The punk band that Bruce Springsteen walked out on: “He was mortally offended”
Rock and roll and punk always seemed to be at odds with one another. Although punk was cut from the same cloth as the classic rock that came before it, most punk bands were more focused on stripping things down and making the legends of rock and roll look more like pampered millionaires than the true voice of the underground. Bruce Springsteen may have already conquered the music world as a blue-collar songwriter, but once punk hit, he had no time for Public Image Ltd.
Which is strange considering how much Springsteen admired the punk movement. He may have still loved the greatest acts of all time, like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but he could certainly understand why things were getting overblown. Most of those stars didn’t know life outside of limousines, so they needed someone like Joe Strummer to wake us all up.
Springsteen even found some merit in listening to Sex Pistols for the first time. As much as John Lydon was focused on causing as much trouble as possible within a single space, he did at least know how to focus that energy into great rock songs on tracks like ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Anarchy in the UK’.
Once the punk legends ended in chaos like almost everyone expected, Lydon wasn’t about to shut his mouth. This was a man who built his brand off of making music, and Public Image Ltd was just the electronic extension of where he was going. Springsteen could show respect, but he wasn’t going to put up with ridicule, either.
When talking about seeing Springsteen, Lydon remembered that the blue-collar rocker ended up walking out of one of the band’s sets because he was being disrespected, telling radio station Q104.3, “Bruce Springsteen apparently did turn up (at one of P.I.L.’s concerts a few decades ago) for our gig. He was up in the balcony, somebody told me that. I cracked one of my typical bad taste jokes. He was apparently mortally offended and left the building”.
For Lydon, this was probably just another day at the office, though. No matter what band he was fronting, there was a good chance that any show where Lydon didn’t say something shocking or offensive would have been considered a failed gig.
It should come as a surprise to no one that Lydon knows how to say something offensive, but did he really know the guy he was dealing with? Springsteen was far from the pampered rock star type, and on his off hours, he would be more likely to be fixing a car in his spare time and coming up with more songs rather than galavanting around with Keith Richards or Jimmy Page.
If punk took the English music scene by the throat, Springsteen represented what that mindset could be for America. Instead of having to write about destruction and stomping out everything in your way, ‘The Boss’ had found a way to put just a trace of optimism into everything. Sure, everything might be dark now, but that didn’t mean the light would be gone forever.
