Jimmy Iovine: Harness fear to drive innovation, part 1

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1:29And right now, you can get six months of Rippling free when you sign up at rippling.com slash scale. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot com slash scale. Don't get sad. Get Rippling. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, listeners. It's Reed. You're about to hear a special episode of Masters of Scale featuring record producer and entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine, co-founder of Interscope Records and Beats Electronics, and former head of Apple Music. On today's episode, we're welcoming guest host Angela Arendts, former senior VP of retail at Apple and former CEO of Burberry. But Angela is no stranger to the show. You might remember her in the guest seat for our two-part episode back in 2020, or as part of our roundtable discussion for our 100th episode.

2:19Angela is the perfect host to interview Jimmy Iovine about his legendary career because she happens to be a friend of Jimmy's. They both joined Apple in the same week of 2014. So, she'll be your guide through Jimmy's incredible scale story. And in doing so, she'll be unpacking one of her own theories of scale. Now, on with the show. I walk into this studio and it was really dark, really moody. Lights were really low. And the guy at the console turns around and says, Hello, James. And it's John Lennon. That's Jimmy Iovine, legendary record producer and co-founder of Beats Electronics. He was an inexperienced 19-year-old recording engineer.

3:13So now, first thing you do is get abject terror.

3:21This is only three years after the Beatles broke up. So to anybody who thought about music, they were so big. It was like, oh, right.

3:41As a recording engineer, Jimmy was expected to help Lennon translate his vision for a new album to tape. In that moment, Jimmy had a choice. Either fear was going to push me back or from behind push me forward. I had a mentor. Roy Ciccala, who was my boss at the record plant, taught me how to engineer records. He was very, very stern, a very tough guy. And he thought I was strong enough to go in there and deal with it.

4:22So I decided fear was going to push me forward. Roy would say, okay, come in two hours early and set up the mix exactly like you know I would want.

4:40About an hour in, I don't realize there are people behind me.

4:48It was John and someone else. And whoever that was said, Jimmy, can you get us some tea? I said, absolutely. And John said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You get the tea. Sit down, Jimmy. Keep doing what you're doing. And then he said, recording. And that was the mix.

5:13First mix I ever got on an album. It was the beginning of my education. That was really day one of my life. There was a wall of fear dividing the insecure kid from Brooklyn and the musical colossus from Liverpool. Jimmy's instinct wasn't to let the fear push him away, but to use it to build a bridge. Fear is ground zero for success. You've got to deal with it, because fear is going to chase you. So it might as well chase you forward, then chase you back. I can't go back. That's worse than failing. Eventually, I learned to like the feeling of fear. By embracing his fear, Jimmy started to hone the instinct to run headlong at imposing barriers and have the courage to break them down.

6:07For entrepreneurs and leaders who develop this instinct, the upsides are huge as new connections will spring up, new conversations will begin, and innovative ideas will flourish. That's why I believe to innovate, you need to trust your instincts. This will give you the courage to break down barriers even when they're terrifying. You've got to have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going home. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do.

6:48Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working as a three-bedroom apartment. Stuff that just seems absolutely nut balls. Ten years later, we're like, well, that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it.

7:03This is Masters of Scale.

7:11I'm Angela Arendt, former Senior Vice President at Apple and former Burberry CEO. And today, your guest host. And I believe to innovate, you need to trust your instincts. This will give you the courage to break down barriers, even when they're terrifying. Business leaders and entrepreneurs constantly come up against barriers. And that's fine. Working out how to break through them is part of the job description. However, there are some barriers many of us don't even consider trying to breach. They're so big, so imposing, or so well-established that we instinctively recoil. Maybe because we feel like we lack the expertise, the understanding, or even the right to break through them.

8:01All these justifications come from a place of fear, an instinct that makes every part of your being want to avoid breaching these barriers. But these big fear-inducing barriers are precisely the ones you want to be smashing down, because through their wreckage lies the path to innovation. I wanted to speak to my friend, the record producer, music executive, and entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine about this. Across this two-part episode, we'll hear how time and time again, he had the courage, creativity, and instinct to break down barriers between people, genres, subcultures, and industries. In doing so, he helped others overcome their fear of the unknown to see a bigger picture.

8:50As a producer and record executive, he's worked with hugely influential artists, including John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Eminem, and Lady Gaga. He co-founded Interscope, pioneering headphone and music streaming company Beats, which Apple bought for$3 billion in 2014. And as head of Apple Music, he launched the company's music streaming platform in 2015. Jimmy's also a dear friend. I've been turning to him for inspiration since we first met as new executives at Apple back in 2014. So it was a joy to reconnect with Jimmy and explore these ideas together at his home in L.A. After Jimmy's incredible start as a recording engineer working with John Lennon, he was soon working with other music legends.

9:40I got to work with a lot of great people from the ages of 20 to 26. I did three albums with John Lennon, two with Bruce Springsteen, and one with Patti Smith. So I had those three professors, and I learned everything there was to know about the essence of the music and the music industry. All three of them were poets, so they were very, very particular on temperament and how to work and the quality of the work, the drilling down on the work. and he often found himself chafing at the barriers that these artists threw up around themselves. One of these was Bruce Springsteen. Jimmy had another opportunity to be a part of making something great.

10:25His rough Brooklyn edges reared up. Now you got a picture. I'm coming from Brooklyn. My father's a longshoreman. I had a real attitude. I thought I was being insulted, disrespected about something. I wanted to quit. Bruce Springsteen's manager, John Landau, offered Jimmy some advice. He walked in and he said to me, come here, you. I got to talk to you. I'm going to tell you something that's going to blow your mind. You never heard this in your neighborhood from your parents or anybody. This is not about you. I said, what? Everything's about me. Just ask my mother. And then he said, I want you to look at the big picture.

11:06This is not about you. It's not about me. It's about the album, the big picture. What are we trying to do? Swallow your bulls**t. Don't breathe your own exhaust. Keep your ego in the car and look at the big picture. That is the greatest advice anyone's ever given me still to today. This key advice helped Jimmy begin honing his instincts to break down barriers. He had been stuck behind the barrier of his own ego, and it kept him from seeing the big picture, what the artist needed, and what he could contribute to making innovative new music. So I went in there with the mindset of an assistant engineer, which is completely of service.

11:59You are of service to the person behind that microphone. and without that person behind that microphone, you have nothing. So you learn that lesson over and over and over and over and over and again. Jimmy wanted to be of service to the artists, but that didn't mean simply following their instructions. With the barriers down, Jimmy could challenge them to break out of their own creative silos, though it still took huge courage. Sometimes you battle in a studio because as long as an artist in music believes that you care as much about their work as they do, you're going to do okay. But you've got to convince them of that.

12:42And they're not easy to convince. Because when you're that young, you're just like, don't let me get thrown out of this room. Jimmy was understandably scared of getting thrown out of the room. Remember, he was in his early 20s and still building his reputation in a competitive industry. It would have been so easy for him to back down, but he didn't. And that's something I want you to note. The barriers we build and become comfortable in are founded on fear. Breaking out of them is scary, but the upsides of doing so are huge. And for Jimmy, there was a strong instinct to push through these barriers.

13:27For some reason, I'm able to connect dots at times that don't look like they belong together. I call it abstract thinking. Whenever you have a really different idea, you're going to meet a lot of resistance. Here's an example from that era in Jimmy's career, when he risked being thrown out of the room by not one, but two hugely influential artists. It came about when Jimmy felt the potential in a song Bruce Springsteen was struggling to finish, called Because the Night. Bruce was working on Darkest on the Edge of Town. One, two, three, four. And he had this album in his head. And he wasn't sure if that type of love song fit on the record, and he didn't really finish it.

14:20Maybe Bruce felt the song didn't fit his persona as a grizzled hero of the everyman. Perhaps it didn't gel with the album's theme of down-on-their-luck characters pitted against the odds. But whatever caused Bruce's indifference to that unfinished song, Jimmy instinctively felt it had potential with a twist. I hear this song and I said, wow, if a girl sang this, it would be powerful, you know, because the night belongs to lovers, right? So I heard that and I had giant conviction on it. What made Jimmy's instinct even more astounding and harder to sell was who he felt would be the perfect singer for that song.

15:04Patti Smith. I'm working with Patti. I said, I don't have a first single. That's Patti Smith, the no-nonsense high priestess of punk poetry whose earlier songs included one titled Piss Factory, and whose most recent attempt at a commercial hit had been described by critics as 10 minutes of noise. Just making the ask of Bruce was a big deal. Took conviction. First of all, they get the guts to ask Bruce for the song. Because when he's working in those days, he was very, very, very intense. And there wasn't room for any bulls**t. So Jimmy waited until he and Bruce were away from the intense environment of the studio before making his request.

15:50We went out to Corny Island together, and I said, Bruce, I'm working with Patty. I said, I don't have a first single. Are you going to use this song? He said, no. I said, can I give it a shot with Patty? He said, he's very simple. He says, yes. Having braved the wrath of Bruce, Jimmy now had to work up the courage to convince Patty to sing a love song. Easter, the album that Jimmy was working on with Patty, was his first as a full-fledged producer. So the stakes were high. So I went back and Patty, she goes, I write my own songs. I said, Patty, this is a moment in time. You're both from New Jersey.

16:35if we capture this, it would be magnificent. All the hours sitting in darkened studios with musicians had taught Jimmy something key when it comes to building the courage to break through to them. In order to work together, you have to understand the value of the other person, really speak each other's language, and understand the why of each other. Patty was an artist, a creator, so he appealed to the songwriter in her. Because Bruce hadn't written the lyrics. He only wrote the chorus. She said, oh, screw it, I'll just write the lyrics. And she wrote, love is a ring, the telephone, desire is hunger, it's the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.

17:22And when she played that for me, I said, that's exactly beyond what I could have imagined. Those lyrics are so powerful. It was my first hit record as a producer. A love song co-written by Springsteen and Smith may have seemed like a crazy idea. But Jimmy broke through the crazy idea barrier. Instinctively knowing how artists can break out of their creative silos to make creative leaps made Jimmy one of the most sought-after and successful producers of the 80s and 90s. His many achievements included helping YouTube break into America with their album Rattle & Hum, launching Stevie Nicks as a solo artist, and working with stars like The Pretenders, Tom Petty, The Eurythmics, and many others.

18:15Jimmy also became known for having artist backs. This included wrestling creative control from the record companies and music executives. So when Jimmy got the offer to help co-found a record label and become a music exec, he was faced with a barrier he didn't want to break through.

18:41This is Mike Nicholas, Capital One business customer and co-founder of Ansett Uncles, a plant-based restaurant and community space in Brooklyn, New York. And he's telling us how they started a product line. We already had a space in the community. The food was an extension of our lifestyle and our values. So we know we wanted to create something that was an offshoot to that. Our pepper sauce. That's my grandmother's recipe. That's like a liquid gold, right? If someone wants to approach us and ask us, what do we do? We provide flavor. Growing a product line is no small investment, but Mike and his wife and co-founder Nicole were able to manage with the help of their Capital One Business card.

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20:39IBM helps you turn AI into more than potential. It helps you turn it into smarter ways of working and ultimately scaling. Let's create smarter business, IBM. We're back with Jimmy Ivey. I'm your guest host, Angela Arntz. If you want to watch my full interview with Jimmy, head to the Masters of Scale YouTube channel. You'll be able to hear the stories and insights from Jimmy's career, including more on his early days as a producer, his time at Apple, and his views on the intersection of fame and talent.

21:16Before the break, we heard how Jimmy built a career as one of the world's most successful record producers, and how he grew a reputation for putting the artist's interest first. This included having their backs in battles with record companies. I look at all these things with bewilderment. You know, I'm always bewildered. Like, why can't I do that? Can I? I mean, I don't know. I had no idea how to run a record company. There were some great people running record companies. My God, David Geffen. I had worked with Geffen Records a bit and I got to know David and we just, he was another mentor in my life.

21:50So I went to him. I said, David, I'm thinking about starting a label. He says, you could absolutely start a label. He says, there are so many people in the record business that are successful that are a lot dumber than you. He said, there's this guy, Ted Fields, starting a record company. I said, okay. And he introduced me to him. In 1990, movie producer and entrepreneur Ted Field asked Jimmy to co-found a record company with him. Doug Morris was running Atlantic Records at the time. And I told him about this. He goes, you know, we'll put up half the money. This could be an opportunity to shake up the record industry by breaking down the barriers that had grown between the record labels and the artist.

22:34He took inspiration from another record label that had become part of the Time Warner stable. In the 70s, there was a company called Atlantic Records.

22:46They had Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. We wanted black culture and rock culture. We wanted the extremes of that. We wanted it banging at the same time. Just as Atlantic had helped break down barriers between musical genres, Jimmy wanted to do the same with Interscope. He signed on as co-founder. We built it around record producers and artists with their own labels, like Dre with Death Row, Trent Reznor with Nothing Records, Timberland and Will.i.am, and all these guys had their own labels for Elle. We just built a company that they were driving. Interscope soon made a name for being the place that let artists be in control, collapsing the barrier between musicians and record label.

23:44However, there was a relatively new form of music that Jimmy didn't even understand. Hip-hop. I didn't know a lot about hip-hop. I didn't like the sound of hip-hop records. Sonically, I didn't understand how the mixing was going down. It took one of the pioneers of hip-hop to break through to Jimmy. So all of a sudden, Suge Knight and Dr. Dre come in my office. That's Dr. Dre, founding member of the hugely influential rap group NWA, and Suge Knight, founder of the new hip-hop label Death Row Records. They had with them an unreleased album by Dre that they wanted Jimmy to hear.

24:27They play me the record, and I had these speakers from the 70s called tenorize. I knew everything about those speakers. I knew what they sounded like. I knew when something was good, when it was corny, when it was bad, it was weak. When he dropped the needle, I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. Who engineered this? And he said, I did. And I said, who produced it? He said, I did. I knew Dre was magic. Dre took it to another level. He understood how to control the bass and make it so powerful. I said, this guy's going to define Interscope. That record was The Chronic. And with it, Dre opened Jimmy's eyes to the full artistry and potential of hip-hop.

25:12He did it by speaking the same language as Jimmy, the language of the mixing desk. Jimmy signed an exclusive deal with Death Row Records. I said, I don't know a lot about hip-hop, but these guys remind me of the first time I saw the Rolling Stones. Snoop and Dre remind me of Mick and Keith. I can't explain it, but they do. In the early days, the Stones would scare you, but bring you in with their music. Dre knew how to make it into a record that was palatable for everybody. That's why The Chronic was one of the biggest instruments in spreading hip-hop around the world. The Chronic was a global hit that defined a new era of hip-hop and brought gangster rap into the mainstream.