CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 5 page

Alas, this did not resolve the issue of getting the Beatles onto iTunes. For that to happen, the

Beatles and EMI Music, which held the rights to most of their songs, had to negotiate their own

differences over how to handle the digital rights. “The Beatles all want to be on iTunes,” Jobs later

recalled, “but they and EMI are like an old married couple. They hate each other but can’t get

divorced. The fact that my favorite band was the last holdout from iTunes was something I very

much hoped I would live to resolve.” As it turned out, he would.

Bono

Bono, the lead singer of U2, deeply appreciated Apple’s marketing muscle. He was confident that

his Dublin-based band was still the best in the world, but in 2004 it was trying, after almost thirty

years together, to reinvigorate its image. It had produced an exciting new album with a song that

the band’s lead guitarist, The Edge, declared to be “the mother of all rock tunes.” Bono knew he

needed to find a way to get it some traction, so he placed a call to Jobs.

“I wanted something specific from Apple,” Bono recalled. “We had a song called ‘Vertigo’ that

featured an aggressive guitar riff that I knew would be contagious, but only if people were

exposed to it many, many times.” He was worried that the era of promoting a song through airplay

on the radio was over. So Bono visited Jobs at home in Palo Alto, walked around the garden, and

made an unusual pitch. Over the years U2 had spurned offers as high as $23 million to be in

commercials. Now he wanted Jobs to use the band in an iPod commercial for free—or at least as

part of a mutually beneficial package. “They had never done a commercial before,” Jobs later

recalled. “But they were getting ripped off by free downloading, they liked what we were doing

with iTunes, and they thought we could promote them to a younger audience.”

Any other CEO would have jumped into a mosh pit to have U2 in an ad, but Jobs pushed back a

bit. Apple didn’t feature recognizable people in the iPod ads, just silhouettes. (The Dylan ad had

not yet been made.) “You have silhouettes of fans,” Bono replied, “so couldn’t the next phase be

silhouettes of artists?” Jobs said it sounded like an idea worth exploring. Bono left a copy of the

unreleased album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, for Jobs to hear. “He was the only person

outside the band who had it,” Bono said.

A round of meetings ensued. Jobs flew down to talk to Jimmy Iovine, whose Interscope records

distributed U2, at his house in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. The Edge was there,

along with U2’s manager, Paul McGuinness. Another meeting took place in Jobs’s kitchen, with

McGuinness writing down the deal points in the back of his diary. U2 would appear in the

commercial, and Apple would vigorously promote the album in multiple venues, ranging from

billboards to the iTunes homepage. The band would get no direct fee, but it would get royalties

from the sale of a special U2 edition of the iPod. Bono believed, like Lack, that the musicians

should get a royalty on each iPod sold, and this was his small attempt to assert the principle in a

limited way for his band. “Bono and I asked Steve to make us a black one,” Iovine recalled. “We

weren’t just doing a commercial sponsorship, we were making a co-branding deal.”

“We wanted our own iPod, something distinct from the regular white ones,” Bono recalled.

“We wanted black, but Steve said, ‘We’ve tried other colors than white, and they don’t work.’” A

few days later Jobs relented and accepted the idea, tentatively.

The commercial interspersed high-voltage shots of the band in partial silhouette with the usual

silhouette of a dancing woman listening to an iPod. But even as it was being shot in London, the

agreement with Apple was unraveling. Jobs began having second thoughts about the idea of a

special black iPod, and the royalty rates were not fully pinned down. He called James Vincent, at

Apple’s ad agency, and told him to call London and put things on hold. “I don’t think it’s going to

happen,” Jobs said. “They don’t realize how much value we are giving them, it’s going south. Let’

s think of some other ad to do.” Vincent, a lifelong U2 fan, knew how big the ad would be, both

for the band and Apple, and begged for the chance to call Bono to try to get things on track. Jobs

gave him Bono’s mobile number, and he reached the singer in his kitchen in Dublin.

Bono was also having a few second thoughts. “I don’t think this is going to work,” he told

Vincent. “The band is reluctant.” Vincent asked what the problem was. “When we were teenagers

in Dublin, we said we would never do naff stuff,” Bono replied. Vincent, despite being British and

familiar with rock slang, said he didn’t know what that meant. “Doing rubbishy things for

money,” Bono explained. “We are all about our fans. We feel like we’d be letting them down if

we went in an ad. It doesn’t feel right. I’m sorry we wasted your time.”

Vincent asked what more Apple could do to make it work. “We are giving you the most

important thing we have to give, and that’s our music,” said Bono. “And what are you giving us

back? Advertising, and our fans will think it’s for you. We need something more.” Vincent replied

that the offer of the special U2 edition of the iPod and the royalty arrangement was a huge deal.

“That’s the most prized thing we have to give,” he told Bono.

The singer said he was ready to try to put the deal back together, so Vincent immediately called

Jony Ive, another big U2 fan (he had first seen them in concert in Newcastle in 1983), and

described the situation. Then he called Jobs and suggested he send Ive to Dublin to show what the

black iPod would look like. Jobs agreed. Vincent called Bono back, and asked if he knew Jony

Ive, unaware that they had met before and admired each other. “Know Jony Ive?” Bono laughed.

“I love that guy. I drink his bathwater.”

“That’s a bit strong,” Vincent replied, “but how about letting him come visit and show how

cool your iPod would be?”

“I’m going to pick him up myself in my Maserati,” Bono answered. “He’s going to stay at my

house, I’m going to take him out, and I will get him really drunk.”

The next day, as Ive headed toward Dublin, Vincent had to fend off Jobs, who was still having

second thoughts. “I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing,” he said. “We don’t want to do this

for anyone else.” He was worried about setting the precedent of artists getting a royalty from each

iPod sold. Vincent assured him that the U2 deal would be special.

“Jony arrived in Dublin and I put him up at my guest house, a serene place over a railway track

with a view of the sea,” Bono recalled. “He shows me this beautiful black iPod with a deep red

click wheel, and I say okay, we’ll do it.” They went to a local pub, hashed out some of the details,

and then called Jobs in Cupertino to see if he would agree. Jobs haggled for a while over each

detail of the finances, and over the design, before he finally embraced the deal. That impressed

Bono. “It’s actually amazing that a CEO cares that much about detail,” he said. When it was

resolved, Ive and Bono settled into some serious drinking. Both are comfortable in pubs. After a

few pints, they decided to call Vincent back in California. He was not home, so Bono left a

message on his answering machine, which Vincent made sure never to erase. “I’m sitting here in

bubbling Dublin with your friend Jony,” it said. “We’re both a bit drunk, and we’re happy with

this wonderful iPod and I can’t even believe it exists and I’m holding it in my hand. Thank you!”

Jobs rented a theater in San Jose for the unveiling of the TV commercial and special iPod. Bono

and The Edge joined him onstage. The album sold 840,000 copies in its first week and debuted at

number one on the Billboard chart. Bono told the press afterward that he had done the commercial

without charge because “U2 will get as much value out of the commercial as Apple will.” Jimmy

Iovine added that it would allow the band to “reach a younger audience.”

What was remarkable was that associating with a computer and electronics company was the

best way for a rock band to seem hip and appeal to young people. Bono later explained that not all

corporate sponsorships were deals with the devil. “Let’s have a look,” he told Greg Kot, the

Chicago Tribune music critic. “The ‘devil’ here is a bunch of creative minds, more creative than a

lot of people in rock bands. The lead singer is Steve Jobs. These men have helped design the most

beautiful art object in music culture since the electric guitar. That’s the iPod. The job of art is to

chase ugliness away.”

Bono got Jobs to do another deal with him in 2006, this one for his Product Red campaign that

raised money and awareness to fight AIDS in Africa. Jobs was never much interested in

philanthropy, but he agreed to do a special red iPod as part of Bono’s campaign. It was not a

wholehearted commitment. He balked, for example, at using the campaign’s signature treatment

of putting the name of the company in parentheses with the word “red” in superscript after it, as in

(APPLE)RED. “I don’t want Apple in parentheses,” Jobs insisted. Bono replied, “But Steve, that’s

how we show unity for our cause.” The conversation got heated—to the F-you stage—before they

agreed to sleep on it. Finally Jobs compromised, sort of. Bono could do what he wanted in his ads,

but Jobs would never put Apple in parentheses on any of his products or in any of his stores. The

iPod was labeled (PRODUCT)RED, not (APPLE)RED.

“Steve can be sparky,” Bono recalled, “but those moments have made us closer friends,

because there are not many people in your life where you can have those robust discussions. He’s

very opinionated. After our shows, I talk to him and he’s always got an opinion.” Jobs and his

family occasionally visited Bono and his wife and four kids at their home near Nice on the French

Riviera. On one vacation, in 2008, Jobs chartered a boat and moored it near Bono’s home. They

ate meals together, and Bono played tapes of the songs U2 was preparing for what became the No

Line on the Horizon album. But despite the friendship, Jobs was still a tough negotiator. They

tried to make a deal for another ad and special release of the song “Get On Your Boots,” but they

could not come to terms. When Bono hurt his back in 2010 and had to cancel a tour, Powell sent

him a gift basket with a DVD of the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, the book Mozart’s

Brain and the Fighter Pilot, honey from her beehives, and pain cream. Jobs wrote a note and

attached it to the last item, saying, “Pain Cream—I love this stuff.”

Yo-Yo Ma

There was one classical musician Jobs revered both as a person and as a performer: Yo-Yo Ma,

the versatile virtuoso who is as sweet and profound as the tones he creates on his cello. They had

met in 1981, when Jobs was at the Aspen Design Conference and Ma was at the Aspen Music

Festival. Jobs tended to be deeply moved by artists who displayed purity, and he became a fan. He

invited Ma to play at his wedding, but he was out of the country on tour. He came by the Jobs

house a few years later, sat in the living room, pulled out his 1733 Stradivarius cello, and played

Bach. “This is what I would have played for your wedding,” he told them. Jobs teared up and told

him, “You playing is the best argument I’ve ever heard for the existence of God, because I don’t

really believe a human alone can do this.” On a subsequent visit Ma allowed Jobs’s daughter Erin

to hold the cello while they sat around the kitchen. By that time Jobs had been struck by cancer,

and he made Ma promise to play at his funeral.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 614