I still remember the call. It was a Sunday afternoon and the sun was shining. London was gorgeous that day and I was depressed because I was cooped up in the small bedroom of my London flat, thinking as hard as I could about what I wanted to study for my doctorate. My degree was in English Literature but was teachers had warned me not to continue with English unless I planned on becoming a teacher. I did not. My masters was in Marketing Strategy which bored me too death. Still, I was not ready for the real world. Student life was great: cheap loans, cheap life, and the opportunity to keep making music without having to commit to the life of being a musician which often played out in one of two ways. For a very few stardom, glitz, and money; but for the majority absolutely nothing but heartache and poverty. I did not want to be the old guy busking on the bakerloo line.
That was when the phone rang and a high pitched voice said, “Hey! This is Jimmy Iovine. I am looking for Buddahead”.
The voice sounded so fake that I thought it was friend scamming me. So, I did what any one in my shoes should do and I hung up the phone. About an hour later Merck, Buddahead’s then manager, called to say that Jimmy Iovine had been trying to reach me and that I should call him.
I know of Jimmy Iovine. I knew him mostly as the producer of U2’s Rattle and Hum. That afternoon when I called him back I discovered that he ran one of the most powerful music empires in the world (Interscope, Geffen, A&M) and what he wanted more than anything else in the world was to sign me.
“I have heard your demos and I know there are lots of guys who want to sign you, and they are all good guys, but I don’t want to open up a magazine next year and read about your record being amazing. I want it to be on my label”. That is what he actually said and with that we agreed to meet in LA the following week.
The following week Merck and I turned up to Jimmy’s office in Santa Monica. No windows. That struck me as strange. Then again rumor had it that some people wanted him dead. Our meeting happened to be the day of the Grammy awards and Jimmy’s office was packed with stars. While we sat there R. Kelly came in and left, Jacob Dylan of the Wallflowers came in, sat down, and left. Then Jimmy played us the new Eminem single.
“Isn’t it amazing?. It’s going to be a huge single for us.” He looked at me and then leaped onto his chair. “So you are going to play for me right?”
That is what I did. I grabbed my acoustic guitar and played When I fall and Take it all away.
“Wow. You know if I were still producing I would produce this record. But I am not producing anymore. You know what you should do? This is what I did with Bono. I gave him an SM57 and told him to sing in the monitor room. That is what works for him. I bet you will sound great like that. I love these demos. Maybe we just keep them. You know when we were making rattle and Hum the band had these songs they had recorded in their studio in Ireland and no matter how hard I tried to re-make them better, the demos just sounded better. So, what are you looking for? What do I have to do to make you sign with me?”
What a question. I knew I couldn’t say write me a big check. Though I wish I had. The first semi-intelligent that came to my mind was, “I am not looking for a record deal. I am looking for a mentor”
With that he got up from his seat, shook my hand, and said, “I would love to be your mentor. I am not sure if you need much from me though. This stuff is really good. But you know when I was working with Tom Petty the only think I said to him was that he should add a keyboard to his sound”. He then left the room and headed off to the Grammy’s.
Pst…if you haven’r realised all NSFW photos are photoshoped
I could write a whole lot more about Jimmy Iovine the record executive. Now is not the time though. This entry is about record producers and Jimmy Iovine is what I categorize as the middle man. His strength is truly not as a musical force. His strength is his phone, his paiger, his contacts, his friends and colleagues, and his power to get them to do what he wants them to do.
Think of the middle man as a musical broker. When Jimmy was trying to musically guide the making of Crossing the invisible line he would call me randomly with strange requests. Some of my favourites are:
“Hey Buddahead. How about you use the guitar player from Linkin Park?” but why Jimmy – Don Gilmore produced their record and actually played a lot of the guitars himself.
“Hey Buddahead. How about you use the guitar player from Limp Bizkit?” but why Jimmy, you already sent me to meet Wes and only his wife turned up
“Hey Buddahead. You should sound more like Harry Nielson.” But why Jimmy, okay if you insist I will rip off “Without you” and call it “Outside”.
“Hey Buddahead. You should sound more like dashboard confessional.” Who?
“Hey Buddahead. You should sound more like Coldplay.” I already do though!!
“Hey Buddahead. You should sound more broken”. What does that mean?
“Hey Buddahead. You should produce with Brian Eno” but Jimmy you just begged us to work with Don Gilmore.
“Hey Buddahead. You should scrap all of this and remix the demos with Andy Wallace” but Jimmy Andy already said that the demos are awful and sound like they were recorded in a tumble dryer
At the end of each and every one of these calls Don Gilmore and I would sit in the studio perplexed. What we needed was a translation book, a Jimmy Iovine dictionary. But that is what Jimmy does. That is what middle men producers do. They produce more like movie producers than music producers. They inject the money, throw a million ideas out, if one sticks then they will facilitate it. Any if you don’t take in their ideas you will suffer. They are mercurial in attention span.
On the other hand, if you are the lucky recipient of the master idea, if you are Tom Petty and you realize you need the keyboards; if you are Eminem and you realize you need Dre, if you are 50 Cent and you realize you need Eminem, if you are Gwen Stefani and you realize you don’t need a band, or even if you are U2 and you realize all you need is Bono, then the stars have aligned and the Iovine machine is in over load, and soon you will find an entire building worth of people (including the parking attendant) bowing at you.