“It’s Just Rock and Roll with Lipstick.”
David Bowie Recalls the Brutal Insult John Lennon Threw at Glam Rock — 15 Minutes Before They Wrote a No. 1 Hit
**LONDON — David Bowie walked into the room expecting John Lennon to hate it.**
It was January 1975. Bowie was recording *Young Americans* in New York, chasing a sound he couldn’t quite name. Lennon was in the same studio, producing Harry Nilsson. Bowie asked him to come hear a track.
Lennon listened. Then he delivered the verdict.
“He just looked at me,” Bowie later recalled, “and said, ‘It’s all right, David. But it’s just rock and roll with lipstick.'”
The insult landed exactly where intended. Bowie had spent years pioneering glam rock — Ziggy Stardust, the platforms, the makeup, the theater. Lennon, the man who helped dismantle the 1960s, was now dismissing the entire movement as costume.
Bowie could have walked out. Instead, he handed Lennon a guitar.
Fifteen Minutes
What happened next defies explanation.
Lennon began strumming a three-note funk riff. Bowie started singing: *”Fame makes a man take things over…”* Carlos Alomar locked into a groove. John Lennon’s onlooker later said the song assembled itself like furniture snapping into place.
Fifteen minutes later, the skeleton of “Fame” existed.
Lennon contributed the song’s defining sonic signature — that high, staccato *”Fame!”* shout, run through a delay effect he’d discovered in the studio. He also contributed something else: the edge Bowie had been missing.
“It was the insult,” Bowie said. “He was telling me I was playing dress-up. And he was right. I needed to hear it. So I made him prove there was another way.”
The No. 1 They Almost Didn’t Have
“Fame” became Bowie’s first American No. 1. It stripped away the theatrics and revealed the cold, funky anxiety beneath. Lennon took a co-writing credit and never looked back.
Bowie, years later, was philosophical.
“He wasn’t being cruel. He was being John. He saw through the glitter and said, ‘What’s actually here?’ And I thought: *Let me show you.*”
The insult became the collaboration. The critique became the hit.
*Fifteen minutes of tension produced one of the 1970s’ defining songs — proof that sometimes the cruelest thing you can say is exactly what an artist needs to hear.*
