From packed punk shows at CBGB to global arena tours, Billy Idol has lived the life he always dreamed of. But with so many years of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, he admits it was also a life that was at risk of ending at any moment.

"You can't do it forever, it'll destroy you," Idol says in an interview with Q's Tom Power. "Eventually you kind of saw the light, but then it wasn't so easy coming to that decision.… A lot of other people didn't."

Billy Idol's ninth solo album Dream Into It is a chronological journey that explores his lifetime through music. The songs were written in tandem with making his documentary Billy Idol Should Be Dead, which will come out later this year.

"I'm 69 years old, so you really can see the landscape of your life," Idol explains. "Doing the documentary made it easy to sort of bounce off your whole life.… Maybe it's even having grandchildren too. Maybe you want to explain yourself a little bit. Maybe even to yourself."

With childhood influences ranging from Miles Davis to Camelot the Musical to The Kinks, Idol has always been fascinated by different kinds of music. As a fan of many genres, he was thrilled to be part of the emergence of punk rock in the 70s.

"The whole sort of expansion of music.… the blues being expanded into rock and roll, and even jazz fusion. We grew up with it all," Idol explains. "We ended up saying, 'Let's dumb this down,' and bring it back to some sort of primitive level with punk rock.… We went beyond being fans and we became people who actually started to move the glass around, so to speak, like a seance."

 
Half of the songs on Dream Into It focus on Billy Idol's youth. One of them is 77 feat. Avril Lavigne, which paints a picture of punk street life in 1977.

"The youth of that time was super feeling it. Like, 'This is it, this is our thing'," Idol remembers. "We were the audience and we were waiting for our own scene.… What was in the air, it was palpable and it was just so exciting.

"And everybody writing their songs, The Clash coming up with their songs, [Sex] Pistols coming up with their songs, us.… It was one of the best times of my life."

With the success of Dancing with Myself and Eyes Without a Face in the 80s, the parties got bigger, and Idol started losing control. Dream Into It has some tunes that acknowledge the lows of his on-the-edge lifestyle — Too Much Fun touches on his drug addiction, and People I Love talks about how he didn't spend enough time with his family. But ultimately, Billy Idol has no regrets about how everything went for him.

"You really start to realize all the crazy stuff you've done over the years," Idol says. "You were right to make all the daft decisions you made, which at the time looked to other people like you're out of your mind. But it came true. I had a bit of a dream, and I made it come true."

Like the lyric of his song White Wedding, "it's a nice day to start again" for Billy Idol. At this stage in his life, one of his greatest joys is seeing the world through his grandchildren's eyes.

"They're so excited to be alive, and everything's a first time experience for them," says Idol. "They love you for who you are now. They don't know your backstory. And that's refreshing as well when you've been alive a long time."