Around 99% of the career of John Lydon is about offending everyone in sight. Outside of being one of the foundational pieces of punk rock with Sex Pistols, Lydon was just as happy to mock the social norms whenever he had a microphone in his face, usually spouting his mouth off about whoever wasn’t playing rock and roll properly. Shock has always been a substance for Lydon. But he admits that no one shocked people quite like David Bowie did in his prime.
Although Lydon claimed to be a part of the first wave of punk rock, the punk mindset had been around for ages. As far back as the 1950s, with acts like Little Richard and Elvis Presley, every one of them had the mindset of making the most raucous music possible to piss off the concerned parents of the world, which practically makes them the testing grounds for punk.
Even in the era of Flower Power, everyone from The Stooges to The Velvet Underground was making music that was deliberately unsophisticated. They almost assaulted their audience with how much raw sound they could fit into one record. David Bowie may have started his journey in this era of Flower Power. But his early days as a hippy were about to change when he started embracing his theatrical side.
Since he had already looked like an alien whenever he sang songs like ‘Space Oddity’, his creation of the ‘Ziggy Stardust’ persona was one of the greatest alter egos that anyone had ever taken on. The Beatles may have perfected the idea of an imaginary band years before. But Bowie lived every second of it, writing songs from the perspective of this rock and roll alien. He also plays in character with his fellow Spiders from Mars.
This was years before Sex Pistols had even grown out of diapers, but Lydon knew he was seeing something revolutionary, telling VH1, “David Bowie was a magnificent idol through that period. [He] managed to offend everyone without doing anything specifically offensive. He somehow kept an element of class about it all rather than just being trashy.”
Whereas Lydon tried to be as offensive as possible by running his mouth. Bowie did the opposite by putting everything into his art. He may have been a bit coy in interviews here and there. But when you combine his brilliant songwriting with his campy demeanor and layers of makeup. He was daring mainstream America not to love him.
Are we sure that John Lydon wasn’t taking notes from Bowie when it came for him to become a star? I mean, a song like ‘Hang On To Yourself’ might be a prime slice of glam rock from that period. But with a fast tempo and strange vocal affectations. This was the moment when glam rock seemed to morph into punk.
By the time the punk movement started, Bowie was long gone, having traded in his punk credentials for working on mechanical-sounding music across albums like Station to Station and Low. Punks may have admired Bowie’s attitude to never compromise his sound. But there’s a good chance he had outgrown that brand of music before it had even begun.
