The moment David Bowie almost came to blows with Simon Le Bon
The many guises of David Bowie can often lead you down several different paths. For some, Bowie will remain a chameleonic costume whizz; for others, he is a pure musician, and others still regard him as one of the best musicians ever to grace the stage as an actor. However, one of his more unusual figures is that of the serial fighter.
Forget the twinkling eyes, the shuddering dance moves or the enigmatic stage persona, Bowie was capable of delivering a mean right hook that would make Mike Tyson blush. Bowie may well have been one of the finest songwriters and performers that pop culture has ever known, but in his heart of hearts, he was still a working-class lad from south London, and, if you’re a working-class lad from south London, you know how to throw a punch or two.
One of the most famous instances of Bowie wanting to put up his dukes and throw some hands was when he crossed Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose. A fight nearly broke out there when Bowie, a known womaniser before meeting the love of his life, Iman, began to flirt heavily with Rose’s girlfriend of the time, Erin Everly. Prior to a gig at The Cathouse, the band were at the shoot for their new video, ‘It’s So Easy’. Bowie rocked up to the venue drunk and in a mischievous mood. He flirted so heavily with Everly, who was starring in the video in bondage gear, that he would provoke Rose into threatening him, yelling, “I’m gonna kill you tin man!”
Things were quickly squared away, and each offending member made apologies. However, it proved that Bowie was always quick to stand up for himself, and it wasn’t the only time he would come nose-to-nose with a 1980s singer.
Another instance broke out for a much less severe infraction between Bowie and Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon. During the now-infamous Glass Spider tour, Le Bon and Duran Duran were on the road with Bowie. The 1987 production has often been lamented by Bowie fans, who see it as one of the only instances where the performer truly sold his soul to cash in on commercial money. The tour came with a huge production, a big sponsor and new pop heartthrobs Duran Duran as openers.
Perhaps due to the heat of the event, perhaps because of the new and unwelcomed pressures he felt, but during the tour, Bowie erupted at Le Bon and offered to fight him after a small mishap. As Le Bon recalls: “We went to the Canal Bar in New York, and we sat down for dinner. David is sitting next to me, and he managed to pour his red wine into my pasta.” While many fledgling pop stars would have been in an uproar, Le Bon remained calm, “I went ‘Oh, David!'”
Imbued by his new boxing training regime, Bowie lost his notorious cool: “He goes, ‘What? Do you want a fight? Let’s have it out! He got all box-y — I think he was just starting to get into boxing,” recalled Le Bon. While Bowie may appear a simple task to get beyond, his wiry frame and willingness to scrap was a difficult negotiation partner.
Thankfully, no fists were thrown, and the pretty faces of both the leading men remained intact. However, while Le Bon professes to have kept calm during the ordeal when recalling the story in 2022, he also shed light on some possible tensions between the duo, admitting the tour wasn’t quite what Duran Duran had expected: “It was supposed to be sort of equal top billing, but we pretty soon realised that it wasn’t.”
Of course, by the end of the tour, things had more than settled down. Bowie would swear off such an event for the majority of his career, instead pursuing his art in its purest form, while Duran Duran would go on to sell out their own stadium tours for decades. Le Bon, a devoted fan of the ‘Starman’, would even cover Bowie songs during those tours, including ‘Five Years’ and even perform ‘Let’s Dance’ at a recent Bowie tribute show.
The reality of their kerfuffle is likely rooted in the pressures of being a rock star mixed neatly with the threads of humanity within us all. Yes, David Bowie and Simon Le Bon were already pop icons, but they could still end up in a fight over a spilt drink like anybody else.
