Steve Stevens recalls the day he made an arrangement to debut Roland’s revolutionary GR-707 guitar synthesizer to America’s guitarists. It happened while he and Billy Idol were in Japan promoting Idol’s 1983 smash hit, Rebel Yell.
“We went to the Roland factory and they brought us into a room, very secretive, and showed us this GR-707 with the foot controller and pickup,” Stevens explains to us via Zoom from his home studio in Las Vegas. “I started to play it, and we’re all like, ‘Wow!’
“So we cut a deal with them. I said, ‘Look, if you let me bring this back to the States, I’ll put it in the next video.”
That turned out to be “Flesh for Fantasy,” the third single from Rebel Yell.
“I do believe I was the first guitarist to have one in the U.S.,” Stevens says. “I used it live on the Rebel Yell tour, but we had a great keyboard player with us, and I couldn’t compete with them and all those great sounds. I was still learning this thing.”
Stevens used the GR-707 on 1986’s Whiplash Smile, which would be his last studio album with Idol until Devil’s Playground in 2005. The instrument is currently “sitting somewhere in my storage locker, an instrument of a particular time.
“It had this big ol’ connector to plug it in,” he says, “and it had that long bar going across the top. I don’t know if that actually did anything other than look really cool, and you could hold it. I think they were going for shock value, like, ‘There’s this whole new world of guitar...’
Times have moved on, and these days Stevens is playing the modern Boss GM-800, a more user-friendly unit. “I’m no longer using multipin MIDI cables and stuff like that,” he says. “It’s a tiny little unit. You can port all of the Boss sounds that are available for keyboards into this unit, which is great.
"For years their energy seemed to be in replicating electric guitar sounds — you can have one guitar and it’ll be a Strat or a Les Paul. I needed something that’s gonna replicate strings and horns and things like that, and this really lets me do it.”
Stevens plugs into the GM-800 for Dream Into It, Idol’s new album and his first full-length studio release in 11 years. The album marks a strong return for Idol, debuting at number seven on the U.S. Top Albums chart and number four on the U.S. Current Rock Album chart.
To make it happen, Idol says he pulled out “all the Steves,” a reference to Stevens’ role as the singer’s guitarist as well as chief collaborator since Idol’s self-titled debut in 1982.
So what exactly are all the Steves?
“I’m a guitar player who almost looks at working on a song like a director,” Stevens explains. “I’m not gonna just plug in my guitar and get a good guitar sound and there we go. That’s great for some guitar players, especially if their success is performance driven. But even as far back as the first album, I’ve been one of those guys who paints with textures and colors, and those are the things that really excite me.”
Indeed, Stevens earned a unique place in guitar rock sound design when he used a toy ray gun to create one of the most out-of-this-world solos for “Rebel Yell.” For that matter, he comes from a background that’s influenced by jazz and prog as well as by hard rock, which helps him look beyond tried-and-true formulas for his guitar arrangements.
“I look at the songs when we’re writing them,” he explains. “I’m asking, ‘What does it call for? A bit of acoustic guitar? Some slide-guitar hero? Some psychedelic things?’
“I think in that respect. All of the different styles that make up what I do or make me unique are given a platform on this record.”
Stevens is indeed in exploratory mode throughout Dream Into It’s autobiographical nine tracks, from the smooth tones of the title cut (which samples Suicide’s 1979 synth-punk classic “Dream Baby Dream”) to the crunchy riffs of “77,” “Wildside” (performed with Joan Jett) and “Still Dancing,” the stinging solos on the Brian May–saluting “Too Much Fun,” and the remake of 2008’s “John Wayne” (with Alison Mosshart of the Kills and the Dead Weather). “I’m Your Hero,” meanwhile, weaves together acoustic and even Latin flavors before it builds to another of Stevens' epic lead breaks.
Not surprisingly, the Boss GM-800 guitar synth was part of his effort. The device is featured on tracks such as “77,” “Gimme the Weight” and “Dream Into It.”
“I was adamant that we didn’t use a lot of keyboards on this record,” Stevens says of the set, which was produced by Tommy English, who also worked with the pair on the 2022 EP The Cage. “I said, ‘Let me create what is needed from a keyboard on a guitar, using delays and reverb and things like that. If I don’t succeed, then bring keyboards in, but at least give me a shot at it.’
“I’d say 90 percent of the time it worked.”
Alongside Dream Into It, Idol has also been working on Billy Idol Should Be Dead, a feature-length documentary that traces his life and career. Directed by three-time Grammy-winner Jonas Åkerlund, the film debuts at New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival on June 10.
“They were always around filming stuff,” says Stevens, who isn’t formally involved but is “as excited to see it as anyone else. Billy had such a great history in England before he even came to America. I really want to seem him go back to those rehearsal studios and venues where he started out, playing gigs with the Sex Pistols and all the bands that were part of that scene.”
Or course, Stevens is attached to Idol’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination — his first — but avoids sounding too invested in whether the duo gets in or not.
“I certainly believe that Billy Idol has to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” he explains. “If I’m tagging along, that’s great. But it’s not gonna change the fact that I still have to change my cat’s litter box and take out the garbage on Tuesday.”
Mostly Stevens is preparing to hit the road with Idol — with Jett opening — for the It’s a Nice Day To…Tour Again trek, starting April 30 in Phoenix and running through September.
“We’ll have to play the bait-and-switch, give ’em a new song sandwiched by big hits,” says Stevens, who recently revealed his best and worst gigs with Idol in a chat with Guitar Player. “Fortunately I will say the Billy Idol fans really do respond to new music. On the last tour we did a version of the Rose Royce song ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore’ that was on the 2024 reissue of Rebel Yell. When we played it live, the reception every night was incredible.
"I think if it’s good they respond. If they’re bored they’ll let you know. But I don’t think any of the new songs are boring.”
