“I only had a few notes on the piano, I couldn’t quite finish the tune…Bowie said, ‘Don’t you think we could make a song with that? Why don’t you tell the story of the Stooges? He gave me the concept of the song and he also gave me the title…Then he added that guitar arpeggio that metal groups love today. He played it, and then he asked Phil Palmer to play the tune again because he didn’t find his playing technically proficient enough.”

Iggy Pop, cited in The Complete David Bowie (2004 edition), p.68