← David Senra
David Senra
Jimmy Iovine, Interscope Records & Beats by Dre
02:08:19
Jimmy Iovine is the co-founder of Interscope Records, Beats by Dre, and the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy.
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- [00:03]
Alex
I want to start with what you were just saying before we started recording. I was like, rob, hurry up and run, run the tape. You said we live in a corny world.
- [00:09]
Jimmy Iovine
We've gone from fame replacing great, right? So it became more important at one point to be famous than to be great. Because as a currency, you had to be great at one time to get a record deal to do all that stuff. And then I sort of dwindled as time went on, which is fine. But it is absolutely replaced great and what you can do on the Internet and market yourself and all this other stuff, because you can make a lot of money just being famous. But now it's taken another leap, which is fascinating. It's gone to attention. And sometimes that means or contributes to a very corny world. I think social media has the biggest impact that I've seen in my lifetime.
- [01:00]
Alex
You know, and that contributes to people being corny for attention on social media. You think?
- [01:04]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, well, because you can make money and the people that don't need money want attention and they want to be the top of the news or the spot viral or. You know, most of my friends, if they go viral, they're devastated. Do you know what I'm saying? They're like, oh shit. Well, they don't even know.
- [01:25]
Alex
I think not even knowing would be the place that I would aspire to be in. Like, I want to make great work. Obviously I'm public facing because I happen to be obsessed with podcasts. I want to make some of the best podcasts in the world, but I try to just. I mean, it comes from you. I did this video, I obviously did the founders episode on you because you've been one of the people I most admire for a long period of time and, and you have. We did this clip that got almost like 2 million views of your advice about, you know, why do they horses have blinders on them. And it's one of my favorite things. Every time I post it, it still like resonates. And I post things to remind myself where it's like, hey, I'm chasing after greatness, right? And it doesn't matter. I can't look left and I can't look right and worry about what other people are doing. This is one of the things I most admire about you. We were, we spent a few hours together at your house yesterday. Very kind to invite me over there again. And you pulled up this insane video from you from 2004, which is four or five years before Spotify was founded, and you essentially were talking about what you saw as the technological shift happening in the music industry, what was that video about?
- [02:26]
Jimmy Iovine
I always wanted Interscope to move laterally. I didn't want to keep drilling the same hole. I hate drilling the same hole. That's just me. I get bored drilling the same hole. That's kind of why I've jumped around industries a little bit and about to learn on the fly a lot, you know, so. But that was about. Around 2000, we had this little TV show called Jimmy and Doug's Farm Club. It was about uploading your music to Interscope and we would put you on our TV show. And it was fantastic and it worked. And what I really wanted to do was have it a music streaming service of all you can eat.
- [03:07]
Alex
But this is before it was invented. There wasn't a. There wasn't. You were talking about. The ideal situation before was actually I.
- [03:14]
Jimmy Iovine
See online all the time, people talk about shit before it happens. You know what I mean? But that, you know, that isn't. That's 10% of the game. The game is getting it right. You know, MySpace was ahead of its time, but it lost the race. So I was very fortunate to be at least early enough to have Apple Music get on the board. I had Beats Music and it went to Apple Music. So we, at least we became number two. Daniel, who's extraordinary, had the. The wherewithal and the ability to get the licenses from a record business that didn't understand at all what he was talking about. The fact that he wrestled those licenses out. It's so. I mean, you could. You could prove it. Because if you look at those deals, those deals are reflective of the iTunes download market 7030, that was the same business as the download market. So they just copied that, which is not a great bit model for that. Why? Because you have not enough money in the streaming service in order for it to really live. So they got to now go out and find different versions of revenue, right? And they pay 70% or whatever it is now 72%, 70, 60. I don't know what the negotiations have been since then and structured in a really odd way because let's say, for example, you're married, you have two kids, and you have a family plan, and you and your wife play the Clash, the Police, et cetera. But your kids play Drake and Kendrick Lamar all day. Most of the money from your house goes to Drake and Kendrick Lamar. What you're hearing about is that the artists are like, they used to be able to earn a living like that, but now, unless you're in that top chunk of heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy streaming. The money is not really meaningful. So that's a problem they have to fix. You know, there's no question about that. But there's a lot wrong with streaming, in my opinion. You know, it's one dimensional. It's. It's an ATM machine. You put your money in, you get your music. They don't do anything for the artist. See, the artists want to communicate with their fans, period. That's what they want. They want to communicate, they want to market themselves. And the streaming services are still saying, we'll put you on our list if you, if you're nice to us or if you like us. That's bullshit. You gotta allow them to have your audience and let them breathe, which is what, you know, not for philanthropic reasons, but this is what TikTok does. That's what Instagram does. You could somewhat promote yourself. So the streaming services, to me, are minutes away from being obsolete because of that. You can't rub against the artist like that. You just can't. You gotta give them what they want. They're driving this ship. I learned that in 1973. I came from Red Hood, Brooklyn. My dad was a longshoreman. I walked in the studio with John Lennon. I did three albums with him and I got my own apartment. I realized, okay, the rest of my life I'm going to try to meet maybe not John Lennon, but people that can do this and with real talent, and my life is going to be okay. All I got to do is not get thrown out room.
- [07:05]
Alex
And you looked at it even back then as like an act of service to the artists that you're working with.
- [07:09]
Jimmy Iovine
Not for that person on the other end of the glass. What the hell do I know how to do?
- [07:15]
Alex
You have this great line in the Defiant Ones, which I've told you I've watched at least 10 times. And you're like 99% of this. When people say, oh, I did this or I did that, and the music was just like, like it's complete bullshit. It all comes down to the artists that you're working with. Yeah.
- [07:28]
Jimmy Iovine
And today, by the way, a lot of artists are producers like Dr. Dre, Timbaland and some of the younger guys, which I'm just not that familiar with. I've been out of the music business a while. They write the songs, they make the record. But in my day, 80% of it was the artist. You know, Bruce Springsteen wrote the songs, had the idea, had the vision, you know, and you helped, you know, so that's what I was coming from.
- [07:53]
Alex
There's a great point. I'm glad you brought up Bruce, because me and you were talking about that yesterday. I told you, I've been going through. I went through his autobiography, and I really think that book changed my life in many ways. I watched one of your interviews, said one of the best pieces of advice that you ever got was from John Landau, because you were. They were working you like a dog, and you were thinking about, like, leaving, and he's like. Let me tell you, he's like, stay in the saddle.
- [08:12]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, Bruce was torturing me. He was. He says that he said himself in an interview, I think maybe in that documentary, he said, an artist needs to be indulged or something like that when you're striving for something. Um, well, the truth was, is that we were trying to do something, and I couldn't get it right. And it took three weeks to get, like, a drum sound, like a simple thing, you know, but it was really hard. And I got. I let my pride. They brought somebody in to help, and I let my pride get in the way. So I went to John Landau and. And he said, I'm going to tell you something you didn't learn in that neighborhood of yours. Your mother and father didn't. Because he knew my family. My mother and father didn't tell you. This is not about you. This is about Bruce Springsteen and about the record we're making. And I'll tell you, for the rest of my life, that just stopped me in my tracks, because the rest of my life, if you apply, this is not about me, you could really get somewhere, even if you're not that good. Just being humble enough to say that and not thinking that because you had one success, that you're, you know, the Beatles or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or whatever, you know, is that it's not about you. And if you could follow that, it's really good.
- [09:41]
Alex
One of my favorite lines from the history of entrepreneurship actually comes from Henry Ford. And he said that he's like, money comes naturally as a result of service. And some of my favorite entrepreneurs. And what I'm trying to do in my life, too, is, like, I'm just going to focus on making something valuable that makes somebody else's life better. And so create, like, an act of service. And then once you do that, just try to serve more people, right? Spread the product, the service, in this case the podcast, to as many people, and then, like, the score will take care of itself. I won't worry about, you know, the value coming back to me.
- [10:06]
Jimmy Iovine
The whole thing you got to do is, look, there's a certain amount of fame, humility, that's good and it works. If you practice it long enough, you actually become somewhat humble.
- [10:16]
Alex
Do you consider yourself a humble person?
- [10:18]
Jimmy Iovine
I think I have a humble side. Say more about that. I do. Well, you know, I come from a family. My father was. Was a humble guy. He was a long. A dock worker, longshoreman, manual labor. Not, you know, I don't know a lot of people whose fathers really work manual labor. You know, where if it's 90 degrees down the pier, it's 120 in the hull of the ship. You know, when you carry your coffee bags, they're 100 pound apiece, right? All day, so. But he had pride, but he was humble. And if you're willing to give yourself up for a greater cause, and in my case when I was younger, it was an album, right. If you're willing to do that and set your bullshit aside to get someone else's vision, it takes humility to do that. And if you're truly doing that, yeah, I have some humility that I'm proud of.
- [11:18]
Alex
You know, one of the things I love most about Jimmy Iovine is the fact that he spent his career working with the very best people he can. People like John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bono, Dr. Dre, Trent Reznor, Eminem, and Steve Jobs. Jimmy knew, just like Steve Jobs knew, just like Jeff Bezos knew that you always bet on talent. In fact, Steve Jobs said so. He said that you must find the extraordinary people and that a small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. Jeff Bezos set the tone from his very first sharehold letter when he said that setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been and will continue to be the single most important element of Amazon's success. You must build a team that pursues the A players. That is exactly what Jimmy Iovine did, and that is exactly what RAMP did. RAMP is the presenting sponsor of this podcast and Ramp has the most talented technical team in their industry. Becoming an engineer at RAMP is nearly impossible. In the last 12 months, RAMP has hired only 0.23% of the people that applied. That means when you use ramp, you now have top tier technical talent and some of the best AI engineers in the world working on your behalf 247 to automate and improve all of your business's financial operations. And they do this on a single platform. Ramp gives your business easy to use, corporate credit cards for, your entire team, automated expense reporting and cost control. That means the longer you use Ramp, the more. The more efficient your company becomes. I run my business on Ramp, and so do most of the other top founders and CEOs that I know. I hear from people that listen to this podcast every day that have switched to Ramp and rave about the quality of the product. Businesses are saving millions of dollars a year by switching to Ramp. Make a wise decision by going to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Today, that is ramp.com every single person that I've either read about that work with you or has given interviews, they say that you want Jimmy in the room because he'll tell you the truth. Yeah, I want to tell the story because it's hilarious. And then I want to ask you about this. I'm reading, you know, Bruce Springsteen's 600 page autobiography. Book's so big you can work out with a goddamn thing. And there's a. There's a story in there where he's struggling and he's trying to do something new. And he's in la and he invites, like, my good friend Jimmy Iovine comes over, we play this new album for him and no one else has heard. He said, you sat there silently for 80 minutes. He turns it off and then you just say one thing. He goes, so when are you going to record the vocals? Because the music was so loud. But he said, he goes, that's why you want Jimmy in the room, because he'll tell you the truth.
- [13:46]
Jimmy Iovine
I'll give you the setting. He was doing the album for about two years. It was the river, and they worked really, really hard on that. And he was doing it. But because I engineered his album, I knew he had a tendency to bury the vocal, right? And I knew those guys really well. I knew Landau and Bruce pretty well by then. Actually. Part of the story he didn't tell, which was funny, is Tom Petty was sitting next to me.
- [14:20]
Alex
Shouldn't have left that out because I.
- [14:21]
Jimmy Iovine
Was producing Tom Petty at the time. We went over and visited, right? So he plays us a double album and the vocal was buried. So I just said to myself, I got one line to penetrate because I saw Bruce's face and he was serious as a fucking heart attack, you know what I mean? He's at the end of an album, he's exhausted. I just said, when are you going to sing it? Right? And, you know, it was very funny, but it was very Clear. And they did, they went back in and they remix the whole album, which was the right thing to do.
- [14:59]
Alex
But where did you get the self confidence? Because you were, how old were you when you started working with John Lennon? 20. 21.
- [15:04]
Jimmy Iovine
20.
- [15:05]
Alex
Yeah. You told him the truth too. Like, where did that come from?
- [15:09]
Jimmy Iovine
Because not out of arrogance or confidence. It's comfort. My father really drilled in me from when I was a little kid that wherever you go, the place is better because you're there, because you're a decent person. He used you're a humble person, you're a decent person, you're a good person and you're not going to screw anybody in his language, right? So wherever I went in my life, I've always feel comfortable, very insecure in my personal life, which I've grown out of in the list that 72. Hello. Right. Thank God, you know, who the fuck wants to die that insecure? Right. But you know, in, in work, I always had a certain amount of confidence because it came natural to me and nothing came natural to me before that. But when I set at a console and I put the faders up, the balance came very, very naturally and people liked it. So that's kind of where I got some of the confidence from. But, you know, I just, I don't know, I was always willing to say what I felt about music and to anybody at any time, you know, And I, I, I'm, I mean, what's the point of asking me a question if I'm not supposed to give you my answer? I don't, I don't understand that philosophy.
- [16:37]
Alex
It's one of the funniest things. I, I played this clip for you because.
- [16:40]
Jimmy Iovine
One second.
- [16:40]
Alex
No, go for it. Interrupt as much as you want.
- [16:42]
Jimmy Iovine
One of the reasons is, I really don't think I walk in trying to get you to like me because I believe you do.
- [16:50]
Alex
Say more about this. You told me this yesterday. This is so. I feel the same way, by the way, to explain.
- [16:54]
Jimmy Iovine
I mean, that shouldn't be sound egotistical, because let me tell you, the people that walk in a room, when you meet a lot of angry people, they think people aren't going to like them and it's not true. So I'm not saying that I'm arrogant. What I'm saying is that I really deal with a lot of people that are very defensive and, and aggressive because they think people don't like them. And you know that we know a lot of people that are very visible right now that I can smell they think Everybody hates them.
- [17:28]
Alex
And some of them say that privately, I'm sure.
- [17:32]
Jimmy Iovine
I'm sure. But you can smell it. And that's not ego thinking that people are going to like you. It's because I came from a home in a neighborhood where that was it.
- [17:46]
Alex
You have this, like, brutal honesty, but you're good.
- [17:48]
Jimmy Iovine
You're leaving one word out.
- [17:49]
Alex
What's that?
- [17:50]
Jimmy Iovine
Brutal honesty, but an enormous amount of respect. Yeah.
- [17:55]
Alex
I don't think you do it in a disrespectful way.
- [17:56]
Jimmy Iovine
No, you can't do it in a disrespectful way.
- [17:59]
Alex
I don't even think you'd be in a room with somebody you didn't respect because you have complete control over. Like, you're.
- [18:03]
Jimmy Iovine
What happens is you think you build these walls and you get over these fences, right? And you go, okay, I'm on the other side. I'm insulated. I'm this, I'm that. And then you have kids, and the kids bring the world back in. And all of a sudden, if you want to get your kid into school, you're going to go sit across. Sometimes you're going to sit across an. You know what I mean? So the answer to that question is no. So once you have kids, you just go back to zero, you know, whatever. But Bruce Springsteen said it best. He says a lot of things best. You know, he said when I was making music, when I was on Born around, in particular, when he was flat broke, you know, I knew Bruce when I met John Lennon. John Lennon was. Was three years after the Beatles broke up, right? So I did three albums with him, but he was already John Lennon. He had Imagine already, you know, so he was. He was John, right? Bruce was broke, being dropped from his label, and his career was in trouble, right? So he had to. He said to me, he said publicly, he said, I don't want to be rich. I don't want to be famous, man. I didn't even want to be happy. I wanted to be great. And When I was 20 to 27, really 20 to 25, I got to work with Bruce Springsteen on two albums, John Lennon on three, Patti Smith on one, and Tom Petty at that point, on one. So I learned my college years, those impressionable years of college I spent with those four people, and it was unbelievable. It was such an education about culture, about life, about what's important about all those things. And I just sucked it in because I was a. I wasn't. I was a really. No Etch A Sketch. I had not. That was a. I had Nothing going on. I didn't understand anything. So everything that they taught me, I just breathe in. I was lucky that it was them, you know, and I just took it all in and it really set the tone for my life. About what? Because these are some of the most culturally relevant poets of the 20th century, you know, and when I say poet, I mean the person, you know, I mean, not just that they write lyrics, you know, and they had the right attitude about their work and their product.
- [20:47]
Alex
What was the right attitude about their work or their product?
- [20:49]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, they weren't thinking about how to promote it. They were thinking about how to make it, you know, and it's kind of what I liked about Steve Jobs when I met him. You know, I met a lot of these guys since the year 2000, you know, because I got on the road once, once Napster came out, I was like, oh, what's going on? I better learn something new, you know, I mean, because this trick isn't going to work anymore, you know, the whole music business, I felt, was going to be upside down, you know, and it has been. But. But in those days, I wanted to get a feel for what I called at that time the other side. So I met with a bunch of tech companies and I started to get. And then I met Steve. And he was the only one that had soul and similar to the same.
- [21:33]
Alex
Soul of the artist that you worked with.
- [21:34]
Jimmy Iovine
Yes, yes, absolutely. But the only one. He had soul and feel. And we bonded on John Lennon and Bob Dylan, you know, we would talk about that all the time, you know, and he had the same attitude that they had now. He was a businessman. He was a lot of things that they're not, and there are a lot of things that he isn't. But how I it translated to me was you can be in this world and have soul, and you don't find that a lot.
- [22:13]
Alex
Why did you say that when you met him? You're like, he's the only one that's going to get this done. Meaning I think it was. This is pre streaming. This was the. I think the ice.
- [22:21]
Jimmy Iovine
ITunes.
- [22:22]
Alex
Yeah.
- [22:22]
Jimmy Iovine
He's like, why don't you get the licenses for itunes?
- [22:25]
Alex
You did.
- [22:25]
Jimmy Iovine
I helped him.
- [22:26]
Alex
So why did. But why could he do it? No one else?
- [22:28]
Jimmy Iovine
Because he understood. He understood what made artists tick. He understood the why. Most engineers that I've met in my now 25 years of playing in that world is they don't understand the why of the people that do what I used to do. And that's why it was so Interesting. I knew. I knew from then that tech was going to buy all the media companies. Media companies move in different ways, you know, they don't move like the tech business. And when I met him, I said, this guy gets it. Now, is he tough? Is he, I don't know, ruthless? Maybe. I don't know. But I can tell you what, he gets it. He gets it, you know, and most of the people I meet in that world know how to do what they're doing. But as far as the particular thing that Steve had, I haven't met another one that has that. I really. Not that they're bad people or anything. They just. They don't have that. By the way, you can like music. Like all these guys always say, I love music, I love chocolate. But I don't understand Hershey's. You know what I mean? I really don't understand it. Who makes chocolate and how they make it. So, you know, you could like music all day and completely. One engineer told me once we were working on something, was going to be video involved. He said to me, I know how that should end. I love television. I mean, it's not the same thing, man. You know, so.
- [24:10]
Alex
But anyway, Steve called you one day to congratulate you because he said, there's all these people trying to make hardware and they're not successful at it. And you were one of the few people that had no experience, by the way, making hardware, that made hardware successfully. The interesting part about that, one of the, one, I want to hear more about that. But two, why did he call music software?
- [24:28]
Jimmy Iovine
You know that answer better than me.
- [24:30]
Alex
I've never heard anybody. I mean, I guess.
- [24:31]
Jimmy Iovine
I mean, it's treated like, you know, ones and zeros or whatever, you know, because that's how it comes across.
- [24:37]
Alex
Yeah.
- [24:37]
Jimmy Iovine
You know, and whatever that is, you.
- [24:39]
Alex
Know, he's like, all these software guys want to make hardware and they can't.
- [24:42]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, he. He always felt that what was unique about Apple, which was, is that a software company can make hardware.
- [24:48]
Alex
Let's talk about the schools.
- [24:50]
Jimmy Iovine
Why the school is important to talk about because it ties into all of this. Occasionally I run into someone who says, he's the next Steve Jobs. She's the next Steve Jobs. Well, let me tell you something. There's not going to be another Steve Jobs. There'll be some great people, and there are some incredible people around today that are doing something extraordinary. Inventing the. Creating these companies, et cetera. But to be Steve Jobs, you have to truly understand the cross between technology and liberal arts, where Those two things meet and interact. When I had Beats, I realized that engineering, design and culture, the collaboration was not happening the way I thought it would. I thought everybody in the world in tech was like Steve Jobs, because he got it. He got the why of everything that I was doing and the people around me were doing. He understood it at its core. It was in his instinct. Right. What I realized when I met a lot of other people in the tech business, all the companies, they're engineering societies, fundamentally, and I find you can't generalize it. There are people that aren't like that. But for the most part, my software companies don't make hardware. They don't understand, truly understand design. Right. And they can't communicate with it. Right. And that's what I think. What the fuck do I know? But that's what I think. That's what I've observed. Right.
- [26:31]
Alex
And how did you know there's a need for a new school, though?
- [26:35]
Jimmy Iovine
Because I realized it was education. Because I realized it was siloing and education that you go to. Because I see, again, what do I know? I know, like, the feel of young people culture, right? So I see the way kids are being brought up. They're multidisciplinary. Right now for the last 15 years, they're all being brought up with multiple disciplines. Tech, music, culture, design. They're all fascinated by that. So when you go to school, when you go to college, you get siloed. You go to Wharton, you're an accountant. Yeah. They have classes and all that. They have an engineering course you could take, but you take that engineering course with 50 other engineers. Right? So now you're seeing school. Remember we started this school 14 years ago.
- [27:24]
Alex
That long ago?
- [27:24]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [27:25]
Alex
Wow.
- [27:25]
Jimmy Iovine
Absolutely.
- [27:27]
Alex
And you. It was you and Dr. Dre, you endowed it with $70 million to get started.
- [27:30]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. Okay. I mean, we had no idea. One of us went to school. We had no. I. We're not afraid to do things we have no idea we're doing. And we put our own money up. Right? So that's, you know, I don't care who you are. That's a lot of money. Right. But I knew there was a problem and we wanted to fix it. And siloed learning, you're hearing a lot of people doing it now, trying to bring all the disciplines, but what they do is they bring it in through the side door. You could take a course at any other school. Our school is a school of collaboration, which you saw. So if you lean towards tech or if you lean toward the arts, or if you lean toward entrepreneurship, or if you lean toward design, you get to work in concert. You innovate collaboratively, which is what these big companies don't have. They don't really sing in concert, in harmony. And that's what I observed. I observed that. I don't know that I observed that. It's the problems that I had communicating and the problems they had communicating with me.
- [28:46]
Alex
And when's the first time you had that problem? Was it when you were trying to build a product?
- [28:49]
Jimmy Iovine
Beats.
- [28:50]
Alex
Beats.
- [28:50]
Jimmy Iovine
Beats was a product, not by accident, like the ipod. I wanted culture, design, music, right? I wanted it all connected. So I met Steve Jobs, and he was like, oh, this guy gets it all. So I figured everybody did.
- [29:08]
Alex
Did you pitch him on doing the headphones? Yeah. Together? Yeah. What do you say?
- [29:11]
Jimmy Iovine
He didn't say, I don't want to do headphones. You do them. So we went out to a restaurant once. I'll never forget it. We went to this Greek restaurant, and this was a. It was. It was after he was sick and. But we went out to a restaurant, and it was one of those restaurants where they put the paper thing with the. Give you the crayons for the kids, you know, and they could draw. And so we're in the middle of lunch. I said, you know, I want to build this headphone company. Goes, you can do it. You build a headphone company. I said, why don't we just do it together? I don't want to do a headphone company. You build a headphone company, right? So I said, okay. He goes, let me show you how. And he called a guy, took all the food. Good thing I don't care about eating one way or the other. I mean, I like food, but it's not the most important thing in my life, so. And he said, give me a marker. And the guy gave him a marker and he drew distribution inventory. It'll kill you. China. You can make things that are made in China, but they can't look like they were made in China. I said, holy shit. I was like, holy shit. You know, so. And then he would guide me along the way, and he was fantastic, right? But I thought when I started Beats, that I. I could. I'm naive, and I thought I could find people like that, but I found people that are designed. I found people that are engineers, and I found people in popular culture. I wanted them all to understand how to collaborate. And I just said, siloed learning is bullshit. And now we have five, six high schools, and it's a great Place. It's considered one of the best interdisciplinary schools in the country, and I'm really proud of that. But again, what do I know about education? Not, not a lot. I learned a lot in the last 15 years, but really not a lot.
- [31:10]
Alex
Yeah. It started with the instinct that you just didn't think it was doing, being done correctly. And you'll just learn, I know how.
- [31:15]
Jimmy Iovine
To get something done.
- [31:15]
Alex
Yeah. This goes back to you just being a natural born entrepreneur and you just.
- [31:19]
Jimmy Iovine
I just thought, I get something done. I had a guy found. I met this great dean, Erica Mo. I met her, I said, oh, she could do this. She was from the Rosky School. But I just felt instinctive. It's an art school at usc.
- [31:35]
Alex
Okay.
- [31:35]
Jimmy Iovine
And then there was the president, Max Nikias. He was an engineer, but I knew he got it, you know, and we built it. And now it's a fabulous school. You know, it's a really fabulous. A lot of people want to go there. It's fantastic. Look, I work on a lot of things I don't know how to do, but I can get it done, you know, I don't claim to be some great technologist, but I made a great headphone.
- [31:58]
Alex
I think I've studied you a lot. I've talked to you now for hours and hours and hours. I still am trying to figure out, like, you have this collection of. I'm trying to think of, like, what is your, your highest talent? I just ran into Steve Stout at a friend's birthday party, which was really funny because he worked for you for a long time. I was like, dude, I'm seeing Jimmy soon. Can you, like, give me some stories? And I, I, I think you're obviously a phenomenal marketer. Let me ask you, like, what do you actually think your talent is? And I want to tell the story that Steve told me.
- [32:22]
Jimmy Iovine
My talent, whatever it is, I'm learning more about now because I'm not running the companies. So when I used to run the companies, like when I ran Interscope, when I ran Beats, and when I ran what became Apple Music, I just woke up in the day and did everything by my instinct, whatever that was in the morning, you know, it's a little more difficult to do it at an Apple than it was when they were on my own companies because they have a giant infrastructure and, and they have, you know, I always felt like I was a bit on the tail that's wagging the dog. You know, I used to live on the dog and the whole thing about.
- [33:04]
Alex
But when you were running the company, you wake up and just instinct purely.
- [33:08]
Jimmy Iovine
Or listen to people, you know, and grab a piece from here and a piece from there, you know, just. And synthesize.
- [33:14]
Alex
Did you go after difficult things on purpose?
- [33:16]
Jimmy Iovine
I only went about what I felt. When Dre said to me that.
- [33:20]
Alex
That was one example. Because Dre comes to you. He plays. Is it the Chronic? What is he playing for you the very first time? Or is like some Chronic finished? And you're. I think you asked him like, who engineered this?
- [33:32]
Jimmy Iovine
Right?
- [33:32]
Alex
And he's like, I did. And he's like, well, who produced it? He's like, I did. And then you're like, oh. Within a few minutes of meeting him, he said something like, he's going to define Interscope, right? But then he had a. Like, a very hairy situation you had to get him out of. Right.
- [33:43]
Jimmy Iovine
It was impossible. It was everything. You watching these shows and stuff, you think it is.
- [33:48]
Alex
Okay, so what was going on?
- [33:50]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, what happened was I connected dots, which I think I do really well. I saw him and Snoop. I heard. Finally heard hip hop with the 808 bass, that big bass out. Producers couldn't harness it. All the records, you know, whether it was Public Enemy or any of those records made in New York, they couldn't harness that. And to where I understood it, Dre was the first person to really harness it and give it the power that it deserved, because he gave it the clarity that it deserved. It was very hard to do. So I understood that. And when I saw that combined with Snoop and Dre and the image that they were projecting and they were talking about, I said, this is the Rolling Stones. I said, this is Mick and Keith. It scares you, but the music brings you in. So I'm like, this has to work. I didn't have to understand the music, which I didn't at the beginning. Now I think I do. You know, I mean, not as much as some of the pioneers of hip hop, but I. I understand it.
- [35:03]
Alex
Were there lawsuits? Were there signed? Like, what did you.
- [35:06]
Jimmy Iovine
There were three lawsuits. There was a RICO lawsuit, right? Rico that came with Sony. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was.
- [35:14]
Alex
Is rico. Money laundering?
- [35:15]
Jimmy Iovine
What is the.
- [35:17]
Alex
Gangster is gangster. Okay, okay. That's right.
- [35:18]
Jimmy Iovine
That was from the easy thing.
- [35:20]
Alex
Oh, okay, Right.
- [35:21]
Jimmy Iovine
It's in all the movies. I'm not talking out of school. So there was a RICO lawsuit. There was a guy in prison who put. Supposedly put up the money for one of the albums, the first album. So he was suing them from prison. They were Sony, and there was a company that Distributed Eazy's label that was suing as well or challenging as well. So I had to settle all those things out, which is kind of like if you see something great, but there's T. Rex sitting on it, and most people would avoid saying, look, there must be something else to eat.
- [36:04]
Alex
And you just know, I'm only one to work with. Great.
- [36:06]
Jimmy Iovine
If I see something new and great and unusual, I can't stop. That's why Beats attracted me so much. I looked at it and said, oh, shit. People are wearing these things on their head, and they look like medical equipment. There's nothing attractive about a headphone.
- [36:27]
Alex
The funny thing about that is there was opportunity hiding in plain sight. And you're like, what's our competition, guys? Bose. It's. They want to. There's no music. It's like silence.
- [36:35]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, their marketing thing was, you can go to sleep with us. I'm like, that's ridiculous. What a marketing thing, right? Keep. You know. So I said, no, no, no, no. We want to wake you up.
- [36:47]
Alex
Okay, hold on. I want to pause here, because I text Daniel E. Right? Founder, Spotify. And I was like, tell me, like, give me some ideas, because he's known you forever. He told me the first time we ever had dinner. He's like, I only lost two deals in my life, and both of them were to Jimmy, I think, which is hilarious.
- [37:02]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, that just means my bullshit was better than his, you know, it doesn't mean he's so. He's so. He. What he did in the music business, man, you have. No one has any idea how hard it was. Patti Smith had an incredible line, is people have the power. The power to dream, to rule, and to wrestle the world from fools.
- [37:25]
Alex
Ooh, that's good.
- [37:26]
Jimmy Iovine
Okay. That's what Daniel did. Okay. So anytime you get a guy like that, I didn't beat him at anything. I just. I just. I just must have been slicker than him.
- [37:37]
Alex
That's, to me, in my opinion, wildly underrated. Still to this day, one of the most fascinating people to me, but he's like, ask him about the origins of Beats. Did you do the headphones before you did the streaming service?
- [37:48]
Jimmy Iovine
Yes.
- [37:50]
Alex
So hardware first. That was. Initial idea.
- [37:53]
Jimmy Iovine
It was all about moving Interscope laterally. I think companies should move laterally, and they don't. Most companies don't move laterally out of fear. That's why what I'm doing with Complex right now, which we'll talk about in a minute, I got the opportunity. I came out of retirement a bit because I Got another bite at the apple because I couldn't finish my thought on streaming.
- [38:17]
Alex
Well, what do you mean by lateral, though?
- [38:19]
Jimmy Iovine
Like, for example, Interscope was a music company, right? I wanted to make the hardware to listen to it. I wanted to have a streaming service. I wanted to distribute my own music. So I wanted to have the complete thought. I wanted to make the music, have the artists that make the music distribute the music, and then have the instrument you listen to it on. So that's moving laterally. I would also want, which I'm doing now with Complex, to have E Commerce, so artists can communicate in different ways with their audience.
- [38:52]
Alex
So these businesses that other artists. Let's just use musicians, for example, are starting now. You were the only one that did it inside of a record label.
- [39:00]
Jimmy Iovine
That's right.
- [39:00]
Alex
So you have this idea for beats. You see this opportunity. Obviously, Dre is known for the best sonics, so it makes perfect alignment with him. This was Steve Stout's point to me, where he's like, jimmy's just a phenomenal marketer. I'm going to come back to beach real quick. I want to close that loop where he's like. Ask him about the fact that he's bringing these super controversial artists at the time, they're not that well known. I think it was Dre and Snoop and they wouldn't play him on the top 40. And he says, jimmy did something genius to get Dre and Snoop played on the top 40. What did you do?
- [39:32]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, I just considered it reflex, you know. What we did was I said, okay, you gotta understand, whenever there's gatekeepers on anything, your job is to figure out a way around the gatekeeper with something you really believe in. Whether the gatekeepers are people at your own company or people in, you know, at radio stations or at wherever the gatekeepers are, your job is to skate around them, right? So I said, okay, let's do this. Let's make a minute commercial of G Thang, which was Dre's first single with Snoop, right? I said, let's make a 60 second spot. Now, I don't want anything said before it or after it. I just want it to play.
- [40:20]
Alex
The radio's not gonna play my song. That's fine. I'm going to buy ad space on the radio and play the song.
- [40:26]
Jimmy Iovine
Yes. And we did, on the 50 top market. Spent a fortune doing it. And then we simultaneously, we got it on MTV because they didn't play rap music either. They played MC Hammer, but they didn't play, I guess you call it Gangster Rap or whatever music is today, they didn't play that then, right?
- [40:43]
Alex
How'd you get on mtv?
- [40:45]
Jimmy Iovine
I said, this is the same thing as Guns N Roses, period.
- [40:50]
Alex
You said that twice now. You said snoop or Dre is Mick and Keith. You say, this is just like Guns N Roses. What does that mean?
- [40:55]
Jimmy Iovine
It means that it's counterculture, that people are going to relate to it. People that feel marginalized and feel isolated and feel angry. And it represents an entire culture that people are going to relate to. And that's what Guns N Roses did. That's what the Rolling Stones did. That's what Nirvana did. That's what James Brown did. It's that thing, you know, that moves people. So, yeah, I instinctively felt that.
- [41:22]
Alex
So who do you go to at mtv? You just go to the top guy. Like, how do you actually get it done?
- [41:26]
Jimmy Iovine
I said, play this. He goes, I can't play this. And he had the remote in his hand, his TV was on behind him. I said, I can't, because we play this. And it was three women singing. And then the next video was a guy and, you know, and all this. But it was pure pop music, right? And I said. He said, I don't know how to program. I said, put it next to Guns N' Roses, and if it doesn't work, please never play an Interscope record again.
- [41:54]
Alex
Wow.
- [41:54]
Jimmy Iovine
So he put it on.
- [41:55]
Alex
You had that much belief.
- [41:56]
Jimmy Iovine
You have to be talented to know that. I mean, it's just fucking obvious, you know what I mean? You know, that's Rick Rubin. He knew it before me, right? So. But what it caused was all these kids, sons of senators, daughters of senators, congresspeople, business people, they came home in one of those records. And when that happened, that's what led to the whole falling out with Time Warner that we had when week when Interscope got thrown out of Time Warner over lyrics. Because Bob Dole, Dolores Tucker, Bill Bennett, right, who was the education star, whatever he was at the time. You know, all those guys. Bill Clinton went on the floor of the Senate and, you know, Bob Dole said we were. Somebody said we were a mustard gas factory or something like that.
- [42:52]
Alex
Yeah, yeah, I remember that.
- [42:53]
Jimmy Iovine
But I've been involved with. And I was involved with John Lennon. They tried to throw him out when I was doing his album. Nixon was lit. He had to go to court every day during Walls and Bridges because Nixon was trying to throw him out of the country. That was real.
- [43:07]
Alex
Yeah, that's. That's insane.
- [43:08]
Jimmy Iovine
Was real. Yeah, because he was against the war, right? So I'm not. I'm used to that. I'm like, so what? You know, I mean, yeah, I didn't. I didn't care what those people were saying.
- [43:17]
Alex
Yeah, so you got him on mtv, you got him on the radio. Once you played the ads on the radio, then people start calling. Of course, they start calling the radio stations, like, play that song. Of course that is an ad. No one else is doing this.
- [43:33]
Jimmy Iovine
Only because I wouldn't do anything illegal, because I'm psychotic about doing anything that is illegal or anything. So I just said, this is legal. Let's do this. I mean, the record business, God knows what they did to get records played, but they weren't going to play these records. There was no chance. Look, there's nobody better at this. No one. The greatest record executive of all time. Of all time is a guy named Barry Gordy.
- [44:01]
Alex
I heard the name, but know nothing about him.
- [44:03]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, he founded Motown, okay, during Jim Crow. You know what I mean? So his artists weren't even allowed off the bus. They were considered race records. He had to get those records played. He had to get that into the white market. What he did. Talk about wrestling the earth from fools. Barry Gorgy miracle, what he did. And he made the greatest music in the world. So when he got. When he pushed, it stuck. See, if you know what you have is going to stick, and if you're passionate about it, then just break through that wall, because there's going to be a lot of resistance. But if it sticks, you win. Yeah, it has to stick, though.
- [44:49]
Alex
There's actually a lesson for entrepreneurs in there, too, because I reread Jeff Bezos shareholder letters like three or four times. He's like one of the people, one of the entrepreneurs I most admire, and he realized he had a sticky product with Amazon because he saw that once you become an Amazon customer, you not only do you order, but you reorder and then you ask Amazon to carry more things. And so he tells a story of this guy emailing him, or he emailed, like, you know, a thousand customers saying, hey, you know, you bought a book. What else did you buy? And one guy goes, can you sell me windshield wipers? And he's like, oh, my God, we're gonna be able to sell anything like this. And so he goes, okay, if we have high retention with my product, which he knew at Amazon, that means I have a winning system. That means I need to invest heavily in introductions to new customers, right? Because the 10 million or whatever the number is, let's say you spend 100 million in new customer introductions and advertising, marketing this year. It's like, that's. These people are gonna be with me next year, the year after a decade.
- [45:39]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, if you. If you're an entrepreneur and you see something work, you can extrapolate what else will work, right? And that's what he did. But I mean, these guys have built businesses that dwarf anything I've ever even dreamed of, you know, but they can extrapolate, you know, like, for example, Beats, right? We have this. I was always frustrated that the music industry didn't have customers. It drove me crazy.
- [46:09]
Alex
What do you mean they don't have customers?
- [46:10]
Jimmy Iovine
They don't have a customer. They still don't have a customer.
- [46:13]
Alex
They don't have a relationship with the end user. Right.
- [46:15]
Jimmy Iovine
Instagram does. TikTok does. MTV. TV did constantly. The music. The streaming services do. For some reason, the music industry is allergic to a customer. Okay. And I don't know why, but they don't have a end user.
- [46:33]
Alex
What was the first time they outsourced the. The relationship with the end customer?
- [46:37]
Jimmy Iovine
Is this just always.
- [46:39]
Alex
So even when you're selling it to, like, right through record studio, record stores.
- [46:42]
Jimmy Iovine
Back in the day, radio and tv.
- [46:44]
Alex
You would have controlled every song. When you said you want to go lateral, the entrepreneurial version of this, a business version, you want to vertically integrate. You want to vertically integrate all the way down. So you would have even had Interscope if there's.
- [46:56]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, but I want to vertically integrate, if you call it that, to fashion. I mean, because you guys are controlling.
- [47:03]
Alex
The culture, they're having the influence.
- [47:05]
Jimmy Iovine
We're causing it.
- [47:06]
Alex
Causing it.
- [47:07]
Jimmy Iovine
My artists are causing the culture. Artists that I work with, rather putting it clearly. For example, we put Beats in all of our music videos when we first started.
- [47:19]
Alex
You were insistent and relentless with this.
- [47:22]
Jimmy Iovine
So what? But, you know, but I put a lot more money in the videos. Everybody benefited, you know what I mean? And it was a time that the industry was desperate. So, yeah, man, you know, we did that. And it worked.
- [47:36]
Alex
Worked is an understatement.
- [47:37]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, yeah, it worked, you know, and we built the number one headphone company in the world. We would know. When we sold to Apple, we were number one in 50 countries, man. We were number one in Germany and Sennheiser was number two. We were number one in Japan and Sony was number two. I still can't believe it, to be honest with you.
- [47:53]
Alex
This is. Goes back to, like, you have this instinct. I'm still trying to figure out your web of really special talents and Marketing is definitely one of them. You have this weird instinct to just.
- [48:03]
Jimmy Iovine
Make the right Marketing is empathy.
- [48:06]
Alex
Say more.
- [48:07]
Jimmy Iovine
It's empathy. Marketing is understanding who you're trying to communicate with and understand them and understand from where they click and come. That's all marketing is. You can call it marketing. What I do, I don't think it's marketing. I just, I have, I guess I have a feel for the market of who I want to sell things or communicate with. Right? I'm not Bob Dylan playing a stretch of the imagination, but Bob Dylan, to take it to an extreme, had a feel for an entire generation and he made his product. He made it because he was a purist. He wanted to do something great, but it turns out that was marketing. The product is marketing if you make the product great. Steve Jobs is a great marketer. So yeah, if you know your product and you know your audience, I guess that's a great marketer. But all it is is empathy, understanding what somebody else is feeling on a massive scale.
- [49:07]
Alex
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- [50:34]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, it was about. I bought it in probably 2011.
- [50:39]
Alex
Like, how. How long were the headphones gone?
- [50:41]
Jimmy Iovine
Three years into it.
- [50:42]
Alex
So Three years into it, and it's called. What was the. I forgot the mark. Okay.
- [50:45]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [50:46]
Alex
And you rename it Beats?
- [50:47]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. Spotify had 3 million subscribers at the time. At the time we sold to Apple, I remained the Beats music. But I realized I couldn't scale it on my own. And because, as you know, with Spotify, it costs a lot of money to do that. And I realized, I can't do this. Me and Dre, we can't do this on our own. So we brought Trent Reznor on, right, who's an incredible talent. Talk about understanding technology and the arts and culture, and his partner, Atticus Ross. They make some of the greatest music in the world right now. So, you know, there's all the movies and everything he's doing.
- [51:27]
Alex
So you try to run it, and then you realized you had.
- [51:30]
Jimmy Iovine
I can't scale it on my own.
- [51:31]
Alex
Can't scale on your own.
- [51:32]
Jimmy Iovine
I wanted it to be at Interscope, and for one reason or another, we couldn't get that done. The guys running at the time weren't in charge, really. There was the whole Vivendi thing and all that stuff. I went to them early on. I said, I want to build businesses with your artist. And the guy actually said to me, he goes, jimmy, I hear you. We paid a lot for your company. I have respect for you, but we want to sell CDs, and that's what we do. So that's how part of my story that not a lot of people know is I was a CEO of Interscope. I had to get the right to start another business. I asked Vivendi to give me $100 million to Interscope to start businesses with the artists inside Interscope. And in fairness to them, they didn't see that. They didn't want to do it. So I said my contract was up, and I said, I'm not going to be the guy to sell the last cd. I got no interest in this. You know, I'm going to do something else.
- [52:40]
Alex
They didn't see it at the time that they were in a dying or a dwindling business, because it wasn't.
- [52:45]
Jimmy Iovine
This is 2003.
- [52:46]
Alex
So you saw it early.
- [52:48]
Jimmy Iovine
It scared the hell out of me. Some reason. The day it started, Napster, I said, this is toast because I understand the market. I understand why the audience would Say, I'd much rather be doing my homework and not have to ask my mother to take me to a record store. Okay? That simple impulse, and it's free. That's a field that an entrepreneur has.
- [53:14]
Alex
Once you see it, you can't put the genie back in that bottle. There's just no way to sell it.
- [53:17]
Jimmy Iovine
So I knew that, and then I went and met with people at intel and places like that, and I heard these guys talk, and I'm like, holy.
- [53:26]
Alex
What were they saying that made you say holy?
- [53:29]
Jimmy Iovine
One of the things the guy at intel said to me is, jimmy, I gotta tell you something. Your story is compelling. He said, but not every industry was built to last forever. I was like, this guy's smarter than me. Where do you want to start? Right? So I'm like, oh, right. So. So I. I. I went to the. I went to them, and I said, I can't just be in the record business.
- [53:54]
Alex
The music almost goes. Like, something you sell to something that markets another product is how you actually monetize.
- [53:59]
Jimmy Iovine
That's what it is. I just call it lateral. I don't. I can't break it down to what it is. I just know the feeling.
- [54:05]
Alex
You told me yesterday, you're like, I'm just a hustler.
- [54:09]
Jimmy Iovine
I know how to hustle.
- [54:11]
Alex
I do, too.
- [54:11]
Jimmy Iovine
No, I love it, by the way.
- [54:13]
Alex
I feel the exact same way.
- [54:14]
Jimmy Iovine
The greatest baseball players in the world who are hustlers. That's what I call a hustler.
- [54:19]
Alex
I don't think it's a pejorative. I don't think it's a negative.
- [54:21]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, people think it is.
- [54:22]
Alex
Oh, not me and you, though.
- [54:24]
Jimmy Iovine
It's not what I'm saying. I know how to hustle, meaning I'm willing to work harder than the next guy.
- [54:28]
Alex
What you did for Dre when you first met him, Dre and Suge, you're like, well, this guy's great. There's an asset in front of me, and the asset is a big, hairy problem that no one else wants to solve. And if I solve, if I can kill the T. Rex that is sitting on top of this genius, then I get to work with the genius that is hustling. That is being resourceful. That's the same thing as Dre would.
- [54:47]
Jimmy Iovine
Say, it's a little bit of street knowledge.
- [54:49]
Alex
Yeah.
- [54:50]
Jimmy Iovine
You know?
- [54:50]
Alex
And what is street knowledge? It's an understanding of people as they actually are.
- [54:53]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, because you have no. What street knowledge is. You have to move around because the world isn't. It's tough. You know, in any neighborhood. I don't know what you call it, lower class or whatever it is, you know, My dad was a longshoreman. We lived in an Italian neighborhood in Red Hook, Brooklyn. You know what I mean?
- [55:11]
Alex
So you lived in a neighborhood with actual gangsters?
- [55:15]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, but I wasn't. I mean. No, I know you weren't like, you.
- [55:18]
Alex
Know, you know, but you were in the neighborhood that, you know, the mafia was everywhere.
- [55:21]
Jimmy Iovine
Oh, yeah. Well, my neighbor was an Italian neighborhood, only in America. I mean, everything was the same. You know, there's four fish stores on a restaurant, there's three pizza places on one street. You know, it was like that, you know, so. And my father worked down at docks and everybody worked on a docks.
- [55:38]
Alex
I know you were saying it's instinct. Maybe you weren't like, there weren't words around this idea. You just understood it. But you saw, it's like, if I'm a college kid and I was at this time and I was using Napster and Kaza and all the other Limewire and all the other ones, like, I don't have to go to the store. I'm definitely downloading this. And now we have MP3 players. So, like the record store is gone.
- [55:55]
Jimmy Iovine
One of the hardest things that I had to do, when I look back on my career, life, whatever it is, had a lot. We all have a lot of hard things. One of the hardest things was getting Universal Vivendi to give me permission to build Beats, to build note, to build products with my artist. Beats came three years later.
- [56:15]
Alex
This is, this is when you, your response to them was, I don't want to be the guy that sells the last cd.
- [56:19]
Jimmy Iovine
That's it. I just, I just. This, this thing is not going to work the way it is right now. We have to move laterally. I just instinctively knew that and I wasn't going to do it. I was going to quit.
- [56:33]
Alex
That's an interesting idea. If you sit down and actually think about what's happening for the whole time of recorded music industry. You made the music, you record it and then you sold it physically. Right? And you're already understanding, oh, once it's digital and free, that means we have to sell something else, that we're not going to be able to sell the music anymore.
- [56:49]
Jimmy Iovine
No. I knew we were invaded. Invaded, okay. And I knew that something had to change and I didn't know what it was, but I knew we couldn't just do only what we're doing. And that's like a music instinct, you know, who knew that The Beatles knew that if you listen to the Beatles, every album was new and different. They reinvented themselves on every album, you know, and if you, you. They keep it moving, you know, the great company. That's why Apple was so great. It kept it moving, kept innovating and moving it. And I felt that the record business needed to stop doing, not just do what they were doing. And that was really hard because they were paying me a lot of money. They just bought my company for, I don't know, hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. But I wasn't going to do it. I knew it was not what I wanted to do. And the problem is people say, well, the record business turned out okay. Well, it did and it didn't. Of course. Spotify is worth 150 billion and the entire record industry is worth half that together.
- [58:07]
Alex
It's really smart. It's like for the longest time we sold it. Now you can't sell it anymore. I'm talking about music.
- [58:13]
Jimmy Iovine
So it.
- [58:13]
Alex
And you're not going to agree with this, it becomes advertising or marketing. These songs become advertising or marketing for another product you can sell, whether it's concerts. They were selling concerts back in the day. Products, all this other stuff that they're doing. Like you had that insight before in the music industry before anybody else?
- [58:27]
Jimmy Iovine
No, not before anybody else. Hip hop saw it.
- [58:33]
Alex
You're right. Because they were doing the shoes, sneakers.
- [58:36]
Jimmy Iovine
The alcohol, Def Jam, Adidas.
- [58:39]
Alex
Did they influence your thinking on this?
- [58:41]
Jimmy Iovine
Absolutely. I owe African American culture so much. I have a debt to black culture.
- [58:52]
Alex
Why do you think rap? Because I grew up on hip hop. I told you. Like it's still almost all the stuff I listen to now. Why did they figure out how to monetize. I hate using that word. Or make money off music. Do other besides selling music for anybody else.
- [59:05]
Jimmy Iovine
Because they're practical and they see the truth and they saw what it was.
- [59:09]
Alex
What's the next bite at the apple?
- [59:11]
Jimmy Iovine
The record industry now can rewrite the. Gets the. The luxury of rewriting the book with AI they can.
- [59:19]
Alex
AI created music.
- [59:21]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. Creative music interact many things. It isn't just creating a song. It's. It's how you listen to music. Everything it affects it. It can affect everything. So there is. Let's say hypothetically, I'm right. In the record industry. Your word wrong is not fair. Didn't take advantage of it. Didn't optimize the streaming thing. What would optimizing be? They would have their own distribution. That would be optimizing. And they don't Right. They have another bite at the apple right now. It could start all Ring the Bell all over again, Etch A Sketch and go back into it. But where they can make a giant mistake, in my opinion. Okay, is if they start licensing their music to every dog and that comes in the door, which is their normal.
- [60:15]
Alex
Route of doing things.
- [60:16]
Jimmy Iovine
Yes. You got to build enterprise around AI now, you can't just give the enterprise to someone else.
- [60:25]
Alex
But, you know, everybody in the music industry, when you tell them this, what's their response, the people in power right now?
- [60:30]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, all I can tell you is I can't tell you everything that I'm doing because I think the labels are now realizing. And again, really, what all I can tell you is Universal Music has invested in a project that we're doing called Complex that has the ability to go on and do a lot of these things that I'm talking about. It's media, it's live, pretty complex con, and it's E commerce. Right. I want to help the labels if I can, you know, build enterprise around AI and not just be license owners. I just. It. I didn't. I felt that way about streaming, and I feel even stronger about that. They shouldn't be afraid of the tech. They shouldn't be. You don't have to understand something fully to do it. I'm proof of that. I don't understand anything. You know what I mean? But I know how to get it done. You know, I knew how to build it. I didn't know how to build a headphone. People say to me, well, you're in. You're a recording engineer. I said, bruce Priestly and Keith Richard are the greatest guitars players. And you know, my favorite, you know, Keith Richards. Incredible. If you gave him two pieces of wood, he's not going to come out with a guitar, you know, so, you know, building a headphone was as far from me and Dre as you could possibly imagine. But we figured out how to do it. So that's how I think is a possibility now to rewrite the book. But you start seeing licenses pop up to all these other companies, they're going to feed a dragon that is absolutely going to eat them. Absolutely.
- [62:13]
Alex
Five years from now, do you think we're going to have AI Complete? AI created music that is at the top of the charts? Isn't it already happening?
- [62:20]
Jimmy Iovine
I don't know. Let me tell you, though, I don't know if I could predict the future, ma'.
- [62:24]
Alex
Am.
- [62:25]
Jimmy Iovine
You know what I mean? I wouldn't have health insurance, you know, it's like, you know, I have fire insurance in my house. I can't predict the future. I have no. I. I overpaid for everything. I'm a retail guy. But, you know, it's like, I do know one thing that I don't understand. I hear a lot of these artists coming out against AI. So I come from a place where to get a record deal, I'm going back to my. When I was a kid, right? In the music business, you have to sing. You have to really sing. Sometimes you have to write. But if you're Barbra Streisand, you have to sing Frank Sinatra, you have to sing. Those people can really sing, you know. Sam Cooke, could he sing? He could sing and write, you know what I mean? Incredible, right? Stevie Wonder. There's a lot of people out now on the charts right now or being really successful, selling out arenas that can barely sing Happy Birthday. So what I say to the people that are challenging AI, and they're doing that because of technology, like auto tune and stuff like that, whatever the technology is. So my question is, what's the difference between somebody who could barely sing Happy Birthday, which is all over the charts right now, to someone who can't sing Happy Birthday at all, who's just a marketer, and a really clever guy or girl that sat in their mirror and did all the moves that everybody does, you know, they watched Madonna and like everybody else and say, I could do that. I can act like that. So I don't understand the difference.
- [63:55]
Alex
So, yeah, because the amount of technology invented for the music industry since you've been in it is like you. You told me yesterday that Prince did a whole album without a drummer. And I was like, what does that mean?
- [64:06]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, he's one of the first people to. To use the Lynn drum machine. See, the Lynn drum machine. I was. I was producing an album in the 70s and. And I brought this guitar player in who. I think it may be the first computer I ever saw. But he had a computer on the session. It was 1977, right? And he had a computer on the session. And in between takes, rather than listen with the rest of us, he'd go put a pair of headphones on and go on the computer and do all that. And he looked at. I said, finally I said to him, I said, hey, man, what are you doing? I mean, you know, this is a session. We're paying attention to the music. He says, well, I'm creating a drummer. I'm creating machine that's going to play the drums. I Said, well, thank God. Because I always had very. I always had difficulty with drummers. You know, I always felt where you sit on the beat is impossible. You know what I mean? Because everybody hits where the one hit what hits it on or before or after. It just drove me crazy working with drummers my whole life, you know. And he said, I'm making a player drum. The guy's name was Roger Lin. Roger Lynn's a guitar player.
- [65:18]
Alex
That's who made the drum machine.
- [65:20]
Jimmy Iovine
The machine drum machine.
- [65:22]
Alex
Oh, wow.
- [65:22]
Jimmy Iovine
Yes. I've seen technology. I grew up with this. So everybody's afraid of AI. AI is going to make music better. AI is not going to thwart great people. They will always be the next Billie Eilish, they will always be the next Kendrick Lamar. They will always be the next great talent. But there's also going to be a lot of bullshit. Yeah, right. So I think the bullshit will get better. I really do. I think AI is going to help those people that work like that. And by the way, a lot of people that we know right now, great talent, are using AI. They're just not telling anybody. AI will never be able to write Blown in the Wind by Bob Dylan, not in anyone who's listening to this or in my lifetime, for sure. AI will take the middle of music, the average music, I believe, and make it better because they're great tools. I. I'm all in on AI music. All in. And I don't think it's going to hurt the greats. But more importantly than anything that I think is that now it's time for the artist and the labels to get on the enterprise side of it.
- [66:41]
Alex
This is what I wonder if you would agree with or not, because when you were just telling the. The story of the person that invented the drum machine, he was inventing it out of necessity. He needed a sound for what he was making. I worry that if these are like professional managers in the music industry, like think about the differentiator. Professional CEO and a founder. Yeah, right. Like you thought completely different because you're an entrepreneur. Like, you were instinctively an entrepreneur. You were an entrepreneur before you even.
- [67:03]
Jimmy Iovine
Knew you were record producers and entrepreneur.
- [67:05]
Alex
Record producers, but the people running the big.
- [67:07]
Jimmy Iovine
But I was a record producer.
- [67:08]
Alex
Yeah, exactly. Like you had that instinct. What? But like, there's one, almost they don't see the necessity for it. And two, I don't even know if, like a professional manager can then reinvent their business to survive the next technological wave. You disagree with that?
- [67:24]
Jimmy Iovine
I think what's happening is the Music industry is finally moving into things they're afraid of. They just need some light. What you don't want to do is license the next AI Spotify and say, Give me 3% of your company. That is the greatest deal anyone's ever made. Who gives a shit who owns 3% of my company? For your company, Spotify. Right. I mean, it's absurd. So they have to grab the enterprise value of the new technology.
- [67:59]
Alex
But don't you think it's going to come outside? Like, one of my heroes is James Dyson. I told you about who? James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner guy. And one of his. Who? I love it. And one of his heroes was Buckminster Fuller. And Buckminster Fuller has this quote where it's like, you don't fight the. Like, if you want to change things, you don't fight the existing system. You build your own. Like, you build a new version of that and almost feel like what you're talking about has to be done outside.
- [68:23]
Jimmy Iovine
Anywhere there's not a founder usually has to be done outside. You don't usually see big companies innovate.
- [68:30]
Alex
That's my point.
- [68:30]
Jimmy Iovine
I'll tell you what, I don't know this company. I don't know the guy. I don't know anything. But I try to. I try to pair those new Facebook Ray Ban glasses. They made a good product.
- [68:43]
Alex
Yeah.
- [68:44]
Jimmy Iovine
So that's. But that's a founder. Big companies always have the advantage. They just don't. They have bureaucracies, and they don't have the entrepreneur as the leader anymore. So can they innovate? That's the can they innovate? And look, I'm a terrible businessman. I had to learn business at Interscope.
- [69:03]
Alex
You are not a terrible businessman.
- [69:05]
Jimmy Iovine
I know how to do what I know how to do. But I had to learn business for defense when I got into the record business.
- [69:11]
Alex
Oh, that's interesting.
- [69:12]
Jimmy Iovine
1990. I had no fucking idea how to run a company. Non0.
- [69:19]
Alex
Is this when David Geffen sold Geffen?
- [69:21]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [69:22]
Alex
Can you tell that story?
- [69:23]
Jimmy Iovine
David Geffen is brilliant, right? He comes from right near my neighborhood in Brooklyn. He's exactly 10 years older than me. He's like 5 7. I'm 5 7. He's Jewish. I'm Italian. We were buddies, right? He was great with artists. You know, he signed Joni Mitchell and the Eagles and all this great shit right in his life. So I felt real camaraderie with him. I produce some records. I'm actually in the studio for 20 years making music. They go on. They sell all These records. I wake up one day, he sold his company for $500 million. I'm like, I'm from Brooklyn, you know, I want to, I'm make a lot of money. I'm not embarrassed that I have. My whole life I've been like, you know, I. Robert, I. I didn't have any money. I had money as a record producer, but that's a certain amount of money. I wanted to live like I saw on tv.
- [70:27]
Alex
Well, you were like, hold on. What I love in the defined ones. Because everybody feels this way, especially if you didn't grow up with money. I know exactly what you're talking about. And you were. I think you might have been an engineer before you were record produced. This story came from when you were an engineer, not a record producer. The producer comes in, he's got like a leather jacket. You're like, what the hell is this? He's got a fancy bag, and then he's got a beautiful girl. And you're like, that's it?
- [70:48]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, you bet that's it. I mean, look, look, let me tell you something, man. You got to tell yourself the truth. I'm not Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye. So I felt the next best way in, I got into producing and engineering, right? That was my next way in, right? So I'm like, well, this feels really good. Then I saw Gaffin and I said, that feels better. Oh, he's doing the same thing out. He's not even in the studio all night. He goes home at 6:00'. Clock. I'm like, 3:00' clock in the morning, still working on the drum sound, you know, like doing that. So I said, I bet I can do that.
- [71:28]
Alex
And then you go talk to him. What does he say?
- [71:30]
Jimmy Iovine
He said to me, oh, you could start a record company. You know how many stupid people there are that have record companies? I said, okay. So I started a record company.
- [71:44]
Alex
I read something Jeff Bezos said that changed my perspective on the importance of high quality sleep. He said that he makes sure he gets eight hours of sleep a night. And as a result, his mood, his energy and his decision making is improved. His point was that you get paid to make high quality decisions and you can't do that if you're sleeping terribly. And the product that has made the biggest impact on my quality of sleep for years is eight Sleep. I'm lucky enough to be friends with the founder of eight Sleep, Mateo, and we live in the same city. A few months after I started using 8 sleep, I randomly ran Into Mateo at a restaurant and I was with some friends. So I go over and say hi. When I got back to my table, my friend asked me who was I talking to? And I said, that's Matteo, the founder of eight Sleep. And my friend replied, he looks like he gets good sleep. Mateo is living and breathing his product. I had never had the ability to change the temperature of my bed before I had an eight Sleep. I had no idea how much that would improve the quality of my sleep. I keep my eight sleep ice cold. It's cold before I get into bed, so I fall asleep faster and wake up less during the night. That feature alone is worth 10 times the price. There are very few no brainer investments in life and I believe eight Sleep is one of them. That is why elite founders like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have all said publicly that they use eight sleep. I would recommend getting the Pod 5, which is the newest generation of their signature product. It is a smart mattress cover that you place on top of your existing mattress and it is next level sleep tech. It automatically regulates your body temperature throughout the night independently for each side of the bed. The result is you get up to a full hour of additional quality sleep per night. Make the no brainer investment in your sleep by going to 8sleep.com senra and use the code senra to get $350 off. You can try it for 30 days at home and return it if you don't like it. But I'm confident you will love it. I will never let anyone take my Eight Sleep from me. Make sure you get yours at Eight Sleep.com forward/senra. People were willing to give you money and back you right away. Why? Did you have previous relationships with them? What did they know about you?
- [73:45]
Jimmy Iovine
No. Well, Doug put up half the money. Geffen was going to put the money up, but he sold his company. So he was very generous with me. And I, no jerk, definitely was going to distribute the money and Ted Field was going to put the money up, but Doug volunteered to put up half the money. Doug Morris at Atlantic. So I went to Dave and I said, David, you only put up half the money. Goes, jimmy, I want what's good for you. Go do it over there. All good, really helpful to me. But I knew nothing about running a business or, you know, I didn't know you buy vegetables for less money than you sell them. I had no idea of anything regarding business. I had an instinct of how to move and what was important.
- [74:28]
Alex
I want to pause the story because Then when I went to your house the first time just a few months ago, you told me something. I haven't stopped thinking about you. You said, every great. Anybody that's great is bent.
- [74:39]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [74:39]
Alex
What does that mean?
- [74:40]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, to be really brilliant, I call it, there has to be a bend in the pipe. You know, whether it's through trauma or through your. Your interpretation of. Of yourself, of how that could happen. You can come from the greatest family in the world and have trauma. You know, just. It's. It's your sensitivity compared to the environment and put it all together. So the ones that I know that are truly brilliant have a bend in the pipe.
- [75:11]
Alex
You know, what's the bend that you see?
- [75:13]
Jimmy Iovine
Normally, it's usually trauma from when they were younger. Family stuff.
- [75:17]
Alex
It's always the childhood.
- [75:19]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, it's all. Yeah, but they had the gift to write or produce or film or paint. Right. I mean, they were the one. The chosen ones that you put that trauma compared with an innate talent, and it makes Picasso.
- [75:41]
Alex
But your bend was. It has to be. Which brings us to the founding of Interscope, because there's. There was a ton of people after Geffen that had your same idea. We're like, well, I can do that.
- [75:53]
Jimmy Iovine
14 labels started with $50 million in funding in 1989. 90.
- [75:57]
Alex
And how many survived?
- [75:58]
Jimmy Iovine
None.
- [75:59]
Alex
You?
- [76:00]
Jimmy Iovine
Adesco.
- [76:01]
Alex
Yeah.
- [76:01]
Jimmy Iovine
Me, Ted, John, and Tom. Wally.
- [76:04]
Alex
When you say it has to be, what does that mean?
- [76:07]
Jimmy Iovine
When you grow up like I did and you did and other people that I know?
- [76:11]
Alex
Yeah. The first time we met, you're like.
- [76:13]
Jimmy Iovine
You're definitely bent when you're walking forward. Right. The sidewalk behind you is caving in, so you have no choice but to walk forward, no matter how scary it is, how much it hurts. So what you have to learn at that moment is how do I take this fear and make it a tailwind instead of a headwind? A lot of my friends and people I know and I watch, the fear stops them. And the ones that succeed is the one. The fear that propels them forward. If you can harness it, learn how to harness it. And take that. Because fear is energy. It's massive energy. It controls your entire system. And if you can learn to take that fuel, and I will propel you forward, it's a powerful thing.
- [77:06]
Alex
Some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the planet that I've met, I said, it's like, what drives them is not a love of success. It's a fear of failure, whatever your fear is.
- [77:17]
Jimmy Iovine
You know what I mean?
- [77:18]
Alex
So when did you. When did You. When did you have the insight about fear, though? Like, when did you. You said, I trained myself that when I feel fear just to take a step forward.
- [77:25]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, you know, look, I was the kid in right field playing baseball, right? I come from a neighborhood where physicality, sports, and tough was the currency. I didn't have any of those things, so I had to go learn a whole new set of tools for my toolkit. But when I got to the studio, I sat there with the guy, Roy Saccala, who was my boss, who taught through me, and they put me in with John Lennon, and all of a sudden, all that fear, I was able to, I don't know why, flip it into energy to learn.
- [78:04]
Alex
So you're like 20 at the time.
- [78:06]
Jimmy Iovine
20.
- [78:07]
Alex
You have a simple genius about you. I'm gonna go back to. It has to be in the bend. And this is why I think it's so important to make the documentaries that you made to do the podcast that you do. Because, like, then somebody that you've never met, that is in a different industry, that's lived at a different time reads that. And, like, I'm like that too. And you said something about your early life where you just felt it was all fucked up, but all you knew was that if you just went to the studio, the more time you went to the studio, the better your life got. That is exactly how I feel. Like, all I.
- [78:34]
Jimmy Iovine
Let me tell you something.
- [78:34]
Alex
All I can.
- [78:35]
Jimmy Iovine
That's not genius.
- [78:36]
Alex
No, it's so. It is a simple genius. It's very. There's. It's practical wisdom.
- [78:39]
Jimmy Iovine
You know, when you people talk about genius, there are real geniuses out there that are freaks, but people talk about people that are successful and stuff like that. It's basically, you're blessed that your instinct drives you in the right direction. And your instinct, Bob Dylan's instill. Bob Dylan is a genius, but Bob Dylan's instinct drove him for an entire generation to lead, you know, Steve Jobs or even people that I know, my friends, that their instinct is commercial or works.
- [79:15]
Alex
But that simple genius of I do more of X and my life gets better. It's very, very smart. Especially when you're 20. You're not, like, you're not experienced. You're in the room with legends. I heard the interview, the conversation you had with Rick Rubin, and you both agreed there's like, there's never been other famous people like the Beatles. It's not like, oh, yeah, that Taylor Swift's kind of like the Beatles. Like, no, no, you don't understand how big this phenomenon is. And you're, by your own admission, know nothing insecure, and you're in the room with them, and you still. There's something very. Again, I'm going to use the word simple genius of, like, your ability to just, like, this is just stay here, and my life will get better.
- [79:50]
Jimmy Iovine
It's also to know which pole to start reeling in. You know, when I was. When I got permission to at Interscope to make our own businesses with the artist, I had a bunch of things going. But soon as Dre said to me, I want to sell sneakers, and I said, no, no, no speakers, right? And I saw him and I saw his credibility and sound, and I said, oh, shit, it all came together. You know, I dropped all the other polls. I just said, okay, let's go.
- [80:24]
Alex
But there's also a simple genius of the way you move that I admire. And I'm not, like, trying to just overly compliment you here. Like, I really learned from it where that story. Dre tells the story of that conversation. He said this conversation the entire time was, like, 10 minutes. Once you had that realization, you dipped out. You just left. And then you call him like, a week later to come to the office, and you have, like, 30 prototypes already done.
- [80:45]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, because I'm very lucky to be able to connect the dots. I can see something, and my little computer in my brain connects all the dots. I just. And the things that I can see, I don't do the things I can't see. But I saw the headphone thing, and I said, okay. And then I started to see. Oh, man. Not only these guys make ugly products. They don't know how to market. They're not cool. They don't.
- [81:13]
Alex
Back to Corny.
- [81:14]
Jimmy Iovine
The corny is a curse. Some people that are corny are really nice, but, you know, too corny is just. I don't know. It's not for me, you know, I'm not, you know, say they don't know how to lay in the cut, you.
- [81:27]
Alex
Know, what does that mean?
- [81:28]
Jimmy Iovine
That means they don't know how to lay back and just watch something happen. They're always like, they want to be noticed, and they don't have a natural feel for, like, you know, for themselves, you know, I think. But what do I know?
- [81:39]
Alex
I think that's it right there. Let's go back to the Interscope. When you start Interscope, you're like, my Ben is. It has to be like, the way you described to me is just like this. There's no failure. Wasn't an Option there wasn't like a. You said plan B didn't even enter your mind. Where it's like, I'm doing this. It is.
- [81:56]
Jimmy Iovine
Will work. Because if you think like that, it's an uncomfortable life, you know? So that's kind of why at 65, I'm 72 now. At 65, I was at Apple, and I said, I can't. It's just not for me anymore. You know, first of all, Apple's a great company. Company. They treated us great, and we did some great stuff together, but I couldn't just wake up in the morning and do whatever I wanted to do because they're a giant company, and they don't want the. I'm in the music side of it. They don't want the tail wagging the dog. You know, I don't blame them. Right. Because I come from a world of breaking things. You know, I would try anything, you know, and they have a very structured, fabulous business. Right. And so I said the combination of it having to be successful, how I see it, plus my team like Trent Reznor, et cetera, and Dre, and not being able to do anything to get it to work and that combination said, you know, you're 65. You know, I met Liberty and we were going to be together. And I just said, you know.
- [83:18]
Alex
Were you already married at that point?
- [83:22]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [83:22]
Alex
Okay.
- [83:23]
Jimmy Iovine
I left. I retired in 2018. I got. I got married in 16. Okay, but why I came. Started working again. I was dabbling. But when I started. I'm not running any companies right now.
- [83:35]
Alex
Said, you don't want the bit in your mouth anymore?
- [83:38]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, I don't want it in my mouth. I have to have somebody with that energy. That's crazy. That runs the companies. You know, you feel you were.
- [83:46]
Alex
The version of you that started Interscope was crazy.
- [83:50]
Jimmy Iovine
No, it was obsessed. I'm. We're all sort of obsessive people. I was really obsessed.
- [83:56]
Alex
And, you know, you considered Interscope a very intense mission that had to succeed.
- [84:01]
Jimmy Iovine
It was upset. I had to be obsessed. And you know what? Obsession doesn't make for a great partner at home.
- [84:09]
Alex
No, for sure.
- [84:09]
Jimmy Iovine
You know what I mean? It's like, so, you know, I'm like, okay, I'm 65 years old. You know, how many summers do I have left, as Tom Waits would say? You know what I mean?
- [84:19]
Alex
But how old were you when you started Interscope? 30. In your 30s?
- [84:22]
Jimmy Iovine
I was 38. 7. 8.
- [84:24]
Alex
And so does that mean every minute of the day is.
- [84:27]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [84:28]
Alex
On making sure Interscope.
- [84:30]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [84:30]
Alex
When did you feel the relief? Was there any sense of, no, you need money? Finish the question.
- [84:36]
Jimmy Iovine
That's no.
- [84:37]
Alex
Till when?
- [84:38]
Jimmy Iovine
Till I was 65.
- [84:40]
Alex
We talked yesterday. You said something like, you're always like a happy, optimistic person but miserable at the same time.
- [84:46]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, because I remember waking up with Liberty one morning about months after I. I left Apple and decided I wasn't going to run companies anymore or anything started whatever. I said to him, do people wake up not thinking of something because I was waking up and I had nothing on my mind, that I'm like, what do people really do that you know, And. And that's what I started feeling. I felt really good. And I feel really. See the whole. The whole goal to me in life, I think it's most people, but some people don't admit it is the search for peace, you know, And a lot of people lie to themselves about what pieces. I meet somebody, they run companies and they don't want to quit. And I love what I do. You love. You love that more than sitting on a beach somewhere? I mean, I do for sure.
- [85:47]
Alex
I don't want to sit on the beach right now.
- [85:49]
Jimmy Iovine
You don't?
- [85:50]
Alex
Okay.
- [85:50]
Jimmy Iovine
I'm talking about people that are 75, that don't want to, that can't give up the badge. You know, they have to have that badge to walk into a room. They're not that person. When I left Apple, I wasn't the head of Apple Music anymore or the head of Interscope anymore or blah, blah, blah, beats.
- [86:12]
Alex
So you lose a status part.
- [86:13]
Jimmy Iovine
Is that whatever the fuck it is. I didn't care about any of that shit. I just wanted to stop feeling that feeling, you know what I mean? So I didn't have that. That wasn't a currency for me. It's a blessing and a cur. I just said, I don't give a fuck. I don't want to. I want this. I just don't want to. I want to get rid of the obsession. I mean, if you work. If you want to work past 70, 75, 80, if you're a founder of a company like Phil Knight, I understand that he's still involved with Nike. Do it if you're feeling it. It's not what I wanted to do, and it's what. Not what I had to do for my own sanity. And. And I.
- [86:50]
Alex
This is. This is where I want to talk to you about. So from the time let's say you're 20, you start to 65, you did not feel peace?
- [86:57]
Jimmy Iovine
No, not for one second.
- [86:59]
Alex
But you sell, you become a billionaire. You sell beats to Apple. What'd that feel like?
- [87:05]
Jimmy Iovine
Felt great.
- [87:06]
Alex
Okay. No peace, though.
- [87:08]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, because company like Apple pays you a lot of money. I'm my father's son. I got a job to do now.
- [87:19]
Alex
But you have a billion dollars in your bank account.
- [87:22]
Jimmy Iovine
It doesn't matter. What matters is there's a job that you're going to do that you're not going to be. I have to get the job done right.
- [87:28]
Alex
But money is a piece of piece.
- [87:30]
Jimmy Iovine
Money is a piece of it. It's really great. You know what I mean? But if I have your money, I'm fucked because I got to do the job. And that's kind of one of the reasons I left, because I. I really couldn't do.
- [87:50]
Alex
This.
- [87:50]
Jimmy Iovine
Sounds really corny. I couldn't do me there.
- [87:53]
Alex
That's not corny at all.
- [87:54]
Jimmy Iovine
It's a great place. It's a great place. But I twitch. You're not.
- [87:58]
Alex
It's a big fucking company. You're an entrepreneur.
- [88:00]
Jimmy Iovine
I couldn't have that compulsion, obsessiveness, insanity, and not. Not have the wheel completely meaning to make any mistake I wanted to make, to experiment, to just go. I couldn't. I couldn't do it.
- [88:16]
Alex
How does it feel when you're going through. When. It's like, when you. Your version of Bend is. It has to be. Is it just. You wake up with, like, overwhelming pressure every day? Like, what is that?
- [88:27]
Jimmy Iovine
You wake up seeing it? Yeah. You wake up. I mean, you wake up seeing what's wrong. Every day, you wake up seeing what's wrong. I. I never. I've never had a victory lap in my life.
- [88:42]
Alex
You don't have any rearview mirror?
- [88:44]
Jimmy Iovine
I didn't have a victory lap when we sold Beats. That is very public. Dre felt great. Oh, that. The video with Tyrese. I mean, Drake felt great. I. I felt great, but I didn't. Like. I'm like, oh, these guys gave. Gave us all this money, and now we gotta make a streaming service work, and Spotify's got the lead. And I'm like, oh, shit. So then the next minute, I was thinking about that.
- [89:12]
Alex
How different are you and Jerry in the way you approach your work? Because when I watch the Defiant Ones over and over again, there's a lot of things about him that I personally identify with, and there's a lot of things about you that I.
- [89:22]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, we're both record producers.
- [89:23]
Alex
Okay.
- [89:24]
Jimmy Iovine
Okay.
- [89:25]
Alex
So he seems to need more solitude, though. You seem more comfortable. Why would.
- [89:31]
Jimmy Iovine
I mean solitude, Dre? I Mean, Dre doesn't dream, go anywhere. Every time Dre and I have to go do something, he calls me the night before and say, we really have to do this. This is 32 years of it. Do we really have to do this? Why are we doing this? You know? So, yeah, no, he. He's much more like that than me.
- [89:54]
Alex
I feel that way, too. Like, this is why I like small conversations like this. But if you say, hey, come to this group dinner or come to this public event, I'm like, that's just not going to happen. Like, there's no way.
- [90:02]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, well, Dre's like that. But, you know, you got to have a ying and yang to be partners. You know, it works, you know, so we're. We're very different, but we. We. We both. We both record producers. I can't explain it. A certain. The certain kind of person that's. I always. I get along with every record producer I ever met.
- [90:19]
Alex
Yeah.
- [90:19]
Jimmy Iovine
Swizz beats Timberland, Pharrell, you know, I love all these guys, man. I get along really well with record.
- [90:26]
Alex
Producers, and you can't explain why. It's the same kind of personality. What is it?
- [90:31]
Jimmy Iovine
I don't know what it is. I don't think about it. But I know that if I meet a record producer, there's always my favorite people I meet.
- [90:38]
Alex
Yeah, I feel the same way about founders. There's a. There's a founder of Nvidia, Jensen Huang. I read his biography. He says something is interesting where he. I think reading between the lines, he tortured himself into greatness. I want to go back to the bend of it has to be. Were you, like, torturing yourself into success?
- [90:57]
Jimmy Iovine
I don't think it's torturing myself. I just felt tortured. I don't know who was torturing me, but all I knew is that every day I would see what's wrong. What's wrong with the product, what's wrong with the business, what's wrong with the record, what's wrong with the guitar sound? What's wrong with, you know, how the headphones are being sold? What's wrong with the sound of them? What's wrong with That's. I wake up every morning with seeing what's wrong.
- [91:23]
Alex
Your example is very different than most of the founders that I talked to. Our profile, because, like, Steve would be working on Apple no matter what. He just absolutely loved it. Work for you was always work. Yeah, it's like. I shouldn't say, like, you can't wait till it's over. Is that the right Way to think about it, like.
- [91:40]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, you see, the problem that I had was, if it sounds possible.
- [91:47]
Alex
It.
- [91:47]
Jimmy Iovine
Was the only place I felt relief. But. But I was still tortured. So, you know, I don't know what the rest of my life was, but.
- [91:55]
Alex
We had this conversation yesterday, and I told you I was on the phone, a friend driving to your house, and we had the same conversation where he's just, how are you? And I'm like, I'm fantastic. And miserable at the same time.
- [92:05]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, well, that's possible.
- [92:06]
Alex
Yeah, I know. And we talked.
- [92:07]
Jimmy Iovine
I'm always in a good mood. I've never. I don't think I've ever woken up in my life in a bed. Except. Except after my father died, I don't think I ever woke up in my life in a bad mood. I wake up in a great mood every day. I wake up happy.
- [92:22]
Alex
The two words you use are happy and miserable.
- [92:24]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, but there's a whole other side of you that wants to accomplish something, and accomplishing something in the world is not easy. There's everything working, usually against you. The world doesn't want to go the way you want to go most of the time. Right. So I'm really happy as a person. I got. I got my kids, and I'm really happy. And I mean, now I'm really happy in my Crime of Liberty, and we have six kids together, and everything is fantastic. I'm really happy. I'm at peace for the first time. But when I was running the companies or producing the record, I just see what's wrong, and it would just drive me bananas.
- [93:07]
Alex
You're the first person I think actually could explain that to me about how I feel, because I was like. I just was interviewed on another podcast, and he's like, are you happy? And I was just like, yeah, I'm happy. But, like, I also, like, I'm striving to do something.
- [93:22]
Jimmy Iovine
I think Steve Jobs was tortured.
- [93:23]
Alex
Oh, for sure. Most of them are. But my whole thing is, like, I don't also want to go through life like that. This is where Bruce Springsteen.
- [93:31]
Jimmy Iovine
You.
- [93:32]
Alex
I mean, you kind of push me in this direction, too, when you're like, go watch that movie. You know, Because I. I didn't. When Jimmy says, go watch a movie, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go watch a movie. I thought I was gonna watch a biopic of his life. I thought it was gonna be like, he was born and he did this, he did that. No, it's about the darkest time in his entire life.
- [93:49]
Jimmy Iovine
The only movie he would make why he's not gonna make the Born in the USA movie. What I'm talking about is I've always been a positive person, and I wake up in a good mood. So, you know, you haven't met me in those days when I was running Interscope and stuff. You would say, oh, he's having a great time. You know what I mean? But there was always this thing, this compulsion and this insanity that was just driving me constantly. And eventually I wanted to shake that so I could say to you, yeah, I'm happy in 1980. Yeah, or something like that. But I wanted to be at peace. And I didn't give a shit about being the head of Interscope or being ahead of B Dream, that nonsense. I just wanted a peace.
- [94:44]
Alex
Do you think Bruce is at peace?
- [94:47]
Jimmy Iovine
I think Bruce has found a lot of peace. I don't ask. I'll speak for him. But I think he's incredible.
- [94:53]
Alex
I feel that's what he's searching for too, in the book where he's like, I got this thing I still have.
- [94:57]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, I mean, in the words of John Lennon, I'm just trying to get me some peace. And Christ, you know, it ain't easy.
- [95:02]
Alex
Yeah.
- [95:03]
Jimmy Iovine
So, you know, I mean, I didn't invent this.
- [95:06]
Alex
No, you didn't invent it, but I think you. You just said something I think is important. It's like most people lie to themselves. And Bruce, in that book, was lying to himself for a while, and he realized, oh, the actual source was unexpected.
- [95:16]
Jimmy Iovine
You know, we all lie to ourselves. And then.
- [95:18]
Alex
Are you still lying to yourself today?
- [95:20]
Jimmy Iovine
I'm sure about some things, but I try not to. I. I just want to. I just want to find peace, you know what I mean? And every day is a search for it, you know, and the monsters want to come in, and you gotta make your bigger than the monster shit. You know, My father would say, as long as the cat's bigger than the. Keep the cat. The minute the shit gets bigger than the cat, he went like this. I must have been 13 years old, 12 years old when he said that to me. And he was right.
- [95:52]
Alex
When you were building Interscope, or really any time in your career when you were younger, what was your inner monologue like? Was it negative to yourself? Were you, like, overly self critical?
- [96:03]
Jimmy Iovine
Only the product I felt so it wasn't.
- [96:07]
Alex
You're like this product when you grow up.
- [96:09]
Jimmy Iovine
When you grow up not having a lot of money and money being a concern and the family and all that kind of stuff, you know, the My family was very generous. But you know, we had reality, right? When you grow up like that, that plays a big part in your brain, you know what I mean? Because you don't think. You think I'm going to be broke. That's what everybody. That's what you think, you know, so that was a big driver of me.
- [96:40]
Alex
When did you lose that fear of being broke?
- [96:42]
Jimmy Iovine
I don't know. But I just know that when I sold to Apple, it didn't fix it.
- [96:48]
Alex
Dude, I thought you were going to say like when you're making tons of money in Interscope. That's wild.
- [96:52]
Jimmy Iovine
No, because I had to get something right that overrides. I knew I had a lot of money. I knew I didn't need money. I knew I was never going to be broke. But it was that what overrode any of it was having to get the job right. That overrode everything.
- [97:13]
Alex
You were able to separate criticism that the work isn't good enough or isn't done to. I am not good enough in your mind.
- [97:21]
Jimmy Iovine
No, because you beat yourself up. You feel that if you.
- [97:24]
Alex
So you were still beating yourself up even when you were. Yeah.
- [97:27]
Jimmy Iovine
Oh yeah.
- [97:27]
Alex
50S and 60s.
- [97:28]
Jimmy Iovine
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because.
- [97:31]
Alex
Did you do it today?
- [97:32]
Jimmy Iovine
No. No, I don't today. I'm not. Right today. I actually approach the job now. I get cranky and when I get cranky, but when I crank, when I put the phone down, it doesn't travel with me. Like right now I do what I need to do with the CEOs that are running the companies and the people that work. I do stuff that I need to do personality wise to get the job done. And it annoys me when people don't see things clearly or whatever and. But when I put the phone down, I don't feel it. When I used to do that, I never stopped feeling it because I had to get it right.
- [98:14]
Alex
I felt like that for a while. This just changed, like, as a result of like the work that I've been doing. There's this guy named Brad Jacobs who started eight separate billion dollar companies. I did a bunch of episodes of Founders on him. He came to do this show. I've spent a bunch of time with him. And he's 68 years old. He's been an entrepreneur for longer than I've been alive. Like, the guy's just absolutely incredible. And his whole thing is he just used to beat the shit out of himself mentally. And he's like, you know what for this is not helping my Performance and talking to him and then using some of the strategies in his book. Like now I used to have a very negative fuel source which is I didn't like the way I was born, what the environment I was born into. I'm going to channel that just like Bruce Springsteen, just like you. It's like I'm going to channel that into achievement. I thought for a long time that like constant self criticism of the work that I'm doing will only make it better. So therefore that'll increase my likelihood of achievement. And now I'm like, you know what? I just obsessed with what I'm doing. Like before when I woke up this morning, I was like giddy because like this is going to be one of the best days of my life. I get to freaking record a podcast with Jimmy. This is going to be insane. Like my now my self talk is just like, just love what you do and follow your curiosity and you're going to be obsessed anyway. You can't work any other way.
- [99:21]
Jimmy Iovine
Just know that you've handled to a certain extent a monster in your life. But the next monster is going to come in a disguise. A different look, a different way. It's going to come in through this door and you'll wake up one day and that monster, we go, oh, I feel like I felt. I thought I killed that monster, but this is a new monster. Only changes.
- [99:44]
Alex
Where do you think that would happen?
- [99:46]
Jimmy Iovine
It just happens to everybody in life. You know, just some people like to admit it and some people don't.
- [99:51]
Alex
So like, might not be in your professional life, but it might be in your personal life.
- [99:54]
Jimmy Iovine
It could be anything. Yeah, man, it could be anything. It could be one of your kids. It could be anything, you know. And for the first time in my life, I feel balanced. I feel kind of like I feel okay, you know, I feel like I'm at peace. But I'm also not running a company. If I was running a company. I know that. I know that it's not for me. I know that I couldn't do it. I'm not that cured. I take what I do serious. I don't take myself too serious because I love having a sense of humor. I think laughing extends your life. So My father was really funny guy, you know, and. And we lived like that growing up. Every. Everything was like we saw a sense of humor and everything, you know, I remember when he was dying, right before he died, he. Something happened and it was. It was like a person came in and did something wrong and he just looked at me and he made a joke because he knew it was funny. And he grabbed the moment he had 28% of his heart left.
- [101:05]
Alex
Did he know he was dying?
- [101:07]
Jimmy Iovine
It was a crazy time in my life. I was 31 years old or 30. 30. 31. And I went to my grandfather's funeral. His father. And the next morning, my father had a heart attack. And then he died probably seven weeks, eight weeks later. And then my grandmother, his mother died the next week. So they. All three of them died within eight weeks. So it was really a pretty crazy time. And my father was. I was so close with him. He just devastated me. But he always had a sense of humor. So I take what I do really serious, but I don't take myself too serious. I really don't take it.
- [101:51]
Alex
And you learn that from him?
- [101:52]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. Yeah. My father was always a hard worker.
- [101:56]
Alex
He was your best friend.
- [101:58]
Jimmy Iovine
Still is, you know. Wow. Still is. It's his voice that really. If I ever get on the right page, it's always his voice that makes me on the right page. Yeah.
- [102:13]
Alex
That was the worst day of your life.
- [102:15]
Jimmy Iovine
It still is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Worst day matter. By far. By far. Yeah, man. I. You know, when I. When he died, I made a Christmas album about him. I. It was called A Very Special Christmas, and we raised over $100 million for Special Olympics.
- [102:33]
Alex
Want to ask you some advice unrelated to work. I just saw that you have on your wrist a bracelet with your wife's name on it.
- [102:41]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [102:42]
Alex
How important has that relationship been in your life compared to your work?
- [102:48]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, you know, I. Again, I don't look back. Right. So I can only go by how I feel now. And right now it's more important than my work. And that's part of why I have peace. Because we. We connect. We work on our marriage, we work on our friendship, we work on our bond, you know, And I'm not. I'm not kumbaya about anything, you know, I realize anything can happen. You're super, super tense, you know, so. So right now it's more important than my work.
- [103:24]
Alex
You get more satisfaction out of that.
- [103:26]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. It's the only place I find peace, you know, And I. I'm. I'm really in search of peace, man. I. The rest of this. And I. But I do think we can crack the code at Complex. I really believe that. I really. I believe that we can really do something in education. I really believe that. So I'm very passionate about that.
- [103:50]
Alex
Yeah. You need something to work towards that.
- [103:52]
Jimmy Iovine
I want to see that I can get Something done without being nuts, without feeling that horrible feeling, you know? I mean, I feel like I can get something done without feeling like that.
- [104:03]
Alex
Yeah, I do too.
- [104:05]
Jimmy Iovine
You know, it really is the truth, you know, but by the way, not everybody feels like that. There are some really talented people who are completely happy about their work. I don't know, but I don't know any of them, but I'm sure there are. No.
- [104:19]
Alex
You've met, like, I mean, your entire world, your entire life was surrounded by top performers, by geniuses, by people that are, you know, at the top of their profession. And that's why I would light you up with questions the last two times that we saw each other about, like, what these people are like. Because what you just said, I want to try to create something great without being nuts. Yeah, me too. And I, like, want these examples of that. Yeah.
- [104:39]
Jimmy Iovine
But I, you know, I wish I could have Learned it at 52, but I think I got it at 72.
- [104:44]
Alex
Why do you think it took you longer than you wanted it to take you?
- [104:50]
Jimmy Iovine
I didn't go to therapy long enough, early enough in my life. Because to unring the bells of your childhood takes a lot of work. I'm very pro therapy, you know, I really am.
- [105:01]
Alex
To unring the bells of your childhood takes a lot of work. That's a great line.
- [105:05]
Jimmy Iovine
It's true.
- [105:05]
Alex
And you think the only way to do that is through.
- [105:08]
Jimmy Iovine
It's not the. It's my way.
- [105:09]
Alex
Okay.
- [105:10]
Jimmy Iovine
It's my. Not the only way.
- [105:11]
Alex
When did you realize, oh, I needed.
- [105:12]
Jimmy Iovine
I didn't take the therapy really serious till my 50s, and I wish I had done it earlier.
- [105:19]
Alex
And what does really serious mean to you?
- [105:20]
Jimmy Iovine
Mean twice a week, but take it in. Not just.
- [105:24]
Alex
Not just show up at the appointment, listen, but actually change your behavior.
- [105:28]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [105:29]
Alex
Were you doing it like inner. Like in your 30s and 40s?
- [105:33]
Jimmy Iovine
I started in my 30s and 40s, but I wasn't a good patient. Customer or client.
- [105:39]
Alex
Yeah, yeah.
- [105:39]
Jimmy Iovine
Whatever the they call me.
- [105:41]
Alex
So you go, you show up, you would talk. You would talk.
- [105:45]
Jimmy Iovine
The minute I walk on the phone, I grab the phone. They have to, you know, it was.
- [105:48]
Alex
Like you weren't ready to, like, to take in the information.
- [105:51]
Jimmy Iovine
No, no.
- [105:53]
Alex
What do you think made you ready other than age?
- [105:56]
Jimmy Iovine
My divorce. Very simple. I. I was in a marriage, and we were married. Everything was going along. And then when we got divorced, which people do, I realized that that was a time that I needed to get my shit self contained. All of a sudden, I got an idea about life that I Didn't see before. So I pursued that. It's no different than the school or Beats or streaming or any of the things that I.
- [106:26]
Alex
That's a great way to think about it.
- [106:28]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. I had the idea earlier. I would have did it earlier.
- [106:33]
Alex
Why did you tell me yesterday that you think I need to talk to somebody?
- [106:38]
Jimmy Iovine
Because of some of the things that you told me, you know, so some of the personal stuff you told me, I said it's a lot easier to go with a guide. It's a lot easier to learn how to play tennis with a tennis teacher. It's good to have somebody in your life that doesn't have an agenda. Everybody in your life has an agenda. If you find a person without an agenda, you can get a lot further. You can have those other people who love you very much and care about you. But to have the one without the agenda for me was very helpful.
- [107:13]
Alex
Like, why do you think it works with that, with this particular person?
- [107:16]
Jimmy Iovine
I believe this person.
- [107:18]
Alex
She trusts their judgment.
- [107:19]
Jimmy Iovine
Everything in my life is guttural.
- [107:21]
Alex
Steve was the same way, though.
- [107:22]
Jimmy Iovine
But you have to know you're wrong. A lot of times you're doing things for reasons that are controlled by that childhood. Right. So as you work through that, you start doing things for more of a reason, more honest reasons that are not driven by that voice of your childhood.
- [107:43]
Alex
There's another thing that you said to me about. You always kept a small circle of.
- [107:48]
Jimmy Iovine
I still do.
- [107:49]
Alex
These are true friends.
- [107:51]
Jimmy Iovine
I try to have an infield, you.
- [107:54]
Alex
Know, that's how many people said, no.
- [107:57]
Jimmy Iovine
I had phobia. Yeah. I haven't seen baseball, by the way. I don't. I don't need another shortstop until the other one dies. You know, I limited. I don't go for six, you know.
- [108:09]
Alex
And it just takes time to develop trust with these people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [108:13]
Jimmy Iovine
I trust other people, but not like that. Not to where I connect like that.
- [108:18]
Alex
Yeah.
- [108:19]
Jimmy Iovine
You know, I'm very lucky. You know, when you get to be 72 years old, you have some friendships that are 50 years old.
- [108:26]
Alex
That's incredible.
- [108:27]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, yeah, it's nice. It's nice. But, you know, on the. On the school thing, we're on to something. And I like to build. I like to do something which goes back to all the business stuff that's going to catch on and going to grow on its own, you know, So I think, like, the stuff we're doing in the inner city, we have five schools now. These are high schools now, because, again, my debt to black culture is enormous. I want to really help the inner city and give these kids an advantage of an education that no one else is thinking about. I think we're going to build some extraordinary people that companies are going to really want.
- [109:16]
Alex
So that's the way you want high schoolers and people in college to learn. What's the best way for you to learn something new now?
- [109:22]
Jimmy Iovine
I was terrible in school. When I had to learn something, I just couldn't. I just.
- [109:27]
Alex
How the hell do you learn to produce records on.
- [109:30]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, like, anybody my age that's in music or around culturally. There was the big bang, which was the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I was probably 11 years old, right? And I didn't have a currency in my neighborhood. I wasn't an athlete. I wasn't physically big. I wasn't any of the things that worked in the neighborhood. And when I saw the Beetle, I said, oh, there's a currency I can have.
- [110:04]
Alex
Because you try. You try to create music first, right?
- [110:07]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, it was terrible coming out, you know, I was in a band, you know, But I realized quick I wasn't going to be in the Rolling Stones. Then I met this woman through my cousin, this woman, Ellie Greenwich, who took me to recording sessions. And that's where I saw that guy with the leather bag and the, you.
- [110:25]
Alex
Know, and the beautiful woman and the.
- [110:27]
Jimmy Iovine
Candles and the pretty girl coming to meet him. I said, oh, that's it. I never saw anybody with a leather bag before, you know.
- [110:37]
Alex
And so you just learn by observing?
- [110:39]
Jimmy Iovine
No. Then I got it. I want to get a job as a. Cleaning up, you know, cleaning up the studio. Setting up the studio, repetition, figuring, putting this over there, you know, figuring out, being around it being the ability to observe.
- [110:53]
Alex
I can see how you can learn to be like a engineer, right? And recording studio that way, but then you go to a much more, almost like, creative part, which is producing.
- [111:03]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, because I had an instinct. I had an instinct for. Again, for what the audience would like and what they wouldn't like and what was good and what was not.
- [111:11]
Alex
Based on your own personal taste.
- [111:13]
Jimmy Iovine
Based on my taste, influenced by John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen. Intense, intense therapy, sitting next to them every day for five years.
- [111:25]
Alex
And you were up close and you saw what true excellence looked like.
- [111:29]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. And he taught me what was cool and what was not cool and what was good and what was great. Difference between good and great and what you do to get there. And so then I was able to produce records because of those two people. I watched them, I watched Landa, I watched John, I watched John Lennon. I watched Bruce. I said, oh, shit. And I just absorbed it and I applied it. That's how. When Bruce gave me the song because the Night for Patti Smith, I was able to translate that into a record where I was the producer. I always wanted a song that sounded like the Animals, you know, it's my life and other. You know, that. That. And we got to get out of this place, right? So when I heard that song and I heard the chorus, because he had the chorus, right, I said. And then I heard because the Night Belongs to Lovers. I said, wow, if a woman sings that, that's powerful. So I said to him, you're going to use this song? He goes, no, it doesn't fit on this album. I said, okay, can I use it for Patti? And he was great. And he said, yeah. And she rewrote the verses and killed it. But connecting the dots, you know, you could learn a little bit how to connect the dots, but you got to be that kind of person that just sees you can connect the dots, and that's as simple and as difficult as it is. I was always able to connect the dots and see what could be, what this is and what it could be. But that's what always tortured me, because I would see something and see what it could be and then try to get it to be. That is maddening. Even with beats. I. You know, I. I saw the ipod, and we finally decided to do it. I said, oh, wow. It could be that. You know, it could be as cool as that. We got to make it as cool as that, because I thought it was really cool, you know?
- [113:22]
Alex
Did you ever meet Akia Morita, the founder of Sony?
- [113:25]
Jimmy Iovine
No.
- [113:25]
Alex
But you observed him.
- [113:26]
Jimmy Iovine
I observed them, and Steve would talk to me about him, and I saw. But I was always very into the fact that he. When I met Steve, I never understood instinctively why Sony had Columbia records, the Walkman, PlayStation, and then the CD and all this stuff. And how did Apple become Apple and not them?
- [113:57]
Alex
It's almost like they had all the components, but it was siloed.
- [114:00]
Jimmy Iovine
No, Marito died.
- [114:01]
Alex
Okay. But it goes back to your. I see some kind of connection to the school you're doing.
- [114:06]
Jimmy Iovine
Yes.
- [114:07]
Alex
Because it's like you had it all. You just had a date. You have one person, like an Akio, who was. If he was alive, or Steve or Jimmy, to put it all together.
- [114:13]
Jimmy Iovine
I am not as smart as those two people. And I'm just telling you the God's honest truth, man. They knew how to do what they were doing. I Don't know how to do what? I. I don't really know.
- [114:22]
Alex
Yeah, but you know how to put shit together.
- [114:23]
Jimmy Iovine
I do. I know how to put shit together, you know, so that's really cool.
- [114:27]
Alex
But did Steve talk to you about the influence?
- [114:29]
Jimmy Iovine
Absolutely.
- [114:30]
Alex
What was he saying about Sony, Nakia?
- [114:32]
Jimmy Iovine
He would say that guy was. Really. Knew what he was doing. He really had a feel. And I. You know, it was obvious to me, you know, Morita bought Sony, bought Columbia Records, bought Columbia Pictures. He saw the distribution, the hardware, the software. He saw it all. But Steve took it. Not literally, but it was part of the inspiration behind, for sure, his chain of thinking. Right.
- [115:01]
Alex
He talked in interviews. He talks about how what he loved about Akio and the Walkman in particular, because Akil had to fight to build a Walkman in his own company. They're like, this is the stupidest thing.
- [115:11]
Jimmy Iovine
I remember being with Bruce Springsteen, and he told me, he said, you know, this guy. This guy from Sony came up to me, and he runs the company. He says, the guy asked me to put these headphones on if there was enough bass, and it was him. You know what I mean?
- [115:36]
Alex
Yeah.
- [115:37]
Jimmy Iovine
So this guy got it.
- [115:38]
Alex
Yeah.
- [115:39]
Jimmy Iovine
You know, and I never met him, but I know he got it. You know, I learned a lot from Steve. I learned a lot from John Lennon. I learned a lot from Bruce. But I got really blessed.
- [115:47]
Alex
Were you able to learn Those are people. Well, I guess Bruce was your age, right? You guys are. He's a little older.
- [115:52]
Jimmy Iovine
He's three years older than me.
- [115:54]
Alex
Were you able to learn from younger people than you? Like, when were you learning from your artists?
- [115:58]
Jimmy Iovine
I learned from Bono, you know, a lot from bottom bottles. 10 years younger than me when I met bottom in 1983, and we did Under Blood. We did Under Blood Red Sky. I said, oh, shit. The framing of how artists are thinking. It's changing. I said, wow, look at this. The music was different, you know, and the kind of music that was going on that they were doing was different. It was a take on punk, but it was, like, more ethereal and different. So. And also, he's an extrovert, whereas the other guys, a lot of guys I worked with weren't.
- [116:40]
Alex
They're introverted, really.
- [116:42]
Jimmy Iovine
Dre.
- [116:43]
Alex
So what did you learn from Dre?
- [116:46]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, Dre brought back the Springsteen thing in me, which was the commitment to a vision and sticking by the culture that you came up in and servicing that culture. And. And it was something that I really didn't understand in the beginning. So I was really hungry to learn about it, you know, about hip hop and the culture and what it was doing and how it applied and the true power of it. So learn. I mean, I learned everything about that. I know about hip hop from Dr. Dream Period.
- [117:20]
Alex
I feel like he was some kind of like prodigy as a young person. But then he just has this relentless work ethic. So he took like innate talent and I don't. And seems to like just through an insane like day after day after day after day dedication and made the. Because he's the greatest hip hop producer of all time.
- [117:39]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, like Dre and Bruce have a lot in common.
- [117:42]
Alex
How so?
- [117:43]
Jimmy Iovine
They are completely uncompromising. Okay? Completely uncompromising. They will not compromise. You have to convince them to move to the left or right. They know completely what they do and they don't compromise. It's just that simple. Bruce was the lead. When I met Dre and Bruce was very similar. They were both broke and Dre was in trouble and broke. And they would with that vision even.
- [118:17]
Alex
Back then they weren't compromising.
- [118:19]
Jimmy Iovine
Not even close. You couldn't rent Bruce Springsteen. You couldn't buy nothing. You could rent me in those days. You know what I mean? Absolutely. You know, but you couldn't anything with that guy. He is. He didn't. He didn't think about, well, where am I going to sleep tonight? It was like this. I learned that from him. It was like really, really powerful thing. There was nothing that anyone had that he wanted. Nothing. That's powerful. That's powerful when you're broke, right. It's like, whoa. Like so. I admired that.
- [119:00]
Alex
So Bono was an extrovert.
- [119:02]
Jimmy Iovine
You were an extrovert. Meaning he'll go out, he'll talk to people and he's passionate. And by the way, in his book and in his play a one man show, he talks about the issues he had at home with his dad and all that stuff. But he is the most positive person I met in music.
- [119:23]
Alex
So his bend same thing comes from like this childhood trauma.
- [119:27]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [119:27]
Alex
But somehow didn't fixed it along the way.
- [119:30]
Jimmy Iovine
No, no, no. He just is naturally positive person. He can stay tough, he can get plowed through things. He works is incredible work at the incredible writer, incredible lyricist, incredible performer. But he's positive whenever you see him. He's got an idea. He wants to do this. He wants. He's got a very broad interest. I mean, you know, I didn't go on vacation until I met him. Say more about that. I'd never been on a vacation really until the year 2000. Because I was doing Rattle and Hum with him in 1988, and I went to the south of France, I remember. And I was like, whoa, what the.
- [120:11]
Alex
So you were just myopically focused on achievement.
- [120:15]
Jimmy Iovine
Yes.
- [120:15]
Alex
I love this story where you fly to California for the first time. Right. I don't think you'd ever been on a plane.
- [120:22]
Jimmy Iovine
No.
- [120:22]
Alex
You. You're 20. How old are you?
- [120:24]
Jimmy Iovine
20. You're 20. Never been on a plane. Never been in a hotel.
- [120:27]
Alex
Never been a hotel. And then I don't know if it's the same trip or later. I think Tom Petty put you in a house. You had never.
- [120:32]
Jimmy Iovine
Lennon put me in the Beverly Hills Hotel.
- [120:36]
Alex
But that's when you start to like, oh, wait, the world is huge. And there's a lot in front of me if I. If I focus on this.
- [120:43]
Jimmy Iovine
Well, I remember John took me to a guy named Richard Perry's house.
- [120:47]
Alex
Okay.
- [120:48]
Jimmy Iovine
A very famous record producer. And John took me to his house with Harry Nielsen. They were going out. They said he just was, like, really nice to me. He said, do you want to come? Sure. I had nothing to do. I was in the hotel. Takes me there, and this guy's got a house in the hills in Laurel Canyon, overlooking. Or Doheny or something, overlooking the city. Was at night, he had tennis court that was lit up. I was like, it's like seeing the guy with the bag. Yeah. I was like, holy shit. You know, like, wow.
- [121:25]
Alex
Yeah. Just opens up the scope of possibilities.
- [121:28]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. You know, you see it for the first time. I've never been on a plane. I mean, I've only been to Manhattan, you know, because of the work, you know.
- [121:35]
Alex
Did you know this is where you were going to spend your life? Like, when?
- [121:39]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah, the minute I got off the plane. And my. My boss, Roy, said, let's rent the car. We rented a Cadillac, right? And we drove down Sunset Boulevard. And it was December, and it was 75, 78 degrees or something like that. I said, are you kidding me? I said, no, this is the one. Like California, you know? So I went to pull into the Beverly Hills Hotel.
- [122:08]
Alex
First hotel you ever stay in.
- [122:09]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [122:10]
Alex
Is that. That's wild.
- [122:12]
Jimmy Iovine
Except the Host Motel in Pennsylvania, where the car pulls up to the door, you know that one of those places. And the pools on the highway. So a little different from where this was the first time. And so I go to my room and I come back and I talk to the doorman. I said, can I say something? The regular people live here? And he said, yeah, I'm a Regular person. I'm a doorman. I said, I live here. I said, my father's alongshoremen. Are there docks here?
- [122:50]
Alex
Yeah.
- [122:52]
Jimmy Iovine
That is the port of California. Yes. With one of the biggest ports in the world or whatever. I said, thanks. I go back to my room, I call my mother. I said, mom, how did you get this wrong? We land in Ellis island And we live 30ft from Ellis Island. It's freezing. It's cold.
- [123:15]
Alex
It's.
- [123:16]
Jimmy Iovine
Why don't we live in California?
- [123:18]
Alex
Yeah.
- [123:19]
Jimmy Iovine
So, yeah, I knew I wanted to live in California from that day.
- [123:21]
Alex
So how long did it take for you to move here permanently?
- [123:24]
Jimmy Iovine
79. Tom Petty. Damn. Took. My whole life was controlled by. Was. Was documented by albums. I was damn the torpedoes when I moved.
- [123:30]
Alex
How many years later was that?
- [123:32]
Jimmy Iovine
Six.
- [123:33]
Alex
Six years. And that's when you. He put Tom Petty put you up in a house.
- [123:36]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah.
- [123:37]
Alex
And you were kind of freaked out.
- [123:38]
Jimmy Iovine
You're like, I'm in the. Well. Because it was. I wasn't again. I never. I never had a house.
- [123:42]
Alex
Yeah.
- [123:42]
Jimmy Iovine
I live in an apartment, Right?
- [123:44]
Alex
Yeah.
- [123:45]
Jimmy Iovine
There was noises outside the window. You know what I mean? So I was completely freaked out, you know. But Petty was. Petty was incredible.
- [123:54]
Alex
What'd you learn from him?
- [123:55]
Jimmy Iovine
He was the first guy I worked with that was my age. He was like, only two years younger than me or something, but he was like. He was more of a contemporary of mine at that point. We were both trying to prove something, Right. So we'd locked in and it was just. Great songwriter and again, perfectionist in his art. He would never bring a song in. Tom Petty never brought an average song into the studio. He was a great self editor. He would come in, that song would be complete and done. Spruce is like that as well.
- [124:31]
Alex
But that's another thing. His motivating factor was creating the best possible song art.
- [124:36]
Jimmy Iovine
Yeah. He wasn't thinking about again, like everybody else. You wanted to have a better life, you know?
- [124:44]
Alex
Yeah.
- [124:44]
Jimmy Iovine
And another guy that had issues with.
- [124:46]
Alex
His father, but you had commercial instincts. Because there's a great line in the documentary where, like, he writes some song and you're like, I think he wrote a great song. And two other ones. You're like, get seven more, we're done. Or like, this song's gonna buy you a house. And Tom's like, I've never heard anybody talk that way before.
- [125:02]
Jimmy Iovine
Because I, you know, sometimes I sound crass or whatever. Just that I have a sense of humor. I know how funny that would sound.
- [125:11]
Alex
Yeah.
- [125:12]
Jimmy Iovine
You know what I mean? Like Bono, one Day I didn't work on Joshua Tree. I wanted to do it, but they chose Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, which was a better choice. They wanted to change their sound, but that was the right choice. But they would always bring me in to listen to the songs like Bruce did that day on the river.
- [125:33]
Alex
Yeah.
- [125:34]
Jimmy Iovine
So I go in and he plays me this song and he says, this was the beginning of it. He says, jimmy, this is house music. I said, really? I said, I don't. I don't know if I like house music that much.
- [125:46]
Alex
Right.
- [125:47]
Jimmy Iovine
So he plays me with or without you. I said, bono, that's house music. Said, no, it's not. You know what you're talking about. I said, bottom, that other song. That's apartment music. You put this song out, you're getting a house. Okay? So, you know, that's just the way I express myself. It's just kind of, you know, I try to. You know, I can't help it if the line is good. I say it even though. Even if it makes you look, you know, like, wow, you're gonna buy a house with the song Tom Petty. I knew when I was saying it that it sounded like that, but my father was like that. He couldn't resist a good line.
- [126:28]
Alex
Goes back to one of the first things we talked about is, like, the fact that they want you in the room because you tell them the truth. And what I love about you is, like, exactly before I met you, exactly how I thought you would be. You are in person. And this started with when I sent this clip, when you're on Ari Emanuel's podcast. And at the end, I sent the clip to Daniel Ek and me and him were just laughing about it. Because you're like, the production. He goes, this is Ari's podcast is a reduction value.
- [126:52]
Jimmy Iovine
There was a velour couch. And he says, it's not a velour couch. I grew up with velour couches, okay? Only my velour couches have plastic on them. No, but you're like, production value sucks.
- [127:04]
Alex
It's hot. I don't got any tea. The water's warm.
- [127:07]
Jimmy Iovine
You got this goddamn light in my face. No, it felt kind. Rick Rubin sitting there in Italy in this incredible house, backlit. He looks like Moses.
- [127:17]
Alex
I'm like, what the I'm gonna last thing? What did you think? Production value today? You happy?
- [127:23]
Jimmy Iovine
I thought it was good when you. When you finally get going. I mean, the wood paneling is just not really for me, you know, I'm not, like. Because I had wood paneling growing up, you know, I mean, everything was not real.
- [127:36]
Alex
We got you the tea. I sent that clip to the team. I was like, jimmy's coming. We're not going to disappoint him. We have the air going.
- [127:42]
Jimmy Iovine
It's a very nice time. It's very nice place. It's perfect.
- [127:45]
Alex
I absolutely love you. I tell you this all the time. You're one of the people I most admire.
- [127:49]
Jimmy Iovine
This was fun.
- [127:50]
Alex
You might want to most be like, thank you so much for taking the time, you know. Oh, don't leave me hanging. Don't leave me hanging. Jimmy, come on.
- [127:56]
Jimmy Iovine
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see that. I was looking for my microphone. No, you're good.
- [127:59]
Alex
Thanks, man. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through founders.