one ridiculous, Zaren.
What's your favorite Billy Idol song? Billy Idol the bleached
(01:25):
blonde rocker Let's see White Wedding because I'm a older brother,
you know, and I just love the opening of that.
It's got a crazy hook and there's wasn't it nice
day to start again? I'd always like that. Rebel yells
good one Cradle Love, although that video, oh man, is
a problem. It is not aged well. It is not
(01:47):
aged well. So I'll say not Cradle of Love, and
I will say White Wedding. What's your favorite Billy Idol song? Um?
I really like Ready Steady Go from when he was
in Generation X, kind of deep catch. Well you know,
I'm over here with the MTV hits and you're like, um,
b sides of the Japanese leg. It's a good song.
(02:09):
So we're talking Billy Idol. Right. I want you to
close your eyes, m Isaac and imagine Bangkok in the
fall of nineteen So amoys, so sultry. So imagine you're
staying at the Royal Orchids Sheraton. Can you picture yourself
(02:33):
doing that? What's you say for the sake of the story. Yes, yes,
it's lush, it's gorgeous. You're on the top floor of
the hotel. Your room overlooks this river. See, but you
hear a commotion down the hall. Now you've been hearing
a lot of stuff down the hall in your the
last week of your stay, yelling, smashing of glass, would
(02:57):
lots of shady ladies coming and going and by shady ladies.
Are we talking about professionals? Professionals You've called down to
the front desk a couple of times to complain. Of course,
sounds like, you know, by gum, I am paying a
lot of money for this room, and there's something going on.
There's some tomfoolery and horseplay going on down the hall.
I did not pay no shenanigans. Uh, they've apologized. Perhaps
(03:22):
they sent up a fruit basket. Oh that would have
been nice. Yeah, it's refreshing, um. But the rucks just persists.
And but today when you hear it sounds a little
bit different. So you opened the door to your room
and you peek down the hall and you see this
group of Thai soldiers. They have rifles bayonets on display,
(03:43):
and they're entering that nuisance room down the hall. Get
like so you're thinking, now it's you can't post this
on next door, but it's a good action. You can't
post it on citizen. The tie soldiers they enter the room,
but they have a nurse and some paramedics with them.
You're thinking, okay, this is getting intense. And they all
(04:06):
walk in and there's like a brief shuffle and then
the group comes out and they had their wheeling the
gurney and there's a passenger strap to this gurney totally
out cold like tongue lolling out of the side of
his mouth. You can see the top of his head.
It's a brushy mess of bleached blond spikes. What do
(04:26):
we have here, Billy Idol, You hotel guest, have just
witnessed Billy Idol's three week drug bender come to an
end at the hands of a tranquilizer wielding nurse and
(04:47):
the Thai Army. Three week long bend, three weeks, three weeks,
and that was the third hotel that he'd trashed in
as many weeks. In a minute, if you going to
do a three week vender and this is the third hotel,
think you're not doing this alone, are you? No? No, no, no,
See he's there with his friend. Billy Idol and his friend,
(05:11):
Harry Johnson went to Thailand to take a break from
recording the album Charmed Life. I'm sorry, you're gonna have
to back that up. Did you say his friend was
named Harry Johnson. Billy Idol and his Harry Johnson went
to Thailand and we're tearing up Thailand yeah, just going nuts.
Um what what kind of put this in motion? Is
(05:33):
that Billy Idol. He had a longtime girlfriend, Perry Lister.
They had a kid in they have like a year
old child, a babe in arms, and um. One day
Perry is at home and the baby monitors on. She's
listening to, you know, the sweet coups of Baby Idol,
(05:56):
and then she overhears a phone conversation that Billy I
is having with another woman. Wait a minute, so Billy
is on the phone in the baby's room talking to
another one. I don't know if he was at the baby.
He's like, let me go somewhere private in the nursery
or if you know those sometimes, like the older baby
monitors back in those days, like would pick up frequencies
(06:17):
like maybe he was on the cordless phone. But what's
he talking about with the with his other woman their
new baby. Yeah, he doubled up. So he's got an
eight eight and an eight nine baby, like Irish twins,
but different women women. So Perry is like, obviously not
(06:38):
okay with this, and so she takes the baby and leaves.
He's heartbroken, Billy, because he wants it all, but he's
got a backup baby, Harry Johnson. He's got a backup baby,
one of the two. So but Harry's like, it's okay, Billy,
you know what, you know what, we need to get
(06:59):
your mind off of you carousing around and dipping your
wick all over town. Let's dip your wick in Thailand.
You know, we need to do keep your wick wetter.
So it's like all right, And you know, Billy Idol
had had some drug problems in the past, so he's like, okay.
Harry Johnson says to him, let's go to Thailand. We're
(07:19):
just gonna drink a ton of booze. We're just going
to use the services of a lot of sex workers
and this is going to make you feel really good.
But no drugs. We're not going to do drugs. And
they're like, yeah, of course, no drugs. So a little
bit more about Billy and Harry. They've only known each
other for about a year. Wait, so Harry is a
new friend. Harry is idle make new friends. Well, he
(07:43):
makes them because I think that they got connected through
their love of motorcycles, shared interest, shared interest. Well, and
Harry was a hairdresser, so he's basically like the plot
of shampoo come to life oh so much so, Harry
the Hairdresser became a hairdresser to pick up chicks because
(08:05):
he thought, well, this is just like an inn. I'm
just plentiful, and I'm just I'm just an absolute rascal.
And so he's like, let me be the only straight
dude in a world full of women looking to be pleased. Totally, totally.
But he transitions into another job, which is Billy Idol's assistant.
Not so much. But they love They have motorcycles. They
(08:25):
have these Harley's and they with other guys and they
all ride around together. And they gave their crew a name.
They called themselves the Rude Dudes. Which one is the
name that like a group of golden retrievers wearing sunglasses
would give themselves, The Rude Dudes, golden retrievers and sunglasses
(08:48):
and tank tops. Is sitting on like a the shore
of a lake, cracking back some bruskies, just a couple
of just a bunch of rude dudes. You know, they
got a barbecue going. That's when you tell me, rude dudes,
that's what I'm seeing. I'm not seeing Billy Idol and
some other sort of you know, frosted tips guys on
(09:13):
Harley Davidson's hair dresser who hangs up with Billy Idol
being a rude dude and calling himself that it's easy
to imagine being a rude person. They're a bunch of
food dudes. So yeah, um, so the rude dudes they
decided to go to Bangkok and blow off a little steam.
It sounds like more than that. True. Let me let
(09:35):
me just take a break and collect myself and and
try and get the image of the Golden Retrievers wearing
sunglasses out of my head. And then I'm gonna let
you know how that worked out for them. Cool, I'm
gonna change my shirt. Okay, So, rude Dude one and
(10:11):
rude Dude too, Billy Idol, and I think Billy Idol's
rude dude one, and Harry Johnson is rude dude too.
Number two D two r D two. They go to Thailand.
They want to visit brothels, drink tropical libations, but no drugs,
no sir. They check into the Presidential Suite at the
(10:34):
Oriental Hotel and for the first week they totally stuck
to the plan. They're just drinking themselves silly there and
then dragging their rum soaked bones down to a brothel
and just parades of women and they all they were
apparently wearing numbers, and that's how they would you know,
I'll take a number fourteen Idol and Harry Johnson. By
(10:55):
the end of the night, they may have been wearing.
Maybe they're wearing like a one in a two, like
one too. Okay, let's say they did that. That's a
new that's a new part of the story, and maybe
the sex workers are picking them. I'll take number two.
Don't send me to number two. Um So. Then one
of the other places that they went was Bangkok's hottest disco.
(11:16):
What do you think Bangkok's hottest disco is called um
Nancy pants? Oh no, it's called Bubbles. I was gonna say,
I liked to I like to imagine that they named
it after Michael Jackson's chimpans. The hotted nightclub in Bangkok
is named after Michael jack It's got everything, it's got
(11:38):
weird dude one. So Bubbles. They go to Bubbles. They're
just having a great time, but you know, it's like
alcohol is a depressant and they're getting wiped out with
all their extracurriculars, and so they need like a pick
me up. So they go to this cab driver and
they're like, sir, could you get us some cocaine? But
(12:00):
had branks their rule of no drugs. But you know what,
rude dudes don't really live by the room. Now they don't.
I was the thing. They were going to maybe get
somebody that tie speed whiskey. They're like, nope, straight to
the just sir, cocaine please, And then driver says, oh, yes, yes,
I'm off, and so he leaves, comes back like an
hour later, and he gives them this like eight inch
(12:22):
vial of white powder. Did you say eight? He gives
eight inches of white powder to them, Harry, he gives
it to Harry Johnson. Given Harry Johnson eight inches. That's
exactly why did I know you do that? Sorry? Harry
tastes it. Here's another detail and invented detail that I
(12:43):
like to imagine. Let's say that Harry has like a
super long cokenail and so he dips it in there
and he tastes it and he's like, oh, Billy, this
is not the cocaine. What is this? This is it's
really strong China white heroine. Oh so they didn't say, oh,
excuse me, driver, we need to make a return, could
(13:05):
an exchange? There's been some mistake. If not the drugs,
I ordered know. What they do is they wander around
through all these marketplaces looking for tinfoilo. I need a
little gear. There's a dragon here, I'm trying to chase.
They can't find any because I guess they went to
the wrong markets, or perhaps they didn't know how to
ask for I don't know. Whatever, they don't have any tinfoil.
(13:28):
So they go back to the hotel room and then
they're like mcgivering out because they see a bunch of
candy bars in the mini bar and they take the
foil wrappers and they're like, ha ha, now we can
do super thin paper tinfoil, which is generally kind of paper.
I don't know, maybe like tie candy bars are actually
(13:49):
wrapped in tinfoil. Kay, maybe whatever. That's what they used.
So they that's how they were able to utilize their heroine.
They could they could use it. They get high as kites.
They're just like walking around like zombies. They don't go
to the brothels now they just have the sex workers
sent up to them. They are the brothel. They are
(14:11):
the brothel, but they're just like zonked right, Um, now
this isn't really nice hotel. You know who else was
staying at the hotel that time, The Queen of England. Yes,
and she went up to the sweet No, I think
I'll take some china white knock knock, Do you have
the cocaine? They're like, no, we don't. No. The Queen
(14:31):
was not there, and it was Mel Gibson and his
family coming out of no or coming out of Last Field.
He was there most likely to film Air America, which
is a movie about two dudes and a bunch of heroines.
Ironically it is ironically so Mel's there and um with
(14:53):
his family, does he interact with Billy Billy Idol at
one point must have made it to the elevators and
but he gets in and he passes out, and the
doors in the lobby open up and he's half in,
half out of the elevator and the doors are opening
and closing on him. Just the pool of Billy Idol,
(15:13):
the pool of limp Billy Idol. And Harry's like, come on, Billy, now,
I don't know. I don't think that Harry was British,
so Billy I was like, oh, in a British accent.
And then Harry says, Billy, Billy, wake up, William. It
is time to arrive William. And he's just gone. I mean,
(15:35):
he's alive, but he's just out. And so mel Gibson
and his family come up because they need to go
to their room, and they look down and mel Gibson
apparently was super polite and just said, oh, excuse me,
and then took his family to another elevator. Do you
think he even knew it was Billy Idol? Probably not.
But here's the Okay, this is for yet another imagined
(15:56):
detail of mine. I like to pretend that Billy Idol
opened one eye and mel Gibson's looking down him, and
Billy Idol says, what do you think you're looking at, sugar?
And that's because that's what That's what mel Gibson said
to that cop who pulled him over later, among other
really horrible things. I think maybe that's where that's where
(16:18):
mel Gibson learned it. He learned it from Billy Idol
buying in a pool of his own sick exactly, and
that that phrase just stuck in his head and then
and then in his twisted mind, you know, next time
I'm twisted on drugs and yeah and anti semitism, I'm
really gonna let it rip. So that that's let's pretend. Um.
(16:41):
So the boys, the rude dudes, they're running out of heroine. Um.
And so when you run out of heroin, apparently your
best bet is to go to a pharmacy and buy
up all the tranquilizers. Oh of course. I mean I
was going to say, well, you know, they probably went
to a pharmacy and bought up all the tranquilis. I
didn't they go back to the cab driver. Anyway. This
(17:03):
doesn't mellow him though, Like Billy doesn't get tranquilized. He
hulks out on tranquilizers. They made him crazy. He gets
super angry, so he starts trashing the room. Up until
this point, you know, he's just been lulling about and
you know, just being like heroin, like spirals for eyes,
(17:23):
and it was just you know, now he's just like smash,
he goes nuts. Um. This wasn't as a total side.
This was not the first time that Billy Idol had
trashed a hotel room. I mean, but in two, he
was staying at the Chateau Marmont in l A. He
was doing the drugs, doing the drink as one billy
(17:46):
does at at the Chateau Marmont. Okay, great epic, legendary place.
He's going by the playbook, and he's pretty much helping
to build the mythos of the Chateau Marmont exactly. He's
helping them hit their quota. He then, of course, he
goes he goes over the edge because there are no
rules for rude dudes. So he's going nuts and he
(18:08):
just starts destroying the hotel room. Why because he finds
out that the liquor stores are closed. It's like after
two am, and you can't buy alcohol until six am.
So he just he goes nuts, like I can't wait
four hours. I need my Midori sours. So he goes
crazy and he's just like trashing the place, TV whatever.
(18:32):
He's stripped down, naked and covered in his own blood.
And the manager comes and he somehow convinces the manager
not to kick him out until like officially morning. And
this is because he can't get a drink. Because he
can't get a drink, so instead of the management like
(18:54):
this you know, we don't know. You don't do this
and swatting him with a newspaper. He's like, all right,
I'll give you till ten and then you gotta check out.
So Billy like he gets like he kind of passes
out for a little while, and then he wakes up.
The sun streaming in the front door of the bungalow
that he's in um is open, and he lights a joint,
(19:16):
still totally naked. Now this is so marijuana is not
legal California. No, So he's he's hitting, hitting this joint
naked in the doorway of the bungalow, just chilling with
some jazz cabbage as one totally that's sticky broccoli. And
he sees the cops coming and he doesn't panic because
(19:38):
he's a rude dude, but he's thinking, like, well, here
it goes, I'm gonna get busted for grass. No, the
cops just keep walking. They don't care. Wait what because
there was something more important going on than busting Billy
Idol for could possibly be more important than busting Billy Idol.
A dead John Belushi, a couple of bungalows over Oh
(20:01):
that that happened the night she died was destroying a bungalow,
like you know, just like Death got confused and went
to the wrong door center of chaos. Death is like, oh, man,
so I can't take them both at the same time.
So I just you know, I guess he just snuffs
out the joint. Was like, oh, I gotta blowtown. Now
(20:23):
gets out of there. So anyway, back to our story,
Billy and Harry, Billy's trashed the hotel room. They decide,
we got to get out of Bangkok. This is bad business.
Let's go to the resort town of Pattaya. Why And
I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. Patia Pattaya, Yes, sure,
(20:47):
there's no there's there's no wrong way to be right
in pta Um. Alright, So they decided they make all
they've been making so many good decisions of course, I mean,
just a string of the uns. So they're like, you know,
what would be a good decisions? You know, if you're
a really good decision. Rude dudes, rent jet skis and
(21:08):
play chicken on them, well naked. Oh, the cocaine of
the seas. The cocaine, the jet skis, the cocaine and seas.
So they're playing chicken, and of course Billy crashes and
sings jet ski. So this like family that he had
rented the jet ski from, he has to pay him off.
Do you think Billy is, by the way, just preternaturally
warm blooded red? That way, he's always getting naked, like
(21:28):
doing a toddler who just sheds his clothes like need
to be free. He probably runs hot, you know, And
I think it's just he wants to be liberated. He
needs that cooling air flow constantly rushing over him, otherwise
one of his parts may fall off. And honestly, can
you be a rude dude and be fully closed? I
don't think that's possible. This Golden Retrievers aren't wearing clote
(21:49):
well they you said they were wearing tank tops. Well
that's just formal aware. But there if a Golden Retriever
is wearing just a tank top, he's he or she
is basically porky pig in it. There's no pants, So
that's still rude dude. Uh So, yeah, they're in this resort,
it's beautiful. They've crashed a jet ski. They go back
(22:09):
to the room, and what do you think they do
back in their room? Um to play a sensible amount
of gin rummy, and they talk about their personal lives
and their relationships with the women in their lives. That's
exactly what happened. They helped each other hell the end,
and they did drugs is what happened. Oh, you live
in a fantasy world, dude. They do a bunch more drugs.
(22:30):
Billy passes out and he wakes up and the room
is dark and there are some sex workers with him
and no Harry Johnson. It's always bad and you got
sex workers and no Harry Johnson because disaster that's a
no go. So he's just so mad, Harry, Why did
you do this to me? Why did you leave me?
He wakes up angry with sex workers. He's got sex workers,
(22:53):
no Harry Johnson, and this pisses him off. Yeah, that
pissed him off. So he double hulks out. He just
goes absolutely nuts. He picks up this giant table and
throws it through a plate glass wall of windows, right
and then he smashes the TV, smashes up some really
lovely teak furniture. Furniture right now. Um, the resort owner
(23:16):
not happy, not not pleased. So the owner says, you
gotta get out of here. So they're like, fine, we're
gonna take this rude dude show back to Bangkok. We're
taking our show on the rood later. Let's let's take
a break, come back, and then I'm gonna tell you
what happens next to the rude dudes. I'm gonna change
my pants. Billie Idol and Harry Johnson. Mom, the rude
(23:59):
did they've been uh sent They've sent themselves back to Bangkok.
They've self deported themselves from the time resort back to Bangkok,
and um, they check into the Royal Orchids Sheraton. Remember
we're talking about that. I asked you if you could
imagine staying there, yeah, and I said, no, not really,
but you're going to do your level best. I'm still
(24:20):
doing that. I'm still imagining I'm there in your mind.
The thread count Egyptian cotton. Yeah, is that the smell
of Guardinia there? No, it's Royal Orchids. Um, I gotta
take one of these ropes back home with me. Just yeah, stick.
I don't think that they mind. You're paying that much
for a room, You've better be able to so back
(24:42):
at the Royal Orchids Sherton. Uh. Everyone in Billie Idol's
life is trying to contact him and tell him get
back to Los Angeles now, enough of this. So are
they hearing like international reports is that the lawyers are
going this is getting cost I don't know, I don't
know who's telling him about all the malarkey that's going
(25:04):
down in Thailand. Maybe you know, maybe seeing the bank
account go down and down. Hell yeah, credit card charges
because every time they trash a place, they got to
pay him off, and they have to pay for the
jet skis. His manager is probably seeing like money transfers
and that sort of thing, and he's probably dumb enough
to call manage agents and be like, I need more heroin, right,
(25:30):
and so um, all these people are like you got
to get back here now, this is You've got to
stop this, stop it and stop it bad. And all
these phone calls and he thinks in his you know,
his logic is like, all right, I'll go back to
l A. But I'm going to need at least a
week off of heroin if I'm in a white knuckle
(25:50):
this fourteen hour flight back to l A. He's been
doing enough heroin to get addicted. Well, I think it
just reawakened underlying addiction that makes itself And I mean
that's that's that's heartbreaking, right that like he you know,
he can't escape that. But it's also it's also a
little ridiculous as me. So he's he's like, just give
(26:12):
me a week, everybody, and they're thinking, oh boy, um,
they get a they book a flight, he and Harry. Yeah,
their rude dudes are coming home, going back to l
a uh. And that at the flight is about three
weeks from when they arrived. I've been on a three
week bender. Um it comes time for him to get
on the plane, is like, you can't rouse Billy. He's
(26:37):
changed his mind that Heroin is too good to leave.
I think that I don't even know if he was.
I think he might have been able to kind of
kick it. But he's probably doing all those tranquilizers and
he's just like he's he's hopped up on goofballs. He's
hopped up on Billy Idol exactly. He's high on his supply.
So what happens. You need to get Billy Idol to
the airport, You need to get him out of your hotel.
(26:58):
What do you do? You're the hotel manager, get a
big spatula, yes, and you call the tie army. I
need your help. So this takes us back to the
very beginning when I had you doing that that exercise
and imagination. It's come full circle. Hein, we've made along
(27:19):
the way. So these guys show up in the uniform
with weapons, and a nurse probably in like a classic
nurse's costume and our nurse's uniform, I should say, when
we wear them exactly. So the nurse comes in now,
(27:39):
she had to have used serious tranquilizers if he was
already on right. So I'm sure she had just a
giant syringe and just like plugged it right and do
as rump or how I cat you have your hands
so far apart like it's our cartoon syringe. It's a
giant novelty syringe from party Central. But I also another
(28:03):
imagined detail of false detail that I've created in my
head about this is that she has a holster and
she pulls out a tranquilizer gun and just like knocks
him with a couple of darts. Instead of like she
gives him like stuff that would take down big game
rhinoceros tranquilizing elephant tranquilizer and that's it. So let's pretend
(28:26):
that that's what she did. So she didn't come in
with even the novelty size surine. She just like quick
draw and then he like he looks at her, just
all surprised, double tapped me, why would you do that?
And then off he goes. So then they lift him
up on the gurney, they wheel him out. He comes
to at the airport just barfing all over himself. Probably
(28:48):
still make cool among us, doesn't come to it an
airport barfing all over. They get him on the plane
and he makes it to Los Angeles safely. Can you
imagine being in that first class or I'm in first class?
The smell alone, it's like I paid how much for this?
Do you think he showered in those three weeks? I
mean aside from the time he spent on the jet
(29:09):
ski that was like I think he showered in the
rain of Bangkok. I think he did. So he's he's
on the plane this long plate. He gets back to
l A. He finishes the Charmed Life album as we
all know, Yeah, goes into studio, gets it done a
couple of months. He finishes recording on February five ninety,
So you know it's in the Fall of eighty nine.
(29:31):
Why does that sound familiar, idol, Because the very next morning,
February six, he's on his Harley Rude duding it up
and he runs the stop sign and crashes and he
(29:54):
really messed up his leg and his arms. Oh yeah,
you see the hell out of himself. Totally, totally. I
mean he was just like just smeared on the pavement
and looked and mel Gibson walked up and said, sugar,
how are you feeling. Yeah, so he's just like he's
just a red smear on the pavement. It's arms and
(30:15):
his arm and lager all messed up. He has so
many surgeries to recover and it really I mean the
album is done, um yeah, yeah, but he lost out
on a lot of stuff because of this accident. He um.
You know he was in the movie The Doors. He
plays a drinking buddy of Jim. Yeah, like road guy. Yeah.
(30:37):
He was actually supposed to play Jim's friend Tom Baker
in that movie. So he was like going to have
this big role. But the bigger role that he missed
out on he was supposed to be T one thousand
in Terminator to Judgment Day. Wait, what doesn't even except
Robert Patrick, the liquid Terminator. He's supposed to be that guy.
(30:58):
The whole reason Robert Patrick has a movie careers because
Billy Idle crashed his motorcycle. Where was Robert Patrick on
the morning of February That's what I want to know.
Throwing a spike strip in front of the Harley mohaha.
Now he gets to be the he gets to say
have you seen this boy? This boy? Yeah? And then
(31:19):
he also gets to be in a movie with guns
and roses on the soundtracks Lucky Duck. So yeah, Billy
Idle blows it, he crashes his sled, all goes to hell. However,
he did still tour for the album Charm Life, and
he used a cane for some of the dates. And
then there's that Cradle of Love video. We're talking about
(31:40):
problematic Cradle Love video. He's only seen from the waist
up in that video. That's why he's on the TV
screen and not and they have the whole scene where
she's undressing and doing this. You know who directed that video, uh,
Spike Lee David Fincher. What it's such a bad video
and it's actually kind of finch esque. Now that you
mentioned it, I can see it. It won awards. Yeah,
(32:02):
I'm not surprised. Car and Driver it won v m
as when that was a thing, and Car and Driver
Best Best Video. Um so yeahst in class. And then
you know, later on he goes on to to kind
of like survive. He wrote an autobiography telling all these
(32:25):
wild tales. He uh cleaned himself up. Sure, let's just
say that must be optimistic. I think as of right now,
I'm going to say if he isn't cleaned up, I'm
gonna wish it for him so hard that he is.
I like that about you. Thank you, it's very generous.
Thank you. Yeah. I just want everyone to be okay.
And you know, we all we all kind of have
(32:46):
our craziness. We all have our our demons, and sometimes
they take you to a tie adventure, otherwise not not
so exciting. Um, so that's that's uh. I think our
ridicul This takeaway here is that rock star behavior is
generally ridiculous, and we kind of expected to be ridiculous,
sometimes paid for it. We get peak ridiculous, like from
(33:08):
Billy Idol. Yeah. Um you and I know a lot
of musicians and my friends are musicians. Same. But what's
your craziest debauched musician story, like Billy Idol level crazy debauched. Well, no,
I can't tell that one. Now he will be embarrassed
by that. Uh oh no, okay, I got what I
(33:30):
got one. I can tell that will not compromise anyone's career. Okay.
When I was a boy in Atlanta, I was at
the Atlantos shopping mall. Right, Atlantic Shopping Mall is on
the buck Buckhead side of Atlanta. It's like a nice
shopping mall. So like when celebrities come to town, they
go to the Buckhead shopping mall. Right, So I'm there,
I'm with my dad, and you're like, wait a minute,
how is this the debauched musician story. You're a kid
(33:51):
with your dad in a shopping mall. Stay tuned. So
we're walking through the mall and we see this entourage
just people, and I don't, like, I'm six seven years old.
I don't really know. I just know that my dad
and how other people, all of the adults are acting.
This must be somebody cool. And I kind of go huh.
My dad takes me by the side and he goes
go over there and ask him for an autograph, and
(34:13):
I was like, he doesn't. He doesn't tell me who
it is. I guess he assumes I know who it is,
So that must be important because I can't really see
your dad doing that exactly. Never never wanted to be like, oh,
like I'm gonna I'm gonna go give attention to this celebrity.
That's not his game, right, So that he tells me
go over and ask him for an autograph, and I
was like, okay, pop. And so I walk over to
(34:34):
this entourage and they're still now they're coming at us.
So I walk over and right in front of them,
and I stopped the entourage. The entourage is very kind
about it. They stopped for this little boys looking up
at him. And I basically I noticed amongst the crowd
as it separates, this one figure in a white fur
coat and he looks down at me. And now I'm
six years old. I don't know what cocaine is, but
(34:55):
I know that this man is high as giraffe eyebrows
all right, And he says to me. I said, excuse me,
excuse me, Can I get your autograph? He looks at me.
He says I'm Rick James, of course, no. Yes. He said,
what's your name, little man? And I said Saren And
(35:16):
that's when I realized my dad wanted the autograph because
he has the same name. So I went over and
got an autograph from Rick James from my dad and
he still I assume have it. Because I don't have
that autograph. All I have is the memory of Rick
James highest draft eyebrows looking down at me, going I'm
Rick James of Crosses. It's incredible. So there you go.
(35:40):
There's a safely told debauched musician story. I love it.
That's perfect and perfect, perfect, ridiculous and that that just
you've seen us out beautifully on that one. Thank you
so much for that story. That's gonna stick in my
head for the rest of time. Uh, anyone listening. You
(36:02):
can find us online at Ridiculous Crime, both on Twitter
and Instagram. UM, if you've got a ridiculous crime that
you want to hear about a tip on one, or
if you want to confess, or if if you have
a really bonkers debauched rock star story that can top
Rick James, which it can't, so good luck, you can
(36:25):
email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. I'm
zer Burnett, I'm Elizabeth Dutton. Thank you for listening by.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett,
produced and edited by Dave Poston. Research is by the
Intrepid Marissa Brown. The theme song is by Thomas Lee
(36:48):
and Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Bolden and the
Old Brown. Ridiculous Crime is a production of my Heart Radio.
Four more podcasts my heart Radio visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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