EVERY SPOKEN WORD
125 min read · 24,682 words- 0:00 – 0:54
The Corny World of Fame
- DSDavid Senra
[upbeat music] I wanna start with what you were just saying before we started recording. I was like, "Rob, hurry up and run, run the tape." You said, "We live in a corny world."
- SPSpeaker
We've gone from fame replacing great, right? So it became more important at one point to be famous than to be great, because there's a currency. You had to be great at one time to get a record deal, to do all that stuff, and then that sort of dwindled as it- as time went on, which, which is fine. But it has absolutely replaced great, and what you can do on the internet, and marketing 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.
- 0:54 – 1:27
The Impact of Social Media on Fame
- SPSpeaker
I think social media has the biggest impact that I've seen in my lifetime-
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm
- SPSpeaker
... you know?
- DSDavid Senra
And that contributes to people being corny for attention on social media, you think?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah! Well, [chuckles] because i- you can make money, and the people that don't need money want attention, and they wanna be the top of the news, or the sp- viral, or, um, you know... Most of my friends, if they go viral, they're devastated. Do you know what I'm saying? [laughing]
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
They're like, "Oh, shit!" Or they don't even know.
- DSDavid Senra
I think not even knowing would be the place that
- 1:27 – 2:10
Chasing Greatness: Personal Reflections
- DSDavid Senra
I would aspire to be in. Like, I wanna make great work. Obviously, I'm public-facing, 'cause I happen to be obsessed with podcasts, and I wanna 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 c- 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, two million views of your advice about, you know, why do the horses have blinders on them?
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
And when you... It's one of my favorite things. Every time I post it, it, it, it still, like, resonates, and I post things to remind myself, where it's like, "Hey, I'm chasing after greatness," right? "And it doesn't matter. I can't look left, and I can't look right and worry about what other people are doing." This is one of the things I most admire about you. We were d- we spent a, a, a few hours together at your house yesterday. You were very kind to invite me over there again.
- 2:10 – 3:24
Technological Shifts in the Music Industry
- DSDavid Senra
And you pulled up this insane video from you from 2004, which is four or five years before Spotify was, uh, founded, and you essentially were talking about what you saw as the technological shift happening in the music industry. What was that video about?
- SPSpeaker
I always wanted Interscope to move laterally. I didn't want to keep drilling the same hole. I hate drilling the same hole. Just, that's just me. I get bored wh- 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? So, but that was about, around 2000, we had this little TV show called, uh, 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, a music streaming service of all you can eat.
- DSDavid Senra
But this is before it was invented. There wasn't a, there wasn't a- you were talking about w- the ideal situation before it was actually founded.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, but, you know, I see online all the time, people talk about shit before it happens.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
You know what I mean? But that, you know, that isn't... That's 10% of the game. The game is getting it right.
- 3:24 – 5:34
The Streaming Service Dilemma
- SPSpeaker
You know, MySpace was ahead of its time, but it lost the race.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
So I was very fortunate to be at least early enough to have Apple Music get on the board. I had Beats Music, and it went to Apple Music, so we, we- at least we became number two. Daniel, who's extraordinary, had the, the wherewithal and the ability to get the licenses from a record co- business that didn't understand at all what he was talking about. The fact that he wrestled those licenses out, it's so odd. I mean, you could pr- you could 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, the download market. So they just copied that, which is not a great m- bit model for that. Why? Because you have not enough money in the streaming service in order for it to really live, so they gotta now go out and find different versions of revenue, right? And they pay 70% or whatever it is now, 72%, 76, I don't know what the negotiations have been since then. And, um, structured in a really odd way, because, let's say, for example, um, you're married, you have two kids, and you have a family plan. And you and your wife play The Clash, The Police, et cetera. But your kids play Drake and Kendrick Lamar all day. Most of the money from your house goes to Drake and Kendrick Lamar. What you're hearing about is that the artists are like, they used to be able to earn a living like that, but now, unless you're in that top chunk of heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy streaming, the, the, the money's not really meaningful. So that's a problem they have to fix. You know, there's no question about
- 5:34 – 6:39
The Artist's Perspective on Streaming
- SPSpeaker
that. But there's a lot wrong with streaming, in my opinion. You know, it's one-dimensional. It's, um, 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 wanna communicate with their fans, period. [chuckles] That's what they want. They wanna communicate, they wanna market themselves, and the streaming services are still saying, "We'll put you on our list if you w- if you're nice to us or if you like us."... That's bullshit! You gotta a- a- allow them to have your, their, your audience, and let them breathe. Which is what, you know, not for philanthropic reasons, but this is what TikTok does. That's what, uh, 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 gotta give them what they want. They're driving this ship. I learned that in 1973.
- 6:39 – 9:40
Early Career and Influences
- SPSpeaker
I came from Red Hook, Brooklyn. My dad was a longshoreman. I walked in the studio with John Lennon, I did three albums with him, and I got my own apartment. I realized, "Okay, the rest of my life, I'm gonna try to meet, [chuckles] maybe not John Lennon, but people that can do this, and with real talent, and, ah, my life is gonna be okay. All I gotta do is not get thrown out of the fucking room." [chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
And you looked at it even back then as, like, an act of service to the artist that you're working with?
- SPSpeaker
If not for that person on the other end of the glass, what the hell do I know how to do?
- DSDavid Senra
You have this great line in The Defiant Ones, which I've told you I've watched probably at least 10 times, and you're like, "Ninety-nine percent of this, when people say, 'Oh, I did this, or I did that,' in the music business," you're like, "It's complete bullshit. It all comes down to the artist that you're working with."
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, and today, by the way, a lot of artists are producers, like Dr. Dre, Timbaland, and some of the younger guys, which I'm just not that familiar with. I've been out of the music business a while. They write the songs, they make the records, but in, in, in my day, 80% of it was the artist. You know, Bruce Springsteen wrote the songs, had the idea, had the vision, [chuckles] you know, and you helped. [chuckles] You know, so that's where I was coming from.
- DSDavid Senra
There's a great point. I- I'm glad you brought, you brought up Bruce, 'cause me and you were talking about that yesterday. I, I told you I've been going through... I went through his autobiography, and I really think that book changed my life in, in, in many ways. I watched one of your interviews. You said one of the best pieces of advice that you ever got was from John Landau. 'Cause you were- they were working you like a dog, and you were thinking about, like, leaving, and he's like, "Let me tell you," he's like, "Stay in the saddle."
- SPSpeaker
Well, Bruce was torturing me. He was... [laughing] He says that, um, he, he, he said himself, uh, in a, in an interview, I think maybe in that documentary, he said, "An artist needs to be indulged."
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. [chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
Right? Or something like that, when you're striving for something. Um, 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 in to help, and I let my pride get in the way. So I went to John Landau, and, uh, and he said, "I'm gonna tell you something you didn't learn in that neighborhood of yours. Your mother and father didn't..." Because he 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, uh, because the rest of my life, if you apply, "This is not about me," you 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 had one success, that you're, you know, The Beatles, or Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs or whatever, you know, is that it's not about you. And if you could follow that, it's really
- 9:40 – 11:19
The Importance of Humility
- SPSpeaker
good.
- DSDavid Senra
One of my favorite lines from the history of entrepreneurship actually comes from Henry Ford, and he said that. He's like, "Money comes naturally as a result of service." And some of my favorite entrepreneurs, and what I'm trying to do in my life, too, is it's like I'm just gonna focus on making something valuable that makes somebody else's life better, and so create, like, an act of service. And then once you do that, just try to serve more people, right? Spread the, 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-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... the, the value coming back to me.
- SPSpeaker
The whole, the whole thing you gotta do is... Look, there's a certain amount of feigned humility that's good, and it works. If you practice it long enough, you actually become somewhat humble. But-
- DSDavid Senra
Do you consider yourself a humble person?
- SPSpeaker
I think I have a humble side. [chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
Say more about that.
- SPSpeaker
I do. Well, you know, I come from a family... My father was, was a humble guy. He was a long- a dockworker, a longshoreman, manual labor. Not, you know... I don't know a lot of people whose fathers really worked 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're carrying coffee bags, they're 100 pound apiece, right? [chuckles] All day. So but he had pride, but he was humble. And if you're willing to give yourself up for a greater cause, and, in my case, when I was younger, it was an album, right? If you're willing to do that and set your bullshit aside to get someone else's vision, it takes humility to do that. And if you're truly doing that, yeah, I have some humility that I'm proud of, you know?
- 11:19 – 13:07
Working with the Best: A Career Retrospective
- DSDavid Senra
... One of the things I love most about Jimmy Iovine is the fact that he spent his career working with the very best people he can, people like John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bono, Dr. Dre, Trent Reznor, Eminem, and Steve Jobs. Jimmy knew, just like Steve Jobs knew, just like Jeff Bezos knew, that you always bet on talent. In fact, Steve Jobs said so. He said that, "You must find the extraordinary people, and that a small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players." Jeff Bezos set the tone from his very first 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 Iovine did, and that is exactly what Ramp did. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast, and Ramp has the most talented technical team in their industry. Becoming an engineer at Ramp is nearly impossible. In the last twelve months, Ramp has hired only point two three percent 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 twenty-four/seven to automate and improve all of your business's financial operations, and they do this on a single platform. Ramp gives your business easy-to-use corporate credit cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, and cost control. That means the longer you use Ramp, the more efficient your company becomes. I run my business on Ramp, and so do most of the other top founders and CEOs that I know. I hear from people that listen to this podcast every day that have switched to Ramp and rave about the quality of the product. Businesses are saving millions of dollars a year by switching to Ramp. Make a wise decision by going to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money today. That is ramp.com.
- 13:07 – 15:00
The Role of Brutal Honesty
- DSDavid Senra
Every single person that I've either read about that worked 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 six-hundred-page autobiography. The book's so big, you can work out with the goddamn thing. And there's a, there's a story in there where he's struggling, and he's trying to do something new, and he's in LA, and he invites, like, "My good friend Jimmy Iovine comes, comes over. We play this new album for him, and no one else has heard it." He said you sat there silently [chuckles] for, for eighty minutes. He turns it off, and then you just say one thing. He goes, "So when are you gonna record the vocals?" [chuckles] 'Cause the-
- SPSpeaker
Well-
- DSDavid Senra
-the music was so loud.
- SPSpeaker
I'll give you the-
- DSDavid Senra
But he said, he goes, "That's why you want Jimmy in the room, 'cause he'll tell you the truth."
- SPSpeaker
I'll give you the setting. He was doing the album for about two years. It was The River. And, uh, they worked really, really hard on that. And... he was doing it, but because I engineered his album, I knew he had a, he had a tendency to bury the vocal, right? And I knew those guys really well. I knew Landau and Bruce pretty well by then. Actually, part of the story he didn't tell, which was funny, is Tom Petty was sitting next to me.
- DSDavid Senra
[chuckles] Oh, you should've left that out.
- SPSpeaker
'Cause I was producing Tom Petty at the time.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
We went over and visited, right? So he plays us a double album, and the but-- and the vocal was buried. So I just said to myself, "I got one line to penetrate," 'cause 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 gonna sing it?" [chuckles] 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 w- the right thing to do.
- DSDavid Senra
But where did you get the
- 15:00 – 33:50
Navigating the Music Industry
- DSDavid Senra
self-confidence? Because you were... How old were you when you started working with John Lennon, twenty, twenty-one?
- SPSpeaker
Twenty.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. You told him the truth, too.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I-
- DSDavid Senra
Like, where did, where did that come from?
- SPSpeaker
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 gonna screw anybody," in his language, right? So wherever I went in my life, I always feel comfortable. Very insecure in my personal life, which I've grown out of in the last... At, at seventy-two, hello? [chuckles] Right. Thank God. You know, who the fuck wants to die that insecure, right? But, um, you know, in, in work, I always had a certain amount of confidence because it came natural to me. Uh, nothing came natural to me before that, but when I sat at a console, and I put the faders up, the balance came very, very naturally, and people liked it. So that's kind of where I got some of the confidence from, but, you know... I just, I don't know. I was always willing to say what I felt about music, and to anybody, at any time, you know? And I, I, I'm... I mean, what's the point of asking me a question if I'm not supposed to give you my answer? I don't, I, I don't understand that philosophy.
- DSDavid Senra
It's one of the funniest things. I, I played this clip for you-
- SPSpeaker
Because one, one second.
- DSDavid Senra
No, go for it.
- SPSpeaker
One of the reason-
- DSDavid Senra
Interrupt as much as you want. [chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
One of the reasons is, I really don't think I walk in trying to get you to like me, uh, 'cause I believe you do.
- DSDavid Senra
Say more about this.
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
You told me this yesterday. This is so... I feel the same way, by the way, to explain.
- SPSpeaker
You know, I mean, I mean, this, that, that shouldn't be sound egotistical, 'cause let me tell you something. The people that walk in a room, when you meet a lot of angry people, they think people aren't gonna like them, and it's not true. So I'm not saying that I'm arrogant. What I'm saying is that I re- 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.
- DSDavid Senra
And some of them say that privately. [chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
I'm sure.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. [chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
I'm sure.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Uh, but you can smell it.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
And that's not ego, thinking that people are gonna like you. It's because I came from a home in a neighborhood where that was it.
- DSDavid Senra
You have this, like, brutal honesty.
- SPSpeaker
Well, you're go- you're, you're leaving one word out.
- DSDavid Senra
What's that?
- SPSpeaker
Brutal honesty, but an enormous amount of respect.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, I don't think you'd do it in a disrespectful way.
- SPSpeaker
No, you can't do it in a disrespectful way.
- 33:50 – 46:14
The Birth of Beats by Dre
- SPSpeaker
Well, what happened was, I connected dots, which I think I do really well. I saw him and Snoop. I heard, finally heard hip-hop with the 808 bass, that big bass sound. 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, and, and to where I understood it. Dre was the first person to really harness it and give it the power that it deserved, 'cause 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 in the beginning. Now I think I do, you know? I mean, not as much as some of the pioneers of hip-hop, but I, I understand it.
- DSDavid Senra
Were there lawsuits? Were they signed? Like, what, what did you have to untangle?
- SPSpeaker
There was three law- there were three lawsuits. There was a RICO lawsuit, right? Uh-
- DSDavid Senra
RICO?
- SPSpeaker
-That came with Sony, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There was, uh-
- DSDavid Senra
Wait, I thought... Is RICO money laundering? What is-
- SPSpeaker
The gangster is-
- DSDavid Senra
Gangster. Okay, okay, that's right.
- SPSpeaker
That was from the Eazy-E thing.
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, okay.
- SPSpeaker
Right? This is in all the movies. I'm not talking out of school. So there was a RICO lawsuit. There was a guy in prison who put up- supposedly put up the money for the, the, one of the albums, the first album. Uh, so he was suing them.... from prison, um, there was Sony, and there was a company that distributed and, um, Eazy-E's label that was suing as well, or challenging as well. So I had to settle all those things out, which is kinda like if you see something great, but there's T-Rex sitting on it. [laughing]
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
And most people would avoid, say, "Look, there must be something else to eat."
- DSDavid Senra
And you just know, "I'm only wanna work with great?"
- SPSpeaker
If I see something new, and great, and unusual, I can't stop. That's why Beats attracted me so much. I looked at it and said, "Oh, shit, people are wearing these things on their head, and they look like medical equipment." There's nothing attractive about a headphone.
- DSDavid Senra
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 [chuckles] ." Well, their mar-
- SPSpeaker
... [chuckles] Their marketing thing was we, you can go to sleep with us.
- DSDavid Senra
[chuckles] Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
I'm like, "That's ridiculous." And what a marketing thing, right? Keep... You know, so I said, "No, no, no, no. We wanna wake you up."
- DSDavid Senra
Okay, hold on. I wanna pause here, 'cause I text Daniel Ek, right? Founder of Spotify, and I was like: "Tell me, uh, like, give me some ideas," 'cause 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 [chuckles] of them were to Jimmy Iovine," which is hilarious.
- SPSpeaker
Well, that just means my bullshit was better than his.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
You know, it doesn't mean, [chuckles] doesn't mean... He's so, he's so-- He-- What he did in the music business, man, yeah, no one has any idea how hard it was. Patti Smith had an incredible line, it, it's, "People have the power, the power to dream, to rule, and to wrestle the world from fools."
- DSDavid Senra
Ooh, that's good.
- SPSpeaker
Okay? That's what Daniel Ek [chuckles] did, okay? So anytime you get a guy like that, I didn't beat him at anything. I just, I just, I just must have been slicker than him, that's all. [chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
He, to, 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?
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
So hardware first-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... that was the initial idea?
- 46:14 – 46:44
The Music Industry's Customer Problem
- DSDavid Senra
end user, you mean?
- SPSpeaker
Right. Instagram does, TikTok does-
- DSDavid Senra
Right
- SPSpeaker
... MTV did. Constantly, the music- the streaming services do. For some reason, the music industry is allergic to a customer. [chuckles] Okay? And I don't know why, but they don't have a k- end user.
- DSDavid Senra
What was the first time they outsourced the, the relationship with the end customer? Is this just-
- SPSpeaker
Always.
- DSDavid Senra
So even when you're selling it to, like, rec- through record stud- uh, record stores back in the day?
- SPSpeaker
Record stores, radio, MTV.
- 46:44 – 47:13
Vertically Integrating Culture and Fashion
- DSDavid Senra
So you would have controlled every... So when you said you want to go lateral, the, the entrepreneurial version of this, the business version, you want to vertically integrate.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
You want to vertically integrate all the way down. So you would have even had Inter- Interscope if the, there's-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, but I want to vertically integrate, if you call it that, to fashion. I, I, I mean-
- DSDavid Senra
'Cause you guys are controlling the culture. They're having the influence.
- SPSpeaker
We're causing it!
- DSDavid Senra
Causing it, ooh.
- SPSpeaker
My artists are causing the culture. Artists that I work with, rather, uh, putting it clearly.
- 47:13 – 48:03
Building Beats: From Music Videos to Headphones
- SPSpeaker
For example, we put Beats in all of our music videos-
- DSDavid Senra
Mm
- SPSpeaker
... when we first started.
- DSDavid Senra
You were insistent and relentless with this. [chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
So what? But, you know, I-
- DSDavid Senra
[chuckles] No, I'm not gonna say-
- SPSpeaker
But I put a lot more money in the videos. Everybody benefited, you know what I mean?
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And, uh, it was a time that the r- industry was desperate. So yeah, man, you know, we did that, and it worked.
- DSDavid Senra
Worked is an understatement.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah. It worked, you know, and we built the number one headphone company in the world. We were num- when we sold to Apple, we were number one in 50 countries. Man, we were number one in Germany, and Sennheiser was number two. We were number one in s- in Japan, and Sony was number two. I, I, I still can't believe it, to be honest with you. [chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
This is, goes back to, like, you have this instinct. I'm still trying to figure out-
- DSDavid Senra
... you know, your, your, like, web of really special talents, and marketing is definitely one of them. You have this weird instinct to just
- 48:03 – 50:28
Marketing is Empathy
- DSDavid Senra
make the right-
- SPSpeaker
Marketing is empathy.
- DSDavid Senra
Say more.
- SPSpeaker
It's empathy. Marketing is understanding who you're trying to communicate with and understand them, and understand from where they click and cop. That's all marketing is. Uh, you can call it marketing, what I do. I don't think it's marketing, I just... I have a f- I guess I have a feel for the market of who I wanna sell things or communicate with, right? I'm not Bob Dylan, by any stretch of the imagination, but Bob Dylan, to take it to an extreme, had a feel for an entire generation, and he made his product. He made it 'cause he, 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 was a great marketer. So yeah, if you know your product and you know your audience, I guess that's a great marketer, but all it is, is empathy, understanding what somebody else is feeling on a massive scale.
- DSDavid Senra
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- 50:28 – 59:09
The Journey of Beats Music
- DSDavid Senra
So how long did you have the headphones before you decided... You bought, like, a small streaming service, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, it was about, I bought it in probably, um, 2011.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, how, how long were the headphones gone?
- SPSpeaker
Three years into it.
- DSDavid Senra
So three years into it, and it's called... What was the... I forgot the-
- SPSpeaker
MOG.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
And you rename it Beats.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, Spotify had three million subscribers at the ti- at the time we sold to Apple. I renamed it Beats Music, but I realized I couldn't scale it on my own, because, as you know, with Spotify, it costs a lot of money to do that, and I realized I can't do this on... W- we, me and Dre, we can't do this on our own. So we brought Trent Reznor on, right, who's an incredible talent. Talk about understanding tech- technology and the arts and culture and, 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.
- DSDavid Senra
So you try to run it, and then you realized you had a-
- SPSpeaker
I can't scale it on my own.
- DSDavid Senra
Can't scale it on your own.
- SPSpeaker
I wanted it to be at Interscope, and for one reason or another, we couldn't get that done. The guys running it at the time weren't in charge, really. There was the whole Vivendi thing and all that stuff. I went to them early on. I said, "I wanna build businesses with your artists," and the guy actually said to me, he goes, "Jimmy, I, I, I hear you. We paid a lot for your company, I have respect for you, but we wanna sell CDs, and that's what we do." So, uh, that's how... Part of my story that no- not a lot of people know is, I was a CEO of Interscope. I had to get the right to start another business. I asked Vivendi to give me $100 million to s- to Interscope, to start businesses with the artists inside Interscope. And in fairness to them, they didn't see that. They didn't wanna do it. So I said... My contract was up, and I said, "I, I'm not gonna be the guy to sell the last CD. I got no interest in this. You know, I'm gonna do something else."
- DSDavid Senra
They didn't see it at the time, that they were in a dying or a dwindling business?
- SPSpeaker
Because it was, and this is 2003.
- DSDavid Senra
So you saw it early?
- SPSpeaker
It scared the hell out of me. For some reason, the day it started, Mapster, I said, "This is toast" 'cause 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." [chuckles] Okay? That simple impulse... And it's free? That's a feel that an entrepreneur has.
- DSDavid Senra
Once you see it, you can't put the genie back in that bottle.
- SPSpeaker
Y-
- DSDavid Senra
There's just no way it's going away.
- SPSpeaker
So I knew that, and then I went and met with people at Intel and places like that, and I heard these guys talk, and I'm like, "Holy shit!"
- DSDavid Senra
What were they saying that made you say, "Holy shit?"
- SPSpeaker
One of the things the guy at Intel said to me is, "Jimmy, I gotta tell you something. Your story is compelling." He said, "But not every industry was built to last forever." I was like, "This guy's smarter than me." [laughing] Yeah, you know, where do you wanna start, right? And so I'm like, "Oh, shit!" Right? So-... So I, I, I went to the, I went to them and I said, "I can't just be in the record business."
- DSDavid Senra
The music almost goes like something you sell to something that markets another product, is how you actually monetize it.
- SPSpeaker
I don't know what it is, I just call it lateral. I don't- I can't break it down to what it is, I just know the feeling.
- DSDavid Senra
You told me yesterday, you were like, "I'm just a, a hustler." [laughing]
- SPSpeaker
I know how to hustle.
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, I do, too.
- SPSpeaker
That's not a bad word.
- 59:09 – 1:14:40
The Future of the Music Industry with AI
- DSDavid Senra
What's the next bite of the apple?
- SPSpeaker
The record industry now can rewrite the in- gets the, the luxury of rewriting the book with AI. They can-
- DSDavid Senra
AI-created music?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, creative music, interac- many things. It isn't just creating a song, it's, it's how you listen to music, everything. It affects... It, it can affect everything. So there is, let's say, hypothetically, I'm buying the record industry, the word wrong is not fair, didn't take advantage of it as... Didn't optimize the streaming thing. Uh, what, what would optimizing be? They, 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, [whooshing] 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 in that comes in the door!
- DSDavid Senra
Which is their normal route of doing things.
- SPSpeaker
Yes! You've gotta build enterprise around AI now. You can't just give the enterprise to someone else.
- DSDavid Senra
But you know everybody in the music industry. When you tell them this, what's their response, the people in power right now?
- SPSpeaker
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 they're getting really... But 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, creating Complex Con, it's, a- and it's e-commerce, right? I wanna help the labels, if I can, you know, um, build enterprise around AI, and not just be licensors. I just, it- I didn't f- 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. [chuckles] And I'm proof of that. I don't understand fucking anything, [laughing] 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 an- you're a recording engineer." I said, "Bruce Springsteen and Keith Richards are the greatest guitarist players, and, you know, my favorite, you k- you know, Keith Richards, incredible. If you gave him two pieces of wood, he's not gonna come out with a guitar."
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
You know? [laughing] So, you know, I wasn't... 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 how to rewrite the book. But if you start seeing licenses pop up to all these other companies, they're gonna feed a dragon that is absolutely gonna eat them. Absolutely.
- DSDavid Senra
Five years from now, do you think we're gonna have AI, complete AI-created music that is at the top of the charts? Isn't it already happening?
- SPSpeaker
I don't know. The- let me tell you, though, I don't fucking know. If I could predict the future, man- [laughing]
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
... You know what I mean? I, I wouldn't have health insurance.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
You know, it's like, [scoffing] you know, I have fire insurance on my house.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
I can't predict the future. I have no i- i, I, I overpay for everything. I'm a retail guy.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
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 had to really sing. Sometimes you had to write, but if you're Barbra Streisand, you had to sing. If you're Frank Sinatra, you had to sing. Those people could really sing. You know, Sam Cooke, woo! Could he sing. He could sing and write, you know what I mean? Incredible, right? Stevie Wonder. There's a lot of people out now on the charts right now, or being really successful, selling out arenas, that can barely sing "Happy Birthday."
- DSDavid Senra
[chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
So what I say to the people that are challenging AI, and they're doing that because of technology-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, like Auto-Tune and stuff like this.
- SPSpeaker
Whatever the technology is.
- DSDavid Senra
[chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
So my question is, what's the difference between somebody who can barely sing "Happy Birthday," which is all over the charts right now, to someone who can't sing Happy Birthday at all? Who's just a marketer and a really clever guy or girl that sat in their mirror and did all the moves that everybody does. You know, they watch Madonna and, like everybody else, and say, "I, I can do that. I can act like that." So I don't understand the difference, so-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, 'cause the amount of technology invented for the music industry since you've been in it, it's... Like, you, you told me, uh, yesterday that Prince did a whole album without a drummer.
- SPSpeaker
Well, he's one of the-
- DSDavid Senra
And I was like, "What does that mean?" [chuckles]
- SPSpeaker
Well, he's one of the first people to, um, to use the Linn drum machine. See, the Linn drum machine, I was d- I was producing an album in the '70s, and I brought this guitar player in who, I think it may be the first computer I ever saw, but he had a computer on the session. It was 1977, right? And he had a computer on the session, and in between takes, rather than listen with the rest of us, he'd go put a pair of headphones on and go on the computer and do all that. And he looked at... I said, finally I said to him, I said, "Hey, man, what, what are you doing? I mean, y- y- you know, this is a session. We're, we're paying attention to the music." He says, "Well, I'm, I, I'm creating a, a drummer. I'm creating a machine that's gonna play the drums." I said, [chuckles] "Well, thank God, because I, I, I, I always had very... I always had difficulty with drummers." You know, I always felt the way you sit on the beat is impossible. You know what I mean? 'Cause everybody hits where the one, hit, hits it on, or before, or after. Uh, it, it just drove me crazy working with drummers my whole life, you know? And he said, "I'm, I'm making a dr- making a player drum." The guy's name was Roger Linn. Roger Linn's a guitar player.
- 1:14:40 – 1:29:12
The Bend in the Pipe: Harnessing Fear and Obsession
- SPSpeaker
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 interp- your interpretation of, of yourself, of how... That it could happen, you can come from the greatest family in the world and have trauma. You know, just, it's, it's your sensitivity compared to the environment, and put it all together. So the, the ones that I know that are truly brilliant have a bend in the pipe [chuckles] you know?
- DSDavid Senra
What's the bend that you see normally?
- SPSpeaker
It's usually trauma from when they were younger, family stuff.
- DSDavid Senra
It's always the childhood?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, it's all... Yeah. But they had the gift to, to write or produce or film or paint, right? I mean, they were the one, the chosen ones. That, that, you put that trauma compared with an innate talent, [chuckles] and it makes Picasso, you know? [chuckles] So, uh-
- DSDavid Senra
But your bend was, "It has to be," which brings us to the founding of Interscope, because there's, there was a ton of people after Geffen that had your same idea, were like, "Well, I can do that-
- SPSpeaker
Fourteen, fourteen labels started with fifty million dollars in funding in 1989, '90.
- DSDavid Senra
And how many survived?
- SPSpeaker
None.
- DSDavid Senra
You.
- SPSpeaker
Interscope.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Me, Ted, John, and Tom Wiley.
- DSDavid Senra
When you say, "It has to be," what does that mean?
- SPSpeaker
When you grow up like I did, and you did, and other people that I know-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, the first time we met, you were like, "You're definitely bent." [chuckles] That's what you told me.
- SPSpeaker
When you're wa- when you're walking forward, right, the sidewalk behind you is caving in, so you have no choice but to walk forward, no matter how scary it is, how much it hurts. So what you have to learn at that moment is, "How do I take this fear and make it a tailwind instead of a headwind?" A lot of my friends and people I know and I watch, the fear stops them, and the ones that succeed is the one- the fear that propels them forward. If you could harness it, learn how to harness it, and take that... Because fear is energy.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
It's massive energy. It controls your entire system, and if you can learn to take that fuel and have it propel you forward, it's a powerful thing.
- DSDavid Senra
Some of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet that I've met, I'd say it's like, what drives them is not a love of success, it's a fear of failure.
- SPSpeaker
Whatever your fear is, you know what I mean? Well, let me-
- DSDavid Senra
So when did you, when did you, when did you have the insight about, uh, fear, though? Like, when did you... You said, "I trained myself that when I feel fear, just to take a step forward." When?
- SPSpeaker
Well, the o- look, I was the kid in right field playing baseball, right? I come from a neighborhood where physicality, sports, and tough was the currency. I didn't have any of those things. So I had to go learn a whole new set of tools for my toolkit. But when I got to the studio, and I sat there with the guy, Roy Socala, who was my boss, who talked through me, and they put me in with John Lennon, and all of a sudden, all that fear, I, I was able to, I don't know why, flip it into energy to learn.
- DSDavid Senra
So you're, like, 20 at the time?
- SPSpeaker
Twenty.
- DSDavid Senra
You have a simple genius about you. I wanna go back to, "It has to be," and the bend. Um, and this is why I think it's so important to make the documentaries that you made, to do the podcast that you do, because, like, then somebody that you've never met, that is in a different industry, that's lived at a different time, reads that and like, "I'm like that, too." And you said something about your early life where you just felt it was all fucked up, but all you knew was that if you just went to the studio-... The more time you went to the studio, the better your life got. That is exactly how I feel. Like, all I-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, let me tell you something-
- DSDavid Senra
All I can control-
- SPSpeaker
That's not genius.
- DSDavid Senra
No, it's a sim- it is a simple genius. It's very... There's a- it's practical wisdom.
- 1:29:12 – 1:30:50
Comparing Work Approaches with Dr. Dre
- DSDavid Senra
How different are you and Dre in the way you approach your work? Because when I watch The Defiant Ones over and over again, there's a lot of things about him that I personally identify with, and there's a lot of things that I, uh, about you that I-
- SPSpeaker
Well, we're both record producers.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Okay, so-
- DSDavid Senra
He seems to need more solitude, though.
- SPSpeaker
Is he more comfortable?
- DSDavid Senra
Well, [laughing]
- SPSpeaker
[laughing] Dre, I mean, uh, uh, I mean, solitude? Dre, I mean, Dre doesn't, Dre doesn'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?" You know? So yeah, no, he, um, he's much more, um, like that than me.
- DSDavid Senra
I feel that way, too. Like, this is why I like small conversations like this, but if you say, "Hey, come to this group dinner or come to this public event," I'm like, "That's just not gonna happen. Like, there's just no way."
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Dre's like that, but, you know, you gotta have a yin and yang to be partners, you know? It works, you know. So we're, we're very different, but we c- we, we both, we're both record producers. I can't explain it. There's certain, there's a certain kind of person that's... I always, I get along with every record producer I ever met.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Swizz Beatz, Timbaland, Pharrell, you know. I love all these guys, man. I get along really well with record producers.
- DSDavid Senra
And you can't explain why? It's just the same kind of personality? What is it?
- SPSpeaker
I don't know what it is. I, I don't think about it, but I know that if I meet a record producer, that's always my favorite people I meet [chuckles] ...
- DSDavid Senra
... Yeah, I feel the same way about founders. Um, there's a, there's the founder of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, I read his biography. He said something that's interesting, where he, uh, I think reading between the lines, he tortured himself into greatness.
- 1:30:50 – 1:32:41
The Tortured Path to Success
- DSDavid Senra
I wanna go back to the bend of, "It has to be." Were you, like, torturing yourself into success?
- SPSpeaker
I don't think it's torturing myself, I just felt tortured. I don't know who was torturing me, but all I knew is that every day I would see what's wrong. What's wrong with the product? What's wrong with the business? What's wrong with the record? What's wrong with the guitar sound? What's wrong with, you know, how the headphones are being sold? What's wrong with the sound of them? What's wrong with... It's, I wake up every morning with seeing what's wrong.
- DSDavid Senra
Your example is very different than most of the founders that I talk to or profile, because, like, Steve would be working on Apple no matter what. He just absolutely loved it. Work for you was always work.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
It's like, I shouldn't say, like, you can't wait till it's over. Is that the right way to think about it, like-
- SPSpeaker
Uh, well, you see, the problem wa- that I had was [chuckles] if it sounds possible, it was the only place I felt relief, but, uh, but I was still tortured [laughing] so you know.
- DSDavid Senra
This is-
- SPSpeaker
I don't know what the rest of my life was, but-
- DSDavid Senra
... But, uh, we had this conversation yesterday, and I, I told you I was on the phone with a friend, driving to your house, and we had the same conversation, where he was just, "How are you?" And I'm like, "I'm fantastic and miserable at the same time."
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Well, that's possible.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, I know, and, and we, we talked about-
- SPSpeaker
I'm always in a good mood. I've never... I don't think I've ever woken up in my life in a ba- except, except after my father died, I don't think I ever woke up in my life in a bad mood. I wake up in a great mood every day. I wake up happy.
- DSDavid Senra
The two words you used are happy and miserable.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, but there's a whole other side of you that wants to accomplish something, and, and accomplishing something in the world is not easy. There's everything working usually against you. The world doesn't wanna go the way you [chuckles] wanna go most of the time, right?
- 1:32:41 – 1:35:22
Balancing Happiness and Ambition
- SPSpeaker
So I'm really happy as a person. I got, I got my kids, and I'm really happy, and... I mean, now I'm really happy. My, I'm with Liberty, and we have six kids together, and everything is fantastic. I'm really happy. I'm at peace for the first time. But [chuckles] when I was running the companies or producing the record, I, I'd just see what's wrong, and it would just drive me bananas.
- DSDavid Senra
You're the first person I think actually could explain that to me, about how I feel, 'cause everybody's like, um... I just was interviewed on another podcast, and he's like, "Are you happy?" And I was just like, "Yeah, I'm happy, but, like, I also, like, am striving to do something."
- SPSpeaker
I think Steve Jobs was tortured.
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, for sure. Most of them are. But my whole thing is, like, I don't also wanna go through life like that. This is where Bruce Springsteen, y- you, I mean, y- you kinda pushed me in this direction, too, when you were like, "Go watch that movie," you know?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
'Cause I, I didn't... When Jimmy Iovine says, "Go watch a movie," I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna go watch a movie." I thought I was gonna watch a biopic of his life. I thought it was gonna be like-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... he was born, and then he did this, he did that.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
No. [chuckles] It's about the darkest time in his entire life.
- SPSpeaker
That's the only movie he would make.
- DSDavid Senra
Why?
- SPSpeaker
He's not gonna make the Born in the USA movie. What I'm talking about is, I've always been a positive person, and I wake up in a good mood. So, you know, you haven't met me in those days, when I was running Interscope and stuff, but you would say, "Oh, he's having a great time," you know what I mean? But there was always this thing, this compulsion and this insanity that was just driving me constantly, and eventually I wanted to shake that. So I could say to you, "Yeah, I'm happy," in 1980-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... or [chuckles] something like that, but I wanted to be at peace. And I didn't give a shit about being the head of Interscope or being the head of Beats, a- I mean, that nonsense. I just wanted at peace.
- DSDavid Senra
Do you think Bruce is at peace?
- SPSpeaker
I think Bruce has found a lot of peace. I, I don't ask, I don't speak for him, but I think he's incredible.
- DSDavid Senra
I feel that's what he's searching for, too, in the book, where he's like, "I got this thing. I still don't have-
- SPSpeaker
Well, I mean, in the words of John Lennon, "I'm just trying to get me some peace, and, Christ, you know, it ain't easy."
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. [laughing]
- SPSpeaker
So you know, I mean, uh, I didn't invent this. [chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
No, you didn't invent it, but I, I think you, you, you, you just said something that I think is important. It's like, most people lie to themselves, and Bruce, in that book, was lying to himself for a while, and then he realized, "Oh, the actual source of his unhappiness-
- SPSpeaker
Well, you know, we all lie to ourselves, and then-
- DSDavid Senra
Are you still lying to yourself today?
- SPSpeaker
I'm sure, about some things-
- DSDavid Senra
You think so?
- SPSpeaker
... but I try not
- 1:35:22 – 1:49:30
The Importance of Peace and Therapy
- SPSpeaker
to. I, I just want to... I just wanna find peace, you know what I mean? And, um, every day is a search for it, you know, and the monsters wanna come in, and you gotta make your shit bigger than the monsters' shit. [laughing] You know? My father would say, "As long as the cat's bigger than the shit, keep the cat."
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
"The minute the shit gets bigger than the cat," he went like this. [laughing] I must have been 13 years old, 12 years old, [chuckles] when he said that to me, and he was right.
- DSDavid Senra
When you were building Interscope, or i- really, any time in your career, and when you were younger, what was your inner monologue like? Was it negative to, to yourself? Were you, were you, like, overly self-critical?
- SPSpeaker
Only the product. I felt like-
- DSDavid Senra
So it wasn't, you're like, "This product, I could've-"
- SPSpeaker
Well, first of all, when you grow up, when you grow up not having a lot of money, and money being a concern, and the family and all that kind of stuff, you know, the-
- DSDavid Senra
I... Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
My family was very generous, but, you know, eh, we had reality, right? When you grow up like that, that plays a big part in your brain, you know what I mean? 'Cause you don't think... You think, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna be broke." That's what everybody- that's what you think of, uh, you know. So that was a big driver of me.
- DSDavid Senra
When did you lose that fear of being broke?
- SPSpeaker
I don't know, but I just know that-... when I sold it to Apple, it didn't fix it.
- DSDavid Senra
Dude, I thought you were gonna say, like, when you were making tons of money at Interscope. That's wild!
- SPSpeaker
No, because I had to get something right. That overrides- I knew I had a lot of money. I knew I didn't need money. I knew I was never gonna be broke. But it was, that wh- wh- overrode any of it, was having to get the job right. That overrode everything.
- DSDavid Senra
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?
- SPSpeaker
No, 'cause you beat yourself up. You feel that if you can't-
- DSDavid Senra
So you were still beating yourself up, even when you were in your-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... fifties and sixties?
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because-
- DSDavid Senra
Do you do it today?
- SPSpeaker
No. No, I don't. Today, I-
- DSDavid Senra
Good stuff on that.
- SPSpeaker
Right [chuckles] [laughing] Today, I, I actually approach the job... Now, I get cranky, and, uh, but when I get cranky-
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
... 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, um, but when I put the phone down, I don't feel it. When I used to do that, I never stopped feeling it, 'cause I had to get it right.
- DSDavid Senra
I felt like that for a while. This just changed, like, mmm, as a result of, like, the work that I've been doing. There's this guy named Brad Jacobs, who started eight separate billion-dollar companies. I did a bunch of episodes of Founders on him. He came to do this show. I've spent a bunch of time with him, and he j- he's 68 years old. He's been an entrepreneur for longer than I've been alive. Like, the guy is just absolutely incredible, and his whole thing is he just used to beat the shit out of himself mentally. And he's like: "You know what? For... This is not helping my performance." And talking to him, and then using some of the, the strategies in his book, like, now, I used to have a very negative fuel source, which is, I didn't like the way I was born, what- the environment I was born into. I'm gonna, you know, channel that, just like Bruce Springsteen, just like you, it's like I'm gonna 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'm just obsessed with what I'm doing. Like, before, uh, when I woke up this morning, I was, like, giddy, 'cause, like, "This is gonna be one of the best days of my life. I get to freaking record a podcast with Jimmy. This is gonna be insane." Like, my now ne- my self-talk is just like, "Just love what you do and follow your curiosity, and you're gonna be obsessed anyways. You can't work any other way."
- SPSpeaker
Just know that you've handled, to a certain extent, a monster in your life, but the next monster is gonna come in a disguise, a different look, a different way, and it's gonna come in through this door, and you'll s- wake up one day, and that monster will go, "Oh, fuck, I feel like I felt... I thought I killed that monster, but this is a new monster, only it's changed its shape."
- DSDavid Senra
Where do you think that would happen?
- SPSpeaker
It just happens to everybody in life, you know? Just some people like to admit it, and some people don't.
- DSDavid Senra
So, like, might not be in your professional life, but it might be in your personal life, or something like that?
- 1:49:30 – 1:55:57
Learning from Legends
- SPSpeaker
Well, like anybody my age that's in music or around culturally, there was the Big Bang, which was the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I was probably 11 y- years old, right? And I didn't have a currency in, in my neighborhood. I wasn't an athlete. Uh, 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."
- DSDavid Senra
'Cause you tried, you tried to tr- to create music first, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I was terrible. [chuckles] I mean, aver- you know, I was in a band, you know, like-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... but I realized quick I wasn't gonna 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-
- DSDavid Senra
And the beautiful woman
- SPSpeaker
... and the candles-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... and the pretty girl coming to meet him, and I said, "Oh, that's it!" [laughing]
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
I never saw anybody with a leather bag before, you know? But-
- DSDavid Senra
And so you just learned by observing?
- SPSpeaker
No, then I got a... I went to get a job as a cleaning up, you know, cleaning up the studio, setting up the studio, repetition, figuring- putting this over there, you know, figuring out, being around it, being a, a, the ability to observe.
- DSDavid Senra
I can see how you can learn to be, like, a engineer, right?
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Senra
In a recording studio that way. But then you go to a much more almost, like, creative part of it-
- SPSpeaker
Producing
- DSDavid Senra
... which is producing.
- SPSpeaker
Well, 'cause 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. I was-
- DSDavid Senra
Based on your own personal taste?
- SPSpeaker
Based on my taste, influenced by John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
An intense, intense therapy, sitting next to them every day for five years.
- DSDavid Senra
And you s- you, you were up close, and you saw what true excellence looked like.
- SPSpeaker
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, and I watched John. I watched John Lennon. I watched Bruce. I said, "Oh, shit," and I just absorbed it, and I applied it. That's how... When Bruce gave me the song Because the Night for Patti Smith, I was able to translate that into a record where I was the producer. I always wanted a song that sounded like The Animals, you know, "It's my life," and other, you know, that, that, and we gotta get out of this place, right? So when I heard that song, and I heard the chorus, 'cause 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 gonna use this song?" He goes, "No, it doesn't fit on this album." I said, "Okay, c- can I use it for Patti?" And he was great, and he said, "Yeah," and, and she rewrote the verses and killed it. But connecting the dots, you know, and you could, you could learn a little bit how to connect the dots, but you gotta be that kind of person that just sees, you can connect the dots. And that's as, as simple and as difficult as it is. I was always able to connect the dots and see what could be, wha- what this is and what it could be. But that's what always tortured me, 'cause I would see something and see what it could be, and then try to get it to be that, is maddening. Even with Beats, I, you know, I, I saw the iPod, and when we finally decided to do it, I said, "Oh, wow, it, it could be that. You know, it could be as cool as that. We gotta make it as cool as that." 'Cause the iPod was really cool, you know?
- DSDavid Senra
Did you ever meet Akio Morita, the founder of Sony?
- SPSpeaker
No, but I just-
- DSDavid Senra
But you observed him.
- SPSpeaker
I observed him, and Steve would talk to me about him, and I saw, and... But I was always very into the fact that he- when I met Steve, I never understood instinctively why Sony had Columbia Records, the Walkman, PlayStation, and then the CD, and all this stuff, and how did Apple become Apple and not them?
- DSDavid Senra
It's almost like they had all the components, but it was siloed.
- 1:55:57 – 2:00:15
The Influence of Bono and Dre
- DSDavid Senra
your artists when you were-
- SPSpeaker
I learned from Bono, you know, a lot from Bono. Bono's 10 years younger than me. When I met Bono in 1983, and we did U- 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 worked with, weren't.
- DSDavid Senra
They're introverted? Really?
- SPSpeaker
Dre.
- DSDavid Senra
So what, what did you learn from Dre?
- SPSpeaker
Well, Dre brought back the Springsteen thing in me, which was the commitment to a vision and sticking by the culture that you came up in and servicing that culture. And, uh, and it was something that I really didn't understand in the beginning, so I was really hungry to learn about it, you know, about hip-hop and the culture and what it was doing and how it applied, and the, the true power of it. So I learned, I mean, I learned everything about, that I know about hip-hop from Dr. Dre, period. [chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
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-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... and made the na- 'cause he's the greatest hip-hop producer of all time. Like-
- SPSpeaker
Well, Dre and Bruce have a lot in common.
- DSDavid Senra
How so?
- SPSpeaker
They are completely uncompromising, okay? Completely uncompromising. They will not compromise. You have to convince them to move to the left or right. They are com- they know completely what they do, and they don't compromise. It's just that simple. Bruce was the lead... When I met Dre and Bruce, it was very similar. They were both broke, and Dre was in trouble [chuckles] and broke, and they would, with that vision-
- DSDavid Senra
And even back then, they weren't compromising?
- SPSpeaker
Not even close. You couldn't rent Bruce Springsteen. You couldn't buy Br- nothing. You could rent me in those days, you know what I mean? [chuckles] Absolutely. [laughing] You know, but you couldn't anything with that guy. He just... He, he didn't, he didn't think about, "Well, where am I gonna sleep tonight?" It was like this. Bah. I learned that from him. It was, like, really, a really powerful thing. There was nothing that anyone had that he wanted, nothing. That's powerful. That's powerful when you're broke, right? It's like, well, [chuckles] you know? Like, I, I, so I admired that.
- DSDavid Senra
So Bono is an extrovert. You were-
- SPSpeaker
Well, I'd say extrovert-
- DSDavid Senra
How did you do that?
- SPSpeaker
I mean, he'll go out, he'll talk to people, and he's passionate. And by the way, he, he, in his book and i- in his play, a one-man show, he talks about the issues he had at home with his dad and all that stuff, but he is the most positive person I met in music.
- DSDavid Senra
So his bend, same thing, comes from, like, this childhood trauma-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... but somehow didn't, fixed it along the way.
- SPSpeaker
No, no, no. He just is naturally positive person. He can s- he's tough. He can get, plow through things. He's, works... He has incredible work ethic, incredible writer, incredible lyricist, incredible performer, but he's positive. Whenever you see him, he's got an idea. He wants to do this, he wants... He's got very broad interests. I mean, you know, I didn't go on vacation till I met him.
- DSDavid Senra
Say more about that.
- SPSpeaker
I'd never been on a vacation really until the year 2000, 'cause I was doing Rattle and Hum with him in 1988, and I went to the south of France. I remember, and I was like, "Whoa, what the fuck?"
- DSDavid Senra
So you were just myopically focused on-
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles] Yes
- DSDavid Senra
... achievement.
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- 2:00:15 – 2:07:20
California Dreams and Career Milestones
- DSDavid Senra
I love this story where you fly to California for the first time, right?
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
I don't think you'd ever been on a plane.
- SPSpeaker
No.
- DSDavid Senra
You, you were 20? How old were you?
- SPSpeaker
20.
- DSDavid Senra
You were 20.
- SPSpeaker
Never been on a plane, never been in a hotel.
- DSDavid Senra
Never been in a hotel, and then, um, I, I don't know if this is the same trip or later. I think Tom Petty put you in a house. You had never-
- SPSpeaker
No, no, Lennon put me in the, in, um, the Beverly Hills Hotel.
- DSDavid Senra
But that's when you started to be like, "Oh, wait, the world is huge, and I... There's a lot in front of me if I, if I focus on this relentless accomplishment."
- SPSpeaker
Well, I remember John took me to a guy named Richard Perry's house-
- DSDavid Senra
Okay
- SPSpeaker
... a very famous record producer, and, uh, John took me to his house with Harry Nilsson. With- they were going out. They said... He just was, like, really nice to me. He said, "You wanna come?" I, "Uh, sure."
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
You know, I had nothing to do. I was in the hotel, right? Takes me there, and this guy's got a house in the hills in Laurel Canyon, overlooking- or Doheny or something, overlooking the city. It was at night. Yeah, and-... tennis court that was lit up, I was like, "It's like seeing the guy with the bag." [laughing]
- DSDavid Senra
[laughing]
- SPSpeaker
And I was like, "Holy shit!" You know, like, wow!
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, just opens up the, the-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... scope of possibilities.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. You know, you see it for the first time... I'd never been on a plane. I mean, I've only been to Manhattan to f- you know, 'cause of the work, you know?
- DSDavid Senra
Did you know this is where you were gonna spend your life? Like, when did you-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah!
- DSDavid Senra
When-
- SPSpeaker
The, the minute I got off the plane, and my, my boss, Roy, said, "Let's rent a car," we rented a Cadillac, right? And we drove down Sunset Boulevard, and it was December, and it was 75 deg- 78 degrees or something like that. I said, "Are you kidding me?" He said, "No, this is the weather like, like in California, you know?" So I went to, uh, pull into the Beverly Hills Hotel.
- DSDavid Senra
First hotel you ever stay in-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- DSDavid Senra
... is that. That's wild.
- SPSpeaker
Ever.
- 2:07:20 – 2:08:19
Final Thoughts and Reflections
- DSDavid Senra
I'm gonna... Last thing, what did you think of the production value today? You happy?
- SPSpeaker
I thought it was good. When you, when you finally get going... I mean, the, the wood paneling is just not really for me. You know? [laughing] I'm not like... Tried, 'cause I had wood paneling growing up, you know what I mean? Everything was not real.
- DSDavid Senra
Well, we got you the tea. I sent that clip to the team. I was like, "Jimmy's coming. We're not gonna disappoint him. We have the air going-
- SPSpeaker
It's a very, it's a very nice ti- it's a very nice place. It's perfect.
- DSDavid Senra
I absolutely love you. I tell you this all the time. Uh, I- you're one of the people I most admire-
- SPSpeaker
This was fun!
- DSDavid Senra
... Well, you know, I wanna most be like, thank you so much for taking the time, dude.
- SPSpeaker
This was fun.
- DSDavid Senra
It was so great. Thanks, man.
- SPSpeaker
Hey, look, you know-
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, don't leave me hanging. Don't leave me hanging, Jimmy. Come on. [laughing]
- SPSpeaker
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see that. I was looking for my microphone.
- DSDavid Senra
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.
Episode duration: 2:08:19
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