I'm quite touched that Lisa Robinson likes our Sex Pistols. Another Well Known American Rock Critic told me that the Pistols had as much right to call themselves punks as he, natty suit and all, had to call himself a mod. But Lisa likes 'em and for good reason: "The Voice of the People" she's heard it declared. None of that superstar aloofness for these boys.

I'm quite touched that Li$a Robinson likes our Sex Pistols and quite surprised too. It's been Lisa, more than any other writer, who over the years convinced me that Mick and Keith and Elton and Bryan alnd the rest really are Stars, that the Rock Scene really does have the glamour and gossip that befit the New Hollywood. Lisa helped create the whole glittery razzmatazz on which the Pistols are now gobbin'.

I'm sure she can live with the contradictions—punks as the stars' backsides, but the poor old English rock press can't. Having devoted their lives to being IN, the lads are now having to demonstrate their good punk faith by getting OUT; the result is mostly gibberish and they've got the whole problem wrong anyway. In a mass medium like rock being popular means making pots and pots of money, it means having your face recognised in the streets of Birmingham, England and in the streets of Birmingham, Michigan; it involves endless hours and days and years of tripping and surely cuts down the time you can spend chatting in your local pub. Stars aren't, People and if they were they wouldn't be Stars. Ian Hunter explained all this in his Diary of a Rock Star (and all these punks sound like Hunter to my ears). To stay with the people means mass failure whether deliberate or not and while there are many admirable musicians who are just such failures, they certainly aren't of any interest to me or Lisa Robinson or anyone else in the rock as phenomenon business.

People vs. Glamour is a scam. The Pistols have been playing a showbiz game from the beginning and why not if they want people to listen to what they've got to say. "We decided", a spokesman for the group announced in this week's NME, explaining their cancelled tour, "it was rather pointless when they don't have a record to promote." Every new rock group there's ever been has pronounced itself as the authentic voice of the people, the reality to be contrasted to the remote concerns of the faded stars of yesteryear. It's just the same with politicians arriving at the White House, they're always voices of the people too: Carter in his cardie, we're going to stay close, baby, oh yeah.

Fact is that faded superstars aren't boring and irrelevant because they've got too much money and don't live on the streets no more, but because they've always been boring and irrelevant, even when they was broke. Forget your fantasies and listen to the music for a moment and what's obvious is that most rock stars have had only one musical idea in their lives. It may have been an idea which won 'em fame and fortune but once that fame -and fortune is won they can't think of anything else to say at all: they either go on doing their thing, whatever it is, for ever—or else—if they've got any musical pride—they shut up.

All of which is just to explain why David Bowie's Low is such a fun record, such a refreshing jeu d'esprit.

Bowie's an interesting case for the punk romantics 'cause he's never been a people, even when no one else knew he was a star. But he has been a working class teenage idol, in Britain at least, and a man of mystery and a movie star and a pretentious twit. None of which seems to have had much effect on his music 'cause I reckon Bowie always did know he didn't have much to say. He needed other musicians and he's used them immaculately. His profile only seems so low this time out 'cause of Eno's ego.

Low is Bowie's Berlin more than his Metal Machine Music. The indulgences are enjoyed less in Eno's droning avant-garde synthesizer patterns than in all the bits and pieces Bowie throws over them—sax and harmonica breaks, wailing wails, fragmented lyrics which sound ever so gloomily profound until you listen to them and realise that this is just old fashioned teenage angst, a little more banal than usual, that's all. The record's even got a rockin' and dreamin' side. The rockin' side is Bowie's Berlin tribute to Eruo-sound ("Sound and Vision" is a version of "Love Is Blue" if you hadn't realised) and the dreamin' side of Bowie's cheery tribute to Eno-sound. Eno's always argued that people dream most when they're asleep: dreamy rock should aim for the same effects as Ovaltine and Bowie mostly gets them.

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LETTER FROM BRITAIN

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Best of all, though, Low made me laugh a lot. What's wrong with Punks and Stars both is that they take themselves seriously. I care as little about Johnny Rotten's problems as I do about Rod Stewart's. They're only after my money anyway and I pay for my hang-ups, not theirs. David Bowie doesn't have hang-ups, just lots of money and if I had lots of money I'd do the same, buy Eno and install him in the studio next to the piano. Eno's more interesting than The People and more soothing. Perched in our little loft overlooking the Berlin Wall we would strum und drag away forever.