Jimmy Iovine

He has an older sister, born in 1946.

The family lived in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood.

James Iovine (born March 11, 1953 ) is an American entrepreneur, former record executive, and media proprietor.

He is best known as the co-founder of Interscope Records.

In the early 1970s, Iovine became a recording engineer, working with John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen, among others.

By 1973, Iovine was a part of the staff, working for the now-demolished New York City faction of the Record Plant, where he worked on Springsteen's Born to Run and Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell.

Iovine served as sound engineer for the Voyager Golden Records, a pair of phonograph records which were launched aboard the Voyager space probes in 1977.

He came to prominence through his work on Patti Smith's album Easter (1978), which included her Top 40 hit "Because the Night".

He later collaborated with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on Damn the Torpedoes and U2 on Rattle and Hum.

Iovine also produced Bella Donna (the first solo album by former Fleetwood Mac member Stevie Nicks), Making Movies for Dire Straits, and Get Close for The Pretenders.

He was also responsible for supervising the music used in the 1984 romance film Sixteen Candles, Streets of Fire and the 1988 comedy film Scrooged.

His father died in 1985.

Iovine attended catholic school in Brooklyn, graduating from the since-closed Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School and went on to attend New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

At age 19, he dropped out of college.

He was introduced to music production after he met a songwriter who helped him find a job as a recording studio cleaner, and he soon began working as an engineer.

His father's death and love for Christmas inspired Iovine to record and oversee A Very Special Christmas in 1985.

The compilation was not released until 1987 under Interscope's future sister label A&M Records.

In 1989, Iovine and Ted Field, founder of film production label Interscope Communications, co-founded Interscope Records.

A year later, the label secured a distribution deal with Atlantic Records and garnered success with artists including No Doubt, 4 Non Blondes and Gerardo.

Atlantic owned a 50% stock in the label.

Over 19 million records sold from Death Row, the label was largely responsible for Interscope's multi-platinum success throughout the 1990s.

It opened at number one on the Billboard 200 with the biggest first-week sales in 1990s hip hop; it consumed 806,858 copies.

A year later, Death Row's notoriety through the Interscope imprint attracted various other urban artists willing to join the label, one R&B boy band being Blackstreet, a spin-off of leader Teddy Riley's previous group, Guy.

Iovine and Field signed Tupac Shakur to a recording contract as one of the first hip-hop acts under Interscope in 1991.

A year later, Interscope became notable for providing distribution, initial funding and financial oversight for the highly successful Death Row Records.

Death Row, founded by Suge Knight, operated as a subsidiary of Interscope, beginning with the December 14, 1992 release of label artist and producer Dr. Dre's solo debut album, The Chronic.

With singles consisting of "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" and "Let Me Ride", both of which featuring labelmate Snoop Dogg, The Chronic managed to sell over five million copies in the United States and become Dre's best-selling album in his career.

Iovine and Dre would later form a personal friendship following the release of the Chronic through Knight.

However, Snoop Dogg accumulated more success on Death Row and Interscope with his November 1993 debut, Doggystyle.

He became chairman and CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M, an umbrella music unit formed by Universal Music Group in 1999.

Iovine has been involved in the production of more than 250 albums.

In 2006, Iovine and close friend, hip hop musician Dr. Dre, co-founded Beats Electronics.

Two years later, the brand launched its first official set of headphones.

In late 2013, they began development for, and in 2014, launched Beats Music, which went on to become the framework for Apple Music.

Despite his retirement, he is still credited or named in institutional education centers such as the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy, which inaugurated in 2013, and the Iovine and Young Center, a magnet high school which opened in Los Angeles in August 2022.

James Iovine was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, to an Italian working-class family.

His mother was a secretary and his father, Vincent "Jimmy" Iovine, worked on the docks as a longshoreman.

The company was purchased by Apple Inc. for $3 billion in May 2014.

At the same time, Iovine vacated his positions as chairman and CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M Records, ending his twenty-five year relationship with his label.

On August 21, 2018, after initial denial, Iovine parted ways with Apple and effectively retired from the media business.