Speaking with Rolling Stone, Beck offered his tribute to the late David Bowie, recounting his first experience with Bowie’s music as well as the first time he saw him live. “He’s always been kind of a guidepost or gravitational force for me,” Beck said. “He’s someone that you set course to or measure what you’re doing against.” He also added, “When an artistic presence infuses so much, when that person’s gone, there’s such a tremendous absence that it almost feels like losing family.”

On Bowie’s work, Beck said, “He was a real genuine pop star, but he was more interesting than the other ones. You could sense that there was more going on than just a song that’s on the radio and an eye-catching video. He could extrapolate what was vital and elemental in music, but somehow edit out the things that would make it more dated or disposable, and reduce it down to something that was art, something unassailable and crystalline.”

The Morning Phase singer also dished on his “Sound and Vision” cover with over 200 musicians, saying, “It was surreal and insane trying to get that many people to play together at the same time. I never heard anything from him about it, but I hope that it didnt make him cringe or anything. I know he was particular, and its always strange to hear one of your songs covered.”

While Beck says the two never worked together, they did speak from time to time and talked very vaguely about collaborating. “I spoke with him a few times. He was one of my favorite conversations ever. He had an electrical conversational wit and was familiar and conversant on so many things. He had an intellect that was so alive and so engaged. It’s very rare. He was just right there on everything: art, music, new bands, comic books, Japanese temples. It was just everything.”

He added, “I did some remixes for him at one point, and I would have loved to have done more and just been around him more. I wish we could have collaborated. We sent some messages back and forth, and we had some very vague conversations about possibly doing something at some point, and I just figured there would be a right time and place. That would be a dream project for me.”