The world isn’t exactly short on David Bowie biographies, but most trade in the mundane—the "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" tropes we’ve seen for decades.

Enter Jerome Soligny. A French journalist, musician, and author, who interviewed and befriended Bowie since the late ’80s, Soligny spent years documenting the artist's process, not his ghost stories. For his two-volume opus Rainbowman, he interviewed 140 of Bowie's closest collaborators to provide a definitive look at the work, not the gossip.

These books offer plenty of fire and remarkably little smoke. My interview with Jerome is now live at Vintage Cafe