Iggy Pop reflects on his friendship and creative partnership with David Bowie in a new interview with the New York Times, saying Bowie, who died on Sunday (Jan. 10), “resurrected me.”

“The friendship was basically that this guy salvaged me from certain professional and maybe personal annihilation -- simple as that,” the Stooges frontman said. “A lot of people were curious about me, but only he was the one who had enough truly in common with me, and who actually really liked what I did and could get on board with it, and who also had decent enough intentions to help me out. He did a good thing.”

Bowie and Pop met in 1971. After the Stooges broke up, Pop traveled with Bowie on his tour behind Station to Station. In 1977, Bowie produced Pop’s first two solo albums: The Idiot and Lust for Life.

“[Bowie] saw me sometimes, when he wanted to voice it that way, as a modern Beat or a modern Dostoyevsky character or a modern van Gogh," the Stooges leader said. "But he also knew I’m a hick from the sticks at heart.” Pop also remembers Bowie visiting his parents in Detroit.

“He was more of a benefactor than a firend in a way most people think of friendship,” Pop says of the late singer. “He went a bit out of his way to bestow some good karma on me.”

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