When David Bowie passed away, the world lost a really special musician. The greatest artists rarely achieve everything they’ve done alone, and Bowie was no exception. I sat down with his main producer and collaborator in this interview with Tony Visconti [pdf] from our book, Beautiful Teams. The book is an exploration of what makes teams tick, through interviews and stories from people who worked with both extraordinary and ordinary teams. Being from the world of software, Jenny and I concentrated on software teams. But we wanted to go beyond software to try to discover some basic truths about teams. When I reached out to Tony, I expected interesting anecdotes, but I was really surprised (and pleased!) with how much his stories about working with rock stars reminded me of the other stories in the book.

Here’s the interview in its entirety, along with an introduction featuring another highly insightful mind, Tim O’Reilly. I hope you find this sheds light not just on the mind of a brilliant musician and producer, but also on your experiences with your own teams.