David Bowie said John Lennon revealed his three rules for songwriting to him (Guitar Player magazine, (9/14/25)

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https://www.guitarplayer.com/guitarists/john-lennon-songwriting-advice-to-david-bowie

“We were talking about writing, and John said, ‘It’s very easy. This is all you have to do.’” David Bowie said John Lennon revealed his three rules for songwriting to him
Features
By Elizabeth Swann published 2 days ago
The two musicians met in New York City in 1974 and went on to build a friendship that led to their hit co-write, "Fame"

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The two artists collaborated soon after meeting. Bowie had just completed recording his album Young Americans in Philadelphia. But in January 1975, he and Lennon got together at New York City’s Electric Lady Studios to cut two more tracks for it: a cover of Lennon’s 1968 Beatles tune “Across the Universe” — included on the group's 1970 swan song, Let It Be — and a new song composed by Bowie, Lennon and Carlos Alomar, Bowie’s guitarist and the player behind the tune’s signature funk electric guitar riff. Titled “Fame,” it became Bowie’s first number-one single.

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“I’ll never forget something John Lennon told me,” he recalled in a 1983 interview, in which he reflected on Lennon’s death three years earlier. “We were talking about writing, and I would always admire the way he used to cut through so much of the bullshit and just come straight to the point with what he wanted to say.

“He said, ‘It’s very easy, all this. All you have to do is say what you mean, make it rhyme, put a backbeat to it. I keep coming back to that principle.”

Bowie added that “Fame” came about in just that way.

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Much more at the link.

And more than two pages in Tony Visconti's autobiography about that first long meeting between Bowie and Lennon.