Awesome Stories #2

Not sure where I'm going with this 'awesome stories' series but I suppose at least it will make me get them out of my system and bore people less. As I mentioned them both in the same breath in my last blog I'll do the Bowie and Pop one.



So David Bowie and Iggy Pop had met sometime earlier, Bowie was pretty famous but James Newell Osterberg Jr and the band he'd recently left , The Stooges (one of my favorites), were only really known to other musicians and fans of what hadn't even really been labelled punk yet. The year was 1976 and they both packed off to Berlin together to get clean, and wound up writing an album. 'The Idiot' would become Iggy Pop's debut solo album just dipping into the charts in both the UK and US. It also happened to contain the awesome song 'China Girl'

"I'd feel tragic
Like I was Marlon Brando
When I'd look at my China Girl
I could pretend that nothing
Really meant too much
When I'd look at my China Girl"


So flash forward to 1983 and global superstar Bowie is releasing his 15th album 'Let's Dance' whilst his best mate is broke again. So what does he do? nobody likes a handout, so he chucks a new version of China Girl on and releases it as a single knowing it will sell and that his mate will be paid half the royalties. Top bloke.