Jimmy Iovine Believes “Fame Has Replaced Great”
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The post Jimmy Iovine Believes “Fame Has Replaced Great” appeared first on Consequence.
This interview is also available as an episdoe of the Consequence UNCUT podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Spend time on the internet and you’ll soon hear some variation on “the grind never stops.” But after nearly 50 years in the music industry, Jimmy Iovine, now 70, begs to differ: “Maybe there’s one person in their 80s or 90s that could be as effective and is in it as much as somebody who’s 40 or even 50, but I don’t want to be that person,” he says, “I want to experiment. I want to do a lot of things. I want to help people, but everywhere I’m involved has great CEOs in it. I’m not the CEO. The hook is not in my mouth. I spit out that hook.”
He’s referring to his decision to leave the music industry around five years ago. Beats, his headphones brand co-founded with Dr. Dre, was sold to Apple for a significant sum in 2014, and Iovine gradually stepped away from leading Interscope Records, which he founded in 1990.
Today, Iovine is certainly not retired, working on multiple educational platforms with Dr. Dre, including the Iovine and Young Center Magnet High School at USC and new high school programs in Los Angeles, Miami, and Atlanta. Each of Iovine’s educational efforts are focused on dismantling “siloed learning” and fostering an interdisciplinary mindset, collaborating across business, technology, art, and entertainment.
When chatting with Consequence, Iovine was particularly eager to share his philosophy towards educating the next generation: “The only way to learn for the job, for the companies that I’ve been to, whether it’s Google or Apple or Amazon or medicine, you have to understand where these disciplines cross in order to collaborate.” But while he’s keeping his gaze on the future, he finds it easy to look back.
Before founding Interscope Records in 1990, Iovine had been cutting his teeth as an engineer and then record producer for artists like Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, and U2 — his fruitful partnership with Andre Young (Dr. Dre) began in the ’90s, signing significant hip-hop names like Tupac, facilitating the launch of Death Row Records, and eventually founding Beats Electronics in 2008.
His relationship with Dre was highlighted in the 2017 docu-series The Defiant Ones, which premiered on HBO and is now available to stream in full on Hulu. Though their accolades are predominately in the music space, Iovine shares that he doesn’t think of the documentary as a music one, and instead finds it to be about “life and inspiration.”
“It’s a story about a white guy and a Black guy that come together, and stick together through every problem that you could possibly have. And they stay together — it’s about persistence, and you can apply that to business,” says Iovine of The Defiant Ones. “My question to anyone is: Why aren’t there a lot of companies run by a white guy and a Black guy that come together? Because you come from different cultures and you really bring a lot to it from different places.” He added, “I don’t know if there’s ever been a company run in America by a white and a Black guy that became as big as Beats.”
With hip-hop celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023, Iovine credits Dr. Dre for getting him interested in the genre. “In the ’80s, I was producing rock and roll. Hip-hop was in the periphery to me. I remember Public Enemy opened for U2 when I was doing Rattle and Hum and I met Chuck D and a bunch of guys, I thought what they were doing was very cool, but I didn’t think it applied to me,” Iovine tells Consequence.
“I learned hip-hop from Dr. Dre. I learned the aesthetic of it. I learned the importance of it. So it hit me when I heard it through the lens of Dr. Dre. His production was light years above anyone else’s production at the time. And so I was able to grasp it more. And I believe Dr. Dre’s production on that album, The Chronic, is why it spread so massively outside of America. I think he made it sonically and spiritually palatable for everybody around the world. That’s why at Interscope, we just fought to make sure that everyone in the world heard this as clearly as we did.”
While Iovine’s ’90s heyday at Interscope led to both individual success and cultivation in the music industry, it was his turn producing U2’s hybrid live album/concert film Rattle & Hum — which we recently named as one of the best concert films of all time — that led him to found the label in the first place. “It was a really hard record to make,” he reflects. “We recorded 18 shows from ‘The Joshua Tree Tour,’ so that’s a lot of shows. And then we had to come back and make a studio and a live album. And somehow they had to sound like they came in the same bus together, so that was very, very difficult… it was really technical on how to do that and get it to sound like they were compatible.” He jokes that Rattle & Hum was “the father of Interscope Records”: “I just realized I’m not producing records anymore… as Bono would say, he killed me on that album. And he was right, so I started Interscope. A lot of it had to do with that. I just said, ‘this is not for me. I can’t do this anymore.'”
He’s still close with Bono and the band, mentioning that he’d attend opening night of U2’s concert residency at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas. “It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Iovine says of The Sphere’s massive, dazzling visuals. “U2 is the right band to have opening it… if it’s anything like what I saw — and I have a feeling it’s going to be better than what I saw — no one’s ever seen a concert like this. It’s that unique. I have nothing to do with the sphere, but what they put together there is pretty incredible.”
It’s fitting that Iovine has his eye on The Sphere, given his entrepreneurial history and his work melding the worlds of technology and art. But while much of that technology is benevolent, the burgeoning presence of artificial intelligence in music threatens to undermine the work of artists everywhere. When I ask about his thoughts on AI in songwriting and production, Iovine avoids picking a concrete side, but feels that it will be an inevitability: “I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but I think AI is going to be massive in songwriting on many levels. One, on a very basic level, if somebody is stuck and you want to experiment and get an idea.” He continues, “Two, is that not everyone, but too many people today are making records for TikTok. They used to make records for radio, but now it’s TikTok. That’s why all these pop records sound exactly the same. So if you’re making records like that, making records with this formula, then you’re going to start seeing big hits written and recorded with AI.”
He clarifies: “I didn’t say ‘great’ hits, I said ‘big’ hits. Because they’re following formulas.” Iovine then lays out a bit of his observations on the state of music today, positing that with streaming, AI, social media, and other new technological shifts, “fame has replaced great.”
“Artists are making so much money in so many different places, which is fantastic, but after they have a hit record, they can earn a lot of money on Instagram and all this stuff. I feel that a lot of people, a lot of artists, not all, but a lot of artists are taking their foot off the gas in the record making category. And that’s affecting the quality of the work. And I think you’re seeing that in a lot of different genres right now.”
While there’s an appropriate amount of suspicion regarding music’s economic shifts and changing attention spans (he laments that 30-second clips have taken priority over full bodies of work), Iovine points out that great art continues to thrive no matter the conditions. “There’re always great artists that come along, like Kendrick Lamar and Billie Eilish,” Iovine says. He names more of his favorite current acts: Olivia Rodrigo, Lil Yachty, Inhaler, Playboi Carti, and even Turnstile. “They caught my attention,” says Iovine of the Baltimore rock band, “I like what they’re doing. I think they got the right spirit and the right attitude.”
Though Iovine maintains that he’s a bit out of the loop compared to his boisterous music exec days, it’s clear that he’s just as invested in the future as he is proud of his past. And after years of having a poor work-life balance, he’s finally taking some time to relax and follow the threads that entice him. “You’ve got to accept things, man. A lot of my friends don’t accept it. They miss the badge, they miss the phone calls,” he says. With luck, Iovine won’t be putting out any fires the way he once had — instead, he’ll keep passing the torch to the next generation.
Jimmy Iovine Believes “Fame Has Replaced Great”
Paolo Ragusa
Popular Posts
Masters of the Air, Band of Brothers Sequel Series, to Premiere in January 2024
AC/DC Rock Power Trip Festival for First Show in Seven Years: Photos + Video
Ed Sheeran Confirms He Has a Grave Ready for Him in His Backyard
Foo Fighters Perform "Best of You" with Shania Twain at Austin City Limits: Watch
