Bruce Springsteen was so obsessed during the making of his legendary 1975 album Born to Run that he threw one of the first versions he heard into a swimming pool, resolved to do the whole thing over again.
The anecdote comes from producer Jimmy Iovine, the Interscope Records founder who also worked as a producer for John Lennon, U2 and Patti Smith, among others.
"I learned my work ethic from Bruce Springsteen," Iovine declares on a recent appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, adding that Springsteen's method (which Iovine later adopted) was to "stay in a state of pain until the music is done."
Bill Simmons asked Iovine during their wide-ranging conversation, whether he worried while making Born to Run if Springsteen would ever actually release it.
In short, yes.
The producer said that once he completed mixing and mastering the album, he had to take a five-hour train ride to see Springsteen, who was touring at the time. In order to play the record, Iovine had to locate a record player.
"So we go to a record store that no ones knows; we don't know what the speakers sound like, we don't know anything. But we also don't know what we're doing. We go in the record store, he hears it and he's [saying], 'Hmm, I don't know. I don't know.'"
"We get back to his hotel – it's one of those motel kind of places, and his room was right outside the pool. He took the lacquer and just threw it in the pool and said, 'We're doing this over again.'"
Iovine explains that he was crushed at the time, but it was longtime Springsteen manager Jon Landau who saved the day and finally got the album released.
Iovine's relationship with music mogul Dr. Dre is spotlighted in the upcoming HBO documentary on the music business The Defiant Ones.
Listen to the full podcast below.
Original article by Andrew Magnotta at iHeartRadio