Billy Idol lived the kind of life that, even in rock’s golden era of chaos, stood out as particularly unfiltered. A peroxide sneer, leather-clad swagger, and an itinerary that might as well have been printed on a backstage pass soaked in whiskey. But somewhere between the chart-topping sneers and hotel demolitions, he also became a father — twice, as it turns out.
Enter Brant. You didn’t know about him. Neither did Billy.
The public got its first glimpse of Brant in 2023, standing beside Idol as he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. What looked like a quietly touching moment became something far stranger — and far more compelling — when details surfaced in the new documentary Billy Idol Should Be Dead. (A title which, if anything, undersells the fact he is still very much alive and suddenly re-evaluating paternity decades later.)
The story doesn’t start with Brant. It starts with Idol’s daughter Bonnie receiving a DNA test as a Christmas gift. A charming gesture with very un-charming results. “I open it and I’m like, who is this? This Brant,” Bonnie recalls. The app unceremoniously listed Brant’s details, alongside the unnerving note: “Looking for my bio dad. New York, 1985.”
That was, of course, the Rebel Yell tour. A culturally iconic and, evidently, personally eventful time for Idol — a man who, according to Brant’s mother, once crossed her path in the wake of a breakup. “We broke up and I actually spent a weekend with Billy Idol,” she told her son.
Idol’s response? Total acceptance. “I really enjoyed being a dad… I always wanted a boy and a girl, and I finagled my way into a boy and a girl,” he says in the film. And the word “finagled” is doing so much heavy lifting here it should be getting royalties.
There’s no bitterness, no tabloid-level fallout, just a mid-‘80s footnote now given full-circle closure. Idol, whose music often sounded like someone charging headlong into a wall of hedonism with a grin, ends up grateful — even tender. Life may not follow a script, but this plot twist, bizarre as it is, ends up feeling like something close to earned.
And like the best kind of rock story — it’s true.
