Steve Stevens is best known as Billy Idol’s gifted guitarist, but there's plenty more to the New York City native than playing sidekick to rock's most famous lip curl.
Back in the 80s, Stevens worked with Robert Palmer, Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson and on the soundtrack to Top Gun (for which he won a Grammy). He's recorded a flamenco album, toured with Vince Neal, and been a member of three supergroups: power trio Bozzio Levin Stevens, all-star covers band Kings Of Chaos, and Deadland Ritual, the short-lived Los Angeles quintet who recorded two singles before quietly disappearing.
Here are eight songs that helped fuel the teenage Stevens’ rock’n’roll dreams.
James Taylor - Fire And Rain
I started playing guitar when I was seven and a half – I picked up my dad’s $17 acoustic and my older brother’s friends coached me - and this was one of the first songs I was determined to master. The singer-songwriter folk scene was happening right around that time, so all my friends were learning Joni Mitchell and James Taylor songs, and I remember in second grade, I played this at school for ‘show and tell’.
My friends and I were a bunch of little misfits, not your normal kids, and we knew that James Taylor had psychiatric treatment and had struggled but had come through to the other side, so we related to the fact that it was deeper than the average song on the radio.
The Rolling Stones - (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
When you get your first electric guitar, as I did when I was 13, there’s nothing better than playing a song like …Satisfaction; I might have played this for the first time in the guitar store when I bought it. [Jimi] Hendrix and Sgt. Peppers were a bit beyond my reach at 13, but you could plug in a fuzz-box and sound exactly like Keith Richards, and that was really exciting, because you could impress your friends and play something that sounded exactly like the record. My parents like The Beatles, but didn’t like the Stones, so that was a good enough reason for me to love the Stones.
Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode
Chuck Berry was the greatest music teacher I ever had. I got a copy of his Greatest Hits album and learned to play every song on it. His music was fun, you could play it with your friends, and sing along, and all those songs were definitely within reach of a guy who’d just got his first electric guitar. At 13, I was in my first covers garage band and we played Johnny B. Goode and Maybelline and we couldn’t have been happier.
Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven
,Everyone who started learning guitar in the early 1970s had to learn Stairway… It had everything, within that one song is an encyclopedia of guitar. It took me a long time to be able to play it correctly. I thought I had it right, but then I heard my brother’s college roommate play it really right, so I had to re-learn, and that was such a revelation.
The solo is a song within itself, a really important piece of music, and when you master it there’s the same sense of achievement you get from performing a classical piece perfectly. I wish I could have seen Zeppelin, but tickets for their shows at Madison Square Garden always just went so quickly, and the scalper prices were way beyond what I could afford as a kid.
![Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven (Live at Earl's Court 1975) [Official Video] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Ly6ZhQVnVow/maxresdefault.jpg)
Yes - Heart Of The Sunrise
Up until Close To The Edge, I was a huge Yes fan. When I heard Steve Howe, he was the first guitar player who, for me, incorporated all the different guitar styles I was learning within the context of a rock band. I’d heard Roundabout on the radio, which led me to buy the Fragile record, but the song I really loved was Heart Of The Sunrise.
I really admired how Steve Howe orchestrated his guitar parts. Within one song, he’d play folk guitar, psychedelic fuzz guitar and jazz guitar, and it made me think, “Wow, you can do that!” As much as I admired Eric Clapton, I was much more drawn to the guys who orchestrated their guitars.
![Yes - Heart Of The Sunrise Live 1972 Yessongs [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/qq-YjWBIgY0/maxresdefault.jpg)
Deep Purple - Highway Star
I loved Deep Purple’s energy, and the early Mark II records were huge for me. Highway Star is an amazing song, and again, Ritchie Blackmore’s solo here is constructed like a piece of classical music. I always loved guitar players who really wrote for the song, who weren‘t just improvising blues scales over the chord changes.
I didn’t really follow Ritchie into Rainbow, though: once I joined up with Billy [Idol], I was so busy that I wasn’t even that aware of what anyone else was up to. We were inventing our own thing.
Jimi Hendrix - Castles Made Of Sand
I grew up in a really racially mixed neighbourhood in New York, and my best friend was Puerto Rican, and he turned me on to artists such as Tito Puente. Then, when we were hanging out with his friends, they turned me on to Curtis Mayfield. When I heard Hendrix play Castles Made Of Sand it was so obvious to me that it was his Curtis Mayfield influence coming through.
I learned this song note-for-note because it really touched me emotionally; it was so vulnerable. Hendrix’s first album [Are You Experienced] was mind-blowing, and Electric Ladyland is another milestone in guitar playing, but Axis… is my favourite, because the band really hit their stride here.
King Crimson - The Court Of The Crimson King
This is such a timeless record. I’m a huge Robert Fripp fan; he’s such a unique guitarist. Progressive rock was uncharted territory in 1969; it wasn’t all bloated, it was about exploration, and to me, this record represents everything progressive rock should be. In 1969, this felt like punk rock felt in 1977.
I’m really a product of early ’70s English guitar playing, and as much as it was fun to see the Ramones and Television at CBGBs, I was never going to throw out my King Crimson and Jeff Beck and Zeppelin records, just because someone said it was old hat now.
Billy Idol and Steve Stevens will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November.
