David Bowie's work with Lou Reed (on 1972 Transformer) and Iggy and The Stooges (on 1973's Raw Power) may have helped pave the way for punk rock in England, but that didn't necessarily mean that the Class of '77 held Bowie in high regard. In a 1991 interview with [now defunct] British music magazine Q, Bowie recalled his first encounter with one of the Sex Pistols in 1977, and how it caused him to "nearly melt through the floor" with embarrassment.
At the time, Bowie was playing piano alongside his future Tim Machine colleagues Tony Sales (bass) and Hunt Sales (drums) in Iggy Pop's band, touring Pop's first solo album, The Idiot, which Bowie had produced. In the first week of March 1977, the tour stopped off for two nights at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, north London, which happened to be where Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten lived. So on a night off from working on Never Mind The Bollocks, Rotten decided to pop in to the Rainbow to say 'Hello' to the Godfather of Punk.
