Jimmy Iovine on the ‘terror’ he felt meeting John Lennon
About Jimmy
- Co-founded Interscope Records, shaping pop and hip hop culture since 1990.
- Co-founder of Beats Electronics and Beats Music, sold to Apple for $3B in 2014.
- Produced albums for legends: John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Patti Smith, Stevie Nicks.
- Founded USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Tech & Business Innovation.
- Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 for a 50-year industry career.
Jimmy Iovine on the ‘terror’ he felt meeting John Lennon
Jimmy Iovine was just a young engineer when he walked into a dimly lit recording studio and found himself face to face with John Lennon. He describes the ‘abject terror’ he felt — but says fear of failure pushed him forward. That session became the foundation of his entire career.
Transcript
Note: Transcripts may be automatically generated and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.
And I walk into this studio and the record plant was like really dark. And the guy at the console turns around and says, hello, James. And it's John Lennon. And you know, this is only three years after the Beatles broke up. So now first thing you do is get abject terror, right? But I was afraid enough of what was behind me to keep moving forward and just feel comfortable somehow because he would have smelled and then it worked out so well that they took me around the country because we made, we made records with John Lennon in, in, in California as well. It was all encompassing and it was the beginning of my education. That was, that was really day one of my life.
