David Senra - Jimmy Iovine, Interscope Records & Beats by Dre

Episode Date: February 1, 2026

Jimmy Iovine is the co-founder of Interscope Records, Beats by Dre, and the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy. Iovine is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the modern music industry. Growing up in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, Iovine was raised in an Italian working-class family.  He began working as a recording engineer in the early 1970s, and went on to engineer landmark albums including Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run and John Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll and Walls and Bridges, before transitioning into production with Patti Smith's Easter, Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedoes, Stevie Nicks' Bella Donna, and U2's Rattle and Hum. In 1990, Iovine co-founded Interscope Records with Ted Field. Under his leadership, the label became one of the most dominant forces in popular music, launching or elevating the careers of Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, Nine Inch Nails, No Doubt, Eminem, 50 Cent, Lady Gaga, and Kendrick Lamar. He rose to become chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records. In 2006, he and Dr. Dre co-founded Beats by Dre, which Apple acquired in 2014 for $3 billion — the largest acquisition in Apple's history at the time. Iovine subsequently helped launch Apple Music in 2015 before departing Apple in 2018. His accomplishments include being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 with the Ahmet Ertegun Award, being honored by the Recording Academy's Producers & Engineers Wing during Grammy Week 2012, co-founding the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy in 2013 with a $70 million donation alongside Dr. Dre, launching the Iovine and Young Center high school program in Los Angeles in 2022 with additional locations in Atlanta and Inglewood, and donating to the city of Compton during the COVID-19 pandemic to fund medical supplies, testing, and meals for residents. https://davidsenra.com/episode/jimmy-iovine Made possible by Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/senra Function: https://functionhealth.com/senra Chapters (00:00:00) Introduction: The Corny World of Fame (00:00:54) The Impact of Social Media on Fame (00:01:27) Chasing Greatness: Personal Reflections (00:02:10) Technological Shifts in the Music Industry (00:03:24) The Streaming Service Dilemma (00:05:34) The Artist's Perspective on Streaming (00:06:39) Early Career and Influences (00:09:40) The Importance of Humility (00:11:19) Working with the Best: A Career Retrospective (00:13:07) The Role of Brutal Honesty (00:15:00) Navigating the Music Industry (00:33:50) The Birth of Beats by Dre (00:46:14) The Music Industry's Customer Problem (00:46:44) Vertically Integrating Culture and Fashion (00:47:13) Building Beats: From Music Videos to Headphones (00:48:03) Marketing is Empathy (00:50:28) The Journey of Beats Music (00:59:09) The Future of the Music Industry with AI (01:14:40) The Bend in the Pipe: Harnessing Fear and Obsession (01:29:12) Comparing Work Approaches with Dr. Dre (01:30:50) The Tortured Path to Success (01:32:41) Balancing Happiness and Ambition (01:35:22) The Importance of Peace and Therapy (01:49:30) Learning from Legends (01:55:57) The Influence of Bono and Dre (02:00:15) California Dreams and Career Milestones (02:07:20) Final Thoughts and Reflections Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I want to start with what you were just saying before we started recording. I was like, Rob, hurry up and run the tape. You said we live in a corny world. We've gone from fame replacing great, right? So it became more important at one point to be famous than to be great. Because as a currency, you had to be great at one time to get a record deal, to do all that stuff. And then I sort of dwindle as time went on, which is just fine. But it is absolutely replaced great.

And what you can do on the Internet and market yourself and all this other stuff because you can make a lot of money just being famous. But now it's taken another leap, which is fascinating. It's gone to attention. And sometimes that leads or contributes to a very corny world. I think social media has the biggest impact. that I've seen in my lifetime, you know. And that contributes to people being corny

for attention on the social media, do you think? Yeah. Well, because you can make money. And the people that don't need money and want attention. And they want to be the top of the news or the viral or, you know, most of my friends, if they go viral,

they're devastated. Do you know what I'm saying? They're like, oh, shit. Well, they don't even know. I think not even knowing would be the place that I would aspire to be in. Like, I want to make great work. Obviously, I'm public-facing because I happen to be of self-fit podcasts.

I want to make some of the best podcasts in the world. But I try to just, I mean, it comes from you. I did this video. I obviously did the Founders episode on you because you've been one of the people I most admire for a long period of time. And you have, we did this clip that got almost like 2 million views of your advice about, you know, why do they horses have blinders on them? And it's one of my favorite things.

Every time I posted, it still like resonates. And I post things to remind myself where it's like, hey, I'm, chasing after greatness, right? And it doesn't matter. I can't look left and I can't look right and worry about what other people are doing. This is one of the things I most admire about you. We spent a few hours together at your house yesterday. We very kind to invite me over there again. And you pulled up this insane video from you from 2004, which is four or five years before Spotify was founded, and you essentially were talking about what you saw as the technological shift happening in the music industry. What was that video about? I always wanted it in a scope.

to move laterally. I didn't want to keep drilling the same hole. I hate drilling the same hole. That's just me. I get bored drilling the same hole. That's kind of why I've jumped around industries a little bit and got to learn on the fly a lot, you know. But that was about around 2000,

we had this little TV show called Jimmy and Doug's Farm Club. It was about uploading your music to Interscope, and we would put you on our TV. show and it was fantastic and it worked. And what I really wanted to do was have a music streaming service of all you can eat. But this was before it was invented. There wasn't a, there wasn't, you were talking about the ideal situation before it was actually, you know, I see online all the time.

People talk about shit before it happens, you know what I mean? But that, you know, that isn't, that's 10% of the game. The game is getting it right. You know, my space was. ahead of its time, but it lost the race. So I was very fortunate to be at least early enough to have Apple Music get on the board. I had beats music and then went to Apple Music.

So at least we became number two. Daniel, who was extraordinary, had the wherewithal and the ability to get the licenses from a record business that didn't understand that all what he, was talking about the fact that he wrestled those licenses out. It's so, I mean, you can prove it because if you look at those deals, those deals are reflective of the iTunes download market, 70-30.

That was the same business as the download market. So they just copied that, which is not a great bit model for that. Why? Because you have not enough money in the streaming. service in order for it to really live. So they got to now go out and find different versions of revenue, right? And they pay 70% or whatever it is now 72%, 70, 60. I don't know what the negotiations have been since then. And instruction in a really odd way, because let's say, for example, you're married, you have two kids, and you have a family plan. And you and you

and your wife play the clash, the police, et cetera. But your kids play Drake and Kendrick Lamar all day. Most of the money from your house goes to Drake and Kendrick Lamar. What you're hearing about is that the artists are like, they used to be able to earn a living like that. But now, unless you're in that top chunk of heavy, heavy, heavy streaming, the money is not really meaningful. So that's a problem they have to fix.

You know, there's no question about that. But there's a lot wrong with streaming, in my opinion. You know, it's one-dimensional. It's an ATM machine. You put your money in, you get your music. They don't do anything for the artist. See, the artists want to communicate with their fans, period. That's what they want.

They want to communicate, they want to market themselves, and the streaming services are still saying, we'll put you on our list if you're nice to us or if you like us. That's bullshit. You got to allow them to have your audience and let them breathe, which is what, you know, not for philanthropic reasons, but this is what TikTok does. That's what Instagram does. You could somewhat promote yourself. So the streaming services, to me, are minutes away from being obsolete because of that. You can't rub against the artist like that. You just can't.

You've got to give them what they want. They're driving this ship. I learned that in 1973. I came from Red Hood, Brooklyn. My dad was a long sherman. I walked in the studio with John Lennon. I did three albums with him, and I got my own apartment. I realized, okay, the rest of my life, I'm going to try to meet, maybe not John Lennon,

but people that can do this and real talent, and my life is going to be okay. All I got to do is not get thrown out of the fucking room. And you looked at it even back then as like an active service to the artist that you're working with? Not for that person on the other end of the glass. What the hell do I know how to do? You have this great line in the defying ones, which I've told you, I've watched by at least 10 times, and you're like 99% of this when people say, oh, I did this or I did that

and the music business is like, it's complete bullshit. It all comes down to the artists that you're working with. Yeah, and today, by the way, a lot of artists are producers like Dr. Dre, Timberland, and some of the younger guys, which I'm just not that familiar with. I've been out of the music business a while.

They write the songs, they make the record, but in my day, 80% of it was the artist. You know, Bruce Springsteen wrote the songs, had the idea, had the vision. and you helped. You know, so that's what I was coming from. There's a great point. I'm glad you brought up Bruce,

because me and you were talking about that yesterday, I told you I've been going through, I went through his autobiography, and I really think that book changed my life in many ways. I watched one of your interviews. He said, one of the best pieces of advice that you ever got was from John Landau, because they were working you like a dog,

and you were thinking about, like, leaving, and he's like, let me tell you, he's like, stay in the saddle. Well, Bruce was torturing me. He was, he says that, he said himself, in an interview, I think maybe in that documentary. He said, an artist needs to be indulged.

Something like that. When you're striving for something, well, the truth was is that we would try to do something, and I couldn't get it right. And it took three weeks to get like a drum sound, like a simple thing, you know. But it was really hard, and I got, I let my pride, they brought somebody into help,

and I let my pride get. in the way. So I went to John Landau and he said, I'm going to tell you something you didn't learn in that neighborhood of yours. Your mother and father didn't, because you knew my family, your mother and father didn't tell you this. This is not about you. This is about Bruce Springsteen and about the record we're making. And I'll tell you for the rest of my life, that just stopped me in my tracks. And because the rest of my life, if you apply, this is not about me, you really, really, you could really get somewhere, even if you're not that good, just being humble enough to say that and not thinking that because you're at one success that you're, you know, the Beatles

or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or whatever, you know, is that it's not about you. And if you could follow that, it's really good. One of my favorite lines from the history of entrepreneurship actually comes from Henry Ford. And he said that. He's like, money comes naturally as a result of service. And some of my favorite entrepreneurs, what I'm trying to do in my life, too, is like, I'm just going to focus on making something valuable that makes somebody else's life better. And so create, like, an active service. And then once you do that, just try to serve more people, right? Spread the product, the service, in this case, the podcast to as many people. And then, like, the score will take care of itself. I won't worry about, you know, the value coming back to me.

The whole thing you got to do is, look, there's a certain amount of famed humility. That's good. And it works. If you practice it long enough, you actually become somewhat humble. Do you consider yourself a humble person? I think I have a humble side. Say more about that. I do. Well, you know, I come from a family. My father was a humble guy.

He was a dock worker, a long sherman, manual labor. Not, you know, I don't know a lot of people whose father's really work manual labor. You know, where if it's 90 degrees down the pier, it's 120 in the hull of the ship. You know, when you carry in coffee bags, there are 100. pound of piece, right, all day. So, but he had pride, but he was humble. And if you're willing to give yourself up for a greater cause, in my case, when I was younger, it was an album, right? If you're willing to do that and set you a bullshit aside to get someone else's vision, it takes humility to do that. And if you're truly doing that, yeah, I have. I have a

have some humility that I'm proud of, you know. One of the things I love most about Jimmy Avine is the fact that he spent his career working with the very best people he can. People like John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bono, Dr. Dre, Trent Resner, Eminem, and Steve Jobs. Jimmy knew, just like Steve Jobs knew, just like Jeff Bezos knew, that you always bet on talent. In fact, Steve Jobs said so. He said that you must find the extraordinary people and that a small team of A players

can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. Jeff Bezos set the tone from his very first shareholder letter when he said that setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been and will continue to be the single most important element of Amazon's success. You must build a team that pursues the A players. That is exactly what Jimmy Yveen did and that is exactly what Ramp did. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast and Ramp has the most talented technical team in their industry. Becoming an engineer at Ramp is nearly impossible. In the last 12 months, Ramp has hired only 0.23% of the people that applied. That means when you use Ramp, you now have top tier technical talent and some of the best AI engineers in the world

working on your behalf 24-7 to automate and improve all of your business's financial operations, and they do this on a single platform. Ramp gives your business easy to use corporate card to cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, and cost control. That means the longer you use Ramp, the more efficient. your company becomes. I run my business on Ramp, and so do most of the other top founders and CEOs that I know. I hear from people to listen to this podcast every day that have switched to Ramp and rave about the quality of the product. Businesses are saving millions of dollars a year

by switching to Ramp. Make a wise decision by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money today. That is Ramp.com. Every single person that I've either read about that work with you or has given interviews, they say that you want Jimmy in the room because he'll tell you the truth. Yeah, I want to tell the story because it's hilarious, and then I want to ask you about this.

I'm reading, you know, Bruce Springsteen's a 600-page autobiography, the book so big you can work out with a goddamn thing. And there's a story in there where he's struggling and he's trying to do something new and he's in L.A.

And he invites, like my good friend, Jimmy Yveen comes over. We play this new album for him and no one else's heard. He said, you sat there silently for 80 minutes. He turns it off. And then you just say one thing. He goes, so when are you going to record the vote?

because the music was so loud. But he said, he goes, that's why you want Jimmy in the room because he'll tell you the truth. I'll give you the setting. He was doing the album for about two years. It was the river. And they worked really, really hard on that. And he was doing it, but because I engineered his album,

I knew he had a tendency to bury the vocal. Right? And I knew those guys really well. I knew Landown Bruce pretty well by then. pretty well by that. Actually, part of the story you didn't tell, which was funny, is Tom Petty was sitting next to me. He shouldn't have left that out. Because I was producing Tom Petty at the time. We went over and visited it, right? So he plays us a double album. And the vocal was buried. So I just said

to myself, I got one line to penetrate because I saw Bruce's face and he was serious as a fucking heart attack. You know what I mean? He's at the end of an album. He's exhausted. So I just said, when are you going to sing it? Right? And, you know, it was very funny, but it was very clear. And they did. They went back in and they remixed the whole album, which was the right thing to do. But where did you get to self-confidence?

Because you were, how old were you when you started working with John Lennon, 20, 21? 20. Yeah. You told him the truth, too. Like, where did that come from? Because not out of arrogance or confidence, it's comfort. my father really drilled in me from when I was a little kid that wherever you go, the place is better because you're there because you're a decent person. He used, you're a humble person, you're a decent person, you're a good person, and you're not going to screw anybody in his language, right?

So wherever I went in my life, I've always feel comfortable. very insecure on my personal life, which I've grown out of in the list that that 72, hello, right? Thank God. You know, the fuck wants to die that insecure, right? But, you know, in work, I always had a certain amount of confidence

because it came natural to me. Nothing came natural to me before that. But when I set at a console and I put the faders up, the balance came very, very, very, naturally and people liked it. So that's kind of where I got some of the confidence from, but, you know, I just, I don't know, I was always willing to say what I felt about music and to anybody at any time, you know, and I, I mean, what's the point of asking me a question

if I'm not supposed to give me my answer? I don't, I don't understand that philosophy. It's one of the funny things. I played this clip for you. Because one second. No, go for it. Interrupt as much as you want. One of the reasons is, I really, I really, don't think I walk in trying to get you to like me because I believe you do say more about this you told me this is so I feel the same way by the way to explain I mean I mean this that shouldn't be sound egotistical because let me tell you the people I walk in a room when you meet a lot of angry people they think people aren't going to like them and it's not true so I'm not saying that I'm arrogant

what I'm saying is that I really deal with a lot of people that are very defensive and are aggressive because they think people don't like them. And you know that. We know a lot of people that are very visible right now that I can smell, they think everybody hates them. And some of them say that privately. I'm sure. I'm sure.

But you can smell it. And that's not ego thinking that people are going to like you? It's because I came from a home in a neighborhood where that was it. You have this, like, brutal honesty. But you're leaving one word out. What's that? Brutal honesty, but an enormous amount of respect. Yeah, I don't think you're doing a disrespectful way.

No, you can't do it in a disrespectful way. I don't even think you'd be in a room with somebody you didn't respect. Because you have complete control over it. You know, what happens is you think you build these walls and you get over these fences, right? And you go, okay, I'm on the other side. I'm insulated. I'm this, I'm there. And then you have kids.

and it can bring the world back in and all of a sudden if you want to get your kid into school you're going to go sit across sometimes you're going to sit across an asshole you know what I mean? So the answer to that question is no so once you have kids

you just go back to zero whatever but Bruce Springsteen said it best he says a lot of things best he said when I was making music When I was on Born or Run in particular, when he was flat broke, you know, I knew Bruce. When I met John Lennon, John Lennon was three years after the Beatles broke up, right? So I did three albums with him.

But he was already John Lennon. He had imagined already, you know. So he was John, right? Bruce was broke, me and dropped from his label, and his career was in Trump, right? So he had to, and he said publicly, he said, I didn't want to be rich. I didn't want to be famous. Man, I didn't even want to be happy.

I wanted to be great. And when I was 20 to 27, really 20 to 25, I got to work with Bruce Springsteen on two albums, John Lennon on three, Patty Smith on one, and Tom Petty at that point on one. So I learned my college years, those impressionable years of college, I spent with those four people. And it was unbelievable. It was such an education about culture, about life, about what's important, and all those things.

And I just sucked it in because I was a really, no, Etch-Sketch, I had nothing going on. I didn't understand anything. So everything that they taught me, I just breathe in. I was lucky that it was them, you know. And I just took it all in and it really set the tone for my life. Why? Because these are some of the most culturally relevant poets. The 20th century, you know?

And when I say poet, I mean the person, you know? I mean, not just that they write lyrics, you know? and they had the right attitude about their work and their product. What was the right attitude about their work or their product? Well, they weren't thinking about how to promote it. They were thinking about how to make it, you know? And it's kind of what I liked about Steve Jobs when I met him, you know. I met a lot of these guys since the year 2000, you know, because I've gone on the road.

Once the NAPster came out, I was like, oh, shit, what's going on? I've better learn something new, you know. I mean, because this trick isn't going to work anymore. You know, the whole music business I felt was going to be upside down, you know, and it has been. But in those days, I wanted to get a feel for what I called at that time, the other side. So I met with a bunch of tech companies. Then I started to get, and then I met Steve, and he was the only one that had soul. And similar to the same soul of the artists that you worked with him?

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. but the only one. He had soul and feel. And we bonded on John Lennon and Bob Dylan.

You know, we would talk about that all the time, you know, and he had the same attitude that they had. Now, he was a businessman. He was a lot of things that they're not and there were a lot of things that he isn't. But how I, it translated to me was you can be in this world.

and have sold. And you don't find that a lot. Why did you say that when you met him, you're like, he's the only one that's going to get this done? Meaning, I think it was, this is pre-streaming. This was the, I think, the iTunes. Yeah, she's like, why did you get the licenses for iTunes? You did?

I helped them. So why did, but why could he do it no one else? Because he understood. He understood what made artists tick. He understood the why. Most engineers that I've met, in my now 25 years of playing in that world, is they don't understand the why

of the people that do what I used to do. And that's why it was so interesting. I knew from then that tech was going to buy all the media companies. Media companies move in different ways, you know. They don't move like the tech business. And when I met him, I said, this guy gets it. Now, is he tough? Is he, I don't know, ruthless?

Maybe, I don't know. But I can tell you what. He gets it. He gets it, you know? And most of the people like me in that world know how to do what they're doing. But as far as the particular thing that Steve had, I haven't met another one that has that. I really, but that they're bad people or anything. They just, they don't have that.

By the way, you can like that. music. Like all these guys always say, I love music. I love chocolate, but I don't understand Hershey's. Do you know what I mean? I really don't understand it. Who makes chocolate and how

they make it? So, you know, you could like music all day. One engineer told me once, we were working on stuff that was going to be video involved. He said to me, I know how that should end. I love television.

I mean... That's not the same thing, man. You know, so... But anyway. Steve called you one day to congratulate you because he said there's all these people trying to make hardware and they're not successful at it.

And you were one of the few people that had no experience, by the way, making hardware that made hardware successfully. The interesting part about that, one of the... One, I want to hear more about that, but two, why did he call music software?

You know that answer better than me. I've never heard anybody. I mean, I guess it is. I mean, it's treated like, you know, ones and zeros or whatever. because that's how it comes across. Yeah. You know, and whatever that is, you know.

He's like, all these software guys want to make hardware and they can't. Well, he always felt that what was unique about Apple, which was, is that a software company can make hardware. Let's talk about the schools. Why the school is important to talk about because it ties into all that is. Occasionally, I run into someone who says he's the next Steve Jobs, she's the next Steve Jobs. Let me tell you something.

There's not going to be another Steve job. There'll be some great people, and there are some incredible people around today that are doing something extraordinary, inventing the, creating these companies, etc. But to be Steve Jobs, you have to truly understand the cross between technology and liberal arts, where those two things meet and interact.

When I had beats, I realized that engineering, design, and culture, the collaboration was not happening the way I thought it would. I thought, everybody in the world in tech was like Steve Jobs, because he got it. He got the why of everything that I was doing and the people around me were doing.

He understood it at its core. It was in his instinct, right? What I realized, when I met a lot of other people in the tech business, all the companies and everything, they're engineering societies fundamentally. And I find you can't generalize it, but there are people that aren't like that. But for the most part, my software companies don't make hardware is they don't understand, truly understand design, right?

And they can't communicate with it, right? And that's what I think. What the fuck do I know? But that's what I think. That's what I've observed, right? How did you know there's a need for a new school, though? Because I realized it was education, because I realized it was siloing in education. That you go to, you, because I see, again, what do I know?

I know, like, the feel of young people, culture, right? So I see the way kids are being brought up. They're brought multidisciplinary right now. For the last 15 years, they're all being brought up with multiple disciplines. You know, tech, music, culture, design. they're all fascinated by that. So when you go to school, when you go to college, you get siloed. You go to Wharton, you're an accountant.

Yeah, they have classes and other. They have an engineering course you could take. Well, you take that engineering course with 50 other engineers, right? So now you're seeing school, remember, we started the school 14 years ago. That long ago? Yeah. Absolutely. And it was you and Dr. Dre, you endowed it with $70 million to get started.

Yeah. I mean, we had no, one of us went to school. So we had no, we're not afraid to do things we have no idea we'd do. And we put our own money up, right? So that's, you know, I don't care who you are. That's a lot of money, right? But I knew there was a problem and we wanted to fix it. And siloed learning, you're hearing a lot of people doing it now, trying to bring all the disciplines.

But what they do is they bring it in through the side door. You could take a course at any other school. Our school is a school of collaboration, which you saw. So if you lean towards tech, or if you lean toward the arts, or if you lead toward entrepreneurship, or if you lean toward design, you get to work in concert. You innovate collaboratively, which is what these big companies don't have. they don't really sing in concert in harmony.

And that's where I observed, right? I observed that. I don't know that. I observed that. It's the problems that I had communicating. And the problems they had are communicating with me. When's the first time you had that problem? Was it when you were trying to build a product?

Beets. Beets. Beets was a product, not by accident, like the iPod. I wanted culture. design, music, right? I wanted it all connected. So I met Steve Jobs. And he was like, oh, this guy gets it all.

So I figured everybody did. Did you pitch him on doing the headphones together? Yeah. What do he said? I don't want to do headphones, you do them. So we went out to a restaurant once. I'll never forget it. We went to this Greek restaurant.

And this was after he was sick. And but we went out to a restaurant. and it was one of those restaurants where they put the paper thing with the, it could be the crayons for the kids, you know, and they could draw. And so we're in the middle of lunch. I said, you know, I want to build this headphone company. He goes, you can do it. You build a headphone company.

I said, why don't we just do it together? I don't want to do a headphone company. You build a headphone company, right? So I said, okay. He goes, let me show you how. And he called a guy, took all the food. Good thing I don't care about eating one way or the other. I mean, I like food, but it's not the most important thing in my life.

So, and he said, give me a marker. And the guy gave him a marker. And he drew distribution, inventory, it'll kill you. China, you can make things that are made in China, but they can't look like they were made in China. I said, holy shit. I was like, holy shit. And then he would guide me along the way, and he was fantastic, right?

But I thought when I started beats that I could, I'm naïbal. I thought I could find people like that. But I found people that are designed. I found people that are engineers. I found people in popular culture. I wanted them all to understand how to collaborate. And I just said silo learning is bullshit. And now we have five, six high schools.

And it's a great place. It's considered one of the best interdisciplinary schools in the country, and I'm really proud of that. But again, what do I know about education? Not a lot. I learned a lot in the last 15 years, but really not a lot. Yeah, it started with the instinct that you just didn't think it was doing, being done correctly. And you'll just learn a long. I know how to get something done.

Yeah, this goes back to you just being a natural-born entrepreneur. I just started to get something done. I found out of guy. I met this great dean, Erica, I met her. I said, oh, she could do this. She was from the Roski School. But I just felt instinctively what's that? It's an art school at USC. Okay. Then there was the president, Max Nicaas. He gave was an engineer, but I knew he got it, you know? And we built it. And now it's a fabulous school, you know, it's a really five. A lot of people want to go there. It's fantastic.

Look, I work on a lot of things I don't know how to do, but I can get it done. You know, I don't claim to be some great technologies, but I made a great headphone. I think I've studied you a lot. I've talked to you now for hours and hours and hours. I still am trying to figure out, like, you have this collection of, I'm trying to think of like, what is your highest talent? I just ran into Steve Stout at a friend's birthday party, which was really funny because he worked for you for a long time.

I was like, dude, I'm seeing Jimmy soon. Can you, like, give me some stories? And I think you're obviously a phenomenal marketer. Let me ask you. Like, what do you actually think your talent is? And I want to tell the story that Steve told me. My talent, whatever it is, I'm learning more about now because I'm not running the companies. So when I used to run the companies, like when I ran Interscope, when I ran beats and when I ran what became Apple music,

I just woke up in the day and did everything by my instinct, whatever that was in the morning, you know, it's a little more difficult to do it at Apple than it was when they're on my own companies because they have a giant influence. infrastructure and they have, you know, I always felt like I was a bit on the tail that's wagging the dog. You know, I used to live on the dog and the whole thing about. But when you were running the company, you wake up and just instinct. Purely. Well, listen to people, you know, and grab a piece from here and a piece from there, you know, and synthesized. Did you go after difficult things on purpose? I only went about what I felt. When Dre said to me, that was one example.

because Dre comes to you. He plays, is it the chronic? What is he playing for you the very first time? Or is like, chronic? Finished. And I think you asked him like, who engineered this? Right. And he's like, I did.

And he's like, well, who produced it? He's like, I did. And then you're like, oh, within a few minutes of meeting him, he says something like he's going to define inner scope. Right. But he had a very hairy situation you had to get him out of, right? It was impossible. It was everything you watching these shows and stuff, you think it is.

Okay. So what was going on? Well, what happened was? was I connected dots, which I think I do really well. I saw him and Snoop. I finally heard hip hop with the 808 bass, that big bass now, producers couldn't harness it. All the records, you know, whether it was public enemy

or any of those records made in New York, they couldn't harness that. And to where I understood it. Drey was the first person to really harness it. and give it the power that it deserved, because he gave it the clarity that it deserved. It's very hard to do. So I understood that.

And when I saw that combined with Snoop and Dre and the image that they were projecting and they were talking about, I said, this is the Rolling Stones. I said, this is Mick and Keith. It scares you, but the music brings you in. So I'm like, this has to work. I didn't have to understand the music, which I didn't at the beginning.

Now I think I do, you know. I mean, not as much as some of the pioneers of hip hop, but I understand it. Were there lawsuits, were there a sign? Like, what did you have to untangle? There were three lawsuits. There was a RICO lawsuit, right? Rico.

That came with Sony. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was... Wait, is Rico money laundering? What is... The gangster. Okay, okay, that's right. That was from the EZE thing.

Oh, okay. Right? This isn't all the movies. I'm not talking out of school. So there was a RICO lawsuit. There was a guy in prison who supposedly put up the money for one of the albums, the first album. So he was suing them from prison. They were Sony and there was a company that distributed EasyEase label that was suing as well or challenging as well. So I had to settle all those things out, which it's kind of like if you see something great, but there's T-Rex sitting on it. And most people would avoid saying, look, there must be something else to eat. And you just know I'm only one to work with great?

If I see something new and great and unusual, I can't stop. That's why Beats attracted me so much. I looked at it and said, oh shit. it. People are wearing these things on their head and they look like medical equipment. There's nothing attractive about a headphone. The funny thing about that is there was opportunity hiding in plain sight. And you're like, what's our competition guys? Bose? It's, they want to, there's no music. It's like silence. Well, their marketing thing is you can go to sleep with us. I'm like, that's ridiculous. What a marketing thing, right? Keep, you know, so I said, no, no, no,

we want to wake you up. Okay, hold on. I want to pause here. Because I text Daniel Eck, right, founder of Spotify, and I was like, tell me, like, give me some ideas because he's known you forever. He told me the first time we ever had dinner. He's like, I only lost two deals in my life. And both of them were to Jimmy I've seen, which is hilarious. Well, that just means my bullshit was better than his. You know, it doesn't mean.

He's so, he's so, what he did in the music businessman, no one has any idea how hard it was. Patty Smith had an incredible line. People have the power, the power to dream to rule and to wrestle the world from fools. Ooh, that's good. Okay? That's what Daniel liked it. Okay? So anytime you get a guy like that, try to beat him at anything.

I just, I just must have been slicker than him. To me, in my opinion, wildly underrated still to this day, one of the most fascinating people to me. but he's like, ask him about the origins of beats. Did you do the headphones before you did the streaming service? Yes. So hardware first. That was a initial idea. It was all about moving in a scope laterally.

I think companies should move laterally, and they don't. Most companies don't move laterally out of fear. That's why what I'm doing with a complex right now, which we'll talk about in a minute, I got the opportunity. I came out of retirement a bit. because I got another bite at the apple, because I couldn't finish my thought on streaming. What do you mean my lateral, though?

Like, for example, Interscope was a music company, right? I wanted to make the hardware to listen to it. I wanted to have a streaming service. I wanted to distribute my own music. I wanted to have the complete thought. I wanted to make the music, have the artists that make the music, distribute the music,

and then have the instrument you listen to it on. So that's moving laterally. I would have also wanted, which I'm doing now with complex, to have e-commerce. So artists can't communicate in different ways with their audience. So these businesses that other artists, let's just use musicians for example, are starting now, you were the only one that did it inside of a record label. That's right. So you have this idea for beats.

You see this opportunity. Obviously, Drey's known for the best sonics ever. So it makes perfect alignment with him. this was Steve Stout's point to me where he's like, Jimmy's just a phenomenal marketer. I'm going to come back to Beach real quick. I want to close that loop where he's like, ask him about the fact that he's bringing these super

controversial artists at the time. They're not that well known. I think it was Dre and Snoop. And they wouldn't play him on the top 40. And he says, Jimmy did something genius to get Dre and Snoop played on the top 40. What did you do? Well, I just considered it reflex. You know, what we did was, I said, okay, you got to understand

whenever there's gatekeepers on anything, your job is to figure out a way around the gatekeeper with something you really believe in. Whether the gatekeepers are people at your own company or people at radio stations or at wherever the gatekeepers are, your job is to skate around them, right? So I said, okay, let's do this.

Let's make a minute commercial of G-Thing, which was Dre's first single with Snoot, right? I said, let's make a 60-second spot. Now, I don't want anything said before it or after it. I just wanted to play. The radio's not going to play my song, that's fine. I'm going to buy ad space on the radio and play the song. Yes, and we did on the 50 top market, spent the fortune doing it.

And then we simultaneously, we got it on MTV, because they didn't play rap music either. They played MC Hammer, but they didn't. didn't play, I guess you call it gangster rap or whatever music is today. They didn't play that then, right? How'd you get on MTV? I said, this is the same thing as Guns and Roses, period. You said that twice now. You said, Snoopadray's Mick and Keith. You say, this is just like Guns and Roses. What does that mean? It means that it's counterculture, that people are going to relate to it. People that feel marginalized and feel isolated and feel angry. And it represents an entire culture that

people are going to relate to. And that's what Guns and Roses did. That's what the Rolling Stones did. That's what Nirvana did. That's what James Brown did. It's that thing, you know, that moves people. So, yeah, I instinctively felt that. So who do you go to at MTV?

You just go to the top guy? Like, how do you actually get it done? I said, play this. He goes, I can't play this. And he had the remote in his hand. As TV was on behind him, I said, I can't because we play this. And it was three women singing, and then the next video was a guy. and, you know, and all this,

but it was pure pop music, right? And I said, I don't know how to progress. I said, put it next to Guns of Rose. And if it doesn't work, please never play an Interscope record again. Wow. So he put it on. You had that much belief.

You don't have to be talented to know that. I mean, it's just fucking obvious. You know what I mean? You know, that's Rick Rubman. He knew it before me, right? So, but what it caused and was all these kids sons of senators

daughters of senators congress people business people they came home in one of those records and when that happened that's what led to the whole falling out with time Warner that we had when we went in escope

got thrown out of Time Warner over lyrics because Bob Dole Dol Dolores Tucker Bill Bennett right who was the education Zoll or whatever he was at the time, you know, all those guys, Bill Clinton went on the floor of the Senate. And, you know, Bob Dole said we were, some, somebody said we were a mustard

gas factory or something like. Yeah, I remember that. But I've been involved with, and I was involved with John Lennon. They tried to throw him up, but I was, when I was doing his album, Nixon was, he had to go to court every day during Wolls and Bridges, because Nixon was trying to throw him out of the country. That was real. Yeah, that's insane. That was real. Yeah. Because he was against the war, right?

So I'm not, I'm used to that. I'm like, so what, you know? I mean, yeah, I didn't care what those people were saying. So you got them on MTV. You got them on the radio. Once you play the ads on the radio, then people start calling. Of course. They start calling the radio stations.

Like play that song. Of course. That is an ad. No one else is doing this. Only because I wouldn't do anything illegal because I'm psychotic about this. doing anything that is illegal or anything. So I just said, this is legal. Let's do this.

I mean, the record business, God knows what they did to get records played. But they weren't going to play these records. There was no chance. Look, there's nobody better at this. No one. The greatest record executive of all time, of all time, is a guy named Barry Gordy. I've heard the name but know nothing about him. Well, he founded Motown.

Oh, okay. during Jim Crow. You know what I mean? So his honors, weren't even allowed off the bus, they were considered race records. He had to get those records played. He had to get that into the white market.

What he did, talk about wrestling the earth from fools? Barry Gordy, miracle what he did. And he made the greatest music in the world. So when he got, when he pushed, it stuck. See, if you know what you have is going to stick,

and if you were passionate about it, then just break through that wall because it's going to be a lot of resistance, but if it sticks, you win. Yeah. It has to stick, though. There's actually a lesson for entrepreneurs in there, too, because I reread Jeff Bezos' shareholder letters, like three or four times.

He's like one of the people, one of entrepreneurs I most admire. And he realized he had a sticky product with Amazon because he saw that once you become an Amazon customer, you not only do you order, but you reorder, and then you ask Amazon to carry more things. And so he tells the story of this guy emailing him, or he emailed like a thousand customers saying, hey, you know, you bought a book, what else did you buy?

And one guy goes, can you sell me windshield wipers? And he's like, oh, my God, we're going to be able to sell anything like this. And so he goes, okay, if we have high retention with my product, which he knew at Amazon, that means I have a winning system, that means I need to invest heavily in introductions to new customers. Right.

Because the $10 million or whatever the number is, let's say you spend $100 million in new customers, introductions and advertising marketing this year. It's like, these people are going to be with me next year, the year after a decade. Well, if you're an entrepreneur and you see something work, you can extrapolate what else will work, right? And that's what he did. But, I mean, these guys have built businesses that dwarf, anything I've ever even dreamed of,

you know, but they can extrapolate, you know, like, for example, beats, right? we have this I was always frustrated that the music industry didn't have customers it drove me crazy what do you mean they don't have customer? They don't have a customer

they still don't have a customer they don't have their relationship with the end user even right Instagram does TikTok does MTV did constantly the music the streaming services do

for some reason the music industry is allergic to a customer okay and I don't know why but they don't have a end user. What was the first time they outsource the relationship with the end customer? Always.

So even when you're selling it to like right through record studios back in the day. Record stores, radio and TV. You would have controlled every. So when you said you want to go lateral, the entrepreneurial version of this, a business version, you want to vertically integrate. You want to vertically integrate all the way down. So you would have even had inner scope. Yeah, but I want to vertically integrate if you call it that to fashion.

I mean... Because you guys are controlling the culture. They're having the influence. We're causing it. Causing it. My artists are causing the culture. Artists that I work with, rather, putting it clearly. For example, we put beats in all of our music videos when we first started.

You were insistent and relentless with this. So what? But I put a lot more money in the videos. Everybody benefited, you know what I mean? And it was a time that there was in the industry. was desperate. So, yeah, man, you know, we did that. And it worked.

Worked as an understatement. Yeah, yeah, it worked, you know, and we built the number one headphone company in the world. When we sold to Apple, we were number one in 50 countries. Man, we were number one in Germany and Sunheiser was number two. We were number one in Japan and Sony was number two. I still can't believe it, to be honest with you. This goes back to, like, you have this instinct.

I'm still trying to figure out, you know, your, like, web of really special talent. And marketing is definitely one of them. You have this weird instinct to just make the right. Marketing is empathy. Say more. It's empathy. Marketing is understanding who you're trying to communicate with and understand them and understand from where they click and come.

That's all marketing is. You can call it marketing what I do. I don't think it's marketing. I just, I guess I have a feel for the market of who I want to sell thing or communicate. with, right? I'm not Bob Dylan. I ain't stretch of imagination.

But Bob Dylan, to take it to an extreme, had a feel for an entire generation. And he made his product. He made it because he was a purist. He wanted to do something great. But it turns out that was marketing. The product is marketing. If you make the product great.

Steve Jobs is a great marketer. So, yeah, if you know your product and you know your audience, I guess that's a great market, but all it is is empathy, understanding what somebody else is feeling on a massive scale. All of the founders and extreme winners that I have studied have this one trait in common. They have excessively high energy levels. If you're going to be the best at what you do, you need to maximize your energy and output. And that's why I've partnered with function.

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forward slash Senra. So how long did you have the headphones before you decided? You bought like a small streaming service. Yeah, it was about, I bought it in probably 2011. Like how long were the headphones gone? Three years into it. So three years into it. And it's called, what was the, I forgot the?

Mark. Okay. Yeah. And you rename it Beets. Yeah, Spotify had three million subscribers at the time we sold to Apple. I remained the beats music, but I realized I couldn't scale it on my own. because, as you know, at Spotify, it costs a lot of money to do that. And I realized I can't do this on it.

Me and Dre, we can't do this on our own. We brought Trent Resdoron, right, who's an incredible talent. Talk about understanding technology and the arts and culture, you know, and his partner, Atticus Ross, they make some of the greatest music in the world right now. So, you know, there's all the movies and everything he's doing. So you try to run it and then you realize you had to- I can't scale it on my own. Can't scale it on my own.

I wanted it to be at Interscope. And for one reason or another, we couldn't get that done. The guy's running at time Warren in charge, really. There was the whole Vendé thing and all that stuff. I went to them early on. I said, I want to build businesses with your artist. And the guy actually said to me, goes, Jimmy, I hear you.

We paid a lot for your company. many have respect for you, but we want to sell CDs, and that's what we do. So that's how part of my story that not a lot of people know is I was a CEO of Interscope. I had to get the right to start another business. I asked Vervende to give me $100 million to, To Interscope, to start businesses with the artist inside Interscope. And in fairness to them, they didn't see that. They didn't want to do it.

So I said, my contract was up. And I said, I'm not going to be the guy to sell the last CD. I got no interest in this. You know, I'm going to do something else. They didn't see it at the time that they were in a dying or a dwindling business? Because it wasn't. This is 2003. So you saw it early?

It scared the hell out of me. For some reason, the day it started, Napster. I said, this is toast. Because I understand the market. I understand why the audience would say, I'd much rather be doing my homework and not have to ask my mother to take me to a record store. Okay, that simple impulse and it's free,

that's a feel that an entrepreneur has. Once you see, you can't put the genie back in that bottle. There's just no way that's going to way. So I knew that, and then I met with people at Intel and places like that, And I heard these guys talk, and I'm like, holy shit. What were they saying that made you say, holy shit? One of the things the guy at Intel said to me is, Jimmy, I got to tell you something.

Your story is compelling. He said, but not every industry was built to last forever. I was like, this guy's smarter than me. Where do you want to start? Right? So I'm like, oh, shit. Right? So I went to them and I said, I can't just be in the record business.

The music almost goes like something you sell to something that markets another product is how you actually monetizing. I don't know what it is. I just call it lateral. I can't break it down to what it is. I just know the feeling. You told me yesterday you're like, I'm just a hustler. I know, I don't hustle.

I do too. No, I love it. By the way, I feel the exact same way. The greatest baseball players in the world were hustlers. That's what I call a hustler. I don't think it's a pejorative. I don't think it's a negative parent. Well, people think it is.

Oh, not me and you, though. It's not. What I'm saying, I know how to hustle, meaning I'm willing to work harder than the next guy. What you did for Dre, when you first met him, Dre and Shug, you're like, well, this guy's great. There's an asset in front of me. An asset is a big, hairy problem that no one else wants to solve.

And if I solve, if I can kill the T-Rex that is sitting on top of this genius, then I get to work with the genius. That is hustling. That is being resourceful. That's the same thing. As Dre would say, it's a little bit of street knowledge. Yeah. You know.

And what is street knowledge? It's an understanding of people as they actually are. Well, because you have no, what street knowledge is, you have to move around because the world isn't, it's tough. You know, in any neighborhood, I don't know what you call it, lower class or whatever it is, you know. My dad was a long show. I remember we lived in an Italian neighborhood in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

You know what I mean? So you lived in a neighborhood with actual. Gangsters. Well, yeah, but I wasn't. No, I know. My family weren't, you know. You know, but you were in the neighborhood that, you know, the mafia was everywhere. Oh, yeah.

Well, my neighbor was an Italian neighborhood, only in America. I mean, everything was the same. You know, there's four fish stores on a restaurant. There's three pieces of places on one street, you know. It was like that, you know. So, and my father worked down a dock and everybody worked down the docks. I know you were saying it's instinct. Maybe you weren't, like, there weren't words around this idea.

You just understood it. but you saw it's like if I'm a college kid, and I was at this time, and I was using Napster and Kazah and all the other, lime wire and all the other ones. Like, I don't have to go to the store. I'm definitely downloading this.

And now we have MP3 players, so, like, the record store is gone. One of the hardest things that I had to do when I look back on my career, life, whatever it is, we all have a lot of hard things. One of the hardest things was getting universal of Vendade to give me permission to build beats. To build, no, to build product.

with my artist, beats came three years later. This is when your response to them was, I don't want to be the guy that sells the last CD. That's it. I just, I just, this, this thing is not going to work the way it is right now. We have to move laterally. I just instinctively knew that. And I wasn't going to do it.

I was going to quit. It's an interesting idea if you sit down and actually think about what's happening. For the whole time of recorded music industry, you made the music, you recorded, and then you sold it physically, right? And you're already understanding, oh, once it's digital and free, that means we have to sell something else that we're not going to be able to sell the music anymore. No, I knew we were invaded. Invaded. Okay.

And I knew that something had to change. I didn't know what it was, but I knew we couldn't just do only what we're doing. And that's like a music instinct. You know who knew that? The Beatles knew that. If you look at the Beatles, every album was new. different. They reinvented themselves on every album, you know. And if you, they keep it moving. You know, the great company, that's why Apple was so great. He kept it moving, kept innovating and

moving it. And I felt that the record business needed to stop doing, not just do what they were doing. And that was really hard because they were paying me a lot of money. They just bought my company for, I don't know, hundreds of millions of dollars, right? But I wasn't going to do it. I knew it was not what I wanted to do. And the problem is people say, well, the record business turned out okay. Well, it did and it didn't. Of course, Spotify is worth $150 billion, and the entire record industry is worth

half that together. I think it's really smart. It's like for the longest time, we sold it. Now you can't sell it anymore. I'm talking about music. So it, and you're not going to agree with this, it becomes advertising or marketing. These songs become advertising and marketing

for an other product you can sell, whether it's concerts, they were on concerts back in the day, products, all this other stuff that they're doing. Like, you had that insight in the music industry before anybody else. No, not before anybody else. Hip-hop.

Saw it. You're right, because they were doing the shoes, the sneakers, the alcohol. Yes. Def Jam, Adidas. Did they influence your thinking on this? Absolutely. I owe African-American culture so much. I have a debt to black culture.

Why do you think rap? Because I grew up on hip-hop. I told you, like, it's still almost all the stuff I listen to now. Why did they figure out how to monetize, I hate using that word, or make money off music besides selling music for anybody else? Because they're practical and they see the truth and they saw what it was. What's the next bite at the apple? The record industry now can rewrite the, guess, the luxury of rewriting the book with AI.

AI created music. Yeah, creative music, interact, many things. It isn't just creating a song. It's how you listen to music, everything. It can affect everything. So there is, let's say, hypothetically, I'm writing the record industry. your word wrong is not fair, didn't take advantage of it

didn't optimize the streaming thing. What would optimizing be? They would have their own distribution. That would be optimizing, and they don't, right? They have another bite at the apple right now. It could start all, ring the bell all over again, etch a sketch, and go back into it. But where they can make a giant mistake,

in my opinion, okay, is if, they start licensing their music to every dog and that comes in the door. Which is their normal route of doing things? Yes. You've got to build enterprise around AI now. You can't just give the enterprise to someone else. But you know everybody in the music industry. When you tell them this, what's their response that people empower right now?

Well, all I can tell you will, I can't tell you everything that I'm doing because I think the labels are now realizing. And again, really what all I can tell you is, Universal Music has invested in a project that we're doing called Complex that has the ability to go on and do a lot of these things that I'm talking about. It's media, it's live, community complex con, and it's e-commerce, right? I want to help the labels if I can, you know, build enterprise around AI and not just be licensed.

I just, it, I didn't, I felt that way about streaming, and I feel even stronger about that. They shouldn't be afraid of the tech. They shouldn't be. You don't have to understand something fully to do it. I'm proof of that. I don't understand fucking anything, you know what I mean? But I know how to get it done, you know? I knew how to build a, I didn't know how to build a headphone.

People say to me, well, you're in your recording engineer. I said, Bruce Breenstein and Keith Richard are the greatest guitar. players, you know, my favorite, you know, Keith Richards incredible. If you gave him two pieces of wood, he's not going to come out with a guitar, you know? So, you know, building a headphone was as far from me and Dre as you could possibly imagine. But we figured out how to do it. So that's how I think is a possibility now to rewrite the book. But if you start seeing licenses pop up to all these other companies,

they're going to feed a dragon that is absolutely going to eat them. Absolutely. Five years from now, do you think we're going to have AI, complete AI, created music that is at the top of the charts? Isn't it already happening? I don't know. Let me tell you, I don't fucking know. If I can predict the future, ma'am, you know what I mean? I wouldn't have health insurance.

You know, it's like, you know, I have fire insurance in my house. I can't predict the future. I have no... I overpaid for everything. I'm a retail guy. But, you know, it's like... I do know one thing, but I don't understand. I hear a lot of these artists coming out against AI.

So I come from a place where to get a record deal, I'm going back to my... when I was a kid, right, in the music business. You had to sing. You have to really sing. Sometimes you have to write, but if you're Barbara Streisand, you had to sing. Frank Sinatra, you had to sing.

Those people can really say. you know, Sam Cook, who can he sing, he can sing Enright, you know what I mean? Incredible, right? Stevie Wonder. There's a lot of people out now in the charts right now or being really successful, selling out arenas that can barely sing happy birthday. So what I say to the people that are challenging AI, and they're doing that because of technology. They're like auto tune and stuff like this.

Whatever the technology is. So my question is, what's the difference between somebody who could barely sing happy birthday, which is all over the charts right now for someone who can't sing happy birthday at all, who's just a marketer and a really clever guy or girl that's sitting there mirror and did all the moves that everybody does. You know, they watch Madonna and like everybody else and say, I can do that. I can act like that. So I don't understand the difference.

So, yeah, because the amount of technology invented for the music industry since you've been in it, it's like you told me yesterday that Prince did a whole album. without a drummer. And I was like, what does that mean? Well, he's one of the first people to use the Lynn Drum Machine. See, the Lynn Drum Machine, I was produced in an album in the 70s, and I brought this guitar player in who, I think it made me the first computer I ever saw. But he had a computer on the session.

It was 1977, right? And he had a computer on the session. And in between takes, rather than listen with the rest of us, he'd go put a pair of headphones on and go on the computer. computer and do all that. And he looked at, I said, finally I said, Tom, I said, hey man, what what are you doing? I mean, you know, this is a session. We're paying attention to the music. He says, well, I'm creating a drummer. I'm creating a machine that's going to play the drums. I said, well, thank God because I always had difficulty with drummers. You know, I always felt

where you sit on the beat is impossible. You know what I mean? Because everybody hits, where the one hit what hits it on or before or after it just drove me crazy working with drummers my whole life you know and he said I'm making a player jump the guy's name was Roger Lynn Roger Lynn's a guitar player

that's who made the drum machine the Lynn drum machine I didn't know that the Lynn drum machine oh wow yes I've seen technology I grew up with us so everybody's afraid of AI AI is going to make music better AI is not going to thwart great people

They will always be the next Billy Ilus. They will always be the next Kendrick Lamar. They will always be the next great talent. But there's also going to be a lot of bullshit. Yeah. Right? So I think the bullshit will get better. I really do.

I think AI is going to help those people that work like that. And, by the way, a lot of people that we know right now, great talent are using AI, AI. They're just not telling anybody. AI will never be able to write, blown in the wind by Bob Dylan. Not in anyone who's listening to this or in my lifetime for sure.

AI will take the middle of music, the average music, I believe, and make it better because they're great tools. I'm all in on AI music, all in. And I don't think it's going to hurt the greats. But more importantly than anything, thing that I think is that now it's time for the artist and the labels to get on the enterprise side of it. This is what I wonder if you would agree with or not, because when you were just

telling the story of the person that invented the drum machine, he was inventing it at necessity. He needed a sound for what he was making. I worry that if these are like professional managers in the music industry, like think about the professional CEO and a founder. Yeah. Right? Like you thought completely different because you're an entrepreneur. Like you were instinctively an entrepreneur. You were an entrepreneur before you even knew you were an entrepreneur. Well, the record producers is an entrepreneur. Record producers, but the people running the big company. But I was a record producer. Yeah, exactly. Like you had that instinct. But like there's one, almost they don't see the necessity for it. And two, I don't even know if like a professional

manager can then reinvent their business to survive the next technological wave. You disagree with that? I think what's happening is the music industry is finally moving into things they're afraid of. They just need some light. What you don't want to do is license the next AI Spotify and say, give me 3% of your company. That is the greatest deal anyone's ever made. Who gives a shit who wants 3% of my company for your company, Spotify?

Right? I mean, it's absurd. So they have to grab the enterprise value of the new technology. But don't you think it's going to come outside? Like, one of my heroes is James Dyson. I told you about who? James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner guy. Oh, yeah.

And one of his, who? I love it. And one of his heroes was Buckminster Fuller. And Buck Mr. Fuller has this quote where it's like, you don't fight the, like, if you want to change things, you don't fight the existing system. You build your own. Like, you build a new version of that. And almost feel like what you're talking about has to be done outside. Anywhere there's not a founder, usually it has to be done outside.

You don't usually see big companies innovate. That's my point. I'll tell you what. I don't know this company. I don't know the guy. I don't know anything. But I try to pair of those new Facebook, Rayban glasses.

They made a good product. Yeah. So that's, but that's a founder. Big companies always have the advantage. They just don't, they have bureaucracies and they don't have the entrepreneur as the leader anymore. So can they innovate? That's the quote.

Can they innovate? And look, I'm a terrible businessman. I had to learn business at Interscope. You are not a terrible business man. I know how to do what I know how to do, but I had to learn business for defense when I got into the record business. Oh, that's interesting. 1990, I had no fucking idea how to run a company.

None, zero. Is this when David Geffen sold Geffen? Yeah. Can you tell that story? David Geffen is brilliant, right? He comes from right near my neighborhood in Brooklyn. He's exactly 10 years older than me. he's like 5-7, I'm 5-7, he's Jewish, I'm Italian, we were buddies, right?

He was great with artists, you know, he signed Johnny Mitchell and the Eagles and all this great shit, right, in his life. So I felt real camaraderie with him. I'm producing records. I'm actually in the studio for 20 years making music. They go on, they sell all these records. I wake up one day, he sold his company for $500 million. I'm like, I'm from Brooklyn, you know, I want to make a lot of money. I'm not embarrassed that.

I had my whole life. I've been like, you know, I didn't have any money. I had money as a record producer, but that's a certain amount of money. I wanted to live like I saw on TV, you know. Well, you were like a, hold on. What I love in the defined ones, because everybody feels this way, especially if you didn't grow up of money. I know exactly what you were talking about.

And you were, I think you might have been an engineer before you were record produced. This story came from when you were an engineer and not a record producer. The producer comes in. He's got like a leather jacket. You're like, what the hell is this? He's got a fancy bag. And then he's got a beautiful girl.

And you're like, that's it. Yeah, you bet that's it. I mean, look, look, let me tell you something, man. You got to tell yourself the truth. I'm not Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Chris Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gay. So I felt the next best way in. I got into producing an engineering, right?

That was my next way in, right? So I'm like, well, this feels really good. Then I saw it Gaffin and I said, That feels better. Oh, shit. He's doing the same thing out. He's not even in the studio all night. He goes home at 6 o'clock.

I'm like 3 o'clock in the morning, still working on the drum sound, you know, like doing that. So I said, I bet I can do that. And then you go, talk to him. What does he say? He said to me, oh, you could start a record company. You got how many stupid people there are that have record companies? I said, okay. So I started a record company. I read something Jeff Bezos said that changed my perspective on the importance of high

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I will never let anyone take my 8Sleep from me. Make sure you get yours at 8Sleep.com forward slash Senra. People were willing to give you money and back you right away. Why? Did you have previous relationships with them? What did they know about you? No. Well, Doug put up half the money.

Yeah. Gaffin was going to put the money up, but he sold his company, so he was very generous with me. And I, no, Jerry, DeFund was going to distribute the money. And Ted Field was going to put up. put the money up. But Doug volunteered to put up half the money. Doug Morris at Atlantic. So I went to David and I said, David, he only brought up half the money. Goes, Jimmy, I want what's good for you. Go do it over there. All good. Really helpful to me. But I knew nothing about running a business or, you know, I didn't know you buy vegetables for less money than you sell them. I had no idea of anything

regarding business. I had an instinct of how to move and what was important. I want to pause the story because then when I went to your house the first time, just a few months ago, you told me something I haven't stopped thinking about. You said every great, anybody that's great is bent.

Yeah. What does that mean? Well, to be really brilliant, I call it there has to be a bend in the pipe. You know, whether it's through trauma or through your impression. your interpretation of yourself, of how that could happen. You can come from the greatest family in the world and have trauma.

You know, just it's your sensitivity compared to the environment and put it all together. So the ones that I know that are truly brilliant have a bend in the pipe, you know. What's the bend that you see normally? It's usually trauma from when they were younger, family stuff. It's always the childhood. Yeah, it's all, yeah. But they had the gift to write or produce or film or paint, right? I mean, they were the one, the chosen ones.

That, you put that trauma compared with an innate talent, and it makes Picasso. But your bend was, it has to be, which brings us to the founding of Interscope, because there's a ton of people after giving. Geffen, that had your same idea. We're like, well, I can do that. 14 labels started with $50 million in funding in 1989, 90. And how many survived? None. You?

They just go. Yeah. Me, Ted, John, and Tom Wally. When you say it has to be, what does that mean? When you grow up like I did, and you did, and other people that I know. Yeah, the first time we met, you're like, you're definitely bent. When you're walking forward, right, the sidewalk behind you, is caving in.

So you have no choice but to walk forward, no matter how scary it is, how much it hurts. So what you have to learn at that moment is how do I take this fear and make it a tailwind instead of a headwind? A lot of my friends and people I know and I watch, the fear stops them. And the ones that succeed is the fear that propels them forward.

If you could harness it, learn how to harness it and take that, of course, fear is energy. It's massive energy. It controlled your entire system. And if you can learn to take that fuel and that will propel you forward, it's a powerful thing. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the planet that I've met, it's like what drives them is not a love of success. It's a fear of failure.

Whatever your fear is, you know what I mean? So when did you, when did you, when did you? When did you have the insight about fear, though? Like, when did you, you said, I train myself that when I feel fear to take a step forward? Well, look, I was the kid in Wrightfield playing baseball, right? I come from a neighborhood where physicality, sports, and tough was the currency. I didn't have any of those things. So I had to go learn a whole new set of tools for my toolkit.

But when I got to the studio, and I sat there with the guy. Roy Saccala, who was my boss, who taught through me. And they put me in with John Lennon, and all of a sudden, all that fear, I was able to, I don't know why, flip it into energy to learn. So you're like 20 at the time. 20. You have a simple genius about you. I want to go back to it has to be in the bend.

And this is why I think it's so important to make the documentaries that you made, to do the podcast that you do, because like then somebody that you've never met that is in a different industry, it's lived a different time. reads that and like, I'm like that too. And you said something about your early life where you just felt it was all fucked up, but all you knew was that if you just went to the studio, the more time you went to the studio,

the better your life got. That is exactly how I feel. Like, all like... Let me tell you some. That's not genius. No, it is a simple genius. It's very, it's practical wisdom. You know, when you people talk about genius,

there are real geniuses out there that are freaks, but people talk about people that are successful and stuff like that, It's basically you're blessed that your instinct drives you in the right direction. And your instinct, Bob Dylan's instill, oh, Bob Dylan is a genius, but Bob Dylan's instinct drove him for an entire generation to lead. You know, Steve Jobs, or even people that I know, my friends, their instinct is commercial or works.

but that simple genius of I do more of X and my life gets better. It's very, very smart, especially when you're 20, you're not experienced. You're in the room with legends. I heard the interview, the conversation you had with Rick Rubin

and you both agreed. There's never been other famous people like the Beatles. It's not like, oh yeah, Taylor Swift's kind of like the Beatles. Like, no, no, no, no, you don't understand how big this phenomenon is. And you're, by your own admission,

no nothing, insecure, and you're in the room with them and you still, there's something very, again, I'm going to use the word simple genius of like your ability to just like, just stay here and my life will get better. It's also to know which poll to start reeling in.

You know, when I got permission at Interscope to make our own businesses with the artist, I had a bunch of things going. But soon as Dre said to me, I want to sell sneakers, and I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I saw him and I saw his credibility and sound and I said, oh, shit, it all came together, you know. I dropped all the other polls.

I just said, okay, let's go. But there's also a simple genius of the way you move that I admire. And I'm not like trying to just overly compliment you here. Like I really learned from it where that story, Dre tells a story of that conversation. He said this conversation with the entire time was like 10 minutes. Once you had that realization, you dipped out. You just left. And you call him like a week later to come to the office.

and you have like 30 prototypes already done. Well, because I'm very lucky to be able to connect the dots. I can see something, and my little computer in my brain connects all the dots. I just, and the things that I can see. I don't do the things I can't see, but I saw the headphone thing, and I said, okay, and then I started to see, oh, man, not only these guys make ugly products. They don't know how to market. They're not cool.

they don't. Back to corny. The corny is a curse. Some people out of corny are really nice, but, you know, too corny is just, I don't know, it's not for me. You know, I mean, I'm not, you know, it's like, they don't know how to lay in the cut, you know? What does that mean?

That means they don't know how to lay back and just watch something happen. They're always like, they want to be noticed and they don't have a natural feel for like, you know, for themselves, you know, I think. But what do I know? I think that's it right there. Let's go back to the Inoscope.

When you started Interscope, you're like, my band is it has to be. Like, the way you described to me is just like, this, there's no, failure wasn't an option. There wasn't like a, you said plan B didn't even enter your mind. Or it's just like, I'm doing this. It is will work. Because if you think like that, it's an uncomfortable life, you know, so that's kind of why at 65, I'm 72 now. At 65, I was at Apple. and I said, I can't.

This is not for me anymore. You know, first of all, couple's a great company, they treated us great, and we did some great stuff together. But I couldn't just wake up in the morning and do whatever I wanted to do because they're a giant company.

They don't want the, I'm in the music side of it, but they don't want the tail wagging the dog, you know? I don't blame them, right? because I come from a world and breaking things. You know, I would try anything, you know, and they have a very structured, fabulous business, right?

And so I said, the combination of it having to be successful, how I see it, plus my team like Trent Resner, et cetera, and Dre, and not being able to do anything to get it to work. And that combination said, you know, you're 65.

You know, I met Liberty and we were going to be together. And I just said, you know. Were you already married at that point? Yeah. Okay. I retired in 2018. I got married in 16. Okay.

But why I came, started working again, I was dabbling, but why I started, I'm not running any companies right now. You said you don't want the bit in your mouth anymore. Yeah, I don't want it in my mouth. I have to have somebody with that energy that's crazy that runs the companies, you know? Do you feel the version of you that started Interscope was crazy? No, it was obsessed. We're all sort of obsessive people.

I was really obsessed. You considered Interscope on a very intense mission that had to succeed. It was upset. I had to be obsessed. And you know what? obsession doesn't make for a great partner at home. No, for sure. You know what I mean?

It's like, so, you know, I'm like, okay, I'm 65 years old. You know, how many summers do I have left, as Tom Waits would say, you know what I mean? But how old were you when you started Interscope? 30 in your 30? I was 38, 7, 8. And so does that mean every minute of the day is? Yeah. On making sure.

Inoscope, yeah. When did you feel the release, was there any sense of? No. I love that you need money. I finished the question. No. Till when? Until I was 65.

We talked yesterday. You said something like, you're always like a happy, optimistic person, but miserable at the same time. Yeah, because I remember waking up with Liberty one morning

about months after I left Apple and decided I wasn't going to run companies anymore or anything started, whatever. I said to him, do people wake up not thinking of something? Because I was, waking up and I had nothing on my mind. And I'm like,

do people really do that? You know? And that's what I started, I felt really good. And I feel really see, the whole goal to me and life, I think it's most people,

but some people don't admit it. It's a search for peace. You know, and a lot of people lie to themselves about what peace is. I mean somebody, they run company, and they don't want to quit. And I love what I do. You love that more than sitting on a beach somewhere.

I mean, are you going? I do, for sure. I don't want to sit on the beach. Right now you don't. Okay. I'm talking about people that are 75 that don't want to, that can't give up the badge. You know, they have to have that badge to walk into a room.

They're not that person. When I left Apple, I wasn't. the head of Apple Music anymore or the head of Interscope anymore or blah blah, blah, the head of beats. So you lose the status part? Is that... Whatever the fuck it is.

I didn't care about any of that shit. I just wanted to stop feeling that feeling, you know what I mean? So I didn't have that. That wasn't a currency for me. It's a blessing and a currency. I just said, I don't give a fuck. I don't want to...

I want this... I just don't want to... I want to get rid of the obsession. I mean, if you work... If you want to work past 70, 75, If you're a founder of a company like Phil Knight, I understand that he's still involved with Nike. Do it.

If you're feeling it, it's not what I wanted to do. And it's not what I had to do for my own sanity. And I... This is where I want to talk to you about. So from the time, you're 20, you start to 65. You did not feel peace. No. Not for one.

But you sell... You become a billionaire. You sell beats to Apple. What'd that feel like? for great. Okay. No peace, though. Well, because company like Apple pays you a lot of money.

I'm my father's son. I got a job to do now. But you have a billion dollars in your bank account. That doesn't matter. What matters is this is a job that you're going to do that you're not going to be. I have to get the job done right. But money is a piece of piece. Money is a piece of it.

It's really great. You know what I mean? But if I have your money, I'm fucked because I got to do the job and that's kind of one of the reasons I left because I really

couldn't do I hate this sounds really corny I couldn't do me there that's not corny at all it's a great place it's a great place but I twitch it's a big fucking company you're an entrepreneur I couldn't have that

compulsion obsessiveness insanity and not have the wheel completely, meaning to make any mistake I wanted to make, to experiment, to just go. I couldn't do it. How does it feel when you're going through when it's like, when you, your version of bend is it has to be, is it just you wake up with like overwhelming pressure every day? Like what is that?

You wake up seeing it. Yeah, you wake up. I mean, you wake up seeing what's wrong. every day you wake up seeing what's wrong i i never i've never had a victory lap lap in my life you don't have any rear of you mirror i didn't have a victory lap when we sold beats i mean it's very public dray felt great oh that the video with tyrese i mean i drae felt great i i felt great but i didn't like i'm like oh shit these guys gave us all this money and now we're got to make a streaming service work and spotify's got the lead. And I'm like, oh, shit. So then the next minute I was thinking about that. How different are you

and Dre in the way you approach your work? Because when I watch the Define ones over and over again, there's a lot of things about him that I personally identify with. And there's a lot of things about you that I, well, we're both record producers. Okay. Okay. So he seems to need more solitude, though. Is he more comfortable? Why, but? I mean, Solitude. Dre, I mean, Dre, I mean, They don't go anywhere. Every time Dre and I have to go do something, he calls me the night before and say, we really have to do this.

This is 32 years of it. Do we really have to do this? Why are we doing this? So, yeah, no, he's much more like that than me. I feel that way, too. This is why I like small conversations like this. But if you say, hey, come to this group dinner or come to this public event, I'm like, that's just not going to happen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Dre's like that. But, you know, you got to have a Ying and Yang to be. partners, you know, it works, you know. So we're very different, but we can't, we both, we're both record producers. I can't explain it. There's a certain, the certain kind of person that's, I always, I get along with every record producer ever met. Yeah. Swiss Beats, Timberland, Ferald, you know, I love all these guys, but I get along really well with record producers. And you can't explain why. You just the same kind of personality? What is it?

I don't know what it is. I don't think about it, but I know that if I meet a record producer. It's always my favorite people I mean. Yeah, I feel the same way about founders. There's a, there's a founder of Nvidia, Jensen Wong. I read his biography. He says something is interesting where he, uh, I think reading between the lines, he tortured himself into greatness. I want to go back to the bend of it has to be. Were you like torturing yourself into success? I don't think it's torturing myself. I just felt tortured. I don't know who's torturing me, But all I knew is that every day, I would see what's wrong. What's wrong with the product?

What's wrong with the business? What's wrong with the record? What's wrong with the guitar sound? What's wrong with, you know, how the headphones are being sold? What's wrong with the sound of them? What's wrong with... I wake up every morning with seeing what's wrong. Your example is very different than most of the founders that I talked to our profile.

Because, like, Steve, would be working on Apple no matter what. He just absolutely loved it. work for you was always work. Yeah. I shouldn't say like you can't wait till it's over. Is that the way you're ready to think about it? Well, you see, the problem that I had was, if it sounds possible, it was the only place I felt relief, but I was still tortured.

So, you know, I don't know what the rest of my life was. But we had this conversation yesterday and I told you I was on the phone, a friend driving to your house, and we had the same conversation. He's just, how are you? And I'm like, I'm fantastic and miserable at the same time. Yeah, well, that's possible. Yeah, I know. And we talked about it.

I'm always in a good mood. I've never, I don't think I've ever woken up in my life in a bad, except after my father died. I don't think I ever woke up in my life in a bad mood. I wake up in a great mood every day. I wake up happy. The two words you use are happy and miserable. Yeah. But there's a whole other side of you that wants to accomplish something.

and accomplishing something in the world is not easy. There's everything working usually against you. The world doesn't want to go the way you want to go most of the time, right? So I'm really happy as a person. I got my kids and I'm really happy. I mean, now I'm really happy. I'm at Liberty and we have six kids together and everything is fantastic. I'm really happy.

I'm at peace for the first time. But when I was running the companies or producing the record, I just see what's wrong. And it would just drive me banana. You're the first person I think actually could explain that to me about how I feel. Because I was like, I just was interviewed on another podcast. And he's like, are you happy? And I was like, yeah, I'm happy. But like, I also like am striving to do something.

I think Steve Jobs was tortured. Oh, for sure. Most of them are. But my whole thing is like I don't also want to go through life like that. This is where Bruce Springsteen I mean, you kind of push me in this direction too when you're like, go watch that movie, you know? Because I didn't, when Jimmy Aveen says,

go watch a movie, I'm like, okay, I'm going to go watch a movie. I thought I was going to watch a biopic of his life. I thought it was going to be like, he was born, and he did this, he did that. No, it's about the darkest time in his entire life. That's the only movie he would make. Why? He's not going to make the born-in-the-U-S.A. movie.

What I'm talking about is I've always been a positive person and I wake up in a good mood. So, you know, you ever met me in those days and I was running an inoscope and stuff? You would say, oh, having a great time, you know what I mean? But there was always this thing, this compulsion and this insanity that was just driving me constantly. And eventually I wanted to shake that.

So I could say to you, yeah, I'm happy. in 1980 or something like that but I wanted to be at peace and I didn't give a shit about being the head of Enterscope or being the head of B3. I mean that nonsense.

I just wanted a piece. Do you think Bruce is at peace? I think Bruce has found a lot of peace. I don't ask him I don't speak for him but I think he's incredible. I feel that's what he's searching for too in the book where he's like, got this thing, I still don't have...

Well, I mean, the words of John Lennon, I'm just trying to get me some peace. And Christ, you know, it ain't easy. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I didn't invent this. No, you didn't invent it, but I think you just said something that's thing is important. It's like most people lie to themselves. And Bruce in that book was lying to himself for a while,

and they realized, oh, the actual source is unhappiness. Well, you know, we all lie to ourselves. And then... Are you still lying to yourself today? I'm sure about some things I try not to. I just want to... I just want to... I just want to find peace.

You know what I mean? And every day is a search for it, you know, and the monsters want to come in, and you've got to make your shit bigger than the monster shit. You know? My father would say, as long as the cat's bigger than the shit, keep the cat.

The minute the shit gets bigger than the cat, he went like this. I must have been 13 years old, 12 years old, when he said that to me. And he was right. When you were building Interscope, or really any time in your career, when you were younger, what was your inner monologue like?

Was it negative to yourself? Were you like overly self-critical? Only the product. I felt like... So it wasn't, you're like, this product's not good enough. When you grew up, when you grew up, not having a lot of money and money being a concern and the family and all that kind of stuff.

You know, my family was very generous, but, you know, we had reality, right? When you grow up like that, that plays a big part in your brain. You know what I mean? Because you don't think, you think I'm going to be broke. That's what everybody,

that's what you think. You know, so that was a big driver of me. When did you lose that fear of being broke? I don't know, but I just know that when I sold to Apple, it didn't fix it. Dude, I thought you were going to say, like, when you were making tons of money in Interscope,

that's wild. No, because I had to get, something right. That overrised. I knew I had a lot of money. I knew I didn't need money. I knew I was never going to be broke. But it was that what overrode any of it was having to get the job right. That overrode everything. You were able to separate criticism that the work isn't good enough or isn't done to I am not good enough in your mind? No, because you beat yourself up. You feel that if you can't... So you were still beating yourself up, even when you were in your 50s and 60s.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because... Do you do it today? No. No, I don't. Today I... Right. Today, I actually approach the job. Now, I get cranky. And I get cranky. But when I crank, when I put the phone down, it doesn't travel with me. Like, right now I do what I need to do with the CEOs that are running the companies. and the people that work. I do stuff that I need to do, personality-wise, to get the job done,

and it annoys me when people don't see things clearly or whatever. And, but when I put the phone down, I don't feel it. When I used to do that, I never stopped feeling it because I had to get it right. I felt like that for a while. This just changed, like, as a result of, like, the work that I've been doing, there's a guy named Brad Jacobs

who started eight separate billion-dollar companies. I did a bunch of episodes of founders on him. He came to do this show. I've spent a bunch of time with him. And he's 68 years old. He's been an entrepreneur for longer than I've been alive. Like the guy's just absolutely incredible. And his whole thing is he just used to beat the shit out of himself mentally.

And he's like, you know what? This is not helping my performance. And talking to him and then using some of the strategies in his book, like now I used to have a very negative fuel source, which is I didn't like the way I was born, what the environment I had born into. I'm going to, you know, channel that just like Bruce Freemanstein, just. like you was just like, I'm going to channel that into achievement. I thought for a long time that like constant self-criticism of the work that I'm doing will only make it better, so therefore that'll increase my likelihood of achievement. And now I'm like, you know what? I just obsessed with what I'm doing. Like before, when I woke up this morning, I was like, giddy. It was like,

this is going to be one of the best days of my life. I get to freaking record a podcast with Jimmy. This is going to be insane. Like my now, my self-talk is just like, just love what you do and follow your curiosity and you're going to be obsessed anyway. You can't work any other way. just know that you've handled, to a certain extent, a monster in your life. But the next monster is going to come in a disguise, a different look, a different way, and it's going to come in through this door. And you'll wake up one day, and that monster would go, oh, fuck, I feel like I felt, I thought I killed that monster, but this is a new monster, only changes shape.

Where do you think that would happen? It just happens to everybody in life, you know? Some people like to admit it, and some people don't. It might not be in your professional life, but it might be in your personal life. It could be anything, yeah, man. It could be anything. It could be one of your kids. It could be anything, you know?

And for the first time in my life, I feel balanced. I feel kind of like, I feel okay. You know, I feel like I'm at peace. But I'm also not running a company. If I was running a company, I know that it's not for me. I know that I couldn't do it. I'm not that cured. I take what I do, sir,

I don't take myself too serious because I love having a sense of humor. I think laughing extends your life. So my father was really funny guy, you know, and we lived like that. Growing up, everything was like we saw a sense of humor and everything, you know. I remember when he was dying, right before he died, he, something happened. And it was like a person came in and did something wrong. And he just looked at me and he made a joke because he knew it was funny. And he grabbed the moment.

He had 28% of his hot left. Did he know he was dying? It was a crazy time in my life. I was 31 years old, or 31. And I went to my grandfather's funeral, his father. And the next morning, my father had a heart attack. And then he died probably seven weeks, eight weeks later. And then my grandmother, his mother, died the next week.

So they all three of them died within eight weeks. So it was a really pretty crazy time. And my father, I was so close with him. He just devastated me. But he always had a sense of humor. So I take what I do really serious, but I don't take myself too. serious. I really don't.

And you learn that from him? Yeah. Yeah. My father was always a hard worker. He was your best friend. Still is. You know? Wow.

Still is. It's his voice that really, if I ever get on the right page, it's always his voice that makes me on the right page. Yeah. Is it worst day of your life? It still is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Worst day I'm out by far. By far, yeah, man, you know.

When he died, I made a Christmas album about him. It was called a very special Christmas. And we raised over $100 million for Special Olympics. I want to ask you some advice unrelated to work. I just saw that you have on your wrist a bracelet with your wife's name on it. Yeah. How important has that relationship been in your life compared to your work? Well, you know, again, I don't look.

back, right? So I can only go by how I feel now. And right now it's more important than my work. And that's part of why I have peace. Because we connect. We work on our marriage. We work on our friendship. We work on our bond.

You know, and I'm not, I'm not kumbaya about anything. You know, I realize anything can happen. You know, you're super intense. You know? So right now it's more important than my work. You get more satisfaction out of that. Yeah. It's the only place I find peace, you know.

And I'm really in search of peace, man. The rest of the shit, but I do think we can crack the code at Complex. I really believe that. I believe that we can really do something in education. I really believe that. So I'm very passionate about that. Yeah, you need something to work towards. And not only that, I want to see that I can get something done without being nuts,

without feeling that horrible feeling. I mean, I feel like I can get something done without feeling like that. Yeah, I do too. You know, it really is the truth, you know. But by the way, not everybody feels like that. There are some really talented people who are completely happy about their work. I don't know, but I don't know. But I'm sure there are all of them.

You've met, like, I mean, your entire world, your entire life was surrounded by top performers, by geniuses, by people that are, you know, at the top of their profession. And that's why I would light you up the questions the last two times. We saw each other about, like, what these people are like. Because what you just said, I want to try to create something great without being nuts. Yeah, me too. And I, like, want these examples of that. Yeah. But, you know, I wish I could have learned it at 52, but I think I got it at 72.

Why do you think it took you long? longer than you wanted it to take you? I didn't go to therapy long enough, early enough in my life because to unring the bells of your childhood takes a lot of work. I'm very pro-therapy, you know? I really am. To unring the bells of your childhood takes a lot of work.

That's a great line. It's true. And you think the only way to do that is through... It's not the... It's my way. It's my, not the only way. When did you realize, oh, shit, I needed. I didn't take therapy really serious to my 50s.

and I wish I had done it earlier. And what is really serious mean to you? Mean twice a week, but take it in, not just. Not just show up at a deployment and listen, but actually change your behavior? Yeah. Were you doing it like in your 30s and 40s? I started in my 30s and 40s, but I wasn't a good patient. Pro customer or client.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever the fuck they call. So you'd show up, you would talk, they would talk. The minute I walk on the phone, I grab the phone, they don't think, you know, it was like... You weren't ready to, like, to take the information? No, no. What do you think made you ready other than age? Well, my divorce.

Very simple. I was in a marriage and we were married and everything was going along. And then when we got divorce, which people do, I realized that that was a time that I needed to get my shit self-contained. all of a sudden I got an idea about life that I didn't see before. So I pursued that. It's no different than the school or beats or streaming or any of the things that I... That's a great way to think about it. Yeah.

If I had the idea earlier, I would have did it earlier. Why did you tell me yesterday that you think I need to talk to somebody? Because of some of the things that you told me, you know? So some of the personal stuff you told me. I said it's a lot easier that... to go with a guide. It's a lot easier to learn how to play tennis

with a tennis teacher. It's good to have somebody in your life that doesn't have an agenda. Everybody in your life has an agenda. If you find a person without an agenda,

you can get a lot further. You could have those other people who love you very much and care about you, but to have the one without the agenda for me was very helpful.

Why do you think it works with that with this particular person? I believe this person. She trusts their judgment? Everything in my life is guttural. Steve was the same way, though. But you have to know you're wrong.

A lot of times you're doing things for reasons that are controlled by that childhood. Right? So as you work through that, you start doing things for more of a reason, more honest reasons that are not driven by that voice of your childhood. There's another thing that you said,

me about you always kept a small circle of... I still do. These are true friends. I try to have an infield, you know? That's how many people, Seth? No. I haven't seen baseball. Okay.

Yeah. I haven't seen baseball. And by the way, I don't need another shortstop until the other one dies. You know what I mean? I limit it. I don't go for six, you know? And this just takes time to develop trust with these people. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I trust other people. But not like that. Not to where I connect like that. Yeah. You know, I'm very lucky. You know, when you get to be 72 years old,

you have some friendships that are 50 years old. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice. It's nice. But, you know, on the school thing, we're on to something. And I like to build, I like to do something,

which goes back to all the business stuff, that's going to catch on and going to grow on its own, you know. So I think, like the stuff we're doing in the inner city, we have five schools now. These are high schools now. Yeah, because, again, my debt to black culture is enormous. I want to really help the inner city and give these kids an advantage of an education that no one else is thinking about. And I think we're going to build some extraordinary people that companies are going to really want.

So that's the way you want high schoolers and people in college to learn. What's the best way for you to learn something new now? I was terrible in school. When I had to learn something, I just couldn't do. How the hell do you learn to produce records then? Well, like anybody my age, some music or around culturally, there was the Big Bang, which was the Beals on Ed Sullivan. I was probably 11 years old, right?

And I didn't have a currency in my neighborhood. I wasn't an athlete. I wasn't physically big. I wasn't any of the things that worked in the neighborhood. And when I saw the Beatles, I said, oh, there's a currency I can have. Because you try to create music first, right? Yeah, it was terrible. Coming out of, you know, I was.

was in a band, you know. But I realized, quick, I wasn't going to be in the Rolling Stones. Then I met this woman, through my cousin, this woman, Ellie Greenwich, who took me to recording sessions. And that's where I saw that guy with the leather bag and the, you know, and the- beautiful woman. And the candles and the pretty girl are coming to me in him. I said, oh, that's it.

I never saw anybody with a leather bag before, you know. And so you just learn by observing? No, then I got it. I went to get a job. It was cleaning up, you know, cleaning up the studio, setting up the studio, repetition, putting this over there, you know, figuring out, being around it, being the ability to observe. I can see how you can learn to be like a engineer, right, in a recording studio that way.

But then you go to a much more almost like creative part of it, which is producing. Well, because I had an instinct. I had an instinct for, again, for what the audience would like and what they wouldn't like. and what was good and what was not. Based on your own personal taste? Based on my taste influenced by John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen. Okay. An intense, intense therapy, sitting next to them every day for five years.

And you were up close and you saw what true excellence looked like. Yeah, and they taught me what was cool and what was not cool, and what was good and what was great. The difference between good and great and what you do to get there. And so then I was able to produce records because of those two people. I watched them. I watched Landau. I watched John.

I watched John Lennon. I watched Bruce. I said, oh, shit. And I just absorbed it. And I applied it. That's how Bruce gave me the song Because of the Night for Patty Smith, I was able to translate that into a record where I was the producer. I always wanted a song that sounded like the animals, you know.

it's my life and other, you know, that, that, and we got to get out of this place, right? So when I heard that song, and I heard the chorus because he had the chorus, right? I said, shit. And then I heard, because the night belongs to lovers. I said, wow, if a woman sings that, that's powerful. So I said to him, you're going to use this song? He goes, no, it doesn't fit on this album. I said, okay, can I use it for Patty?

And he was great. And he said, yeah. And she rewrote the verses and killed it. But connecting the dots, you know, and you could learn a little bit how to connect the dots, but you've got to be that kind of person that just sees you can connect the dots. And that's as simple and as difficult as it is.

I was always able to connect the dots and see what could be, what this is and what it could be. But that's what always tortured me because I would see something and see what it could be and then try to get it to be that is, man. Even with beats, I, you know, I saw the iPod and we finally decided to do it. I said, oh, wow, it could be that. You know, it could be as cool as that.

We've got to make it as cool as that because the iPod was really cool, you know. Did you ever meet Akia Murido, the founder of Sony? No, but you observed them. I observed them. And Steve would talk to me about him and I saw. But I was always very into the fact that he, when I met Steve, I'd never understood instinctively

why Sony had Columbia Records, the Walkman, PlayStation, and then the CD and all this stuff. And how did Apple become Apple and not them? It's almost like they had all the components, but it was siloed.

No, Marito died. Okay. But it goes back to your... I see some kind of connection to the school you're doing. Yes. Because it's like, you had it all. You just had one person like an Akio, who was, if he was alive,

or Steve or Jimmy, to put it all together. I am not as smart as those two people. And I'm just telling you the God's honest truth, man. They knew how to do what they were doing. I don't know how to do what I, I don't really knew. Yeah, but you know how to put shit together. I do. I know how to put shit together, you know?

So that's really cool. But did Steve talk to you about the influence? Absolutely. What was he saying about Sony and Akio? He would say that guy was really knew what he was doing. And he really had a feel. And, you know, it was obvious to me. You know, Marita bought Sony, bought Columbia Records,

bought Columbia Pictures. He saw the distribution, the hardware, the software. He saw it all. But Steve took it, not literally, but it was part of the inspiration behind his chain of thinking, right? In interviews, he talks about how, what he loved about, and the Walkman in particular because Akio had to fight to build the Walkman in his own company. They're like, this is the stupidest thing.

I remember being with Bruce Springsteen, and he told me, he said, you know, this guy from Sony came up to me and he runs the company. He says, the guy asked me to put these headphones on if there was enough bass. And it was him. You know what I mean? Yeah. So this guy got it, you know? And I never met him, but I know he got it. You know, I learned a lot from Steve.

I learned a lot from John Lennon. I learned a lot from Bruce. I got really blessed. Were you able to learn, those are people, well, I guess Bruce was your age, right? You guys are, he's a little older. He's three years older than me. Were you able to learn from younger people than you? Like, were you learning from your artists?

I went from Bono. You know, a lot from Bono. Bono's 10 years younger than me. where I met bottom in 1983 and we did under blood, we did under blood red sky. I said, oh shit,

the framing of how artists are thinking is changing. I said, wow, look at this. The music was different, you know? And the kind of music

that was going on that they were doing was different. It was a take on punk but it was like more ethereal and different. So, and also, he's an extrovert,

whereas the other guys, a lot of the guys I've worked with, weren't. They're introverted, really? Drey? So what did you learn from Drey? Well, Drey brought back the Springsteen thing in me, which was the commitment to a vision and sticking by the culture

that you came up in and servicing that culture. And, uh, And it was something that I really didn't understand at the beginning. So I was really hungry to learn about it, you know, about hip hop and the culture and what it was doing and how it applied and the true power of it. So I learned, I mean, I learned everything about that I know about hip hop from Dr. Dre, period. I feel like he was some kind of like prodigy as a young person, but then he just has this relentless work ethic. So he took like innate talent and I don't, and seems to like just, through an insane, like, day after day after day after day,

dedication and made the... Because he's the greatest hip-hop producer of all time. Well, Gray and Bruce have a lot in common. How so? They are completely uncompromising. Okay? Completely uncompromising. They will not compromise.

You have to convince them to move to the left or right. They know completely... what they do, and they don't compromise. It's just that simple. Bruce was the lead. Well, I met Dre and Bruce was very similar. They were both broke. And Dre was in trouble and broke.

And they would, that vision. And even back then they weren't compromising. Not even close. You couldn't rent Bruce Springs. You couldn't buy. Nothing. You could rent me in those days. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. You know? But you couldn't. anything with that guy, he just, he didn't think about, well, what am I going to sleep tonight? It was like, this. I learned that from him.

It was like, really, really powerful thing. There was nothing that anyone had that he wanted. Nothing. That's powerful. That's powerful when you're broke. Right? He's like, well, you know, like I, so I admired that.

So Bono was an extrovert. Why do I say extrovert, meaning he'll go out, he'll talk to people, and he's passionate. And by the way, in his book and in his play, One Man's Show, he talks about the issues he had at home with his dad and all that stuff. But he is the most positive person I met in music. So his bend, same thing, comes from like this childhood trauma, but somehow didn't fix it along the way. No, no, no.

He just is naturally positive person. He's tough. He can get plowed through things. He works, his incredible work at the incredible writer, incredible lyricist, incredible performer, but he's positive. Whenever you're seeing, he's got an idea. He wants to do this. He's got a very broad interest.

I mean, you know, I didn't go on vacation until I met him. Say more about that. I'd never been on a vacation, really, until the year 2000, because I was doing Rital and Hunt with him in 1988. And I went to the South of France. I remember when I was like, whoa, what the fuck. So you were just myelically focused on achievement. Yes.

I love this story where you fly to California for the first time, right? I don't think you'd ever been on a plane. No. You were 20? How old are you? 20. Never been on a plane, never been in a hotel. Never been in a hotel.

And then, I don't know if it's the same trip or later, I think Tom Petty put you in a house. You had never... No, no. Lennon put me in the Beverly Hills Hotel. But that's when you start to like, oh, wait, the world is huge. And there's a lot in front of me if I focus on this... Well, I remember John took me to a guy named Richard Perry's house. Okay. The very famous record producer.

And John took me to his house with Harry Nielsen. They were going out. They said, he just was like really nice to me. He said, you want to come. Sure. I had nothing to do. I was in the hotel. I took me there and this guy's got a house in the hills in Laurel Canyon, overlooking, or Doheny or something, overlooking the city was at night. Yeah, tennis court that was lit up. I was like, it's like seeing the guy with the bag. And I was like, holy shit. You know, like, wow.

Yeah. Just opens up the scope. of possibilities. Yeah, you know, you see for the first time, I'd never been on a plane. I mean, I've only been to Manhattan because of the work, you know. Did you know this is where you were going to spend

your life? Like, when did you... Yeah, the minute I got off the plane and my boss, Roy, said, let's rent the car. We rented a Cadillac, right? And we drove down Sunset Boulevard, and it was December, and it was 75,

78 degrees or something like that. I said, Are you kidding me? I said, no, this is the one like in California, you know? So I went to pull into the Beverly Hills Hotel. First hotel you ever stay in is that. That's wild. Ever, except the host motel in Pennsylvania, where the car pulls up to the door,

you know, one of those places. And the pools on the highway. Right. And so I go to my room and I come back and I talk to the doorman. I said, can I see something? The regular people live here. And he said, yeah, I'm a regular person. I'm a doorman.

I said, I live here. I said, my father's a longshoreman. Are there docks here? It says it's the port of California. Yes, one of the biggest ports in the world or whatever. I said, thanks. I go back to my room. I call my mother.

I said, mom, how did you get this wrong? We land in Ellis Island, and we live 30 feet from Ellis Island. It's freezing. It's cold. Why don't we live in California? So, yeah, I knew I wanted to live in California from that day. So how long did it take for you to move here permanently? 79.

Tom Petty, Dan McI took. My whole life was documented by Alba. because I was damaged torpedoes when I moved. How many years later was that? Six. Six years. And that's when he put Tom Petty pull you up in a house. Yeah.

And you were kind of freaked out. You're like, I'm in the... Well, because it was, I was in, again, I never had a house. Yeah. I live in an apartment, right? Yeah. There was noises outside the window. You know what I mean?

So I was completely freaked out, you know? But Petty was incredible. What did you learn from him? See, he was the first guy I worked with. That was my age. He was like only two years younger than me or something. But he was more of a contemporary in mind at that point. We were both trying to prove something.

Right? So we'd locked in and it was just great songwriter. And again, perfectionist in his art. He would never bring a song in. Tom Petty never brought an average song into the studio. He was a great self-editor. He would come in. That song would be complete.

I'm done. Bruce is like that as well. But that's another thing. His motivating factor was creating the best possible song art that he can make. Yeah, he wasn't thinking about, again, like everybody else, you wanted to have a better life, you know? Yeah. And he had another guy that had issues with his father. But you had commercial instincts because there's a great line in the documentary where, like, he writes some song and you're like, I think you wrote a great song and two other ones. You're like, get seven more, we're done.

or like, this song's going to buy you a house. And Tom's like, I'd never heard anybody talk that way before. Oh, because I, you know, sometimes I sound crass or whatever. Just that I have a sense of humor. I know how funny that would sound. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, Bono one day, I didn't work on Joshua Treat.

I wanted to do it, but they chose Brian Eno and Danny Laenou, which was a better choice because they wanted to change that sound. but that was the right choice but they would always bring me in to listen to the songs like Bruce did that day on the river so I go in and he plays me this song and he says

this was the beginning of it he says Jimmy this is house music I said really I said I don't know if I like house music that much so he plays me with or without you I said Bono that's house music I said no it's not you don't know what you're talking about I said Bono

that other song that's apartment music. You put this song out, you're getting a house. Okay? So, you know, it's just the way I express myself. It's just kind of, you know, I try to, you know, I can't help it. If the line is good, I say it,

even though it makes you look, you know, like, wow, you're going to buy a house with the song, Tom Petty. I knew when I was saying it, that it sounded like that. But my father was like that. He couldn't resist. This is this, the good line. It goes back to one of the first things we talked about is, like, the fact that they want you in the room because you tell them the truth.

And what I love about you is like exactly, before I met you exactly how I thought you would be, you are in person. And this started with when I sent this clip when you're on Ari Emanuel's podcast. And at the end, I sent the clip to Daniel Eck, and me and him were just laughing about it because you're like the production. He goes, this is Ari's podcast. This is a reduction value. There was a Valour couch. And he says it's not a valour couch. I grew up with valour couch.

It was okay? Only my valour couch has plastic on them. No, but you're like, production value sucks. It's hot. I don't got any tea. The water's warm. You got this goddamn light in my face. Yeah.

No, it felt. And Rick Rubin's sitting there in Italy in this incredible house backlit. He looks like Moses. I'm like, what the fuck? I'm going to last thing. What did you think of reduction value today? You happy?

I thought it was good. When you finally get going, I mean, the wood paneling is just not really for me. You know, I'm not like, because I had wood paneling growing up, you know what I mean? Everything was not real. Well, we got you the tea. I sent that clip to the team. I was like, Jimmy's coming. We're not going to disappoint him.

We have the air going. It's a very nice place. It's perfect. I absolutely love you. I tell you this all the time. You're one of the people I most admire. This was fun. You know.

You might most be like, thank you so much for taking the time. This was great. Hey, look, you know. Oh, don't leave me hanging. Don't leave me hanging, Jimmy. Come on. Oh, I saw it. I didn't see that.

I was looking for my microphone. No, you're good. Thanks, man. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast founders. For almost a decade,

I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through founders.