How John Lydon destroyed David Bowie’s street cred: “I nearly melted”
Even though David Bowie went through multiple transformative periods in his career, there were very few occasions when he could have reasonably been considered uncool.
While his dalliances with his hard rock group, Tin Machine, in the late 1980s and early ‘90s have often been dismissed as a low point in his career, and with some of his genre experiments in the subsequent decades being perceived as slight misfires, there have been moments where Bowie’s stock wasn’t as high as it had been during his creative peaks.
However, even when you isolate these particular episodes, there is still a reasonable claim to be made that Bowie never faltered when it came to oozing coolness, and even those who have never been fans of his will usually acknowledge that the various personas that he invented for himself were born from a place of stylistic innovation.
Bowie will never not be cool, unless you’re determined to strike such a damning blow to his image that makes him feel as though he’s hit rock bottom, and when he first encountered John Lydon of Sex Pistols fame in 1977, he experienced a moment where the facade dropped entirely, and he found himself questioning whether he was suddenly going out of fashion.
At this time, Bowie was perhaps at his most experimental and groundbreaking musically, having released Station to Station just two years prior, and having divided critics with the now-acclaimed Low in January of that year. If the lukewarm reception for perhaps his most ambitious album wasn’t going to rock his confidence, then an encounter with an up-and-coming star of British punk might have been the moment that sent him over the edge.
In March of 1977, Bowie was in London to watch Iggy Pop perform at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, having recently helped the Detroit punk icon produce his album, The Idiot, and also in attendance was Lydon, who was in the ascendency thanks to a series of riotous concert performances that had helped gain them notoriety.
Bowie later spoke of his encounter with Lydon, then known by his pseudonym Johnny Rotten, with writer Charles Shaar Murray, and revealed that Lydon’s expletive-laden comments were as barbed as one might imagine, all at his expense. “I was in the dressing room – wearing a suit, as it happened – and Johnny Rotten came in, turned to Iggy and said, ‘Who the fuck’s that – your fucking manager or something?’” Bowie admitted.
“Then he took a second look and said, ‘Oh, it’s fucking Bowie in a fucking suit.’ I nearly melted through the floor! My street credibility’s Madison Avenue.” With the king of glam rock having been knocked from atop his throne by a simple comment about his attire, this was perhaps the lowest moment of his career since the music-hall novelty of his self-titled debut album, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that bothered him in the long run.
He’d go on to encounter another member of the Sex Pistols later that same year in Glen Matlock, and while his previous dealings with Lydon hadn’t fared well, at least he had the experience and sense of humour to shake off the punk act’s cutting remarks this time around. After greeting Bowie as he exited his chauffeured vehicle with “You’re a flash cunt,” Bowie simply turned to Matlock to silence him by owning the situation, retorting, “Yeah, I guess I am.”
