R E M I X I N G A M E R I C A N P O P drive necessary to make it in the music business but he lacked one other essential ingredient: experience. Luckily for him, he was smart enough to know that, if his dream of creating a competitive music label was to be realized, he needed a seasoned music industry insider as a partner. His quest to find someone who had both the experience and the mettle to launch an independent record label led him to Jimmy Iovine, a veteran record producer. Iovine had been in the music business for more than three decades. Over the course of that time he worked as an engineer and producer for some of the biggest names in rock including: John Lennon, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, and U2. The son of a long- shoreman, Iovine’s tough Brooklyn upbringing served him well in the competitive business of commercial music-making. Around the time he was approached by Field, the weathered Iovine was in search of something new. Sensing that music and the world around him were changing, he was not sure where or even if he fit in any longer. Speaking about that crossroad period in his professional life, Iovine told a Rolling Stone reporter in 1997 that he believed: “Music is going to change. Young bands aren’t going to be asking for me. But I love working with the new thing. I always liked the part of the business that’s the first time you hear something, and I knew I wasn’t in that business anymore.” Iovine may have suspected that Field’s oƒer to help run a label may have been his last best shot at “working with the new thing.” Many music industry insiders believed that the Iovine-Field partner- ship was destined to fail. After all, indie labels come and go. Even the two partners realized the odds were stacked against them. “We were looking at a long shot,” Iovine said. “It was a guy with money from the outside and a record producer. Those two things couldn’t suc- ceed.” One popular newsweekly characterized the Iovine-Field part- nership as venture meeting capital, Flatbush meeting Beverly Hills. They o‰cially launched Interscope Records in 1990 just as several other indie labels announced their dreamy-eyed pursuit of music industry fame and gold. The nineties would prove to be a strange 43