Jimmy Iovine

Summary

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Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Guest: Jimmy Iovine
Date: November 26, 2025

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Overview

In this wide-ranging, candid conversation, music industry titan Jimmy Iovine joins Rick Rubin to discuss his journey from Brooklyn to the highest echelons of music, technology, and education. The episode explores Iovine’s unique path through record production, the launch of Beats, his partnership with Dr. Dre, selling to Apple, and why he’s become a vocal advocate for breaking down silos between disciplines through education. Personal stories, industry insights, and a celebration of creative collaboration thread through an inspiring and often humorous dialogue.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Tracing Iovine’s rise from humble beginnings to music-industry legend
• Insights into music production, record industry evolution, and technology’s disruption
• The story behind Beats headphones and the Apple deal
• Why collaboration and interdisciplinary learning are crucial for the future
• Iovine’s reflections on influence, mentorship, legacy, and "retiring" on his own terms

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From Brooklyn to John Lennon ([00:25])

• Jimmy’s break:
  • Started as an engineer, living with his mother in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
  • First big opportunity was working with John Lennon.
  • Quote: “I got to work with John Lennon. He goes, lucky him… he’s famous. Where’s he gonna find a good person? You’ll be loyal to him. You’re honest.” —Jimmy Iovine ([00:25])
• Staying grounded:
  • Never developed an ego from his early successes.
  • “I never breathe my own exhaust… the worst thing you can do in life if you have some success, is breathe your own exhaust.” —Jimmy Iovine ([00:52])

2. Growing Up & Insecurity ([01:31])

• Describes himself as "a little guy in Red Hook," where athletics and toughness were currency.
• Music became his escape and new form of status.
• “In 63, music became a currency, and I went all in on that, and that’s how I ended up where I am.” —Jimmy Iovine ([01:56])

3. Entering Tech: Interscope to Apple ([03:52])

• Mid-2000s, witnessing industry upheaval (Napster, CD decline).
• Meeting Steve Jobs and Eddie Cue about iTunes.
  • Jobs understood both technology and popular culture (drawing a parallel to Sony’s Akio Morita).
  • “I felt the party was at [Steve Jobs’] house… that was the direction, and it could be a really good direction.” —Jimmy Iovine ([05:49])
• Realization: Record labels need to diversify and innovate, looking to hip-hop entrepreneurs as examples.

4. The Beats Headphones Origin Story ([07:29])

• Spark: Dr. Dre frustrated with low-quality Apple earbuds.
• “My lawyer wants me to sell sneakers. And I said, no, no, no. No, Dre, speakers.” —Jimmy Iovine ([07:41])
• Jimmy’s access to Apple fueled the inspiration: “I can recognize cool. I don’t understand what they’re doing, but I know it’s cool.” ([08:32])
• Despite Steve Jobs' skepticism about headphone sales, Jimmy and Dre moved forward independently.

5. How Beats Went Mainstream ([10:10])

• Relied on connections from the music world for design and marketing feedback (e.g., Pharrell, Gwen Stefani).
• Product placement in music videos and sports was pivotal.
• Anecdote: Kevin Garnett ad with the tagline "hear what you want" established Beats' identity ([12:10])
• LeBron James and the U.S. Olympic basketball team wore Beats on worldwide TV by happenstance ([13:53]).

6. Multidisciplinary Thinking and Educational Mission ([16:00], [21:19])

• Frustration with siloed expertise at tech companies and even at Beats/Apple.
  • “Engineering and design… are siloed when they learn, and they’re siloed when they come out.” —Jimmy Iovine ([18:45])
• With Dr. Dre, launched the USC Iovine and Young Academy to foster interdisciplinary talent.
  • Quote: “We want to build a school that people can collaborate, innovate, and collaborate different disciplines.” —Jimmy Iovine ([22:59])
  • $70M donation, and now a model for institutions like MIT.
• Belief: true innovation comes from merging art/design/tech/business.

7. The Media and Tech Landscape ([28:17], [29:40])

• Sees the rise of Netflix/Spotify and tech platforms as inevitable; record business missed the opportunity due to infighting and shortsightedness.
• Memorable exchange:
  • “Spotify owns nothing.” —Interviewer ([29:12])
  • “They own nothing.” —Jimmy Iovine ([29:14])
• Industry’s failure: labels were too adversarial to collaborate on tech/distribution.

8. Interscope: Risk-Taking, Artist-Led Approach ([39:18])

• At Interscope, Iovine broke industry norms.
  • Prioritized artist needs and culture over rigid business rules.
  • “The answers are not in me… The answers are with Dre, the answers are with Trent [Reznor].” ([39:36])
• Willing to make bold investments (“I would go $25 million down on somebody, no problem.” —Jimmy Iovine [41:45])
• Left when it became more about managing people than the music: “I made headphones because I couldn’t take the people anymore.” ([41:56])

9. Working with Legends: U2, Springsteen, Whitney Houston ([44:43], [54:12], [60:42])

• Produced songs with iconic artists, valuing authenticity and relentless work ethic.
• On Whitney Houston recording “Do You Hear What I Hear?”:
  • “I didn’t know miracles existed until I recorded that woman’s voice… It was so powerful and extraordinary. Sang it in one take.” —Jimmy Iovine ([48:30])
• Recalls seeing Bruce Springsteen write “Thunder Road” in the studio:
  • “He had a sound in his head, and he didn’t know how to get it out. None of us did… You work till you get it right, which sounds simple, but if you’re honest…it’s hard.” ([64:52],[66:46])
• Reflection on not being defined by business:
  • “I realized that I never liked business. I like music. I like getting ideas and doing them.” —Jimmy Iovine ([77:10])

10. Advice on Retirement & Legacy ([79:26], [81:25])

• On truly walking away:
  • “I had to get myself out of the position of my name being on something and being my responsibility… I didn’t want that anymore.” ([79:30])
  • “Only do stuff with people you like. Be in a position where you can always give it back.” ([80:20])
• Importance of separating identity from one’s job:
  • “Nobody wants to give up the uniform… it’s seeped into their skin, and they are that job.” ([82:24])
  • David Geffen told Jimmy: “You are not your job, and don’t let that happen to you.” ([83:19])
• Final prescription: More therapy earlier and define success by your own standards.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Never breathe your own exhaust.” —Jimmy Iovine ([00:52])
• On his dad’s support:
  • “He’s famous. Where’s he gonna find a good person? You’ll be loyal to him. You’re honest.” —Jimmy Iovine's dad ([00:25])
• On innovation:
  • “Supposedly, the Elite singer, Steve Jobs, right? I said, okay, this is… this is it. So I ate my boat in that direction.” —Jimmy Iovine ([09:01])
• On launching Beats:
  • “No, no, no. No, Dre, speakers.” —Jimmy Iovine ([07:41])
• On working with Whitney Houston:
  • “She walked out there, she sang the song in church. …You didn’t need a microphone or tape. It was so powerful and extraordinary. Sang it in one take.” —Jimmy Iovine ([48:37])
• On creativity:
  • “You got to see a hurricane form… my life was defined by that.” —Jimmy Iovine on Springsteen ([73:27])
• On retirement:
  • “Having to convince somebody of something is a lack of freedom… That’s the gift I gave myself when I left.” —Jimmy Iovine ([77:31])

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Timeline of Major Segments

• 00:25–03:51 — Early career, first break with Lennon, growing up in Brooklyn, the roots of confidence and insecurity.
• 03:52–09:25 — Meeting Steve Jobs, the dawn of digital music, inception of Beats, recognizing the cool in tech.
• 09:26–15:34 — Beats’ growth: from music to sports, organic product placement, LeBron and the Olympics.
• 16:00–25:24 — Interdisciplinary thinking, frustrations with siloed expertise, founding the Iovine Young Academy at USC.
• 28:17–33:41 — Tech overtaking media, missed opportunities by labels, Disney/Warner/Netflix parallels, building for the future.
• 37:12–42:53 — Surprises at Interscope, focus on support for artists, risking capital on talent, leaving the business.
• 44:43–55:29 — Remaking A&M Studios, producing “A Very Special Christmas,” remarkable stories with Whitney Houston.
• 57:09–67:36 — The creative process of U2 vs. other artists, first meeting with Springsteen, the sacrifice and rigor of music-making.
• 69:13–77:54 — Technological shifts in recording, the invention of the Linn drum, more on Springsteen’s uncompromising artistry, reasons for leaving production.
• 79:26–84:44 — Reflections on stepping away, advice for retirement, identity beyond professional accolades, lessons learned.

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Conclusion: Lessons and Takeaways

• Jimmy Iovine’s story is one of relentless curiosity, adaptability, and refusal to be boxed into a silo—whether in music, technology, or education.
• His faith in collaboration, pushing beyond comfort zones, lifting up creative partners, and willingness to pivot make for a blueprint not only for music executives but anyone passionate about meaningful work.
• Final spirit: “Everything is one thing. I don’t see things siloed. I think everything should be in one place. I know that sounds impossible, but it’s not impossible.” ([34:44], [44:43])

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Summary by Tetragrammaton Podcast Summarizer
For deep thinkers, makers, and those at the intersection of art, tech, and business.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

Tetragrammaton.

[Jimmy Iovine]

When I first got the gig with John Lennon, I walked in and I got to work with him for two weeks. In the very beginning, I'm living in my mother's house in Brooklyn, right? Red Hood Brooklyn. I said, dad, you're not going to believe this. I got to work with John Lennon. He goes, lucky him. I said, what do you mean, lucky him? He goes, he's famous. Where's he gonna find a good person? You'll be loyal to him. You're honest. Where's he going to find somebody like that?

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I mean, and by the way, I never got a weird ego because of it. I just always felt like, oh, I belong here, beautiful. I never felt like I don't belong. And like, that's why I never breathe my own exhaust. So I don't think like, oh, wow, I had a hit record. I'm like, who doesn't? You know what I mean? It's like I never. I was always like, I'm here. This is what I'm doing. And it turned out good. Now I'm insecure of my life completely. I was. But I'm never insecure about where I am with my work.

[Interviewer]

What are you insecure about? It sounds like you have self confidence now.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I have self confidence in my whole life.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

But growing up, you know, I was a little guy in Red Hood, Brooklyn, where the currency. Well, I'm psychoanalyzing myself. I watched the Martin Scorsese documentary the other day. I felt like I was watching myself. Same story, you know, little guy, tough neighborhood, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The currency in my neighborhood was athletics and physicality. You know, if you were a tough guy, I knife either one.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Then what happened was in 63, music became a currency, and I went all in on that, and that's how I ended up where I am. But those other two things stay with you. You know, you become insecure about girls because that's who the girls go out with. Right? Right. You want to be a football hero, right? So I'm making. I'm making this up right now. I went to a lot of psychotherapy in my life. I think that's where it's coming from. But then eventually I started to get more confidence about myself, and I feel really good now. But. But I've never. I never felt I was going to go somewhere somebody wasn't going to like me. I. I know that sounds weird, but I know people feel that. Yeah, people feel that. They go to a party they go, oh, my God. I go to a party. I figured, you know, life of the party, let's go. Right? You know what I mean? Okay. It was party. John Lennon brought me to a party party once. He brought me. It was him, Ringo, Harry Nielsen, and me and Richard Perry. We went to Roman Polanski's party.

[Interviewer]

What was that like?

[Jimmy Iovine]

It was out there. It was everything you think it should and shouldn't be.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So I went there. But I remember I didn't feel, like, uncomfortable. I was only 19 years old.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I was looking around like, oh, wow, look at this. You know, and. Because the worst thing you can do in life if you have some success, is breathe your own exhaust. It is so boring. And it reads. When people see you. They read it? Yeah, they read it. I don't know how to do half the things. 90 of the things I do, I get people that know how to do them and I help them. That's it. You know, I'm not Steve Jobs. I'm not even Marty Scorsese. Well, he's a genius. He's brilliant. But I'm saying I'm none of those characters. Right. But part of that comes from thinking that you're comfortable, so you're not defensive. Right.

[Interviewer]

Great.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So one of the things I wanted to tell you about is the journey from Interscope to Apple to my schools, where we are now, and the why of it. So 2003, Mercury business hits turbulence. I'm not interested. I'm not working on tech or anything like that.

[Interviewer]

Is that like when Napster happened?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. So I figured that the labels need to do something else to a. To offer the artist or else. Why would artists want to do that? Right. And also the boat was leaking furiously and all the labels were suing everybody and stuff like that. So I get a call from Doug Morris, who was running Universal, said to me, go up and see Eddie and Steve, Steve Jobs and Eddie Q about itunes. So I gone up there and I met those guys and it just was so fascinating to me to see what they had going, both technically but culturally. You know, when Steve, you had a guy who understood not just overall culture, but understood popular culture, he was kind of like, you know, you're too young, actually like a Morita kind of guy. The guy who founded Sony, you know, he look, he had the Walkman, he bought Columbia Records, the compact disc. He had it right. He was a tech company that had popular culture. He was the first that looked like that, actually. I think Steve got a lot of it from him.

[Interviewer]

I think so, too, I think he said that that was, like, one of his inspirations.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. Well, it had to be. Yeah. So I go up there, and I get completely infatuated with the whole ecosystem of music to digital distribution.

[Interviewer]

At that time, were we still selling CDs?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Oh, yeah. But I found a new love. The way I fell in love with music, I fell in love with the idea of this ecosystem. It just felt natural to me, and it felt culturally relevant. It didn't feel like a machine. And that was a lot to do with Steve Jobs, who, you know, we spend most of our time together talking about Bob Dylan and John Lennon, you know, because he loved the Beatles and he loved. He loved Dylan, you know, and we helped him EQ iTunes at one time, and, you know, whatever. We just helped wherever we could. I felt the party was at his house. You know, I felt that that was the direction, and it could be a really good direction. And I didn't have any interest or thinking that it was possible that we could build our own itunes. That was beyond my even comprehension, which I later realized I was just not sophisticated enough yet. Right. So the power of MP3s and the whole thing just kept getting bigger and bigger. So I realized, okay, if we're going to be a record company, we have to do more than just this. If we're not going to distribute our own records, we're not. We have to create other businesses. Because part of it. I saw what you guys were doing in hip hop, Russell, Puff, these guys were all doing very entrepreneurial things. And I said, that looks really smart, you know, because they bring a lot to it. They bring fashion, they bring taste.

[Interviewer]

It was the whole movement. It wasn't just the music.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's right. So we tried a bunch of things, and the great story of me and Dre running into each other, because Dre was really upset with the earbuds.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. The white wired, free headphones that came.

[Jimmy Iovine]

With the ipod and the iPhone. And it was so powerful, the reach of that thing, that every kid in the world was walking around with that thing. So Dre says to me, my kids are listening to music on their computer, and those earbuds sounds terrible. I spend all day doing. I spend every day, and it sounds horrible. He said, there's got to be a solution for this. What is it? Then about six months later, I ran into him, and he told me that great story. It is a great story now, where he said to me, you know, my lawyer wants me to sell sneakers. And I said, no, no, no. No, Dre, speakers. Because remember what you said, right? And I said, okay, headphones. Oh. Oh, okay. And he said, we can do that. I said, I think we can do this because I was hanging out at Apple. I was hanging out at Apple a lot. I would go up twice a month, three times a month.

[Interviewer]

Because it was the future you saw. It was the future.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Absolutely. I'll tell you what it was. Maybe you have the same thing, and I think you do. I was never cool as a kid, so I wanted to be around cool, and music was cool. I realized that music, not the music, but the whole thing of a record company was feeling dated, and this was now cool. So I. I can recognize cool. I don't understand what they're doing, but I know it's cool.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Supposedly, the Elite singer, Steve Jobs, right? I said, okay, this is. This is. This is it. So I ate my boat in that direction. And I remember Dre and I decided we're going to do headphones. Then we put the company. I went to Steve and I said, steve, why don't we do Beats with you? He said, I don't want to sell headphones. He goes, you sell headphones? I said, okay.

[Interviewer]

Did he say why?

[Jimmy Iovine]

He. He's brilliant. But he wasn't always right. No one's always right, Right. He felt that no one would pay for audio anymore on headphones, and people thought these were cool. Enough said. But if you want to do it. So we're at lunch at a Greek restaurant that had one of the. You know, when you bring your kids to a restaurant, they have the crayons on the paper, right? So he tells the. Wait, before we were finished, let's tell the waiter to come over and take everything away. And he said, do you have a marker? We got a marker. And he drew out. I wish I still had it. He drew out manufacturing, distribution of hardware. Right.

[Interviewer]

Because you had never done that before.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I had no idea. Right. But I knew I wanted to start a headphone company. And so we started Beats. And Beats obviously worked, right? It was an incredible thing, because what we did was we harnessed the popular culture that we were able to harness. And the way I work is everybody who walks in my office, I show the designs, too. It's like I play them records, you know? So I showed Pharrell. I showed Gwen Stefani. I showed a lot of people the designs and ask them which ones they like. And Dre and I are always collaborating on it, and we came up with that incredible design, you know? And what we did see I gotta rewind to hip hop because it's just kind of how I approach everything. When I met Snoop and Dre, I just said, this just needs to be marketed properly. Everyone in the world needs to hear this shit. And if Interscope did anything, it helped with that, right? We spent the money. We knew how to get the platforms on it. MTV and radio and all this stuff and worldwide and whatever. But I felt the same way about headphones. The only headphones anybody knew anything about was Bose. And their advertising was, we're going to put you to sleep. I'm like, come on, right? I said, we can. We can do better than that, right? And the whole thing was noise canceling, but we had noise canceling as well. But what I did was I got as many videos as I can, and I put the headphones in. The videos.

[Interviewer]

In music videos.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

So anytime one of your artists made a music video, you'd show them wearing the headphones.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, they were in the headphones. The audience didn't want to do it. We didn't do it. But most of the time, everybody agreed.

[Interviewer]

It was almost like product placement for visibility.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, Beats. We had some money, so we put money in. You know, it was. It was cold, you know, and. And it really worked. So then we're still on this thing of Boses banging noise cancellation. And we said, well, we have noise cancellation, but we're going to do is. We're going to keep a different kind of noise out. So we made a commercial with Kevin Garnett, the basketball player, and he pulls up in the bus for the game in Philly, which is the roughest crowd in the world. He gets off the bus, and they're throwing eggs at the window and all this stuff. So he takes the headphones, and it's called hear what you want, and he put it on his head.

[Interviewer]

Great.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And that was it. Right? So that took us from go to sleep to, no, no, no, you're not going to sleep. You're going to put on music and hear only what you want in the world. And that's the way that's what music does to you, right? So I was producing a movie, more than a game, with LeBron James and Maverick Carter. So Maverick was in my office, and I had a box of Beats there. I gave them to Maverick, and Maverick went home, gave him to LeBron. And LeBron's a big fan of Dre. And they called me back and they said, can we have 15? We're on our way to Beijing for the Olympics, and I want To. I want to give it as a gift to the Olympic team. So I said, lebron, do me a favor. When you get off the plane, have the guys wear it when they get off the plane. So I have no idea the impact that's going to have these guys televised.

[Interviewer]

All over the world.

[Jimmy Iovine]

All over the world.

[Interviewer]

It's unbelievable.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So the Dream Team is coming off the plane, and they all have the headphones on, some around their neck, some on their head. So then what we realized is.

[Interviewer]

And that really did come from Maverick being in your office and you giving him headphones. It wasn't like a marketing plan of, like, let's figure out how to get it to the players at the Olympics.

[Jimmy Iovine]

No, that came later.

[Interviewer]

But still, it happened in a very organic way.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's right.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So now what we took from that was, oh, sports. Nobody is doing headphones in sports. No one. Some football players had headphones, but no one. That was the drive of their marketing. So then we get Dre and LeBron, and we put them in a gym together, and we imply that if you wear these headphones, you could work out harder, because music's going to inspire you to work harder.

[Interviewer]

Wild.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And then we had a guy named Omar who was our marketing guy was terrific. He figures out a way to find all the equipment guys on all the teams. We didn't go to the people that own the Giants. We went to the equipment handlers, and we put in everybody's locker, we put headphones. So now, all of a sudden, just like a gift, you turn. Yeah. You turn on the NFL, and these guys all have the headphones on in practice.

[Guest or Participant]

Right.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So we had LeBron, and then we had this infiltration of the NFL first. So we moved kind of away from music a little bit and went heavy into sports.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Also interesting, because at first, he wanted to make sneakers, which is what was for the sports.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right.

[Interviewer]

And then you do headphones, because that goes with the music, and it ends up coming back to sports. Very interesting.

[Jimmy Iovine]

No, it's crazy.

[Interviewer]

Crazy story.

[Jimmy Iovine]

It was crazy. So simultaneously, I still was bugged by distribution from the early 2000s, I wanted to have a streaming service. As a matter of fact, even earlier than I met Steve, I had a little bit of an attraction to it. We started this TV show, me and Doug. Right. It was supposed to be a streaming service, but when Spotify started, I said, okay. So I bought me and. And Trent and the people at Beats and our crew. We bought. MOG was a foundering sort of streaming service. We bought it because my Dream entrance was that you'd make the music, you put it out, you distribute it, and then you have the instrument that people play it on. Right. Which was headphones. Right.

[Interviewer]

So you could also make sure it sounded good through that whole chain.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Exactly, exactly, exactly. You know, Trent wasn't involved in Beats, but he was involved in Beats music, and he was extraordinary in Apple music as well, I'll tell you that. So we have it. And I've always seen everything in one place, but now what's going on is I didn't know this. What we were doing, which was unusual for the day, was really multidisciplinary behavior, where tech, you can't get any more different than building hardware than to making music. You know, people always say to me, well, you guys, you and Dre are recording engineers. Of course you build a headphone. I said, bruce Priest is a guitar player. If you gave him two pieces of wood, it's not going to come out as a guitar. Okay. Period. Or anybody, you know, Keith Richards, any guitar player. Right. So now we sell to Apple. I realized that.

[Interviewer]

Did you sell the headphone company first? So it's the music streaming service, which is now Apple Music.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And the headphone company.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yes, same time.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jimmy Iovine]

But I realized that all these companies, at the time, at least Google, because I visited them and Microsoft, they were really engineering societies. They really were where I learned that engineering and design and everything else that falls underneath that, you know, art and creativity, they're siloed when they learn, and they're siloed when they come out.

[Interviewer]

Narrow expertise.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. Siloed.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right. So then I wanted to bring social into streaming when I was at Apple. Right. And Trent and I wanted them to buy Musical Ly. It's now called TikTok. They changed the name.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Musical Ly became TikTok.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. Musically was a social app.

[Interviewer]

Oh, music Ly.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. I remember where you get a song, you make a video, and you put it up and everybody. Your kids could become involved. They dance and all this other stuff. I like the social aspect of it. I always wanted music streaming to breathe in and out so people can react, so people can communicate with the artist. I didn't want it to be an ATM machine.

[Interviewer]

More of a sense of community around the artist.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yes. Rather than an artist having to go Instagram now. TikTok, Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon. Right now, because of that siloed mentality, none of them have social. None of them. None of the streaming services. I don't know. They feel they can't do it. I don't know what they feel. They really think I'm wrong. Right. Because I told all of them. But it led to me realizing that there's a breakdown of communication between technology, design, and any form of the arts. So I left Apple. Not because of that, but that was. It was. I had. I had an idea, and Apple's an incredible company, and they treated us really well, but it was just. I just. I ran out of time. I ran out of personal Runway. I was 65 years old. You know, I'm not gonna do this anymore.

[Interviewer]

And you also took it very far.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Like you. You made it happen.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. But I didn't finish the thought, so. Because I'm a good top line guy, but a lot of times, what goes underneath it, I need a lot of people for, and I need a lot of cooperation. Before we went to Apple, this is why I noticed the thing at Apple, because I had it at Beats. I couldn't get engineering to communicate with design. And then I had these other 200 creative people around us, and no one knew how to communicate and what would always go on. And I think a lot of people.

[Interviewer]

Almost like they were speaking different languages.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And sometimes on purpose.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. I mean, a lot of time engineers do it on purpose. You can win every argument if the other person thinks he sounds stupid, right. And he goes, oh, I don't understand this stuff. You know, it's a hell of a power, you know, to have. You're the only person in the room that knows how it works. Yeah, right. So that's very literal and very simple. But that was. That's what I thought was going on. So I said, what really needs to happen, and I told us to, Dre, is education should not be siloed. You need collaborative innovation at these companies. We needed Beats. We couldn't find people that knew how to work together, how to collaborate and really communicate. And it was causing a lot of breakdowns. And when I went to Apple, I realized, well, that goes on here, too. It goes on in most companies now, because most companies now need to understand tech, so they need to understand the fundamentals of tech. So what Dre and I did, which was probably crazy, I'm going to mention a number, because I don't want to be. It's in public, but I just want you to know how insane it must have been. We went to USC and we said, we want to build a school that people can collaborate, innovate, and collaborate different disciplines. And there was a guy named Max Nikias who was the President who just. It hit him like lightning. He goes, I'm an engineer. You're right. He brought in this woman, Eric Mulle, who was the Rosky School, which was the art school. She came in, Dre and I wrote a check for $70 million.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right? That's a. Wow. Right on. Nothing but a top line idea. Interdisciplinary learning. This is 2013. Everybody at USC thought we were out of our minds. All the others, not all. Most. And we had to, with Eric and Max, navigate our way through that, figure.

[Interviewer]

Out what that looks like.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And it's called the Ivan Young Academy, and it's been open for 12 years now. But my whole life, whatever business I do now, whatever I do now, it's all based on interdisciplinary. I think every engineer in the world should understand different disciplines. And I think that design, et cetera, should understand the language and the discipline of tech. Right. And communicate. And it's what's really crazy is that a lot of these companies think they have that and they don't have that. You know, and everybody.

[Interviewer]

Different departments understand each other, do each of those things.

[Jimmy Iovine]

They don't understand each other.

[Interviewer]

Understood.

[Jimmy Iovine]

You have to know the why of someone. I talked to some of the greatest engineers in the world when I was doing this. They didn't understand that what I do is not fungible. They don't understand that. I had one of the engineers tell me one day we were doing video. He says, I love television. I know how this should end. That means you don't understand the why of Steven Spielberg. Right.

[Interviewer]

It's also why Apple wasn't Dell.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right.

[Interviewer]

You know.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

Wasn't IBM.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Exactly. That's why it was different than if Marina doesn't die. Yes, Sony could be Apple, because then they got people in that didn't understand that.

[Interviewer]

And there's some question now whether the people at Apple understand that still.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Again, no one is, Steve. But I know that they're doing it. They're trying. But I still think that the basics, nothing to do with Apple, the CEO or the CEO of Microsoft. It's got to do with education. Siloed learning, we felt was over in 2012, 2013. So we started this school. Now a lot of schools are doing this.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Oh, yeah. MIT's put up $100 million to build one of these schools. Wow. Yeah. Because it makes sense what happens to a kid that grows up today. They grew up with multiple disciplines. They have to understand tech or they can't communicate or can't do anything. So they have to understand the fundamentals. Kiddism. Would just remote put it on and change the channel. Life's more complicated than that now. They understand, especially kids from the inner city understand the soul and music and art and. And they understand design. All kids understand design. I have a feel for design today, the minute at 18 years old and you go to college and they take all of that away from you and all you're doing is engineer, lawyer, accountant, right? And whatever else exists today, you know, so we felt that when you're learning, you need to learn multiple disciplines and collaborate. So what we have is we have a thing called the garage where we'll take a kid who at 19 years old wants to be an engineer and we'll put him with a 19 year old that wants to be a designer. And one wants to be an entrepreneur and one's a creative musician or whatever, and they have to build a project together. So now what they learn is I see why that person's important. And they learn the language and to communicate. And everything I do now is kind of built around that accident, or not so much of an accident of Beats and Apple. I didn't invent it. Steve Jobs and Marita are the first people that really did it. Right. I just saw it and I said, oh, okay.

[Interviewer]

And you still see that it's still not all the way there.

[Jimmy Iovine]

It's not all the way. They're not even close. Yeah, not even close. Not even close. And when you deal with these institutions, you know, the engineering societies, they don't want to hear it. You know, they don't want to hear it. They think that they know, you know, And I have a lot of engineers that are friends, but they're like that. So I just felt really early on, especially after I met Steve, that all these tech companies were going to buy all the media companies. That was just obvious as anything to me, you know, and then all of a sudden, what you see, Rick, you're going to jump around a bit. But what you see is Netflix comes out. It's not just the music business. You see Netflix, Netflix comes out. What do they have? They have a checkbook. They have no catalog. They have nothing to. They have Lily Hammer. Little Stephen show was their first show, right?

[Interviewer]

Really? Is that true?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Watch it. It's hilarious. I bet, right? So what do they do? They write advances and they buy the distribution of all those companies. All of them, Warner, all the companies, they would license their stuff to Netflix. Netflix took other money and made their own show. So now they have their shows and their own shows. That's sexy. They build an audience. Now their stock is $500 billion, and Warner might sell for 40 billion. Warner Pictures.

[Interviewer]

Unbelievable, right? Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So how many times you got to get hit with a stick, right? The record business. Spotify is worth 160 billion. All the labels together is not worth 160 billion.

[Interviewer]

And Spotify owns nothing.

[Jimmy Iovine]

They own nothing.

[Interviewer]

They're a distribution channel.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's exactly right. By the way, I didn't add Apple Music and Amazon in there yet. Or YouTube, if you had those together, probably goes to 300 billion, 400 billion. Who knows, right? Because there's that mystery of what is tech. Whoa, that's not me. But yet the tech companies are going, oh, media. That's me.

[Interviewer]

You know, another reason that I think that this happened this way is that the record companies were always so adversarial with each other that, yeah, they couldn't be the ones to say, let's group together and sell our stuff online, because they hated each other.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's one of the reasons. But the fundamental reason is they felt from the beginning, War Music sold mtv.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's not what they thought. They did. How crazy. They didn't understand MTV was more valuable in the record business.

[Interviewer]

They didn't understand it.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Okay. Right. Exactly. You just. It's not their. Their thing. Right. I mean, those two examples of Netflix and Spotify just gave you are now. At least Netflix owns all their content now. And also Disney, Warner, Paramount have started their own streaming services. I get it.

[Interviewer]

It's hard, though, when. If you had to subscribe to all of the different labels for music, it wouldn't work.

[Jimmy Iovine]

You don't have to. You don't have to, Rick. What you need to do is, let's say, hypothetically, you build a streaming service. Not today. I'm talking about. This could have happened. Yeah. And you all distribute through it. You could have your own distribution. You can. You can have, you know, Hulu was. Fox and NBC or something. You could do it, you know, and at one time, you would have said, no way is somebody going to subscribe to Prime. Disney, hbo, Netflix, Paramount, Peacock. If you want to watch football, you need four streaming services. So people. You could build a model around the record business where people would either get the music from the label or from a combined distribution. Because if you control the distribution, you can deal with the communication between your customer. What these people refuse to have is customers.

[Interviewer]

They were always wholesalers.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And I think this is all changing. In both television movies, I think this guy, David Ellison, I met with him once. He seems to have A really interesting take on it. And I know that the people at umg, I don't know the other labels, I know the people at UMG want a more progressive sort of relationship with the customer and stuff. You know, that's what this whole complex thing is. This whole complex thing is for artists to be able to have everything in one place, you know, and it's doing really well and like everything else that we always do. So everybody thinks you're crazy, but I don't think we're crazy. I think we got something going. But the school, I mean, think about. I'm thinking 20 years out, which I probably won't be around. But to have an engineering society that truly understands the other disciplines will make the world. This is what I do. I do entertainment. I'm not a doctor. I don't think anything about any of that shit. I understand entertainment. And it'll make entertainment a better place. It'll make the instruments we use better. Remember, Because Steve understood it and the iPhone was still the most powerful thing in the world. Right. It's the most powerful instrument. When he understood it, he could communicate it. And that's our little goal. That's why we built this school. And it's a great model and we want. This is one where we want everybody to copy us. And by the way, we know nothing about education.

[Interviewer]

You just see what's missing in the picture.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, that's how we operate.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

You know, I didn't know how to build a headphone the other Dre, but we got it built and, and we made the number one headphone company in the world. You know, we were number one in Germany and Sennheiser was number two.

[Interviewer]

Unbelievable.

[Jimmy Iovine]

We were number one in Japan and Sony was number two.

[Interviewer]

Unbelieving in it.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Crazy.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right? So that means we could do this. That's all.

[Interviewer]

I. I thought you were retired.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I am retired. What I've done is I took the bit out of my mouth and I found individuals that had that same drive and I asked them to take the bit.

[Interviewer]

Great.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And so like a day like today, I have nothing to do. I'm talking to you. And then I'm going to the Dodger game. And I'm not going to the Dodger game. I'm taking my son in law. I'm not going to talk business, you know, but I do have zooms and stuff and meetings where I kind of set the tone for what I think we should do.

[Interviewer]

You have a vision for the future and you want to see it happen.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I have a Vision for what it shouldn't be. Then I fall into what it should be. And I know it shouldn't be the way it is right now. I just don't believe it. You know, I talked to Lucian Grange a lot about this and he really wants to get it right. He's been great and. And I'm starting to reach out to other people, but we got something going on and it's all one thing. To me, everything is one thing. I don't see things siloed. I think everything should be in one place. I know that sounds impossible, but it's not impossible.

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[Interviewer]

Of all the groups on Interscope, who were you most surprised by their success?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Surprised. I was surprised at the scale of Black Eyed Peas.

[Interviewer]

Really.

[Jimmy Iovine]

How big they could become because they came to us as a alternative rap group. I have others that I'll mention, but Black Eyed Peas. What happened with Black Eyed Peas is a fabulous story that you'll love.

[Interviewer]

Tell me.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So I'm with Bono and Edge in France and they're on Interscope at the time and still no. Yeah, yeah. But they're trying to do something. And I always how did they end.

[Interviewer]

Up not being on Island Records? I never understood that they were Island Records.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, Chris was gone.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Chris was gone. Who's another person. They like me.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So when we sold to Universal, Bono went to Doug and said, I want. I don't have anybody here that I know. Like, I know Jimmy and I knew Chris. And Doug said, yes, Doug. It made sense to Doug. And the first thing we did together was Beautiful day. And it was fantastic. I didn't write it, but you know we all made it happen. Right. And then I. I wrote Bono to meet Steve, and we put their songs in the commercial, all that stuff. Right. So anyway, so Black Eyed Peas was one. Definitely. No Doubt was another, I believed. But they came a long way in their songwriting. After five years, you know, we had a lot of.

[Interviewer]

And they were an alternative rock band, and they turned into a pop sensation. Yeah, you can't plan that.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, you can't. Because when they start out as something else and then they cross over to pop, that's always interesting, you know, like, there were some real hard rock bands that made a real penetration, like Helmet.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That was very, very aggressive that I thought. You know, I thought they'd be niche, and they became much more the niche. But I would say that, you know, I'm such a cheerleader, and I'm so optimistic. I wake up every day, I'm completely optimistic. So I think anything could be anything.

[Interviewer]

What do you think at Interscope, you did differently than what other record companies were doing? You were coming from outside of the music.

[Jimmy Iovine]

No, I came from where you're coming from.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, you came from making records to running a record company.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Most of the people who run record companies came from working at a record company.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Because when I was broke, the first freedom, I call it freedom, independence. The first apartment I ever got was from a singer. I run the room with this really smart person. And I went in a room with three of them in a row, which was John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, and Patti Smith. And my life changed. So I said, okay, I need these people. And they taught me culture. They taught me everything you could possibly need to know about popular culture. I mean, that I could have possibly comprehended at the time. So when I went to Interscope, I applied the same rules. I said, this is where the answers are. The answers are not in me and not in the people that work here. The answers are there. The answers are with Dre, the answers are with Trent. The answers are there. I didn't care how much money we spent. I didn't give a flying fuck. It was our money. I didn't care. When I met Snoop and Dre, I didn't understand hip hop, but they reminded me of Mick and Keith. Wow. Mick and Keith hit me when I was 12 years old. I said, these guys. That's who these guys are. I went to mtv, I said, never play another Interscope record if G Thing doesn't work on video. And they put it on and, you know, boom, Right? So that was my different. Cause I knew, like, you Know, I knew how to work with artists, but I really knew how to work with artists. I spent 20 years in a recording studio. No one spends 20 years in a recording. I'm not a businessman. I don't like business. I hate business. I still hate it, but I had to learn it for defensive purposes. It's just truth. I mean, I still don't. I still notice, you know, I'm not anywhere near the business people that I know. But Interscope, it was a different kind of label because we did things we shouldn't do, especially financially.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

You know, I would go $25 million down on somebody, no problem.

[Interviewer]

Do you ever miss leaving Interescope?

[Jimmy Iovine]

No, not for a second.

[Interviewer]

It was the right thing to do at.

[Jimmy Iovine]

No, no, no. I made headphones because I couldn't take the. People anymore. Yeah, they don't talk.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I just said, I can't do this anymore. It was starting to get too much for me. You know, it's a. I feel everything is a young man's sport, you know, I feel you grow out of every. That's why I grew out of running companies. I feel that at a certain age, you know, I just. I just don't do it anymore. But I never feel funny about leaving the record business. As a matter of fact, I'm very happy I left the record business. I wish I had left it 10 years earlier, because I did it. And for what? For one more hit. You know what I mean? I mean, one more hit record. Great. You're not making the music. You're making the music. You're like Jasper Johns. You sit there, you come in here, you paint, and you go home and you put it out. Right, Dave? Somebody puts it out.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Like I told Bruce Springsteen, when I retired, he asked me, man, why are you retiring? I said, man, I went to your show last night in Milan. 80,000 people yelling, Bruce. If they were yelling, Jimmy, I'd still be working. I said, I talk to scumbags all day, you know. I said, fuck this. Not everybody, but a lot of them. You know, it's like, okay, enough. I. You're the man. You're this. You're Illuminati, whatever the fuck that bullshit is. I like, no, I'm a record producer at Heart. I'm an assistant engineer at Heart.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Tell me the story of A and M Recording Studios. How'd you get involved?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Okay, it was 1985, and my father just died, which was devastating to me. It's still the worst day of my life. And you know what? Every now and then I have a horrible day 40 years later, still. That's how close we were. Right. And Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert wanted to remodel the studio because that place was built by the people that Lincoln center. And it was all iron and everything. So it sounded. Kind of sounded good, but it was out there in Herb album.

[Interviewer]

I think Lincoln center has problems with sound.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

As well. Seriously, It's a known fact that it's the same guy. It's like one of the great concert halls. That just doesn't sound good.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Same.

[Interviewer]

That's interesting.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right? So we meet with Jerry and her, me and my engineer, and they like us.

[Interviewer]

How long do you know them?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Not long at all. I met Jerry because of this. Okay, so we go in there and.

[Interviewer]

You'Re a record producer at this point. You're not a.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's all I am.

[Interviewer]

You've never owned a recording studio. You've never built a recording.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I worked at a recording studio.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

You know, I worked at a record plant and Shelly Akis was my engineer, and he worked it there and he worked there. So we kind of understood our way around.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So they said, we want to remodel A M Studios. Will you guys head it up and do it? I said, wow, that sounds like. I went to the lot and I fell in love with a lot.

[Interviewer]

A lot's super cool.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Lot's beautiful. Right.

[Interviewer]

Charlie Chaplin's lot.

[Jimmy Iovine]

If you were at a different time in your life, you would have bought that place for sure.

[Interviewer]

You know, I heard John Mayer just bought it.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, John Mayer just bought it with Mick G. Amazing. So we go in there and we tear the studio apart. We literally practically brought it down to its studs. It was a really great project. And we. We gave ourselves the time to finish the first record that was cut. There was angel of Harlem on U2's record. And we designed the studio to record that band. So there was two of the studios, the two main A and D. They had the big studio part, and then they had these big open booths surrounding it with glass doors. So you could put the drums in there, you could put a guitar. It was all about not needing blankets. And what people don't understand is that when you record, a lot of people put blankets and baffles and all this stuff. But we didn't like that. So we try to build. If you want that isolation, you could have it. But the instruments can still breathe. If you go to that studio, you'll see that they changed a. A little bit, but. But it was a Lot of fun. So now, during that, which is something I did want to talk about, like, I said, my father died in 85. And I was at my sister's house, literally sitting on the floor because I. I just couldn't get up. And Springsteen called me and to tell me he was sorry that my father died. And it was Christmas. He died the week after Christmas, and he loved Christmas, and we were very, very close, and we used to always do some great stuff at Christmas. So I. As he. I'm talking to him, I said, bruce, you know, I want to make a Christmas album for my father. If I do that, would you help me? Would you be involved? He goes, absolutely. I said, okay, great. So I get off the phone, and I go on a mission. So I stopped producing records for a little while, and I go into that, and we made a deal with A and M. But my former wife took me to a party at the Shriver's house where sergeant Shriver and you and his. Shriver were there, because I didn't want any money. I said, I got to get money out of the way here. I want to give all the money to charity, right? So they had a charity called Special Olympics, and they took me to New Jersey. So there was fake Hulk Hogan and all these fake stars. And I said, why don't you have real people here now? I don't know if anybody was involved, but not the one I was at.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So I said, you know what? Let's do it here. Let's do it for these people. And they were fabulous. And they had a son named Bobby Shriver who jumped in, and we went on the road, and I produced this album. Right. It took me a year and a half on the. It was called A Very Special Christmas.

[Interviewer]

It had YouTube Keith Haring cover, if I remember correctly.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. Well, it earned $100 million for Special Olympics.

[Interviewer]

Incredible.

[Jimmy Iovine]

In 1987.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's amazing.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And who was on the first album?

[Jimmy Iovine]

U2. Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Bon Jovi, the Rhythmics, the Pointer Sisters, Sting, all doing Christmas songs. John Mellencamp, all doing Christmas songs. I recorded a lot of the album myself because I want. I went on the road, and I just. Like, for example, Whitney Houston. I went to North Carolina. She did a show there, and she met me in the studio on the way to soundcheck. Let me tell you something. I didn't know miracles existed until I recorded that woman's voice. She walked out there, she sang the song in church. It was. Do you hear what I hear? As a kid, she knew the song, she went out there. I can't explain this to layman, but you didn't need a microphone or tape. It was so powerful and extraordinary. Sang it in one take. She comes in and says, what do you need? I said, I'll tell you this, but she said, I'm single. One more. Single one more time. Did all the backing vocals. She was gone in an hour. And it was so inspiring. If you get a chance, you should listen to it is. Do you hear what I hear right now? That'd be great. When you hear this, it's going to blow your mind.

[Guest or Participant]

Do you hear what I hear? Say the little lamb to the shepherd boy do you hear what I hear what I need. Shepherd boy do you hear what I. Found? A song high up of the tree With a voice as big as the sea with the boy as big as the. Now Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king do you know what I know? In your palace warm mighty king do you know what I know? Oh, a child, a child shivers in the cold Let us bring him silver and gold Let us bring him silver and gold oh, Yeah oh. King to the people everywhere Listen to what I say Time of peace Peace and people everywhere oh, yes do what I say oh child for the child sleeping in the night he will bring us goodness and light the other he will bring us. Me do you know what I know what I. What I. Do you know? Do you know? Do you know what I.

[Interviewer]

She makes it sound completely effortless.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Isn't it beautiful?

[Interviewer]

Comes out.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, she's a miracle. I mean, I. She's a miracle. What a incredible, incredible gift she had and she gave everybody else. I mean, you know, Rick, I owe so much to black culture. And when I hear that, I just realized that, you know, especially since dreams into my life and all this stuff that I've been able to do since 1990. Right. I owe so much to black culture that I'm gonna spend the rest of my life trying to just touch the debt that I owe, you know, and it's really hearing that just. I go back to that day, one of the greatest recording days I had in my life. I. I'm with the instrument was just so awesome and intimidating.

[Interviewer]

Makes it easy for you.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Oh my God, she needs me. Like she needs. She doesn't need me. You know, I just was, you know, I just went to North Carolina.

[Interviewer]

Were these all songs that you listened to growing up?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And most of this is still multi track tapes. So you're carrying tapes to.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

North Carolina.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, yeah. Me and My engineer, we went to North Carolina actually, with Tom Foenunzio.

[Interviewer]

Great. So A and M studios, they ask you to remodel the studio.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

The first thing you record there is a U2 song.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And it goes good one.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Great. But then we lived there.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And that's kind of what got me not into produce records anymore. I'm still great friends with the band. I love the Bono is like, these guys are my family still. But I realized I have to pivot. I can't. I can't just do the same I was doing at that point. I was bruising records for 18 years and I just said, you know, these guys are all younger than me and I'm gonna get older and the new bands aren't gonna want to work with me, you know. So David Geffen had a record cover. We talked about this last time, and it's okay. I'm gonna start a label. And it worked out, you know.

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[Jimmy Iovine]

Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

[Interviewer]

Tell me a little bit about the inner workings of U2 as compared to other bands.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Their process of writing songs is so organic, you two, and so spontaneous that there were times I really felt like I was in over my head, you know, Brian Eno and Daniel Anwar are incredible act to follow. Those guys cover a lot of ground.

[Interviewer]

So you worked with them after them?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, I worked with them before on a live album, but then we made the studio album to Rattle and Hum after them. I see we made some good music. I think they wanted to work with me because it was a very Americana kind of thing, you Know, and I knew how to do that, you know. But I was with Brian Eno and Bono about three years ago in a room. I think it was Bono's house or in a hotel or something. And I looked at Bono and Brian and I said, you know, I'm the second best record producer in this room, you know? And Brian was very gracious. Was very gracious. But those guys are really talented. And. But they. They're. The way they produce is actually. It's painful. And actually they give birth to music. It's not like somebody walks in and says, hey, Jude.

[Interviewer]

They don't come in with a song.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Not all the time. Most of the times they don't. They come in with an idea and a rough. And then it forms in front of. And it's like. It's magical.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But I think you take a long time.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's really, really magical. And what they do, because they create magnificent music.

[Interviewer]

But you work with a lot of artists. Would you say that the way they do it is particular to them?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, yeah. Tom Petty walks in with a song. Yeah. Bruce Springsteen walks in with a song. Stevie next walks in with a song. CB Next will walk in with a song. Song over another song on tape. Right. And they've got to figure out the arrangement and everything, but it's the song. Yeah. So they. For example, when I was in Hawaii with them after on the Blood Red sky, because they do it all different ways. I went to a sound check in Hawaii with them, and all of a sudden I hear Adam playing something an Edge and Larry. And I hear Bono humming, you know, and he's singing. He doesn't have the words really yet. In the name. You know, he's singing in the name. And I hear a sound check. Pride forming. And I said, holy shit. That's why I so desperately wanted to produce the next album, which is even.

[Interviewer]

Before they had words, you could hear. It was magic.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Oh, yeah.

[Guest or Participant]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That was that song. And I wanted to produce the next album desperately because of that song. And I would have done a good job on that song as the rest. I wouldn't have gotten as good as Brian and Danny. So they didn't hire me, which crushed me, but they brought in Danny and. And Brian, who did a much better job than I would have done. Much better. And it set them up for Joshua Tree, which Danny and Brian did as well. And then Joshua Tree obviously was Joshua Tree. Right. But they're a different kind of band. They work more song. Edge and Bono. Now, you Know, I mean, they always wrote the songs. But again, I haven't been in the studio with them in a long time, but it's unlike anything I'd ever seen.

[Interviewer]

Tell me the first time you met Springsteen.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I had just finished working with John Lennon. We were going to go in the studio, and he had a song called Tennessee Williams. And we were going to go in the studio, and Sean, his son was born. And we had the studio booked, I think it was for April, it was 1975. And John called me and said, come up and see me and Yoko. So I went up there.

[Interviewer]

Did he play you the song?

[Jimmy Iovine]

We played me the song at the Record Plan.

[Interviewer]

So you've heard the song?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Great.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's why I say it was Tennessee Williams. That was the name of the song.

[Interviewer]

Because I don't think that song has ever come out.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I think it has to come out somewhere.

[Interviewer]

Oh, okay.

[Jimmy Iovine]

It's somewhere.

[Interviewer]

Let me look, because I would love to hear it. I've never heard it.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Look, on YouTube.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Or turn it into another song.

[Interviewer]

Okay, let's see.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Tennessee, O Tennessee. That's it. What you shown to me your words like horror pure and clear the sadness of your soul reveals the music of the sphere. Conceal behind your spirit, man, your poet's love and fear. America, America, your heroes are alive.

[Guest or Participant]

You're fading and glory will survive.

[Interviewer]

Did he typically write on piano?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Both. So I went to the Dakota, and he and Yoko was sitting there, and Yoko spoke, and she said, jimmy, John's going to retire for five years. So it was funny. It was cute, actually, in a way, because Sean was just born. I. I told my sister I was going to John's house, and she went to Tiffany and bought me a teething ring to bring as a gift.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I was 21 years old. I had no idea. Gifts, what, birth, children, I mean, you know, whatever. Babies. So anyway, so she tells me, john's going to retire for five years. And she opened this book and she started showing me his birthday and Sean's birthday. It's the same day and the thing. And he's got it. He's got to stop for five years. So she said, what's your birthday? And I said, well, My birthday is March 11, 1953. She looks at it and she goes, you should stop as well. I said, yo. I started laughing. I said, Yoko, I make $10 an hour because I had that relationship with John, you know?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I said, yoko, I made $10 an hour. I said, I can't quit anything. I need more work. I don't need less work. So it was really a nice afternoon. That's the last time I saw him. So I go home, and about a week later, I didn't know what to do because now I was engineering for John. And I grown a little bit, you know, at the three albums with them. And I really had grown in my position and everything. So the owner of the studio called. I'm still living with my mother. It was Roy Sakal. And he said to me, I need you to come in. We got this guy, Bruce Springsteen. Another studio just threw him out. We're slow and we could use the business. And you're good at teaching other engineers how to use our studios. I said, man, I don't want to do that. You know what I mean? I just don't want to do it right.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And he started yelling at me, and then he called my mother. They said, I do everything for this guy. My mother starts, yeah, you got. This is Roy. He's on everything for you guys. So I go to the studio, right? And it's Bruce Springsteen, John Landau, Mike Appel and the band. So I'm working with them. I'm showing the engineer how to do things within the studio, make him comfortable. And the next day, he's gone. So John looks at me and says, look, one reason or another, Louise was a great engineer. Said he had to leave. Can you do this? I said, absolutely.

[Interviewer]

What was your feeling that first day?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, I walked in on him writing Thunder Rogue.

[Interviewer]

Good Day.

[Jimmy Iovine]

It blew my mind. It was like, holy.

[Interviewer]

At that point in time, nobody sounded anything like that.

[Jimmy Iovine]

No, he was. He had a sound in his head, Rick. He had a sound in his head, and he didn't know how to get it out. None of us did. But he had a sound in his head. Sort of like what he calls it is Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Phil Spector, you know. And he used to play me like, the Good and the Bad, the Ugly, Ennio Marconi Records when he wanted a guitar sound.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How old was he at that time?

[Jimmy Iovine]

He was 25. I was 22. And it was intense. We had a lot of fun, a lot of laugh, but it was intense. I learned the work ethic because John, in this last album we did, he came in the studio after court because he was being thrown out of the country with Richard Nixon. He used to come and we worked from 12 to 8, 12 to 9. And he went home, you know, because he began. Now he's 33 years old. He's made 15 albums. This was, like, from the day we started Born A run to the day we finished. We didn't stop.

[Interviewer]

And that was a long time.

[Jimmy Iovine]

No, it was all in 1975.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jimmy Iovine]

But it was so intense and so work intensive and so not settling, not compromising, not one fucking note. I really learned the work ethic in that room because I didn't know how to work. I worked hard and I worked a lot of hours, but I didn't know why I was working a lot of hours. He showed me. You work till you get it right, which sounds simple, but if you're honest.

[Interviewer]

With yourself, yeah, it's hard.

[Jimmy Iovine]

It's hard.

[Interviewer]

It's hard and it's exhausting. And when you're working a lot, sometimes it's hard to know when it's right.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's right.

[Interviewer]

You get delirious.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Boy, I'm telling you that.

[Interviewer]

Describe it properly.

[Jimmy Iovine]

When I was mixing Born around, I thought I was going to die. Yeah, of course it's practical. But why is mixing always at the end when you.

[Interviewer]

When you're too tired to do it?

[Jimmy Iovine]

You know what I mean? You can't. You're deaf.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. You've been listening loud for months.

[Jimmy Iovine]

You've heard the songs over and over and over and over again and. Yeah, so. But. And for the relationship, that we're still great friends, me and Landau and Steven and Roy and Bruce. We're still all great friends. It's going to be 50 years next year.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Congratulations. That's a good anniversary.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, man, that was. It was really, really special.

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[Interviewer]

Last time we talked, you mentioned Stevie Nicks taking pieces of A Police song?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And looping them up. Other times that you were in the studio where somebody did something that you hadn't seen before, like a new technique or a new technology or doing something in a different way.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, because I'm so old, I was on a session one day, I was producing, and there was a guy, a guitar player that was a session guy. And in between every take, he would not listen back to our playback. He had a little computer that he put headphones on and he would go over to his own computer. And so I say to the guy, hey, man, what are you doing? The guy's name was Roger Lin. And he says, I'm inventing a drum machine.

[Interviewer]

The Lynn drum?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yes, I'm making a machine that plays the drums. I said, good, because drummers drive me crazy anyway, which they do, Right. And so few people can really play the goddamn thing. And with Roger Lynn.

[Interviewer]

And what was he playing on the session? He was a guitar player.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Guitar player. He's a guitar player. Yeah. We just recorded Damn Torpedoes and he asked us for our drum sounds from the ammo. Torpedoes. So the very first Lynn drum sound had Tom Petty's drums as the sounds.

[Interviewer]

Wow. Amazing. Any other times you could think of or technical stuff that was new?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, first of all, we were lucky at Record Plant because we were the hottest studio and we were around the corner from a lot of tech companies, like even Tight Clockworks and stuff like that. So we would get the first phaser, the first digital delay. If you listen to walls and bridges, you hear, like hours. You hear delays all over the place, because what happened, they were new. It was like when the Beatles discovered stereo. The drums are on the left, the vocals on the right. You experimenting. Right. So that's why I always was curious about technology, because in those days, when you got something, you got so jazzed just to try it, you know? I also remember quitting producing when the SSL came out, because I was just like, okay, I don't know how to handle this. This is too much for me.

[Interviewer]

It's like a new language.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. It was a new. Whole new line we had to learn. And I just, like. Everything came to a head, you know?

[Interviewer]

Tell me more about Bruce, beyond the work ethic.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah, tell me about the guy. Very simple. Zero compromise factor about his art, his work and his dignity, his morality, his life. 0.0Compromise. You can't buy him, you can't sell him, you can't. You can't rent him. I was for rent.

[Interviewer]

You mentioned something about they were going to drop Him?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

I don't know that story.

[Jimmy Iovine]

After the second album, Columbia was going to drop him and I hadn't known them yet, and Mike Appel was the manager and producer at the time, and they had to really scamper around for studio time and stuff like that. And then they started recording and the label heard it and they got back interested. I think a song leaked or Born to Run leaked or something, and he didn't care. This guy had nothing, but he didn't care. He's an all or nothing guy. He is one of the most. Just unbelievable guy. Remember, I walked into him, a very different place in his life than Lennon, because Lennon is what I knew. I did three albums, you know. He did three albums.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, but he already had been in the Beatles. He was already huge. As huge as you could possibly be.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And as a solo act. Yes, imagine. And he was being thrown out of the country and he had all the political stuff.

[Interviewer]

Anyway, this is a guy about to be dropped from his label.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

25 years old.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And you got to see that work ethic.

[Jimmy Iovine]

You got to see a hurricane form.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

And you get to watch it up front. And you just go, whoa. And my life was defined by that.

[Interviewer]

In his success. Did anything change after that?

[Jimmy Iovine]

No. He's the same guy.

[Interviewer]

Same guy.

[Jimmy Iovine]

He's gotten better. You know, he talks about it. Good thing about it. I would never talk about it if he didn't. But he, you know, depression and all that stuff. And he's worked through it. But the core of the guy. No, he knows who he is. He knows what he wants, he knows what he does. I'll talk to him about stuff. And he goes, well, I mean, you know, that sounds really good. Not for me.

[Interviewer]

You mentioned last time we talked passingly that you mixed Evil Woman.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Tell me the story. How did that come to be?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, I just finished working with Lennon and Jeff Lynn was coming to Record Plant to work on Face the Music is the name of the album, and he asked for the guy who works with Lennon. So they just put me on it. You know, talk about somebody who's self contained. This guy, Jeff Lynn, he came in, he wanted to do backing vocals. So I knew Ellie Greenwich, who was the woman who helped me. I knew this girl singer, Marge Raymond. I knew these girl singers that were fantastic. So I called Ellie, she put it together and they came in and he. All those backing vocals on Evil Woman. So we had some sub mixes, but we. We mixed like three songs and Evil Woman was one of them, and. But Jeff, Another guy, really technical, really knew what he wanted. Great arranger. I mean, the mix was there because his arrangement as recording was so perfect. Yeah, it was all him. He was an unbelievable talent.

[Interviewer]

Let's listen to the evil woman.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Oh, man.

[Interviewer]

I haven't heard it in a long time.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Oh, man.

[Interviewer]

It's a good one.

[Jimmy Iovine]

It's great. It's great. Hear the girls come in.

[Guest or Participant]

That one. You got the blue Guess you ain't got no one else to you there's an up and run that leads nowhere so just make some miles between you and there There's a hole in my head where the wind comes in you. You took my body and pled to win hi. Hi. Woman cry and shame but you ain't got nobody else to please.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's great, right? And you know, Rick, when I sit here with you, you're a record producer, you know, and I hear music and we're in the recording studio, you know, I don't ever want to go in one again. I haven't produced a record, really, in, I think it was 35 years. But I realized that I never liked business. I like music. I like. I like. I like getting ideas and doing them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

But. But I don't like business. There's nothing about it. I just don't like it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Something you said about having to deal with people that you didn't like to deal with.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. Well, convincing people the worst thing in the world is how to convince somebody of something. Such a lack of freedom.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's what you're talking about. If I don't. If I could flip the therapy for a second.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Having to convince somebody of something is a lack of freedom.

[Interviewer]

It's the worst.

[Jimmy Iovine]

It's the worst.

[Interviewer]

I never want to do that.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's the gift I gave myself when I left. Because again, I don't know how to work without really doing it right. So I call myself retired, but I'm retired from that.

[Interviewer]

Understood.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I wake up in the morning, I get on a zoom. I help my son with his company. I help my wife where I can, but I'm not driving.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

The hook's not in my mouth. Yeah, you can do anything. You can make money. But I had to spit the hook out.

[Interviewer]

That's great.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I couldn't take it.

[Interviewer]

Great. How much better is your life now?

[Jimmy Iovine]

My physical numbers are ten times better. Everything is better. It's just a better life.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Is it just a question of less stress or is it something.

[Jimmy Iovine]

It's just less stress 100% because I turned that Part of my brain off, the drill bit part, because I used to scan for problems, especially ones that I couldn't resolve, and then go in and fix them. But if you're running a company, there's an unlimited amount of that.

[Interviewer]

It never ends.

[Jimmy Iovine]

So if I go into a company now that I'm involved in or I'm invested in, they got a problem. I could say, okay, try this, this, and this. But then I leave. You know what it's like? It's like grandkids. Your kids bring the grandkids over, you love them, you give them everything, you do, anything you want to do, and.

[Interviewer]

Then they leave and they go home.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right. And you love your grand. I love my grandchildren as much as I love my children.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

But I don't feel like I'm the only person obligated. I'm not the only person raising him. Yeah. He has a mother and a father that don't want me to interfere like that. Right.

[Interviewer]

So what advice do you have for retiring?

[Jimmy Iovine]

Well, my thing was very important that I get myself out of the position of my name being on something thing and being my responsibility. Apple Music was my responsibility. Beats Music was my responsibility. Beats was my responsibility. Interscope was my responsibility. I didn't want that anymore.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Because then anything that's remotely wrong with it, I got to wrestle to the ground personally. Because like any company, you got three or four really good people and the rest are good, but they're not going to solve problems like this. So what they do is your bell gets rung, ding, ding, ding. Can you. Yeah.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

And.

[Interviewer]

And you want it to be wrong because you want the problem to be solved. If they don't tell you, it's bad, too.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Right, Exactly. So, I mean, there were good people at every company I worked through, but I'm saying there were those three or four unique people that you do the thing with, Right? Yeah. So my recommendation is only do stuff with people you like. Yep. Only got to stick to that good rule. Right. And be in a position where you can always give it back. Say, you know what? If you agree with me, great. If you don't agree with me, great. You know, Patti Smith, and I don't mean this about people that I work with, but she had one of the greatest lines ever. People have the power, the power to dream, the power to rule, and to power to wrestle the earth from fools, you know, And I don't want to wrestle anymore. Whether I'm the fool or they're the fool, I just don't want to wrestle anymore. So. But if I had to really answer that question and rewind my life, I would have gone for therapy earlier. So I can learn how to work and be less obsessed.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

If that's a possibility. More. I watch everybody work around me, even if they're cool and aren't obsessed, they have really works hard, man. You know, if you're going to be successful, if you want to get to the top of the game, it's brutal, man. And then what is success to you? Right. What does it mean? But I knew one thing, and I'm so glad I did. When I had 65, I said, no mas.

[Interviewer]

Great.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I just pulled the plug out.

[Interviewer]

And you still get to do stuff and have fun.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I'm doing the stuff that I love to do, meaning I get to do the creative stuff. And if I help people in business, I have instinct for business. I'm not good at business. I mean, everybody thinks I'm a businessman, but, you know, I build companies.

[Interviewer]

You're an idea guy.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah. And I know how to get ideas done.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

That's it.

[Interviewer]

You know, you've had enough success over your life that if you didn't have whatever the last big win was and the last big win was a huge win.

[Jimmy Iovine]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Probably your quality of life wouldn't change at all.

[Jimmy Iovine]

No, no, no. What you're getting at is what we see a lot with our friends and people we see from afar is nobody wants to give up the uniform. They are that uniform. They don't realize it, but it's seeped into their skin, and they are that job.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And without it, they don't know who they are.

[Jimmy Iovine]

They feel naked.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

They want to go in that room and want people to go, oh, shit. So that takes a lot of. For me, therapy as well, so. Because I don't give a shit.

[Interviewer]

We see it happen with musicians who've been on the road for 40 years, and then all of a sudden, something happens where they can't do it anymore and they're completely lost.

[Jimmy Iovine]

I know, but that was. That was therapy. I prepared for that. I knew. By the way, I started that 20 years ago. David Geffen said to me, goes, let me tell you something. I know you.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Iovine]

You are not your job, and don't let that happen to you. And I take great input. I'm a sponge. So when somebody I respect says something, I go do it. I said, okay, I'm not going to leave my job. And I'm not. And I wasn't. And it really helped me in life, you know, And I'M still figuring it out, but I like what I'm doing now. I only work with an idea. And if I have an idea, like, you know, I have my friends at Bruce Dre, the guys that I work with, still a little bit creatively, and I got this other business my son's working on, and, you know, I'm helping out, and that's it. Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.

[Podcast Host]

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