What was inside David Bowies record collection?

Everyone, at some point, digs deep for inspiration.Even David Bowie.

And when the Thin White Duke needed a musical boost, he turned to black vinyl.According to the recently published “Music Lover: The Inside Story of David Bowie’s Record Collection,” Bowie’s resources were deep and varied.Albums ran the gamut from soul king Bobby Womack to glam rockers Mott the Hoople and rapper Kendrick Lamar.Sometimes, Bowie’s earworms of the moment were off-the-wall.

“There was a Polish folk ballet album [‘Helokanie’] that he basically rearranged and made up words to,” co-author Geoff MacCormack, a lifelong friend of Bowie, recalled to The Post.“It became something on one of his German albums.

I think it was ‘Low.’ He picked up the album at Tower Records when we were in there browsing.”Co-authors MacCormack and Jérôme Soligny (he met Bowie as a music journalist and they became music-swapping pals), say that even the famous Ziggy Stardust is rooted in the offbeat name of another.In the 1960s, a singer-songwriter from Texas dubbed himself the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and put out a few singles on Mercury Records, the label to which Bowie himself was signed.Bowie gave props to the Cowboy when he invited him to perform in London’s 2002 Meltdown Festival, which he had curated.

That same year, on the record “Heathen,” Bowie did a version of the Legendary Stardust Cowboy’s other-worldly ditty “I Took a Trip (On a Gemini Space Ship).”Bowie also “praised” Florence Foster Jenkins, the woman who adamantly sang out of tune and was played by Meryl Streep in a movie based on her life.According to Soligny, “David would like the idea of someone who said, ‘People can say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.’“David realized you could be doing interesting things and not everybody’s going to get it.

It’s like the accidents in songwriting or recording.That famous piano sound in ‘Ashes to Ashes’ — it’s from a key...