So what about Paul McCartney’s portrait of David Bowie, and Bowie’s response to it? This, too, is a story that plays out over time — nearly 20 years.

As reported in Far Out magazine, McCartney’s approach to painting was pretty laid-back. Rather than setting out to paint a portrait of Bowie, he realized as he completed the painting that his colleague’s face had unconsciously emerged. That in itself is not unusual, but it’s not a classic example of a portrait, in large part because it depicts David Bowie vomiting copiously. This uncommon activity in portraiture is what led to McCartney dubbing it “Bowie Spewing.”

As McCartney was planning to show the piece in a 1990 exhibit in Siegen, Germany, he thought it would be a courtesy to check with Bowie that he wouldn’t be offended by it. As Bowie later put it in an interview with Humo magazine (quoted by Far Out), “Paul sent me a picture of the painting, together with the question if I would mind the title of it. I answered ‘Of course not, but what a coincidence, I am currently working on a song that’s called ‘McCartney S****.'”

According to a 2018 profile in GQ, it seems that McCartney didn’t know about Bowie’s cheeky response until his interviewer asked him about it, replying dryly, “I never saw that. But, you know, he was a jovial character.”

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