RIP: Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud

It is fair to say I was something of a Bowie casualty back in the day. I had every one of his first nineteen albums before bailing out on Tin Machine II, twenty two years into his career.

Let's record a generous gesture rather than the music per se to celebrate the great man. Bowie's cover, on Let's Dance, of Iggy Pop's China Girl from The Idiot, generated enough royalties for the guy known to his mum and dad as James Newell Osterberg, Jr. to pay a three quarters of a million dollar IRS tax bill and saved him from bankruptcy and penury.

I have never read that the recording's purpose was to pull Iggy out of the fire, but I bet it was. Pure class. Letting Mr. Pop earn the the money was even better, and in a strange way more selfless even, than giving it to him as charity.