The Man Who Sold the Bonds

Three things about BOWIE BONDS, the famously forward-thinking financial instrument DAVID BOWIE and banker DAVID PULLMAN came up with in the mid-1990s, decades before everyone from BOB DYLAN to IMAGINE DRAGONS to RZA to POST MALONE/CAMILA CABELLO collaborator LOUIS BELL started cashing in their future royalties for hundreds of millions of dollars:

You couldn't buy a Bowie Bond. PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE bought Bowie's entire offering in for $55 million in 1997 and kept it for itself.

Bowie didn't sell his songs. He sold Prudential a 10-year security at a fixed interest rate, backed by the royalties from his pre-1990 master recordings and publishing—the entirety of what was then considered his golden years. In essence, he gave up a decade's worth of royalties on "HEROES," "LIFE ON MARS?" and everything else in exchange for an immediate payout—some of which he used to buy the pieces of his catalog he didn't already own.

Though he had the vision to imagine the Wall Streeting of royalties long before almost anyone else did, Bowie may or may not have foreseen something else—the financial meltdown of the music business just a few years after he and Prudential shook hands on the 10-year deal. Moody's Investors Service initially gave Bowie Bonds a glittering A3 rating, but within a few years it had downgraded them to near-junk status. The downgraded rating, which Moody's removed before the 10-year deal ended, would have mattered only if Prudential wanted to resell the bonds, which it didn't. But still.

(Bonus fourth thing: Some financial analysts think Bowie Bonds, by helping to popularize the idea of asset-backed securitization, may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis and the recession that followed. Others think that's a little far-fetched.)

(Bonus fifth thing: When reporters and analysts revisited Bowie's financial innovation after his death in 2016, the prevailing feeling was that it wasn't likely be replicated anytime soon. Because of low royalties in the streaming era, BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC's JOHN KELLOGG told the LA Times, "It’s extremely difficult for someone to try to put together a securitization of future royalty streams of copyrights.")

(LOL.)

MusicSET: "I Sell the Songs That Make the Whole World Sing."

What's in a Name?

One thing about MERCK MERCURIADIS' HIPGNOSIS SONGS FUND. You've heard that name before. You may associate it more with provocative album cover design than with provocative financial instruments. But you may not know there's a connection. Mercuriadis was close friends with STORM THORGERSON, co-founder of the original HIPGNOSIS, and named his son after him. Shortly before Thorgerson died, he gifted Mercuriadis the name and designed the songs fund's upside-down elephant logo.

Merck: "I said to him, 'Look Storm, what does an upside-down elephant have to do with my business?'" Thorgerson called Mercuriadis an idiot and said, "That’s not an upside-down elephant... It's an elephant that is blown away by how good the songs are."

Etc Etc Etc

SUB POP opens a new flagship record store in Seattle's DENNY TRIANGLE neighborhood. But, um, now? "We just wanted to give our lives a vote of confidence," Sub Pop's JONATHAN PONEMAN tells the Seattle Times, "by opening up this store at a time many people would probably find an odd time to do such a thing"... The TOURING PROFESSIONALS ALLIANCE is serving meals twice a week to out-of-work road crew members in Los Angeles, Nashville, Chicago and New York through its TOURING PROFESSIONALS RELIEF KITCHEN. "Food and music has always had such a strong connection," says chef EDWARD LEE, whose LEE INITIATIVE partnered with the alliance to launch the program in December... The K-pop fans who disrupted an anti-JOE BIDEN hashtag on TWITTER may have violated the service's (kind of strange) rules... Hip-hop al dente? SPOTIFY playlists that double as pasta timers... MUDDY WATERS' descendants are turning his Chicago house into a museum.

Rest in Peace

JAMES PURIFY, who with his cousin BOBBY PURIFY had a mid-'60s hit with "I'M YOUR PUPPET"... Prolific Lebanese composer ELIAS RAHBANI... LONG RYDERS bassist TOM STEVENS.