David Bowie: A financial innovator as well as a musical genius

He reportedly used the money to buy songs owned by his former manager.

But they fell to earth in 2004, when Moody’s Investor’s Service downgraded them to one notch above junk because of "weakness in sales for recorded music".

Prudential did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the current status of the bonds.

Bowie's invention even led Newsnight's Evan Davis to ask "Is David Bowie to blame for the credit crunch?"

“The banks were catching on to the idea. They thought: 'We have billions out there in mortgages which are going to pay us back very slowly. Why don't we sell those and get the money now?' So the banks started doing what Bowie had done - in a big way,” Davis wrote.

Many allege that derivatives or securitisation helped bring on the financial crisis in 2007.

Bowie is not the only artist to create a so-called celebrity bond. James Brown and the Isley Brothers have also issued such instruments.

Rick Wakeman of Yes testified to David Bowie’s business mind when he was asked about his best financial move in an interview in 2014:

“Undoubtedly listening to David Bowie who said: 'Be your own man and don’t listen to people who don’t know a hatchet from a crotchet and try to fulfil their own ideas through you because they haven’t got any,'" Wakeman said.

He followed this advice for his Journey to the Centre of the Earth album.

"Eventually my record company in America loved it, insisted it was released and it sold 15 million copies and that really taught me to be my own man," Wakeman said. "Spending money I didn’t have was simply my best financial decision because if I hadn’t done it, 40 years on, I wouldn’t be doing my shows now."