Original subtitles

01 The Defiant Ones - Part 1 English

[EMINEM] You don't have to be quiet, but just shut the fuck up.

[MAN LAUGHS]

[MAN] We good? [EMINEM] Let's cut to the fuckin' chase, man.

[MAN] Let's cut to the chase. [EMINEM] Boom.

JON LANDAU: Does my hair look particularly terrible?

I do ask for the right to be able to spit.

[CHUCKLES]

[MAN] So you got, like, 45?

Sure.

I love food and wine.

[MAN] Dre, take two.

- Take two? What do you mean take two? - [LAUGHS]

February, Stevie Nicks.

This is a whole, like, art to this.

Do you want me to scoot this way? ls that better for the light?

I'll put all this shit in the movie, by the way.

- [SEAN] That's why I'm tryin' to tell 'em to go. - Oh, jeez.

[WILL.I.AM] When is this comin' out? [MAN] Huh?

- [MAN] Say again. - When is this gonna be out?

[MAN] It should be out next year.

Describe that relationship.

- Dr. Dre and Jimmy Lovine. - [WILL.I.AM] Okay, cool.

We're talkin' about Jimmy and Dr. Dre.

The relationship between Jimmy and Dre.

April 1st, 2014, a rumor leaks

that Apple is buyin' Beats.

So I called Jimmy like, Yo, is this for real?

No, Will, those are rumors. It's not real.

Right?

April Fools'. [CLICKS TONGUE]

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

JIMMY IOVINEI I called Dre.

I said, Dre, remember De Niro's character, Jimmy, in Goodfellas?

Where Jimmy told the guys, 'Don't buy any furs.

'Don't buy cars. Don't get showy.

He said, Yeah? I said, Don't move this weekend.

Don't do anything.

He says, I gotcha.

[CHUCKLES] And that Friday night, Puff calls me.

Yo, man... ls this true or not, this deal?

You made a deal with Apple, and you're not telling me?

I said, Look, I'm talkin' to a bunch of people about the company.

You gotta respect me, know that I can't talk to you about it.

Now that was about 8:00.

2:00 in the morning, Puff calls me and starts yelling over the phone.

You wouldn't tell me? You wouldn't tell your friend?

And yet Dr. Dre and Tyrese are talkin' about it on Facebook.

I said, Where? He said, Facebook.

I said, I gotta go.

The homey is drunk off a Heineken.

[LAUGHTER]

The homey drunk off a... At least he... Stop snitching, you motherfucker.

We had gone for, like, six weeks without it leaking.

Billionaire boys' club, for real, homey.

- Huh? Fix your face. - Yeah, you know that.

- Fix your face. - You know that.

This thing is leaked.

This thing is loud.

Oh, shit, the Forbes list just changed.

They didn't... Hey, it came out, like, two weeks ago.

They need to update the Forbes list.

- Shit just changed. - In a big way.

- Oh, my! - Understand that.

[MAN] Oh, my.

The first billionaire in hip-hop,

right here from the motherfuckin' West Coast, believe me.

- [MUSIC PLAYING] - Shit! Nigga! Fuck!

[PEOPLE YELLING OVER MUSIC]

Fuck y'all niggas. Fuck! What y'all niggas talkin'?

Tyrese fucked that up.

This nigga was so drunk and high, I don't know what the fuck he was.

He went, Yeah, nigga, the first motherfuckin' billionaire, nigga.

From Compton, nigga, yeah, nigga.

And then Tyrese crip-walks.

And I can only imagine Jimmy at that point in time.

No, this can't be. That's... No!

This can't... What are you, crazy?

Crazy.

It was like, What is this?

How can this possibly be the case?

We start off this Friday morning with some California love.

[FEMALE NEWS ANCHOR] Hip-hop mogul and headphone tycoon, Dr. Dre,

boasting in a video on Facebook with friend, Tyrese Gibson...

The biggest deal in its history and hip-hop's first billionaire.

[FEMALE NEWS ANCHOR] The selling price rumored to be a whopping $3.2 billion.

Think about it, Apple, known for discretion in its deals.

[CHUCKLES] And then, you know, there's, like

a Facebook page with a victory lap by Dr. Dre.

[NEWS ANCHOR] I can't imagine what the legal departments were doing

when they saw that video.

This is just a bad deal.

Yes, hello?

This is Apple. You niggas want to talk early?

Take a few... Yeah, take a couple off.

Yeah, take a couple off, nigga. Shut up, nigga. It ain't inked yet.

I'd been wanting to work with Apple...

At that point, it's probably 10 years, maybe more than 10 years.

And I'm like, How could this be possibly happening?

So, sure, I thought the deal could blow.

I think, you know, for Jimmy, who had to bear the brunt of it,

I'm sure it was not a good two or three days.

And I felt bad for him, 'cause he was gettin' the crap knocked out of him.

And he was responsible to all the shareholders

to make that deal go through.

He was crushed.

And when he told me, when I finally talked to him,

I was like, We could potentially lose this.

You know?

And he says,

But it's the horse I rode in with.

[DR. DRE] I was actually in the studio, excitement was in the room.

You mix excitement with a fuckin' fifth of alcohol, man,

somethin' terrible is bound to happen.

That is in the top three most embarrassin' moments in my life.

[THUNDER RUMBLES]

Sometimes things like this happen.

And I'm so secluded. I'm so private.

At the same time, I want to have fun, and I want to party.

And I want to make my music and that whole shit.

But it... You know, as far as, um...

Along with cameras around me, like this...

Along with cameras in my studio,

around my family, in my home,

around any fuckin' thing that I'm doin' that I really give a fuck about.

Well, I'm at a place with it right now where I'm comfortable enough

to let these things go and to talk about these things.

[THUNDER RUMBLES]

Okay, God, give us a lightnin' strike, but keep it out there.

[LAUGHTER]

[THUNDER RUMBLES]

[BEAT PLAYING]

You are about to hear what many people consider obscene language,

and ideas that are offensive.

They are also popular.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

- [MAN] How ya doin'? - Hey, hey.

- Good to see ya, brother. - What's up, man?

- What's up? How ya doin', man? - Doin' okay.

Big-time movie makin', right?

[MAN] When he comes in, then that's when y'all...

[MAN 2] So, guys, show of hands in the back corner, who's ever smoked a cigarette?

Corey Hawkins AKA Dr. Dre.

[LAUGHS]

You know.

[DR. DRE] Sittin'on the set, watchin' myself bein' portrayed in a movie

is just fuckin' weird, man.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

I've had such a traumatic career, but such a fortunate career at the same time.

It seems like these artists that I've worked with

are fuckin' angels to me, you know?

They always come in at the right time.

As far as me and Jimmy goes, we're just some lucky motherfuckers, man.

- [MOBILE PHONE RINGS] - Here's Dr. Dre. Hello, Dr. Dre.

[INTERVIEWER] First of all, what is he making right now?

- What... - I'm not interviewing fuckin' Dre.

[INTERVIEWER] I know you're not interviewing...

[LAUGHS]

[JIMMY] I always felt that I had to work harder

than the next guy just to do as well as the next guy.

And to do better than the next guy, I had to just kill.

[NEWS ANCHOR] Jimmy Lovine, the music executive has worked with everyone

from Bruce Springsteen to Lady Gaga.

But his partnership with Dr. Dre is creating the most business buzz these days.

What kind of numbers can you give us on how quickly this business has grown?

And has it grown faster than you thought it would?

Well, of course it's grown faster than we thought it would.

[BEAT PLAYING]

[JIMMY] So what happened was Apple stays true to who I always knew they were,

kept their word, ignored all the noise, and made the deal.

[JON] There is this thing called the American dream.

And we know it's a myth.

It only applies to a very few people.

But Jimmy's one of those people who has not only succeeded

but has become a better person in the process.

[TOM PETTY] He's a scrapper, man.

I mean, he came from Hell's Kitchen.

He's persistent.

This motherfucker is, like... He's a different type of motherfucker.

Jimmy has this brutal honesty.

It can appear rude.

Lots of people don't like him,

but brutal honesty is why you want him in the room.

Of course, it's all driven by his low self-esteem.

- I mean, but so are we all, you know? - [LAUGHS]

And our visions of grandiosity, you know, on top of that.

What else is there? [LAUGHTER]

[PAUL ROSENBERG] Jimmy's the guy firing a million ideas a minute.

And Dre is looking at those ideas

using this Dr. Dre bullshit detector

that is the best in the world.

Jimmy Lovine is the levitator.

Dre is the innovator.

[PAUL ROSENBERG] They produce each other.

[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]

[SINGING] Monkey see, monkey do

I don't know why I'd rather be dead than cool

I don't know why Every line ends in rhyme

I don't know why Less is more, love is blind

I don't know why

Stay Stay away

Stay away

Give an inch, take a smile

I don't know why Fashion shits, fashion style...

Yo, I'm startin' to sweat right now just listenin' to this shit.

It's bananas.

Nirvana, Kurt Cobain.

That's my favorite rock group of all time.

Here's a little bit of Kraftwerk, Metal on Metal, live.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[DR. DRE] I was born in Compton, two weeks after my mother's 16th birthday.

A lot of shit went on with my father.

He was smart as shit, but crazy as shit, too.

Very abusive, physically and verbally, a lot of drugs.

And he was out of the picture before I could talk, you know?

But the violence that was goin' on, it was just normal.

[HELICOPTER WHIRRING]

[DISPATCHER] Unit 1380-61, 1380-61, drive-by shooting,

confirm one victim down, 53-18 South Main.

[MALE OFFICER] Here you go.

I knew it was gonna happen. 'Cause this is a Saturday night.

It's terribly warm. The moon's out.

And the gangs are already startin' to shoot.

[DR. DRE] Compton, especially where and when I grew up, it was goin' down.

[TOM BROKAW] More than 70,000 gang members live in Los Angeles County.

Violence can erupt any time.

[DR. DRE] Because my mother was havin' a kid at such a young age,

people were tellin' her her life isn't gonna be shit,

her son's life isn't gonna be shit.

So I can remember, my entire youth,

my mom bangin' in my head that I had to be a success at somethin'.

[VERNA] I used it as a tool.

It made me strive to do better.

[DR. DRE] She's one of the strongest people I know.

[BILL KURTIS] Compton was the American dream.

Sunny California, temptingly close to the Los Angeles ghetto

in the '50s and '60s, it became the black American dream.

But the dream has turned sour.

They have been unable to solve the problems of crime and growing welfare,

which is slowly turning suburban Compton into an extension of the black inner city.

Bill Kurtis, CBS News, Compton, California.

Yeah, I mean, if you know anything

about hip-hop or the history of hip-hop, you know that melody.

It's like late '70s, early '80s,

Kraftwerk was a big inspiration for a lot of hip-hop artists back then, you know?

When hip-hop was really startin' from the ground floor.

So, you know, they're definitely one of my inspirations.

[VERNA] I think it was born in him, the music.

He liked noise.

[MUSIC PLAYING ON VINYL]

He's always been like that.

When he was a baby, you'd just put him somewhere near a speaker.

And he'd just lay there and kind of look in the air

like he's searchin' for the notes, those sounds and stuff.

[MAN 1] Hey, what's happening? [MAN 2] Hey, Tommy.

We always had the house that everybody would congregate at.

[DR. DRE] There was always parties and dancin'.

[VERNA] When company would come over,

Andre would be the little DJ.

[DR. DRE] Before I could read, if there was a song that I knew everybody liked,

I just knew what that label looked like.

So I would stack up ten 45s in the order that I saw fit.

[VERNA] He'd just stack 'em up and play them.

[SAXOPHONE PLAYING]

[SINGING]

I'm in for real, baby Gonna keep movin'

[DR. DRE] My relationship with my stepfather was up and down.

My second husband, same crazy problems, abuse and all that stuff.

[DR. DRE] I saw my share of violence.

My mom tried to keep me away from that as much as possible.

So I was to myself quite a bit.

And my brother Tyree became my best friend.

We were three years apart.

And this is the person that I really knew.

And this person knew everything about me.

But I don't want to get into that.

I don't want to get into Tyree right now. Yeah.

[VERNA] Tyree, he just idolized his brother.

And Andre was just really quiet, a thinker.

He was very smart.

[SINGING] Just like I want you

I want you to get down, baby

When I get down...

[VOCALIZING]

By the way, I'm never gonna be able to do it any better than what they did.

This is just my version.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Yeah, I gotta spend some time on this shit.

But, like, seriously,

bein' able to go in and touch these vocals,

[SONG PLAYING]

Especially the tracks of a song not only that I grew up on,

a track that I really love. Man!

It's motherfuckin' chill bumps, man.

It's just... This is crazy.

[SONG CONTINUES PLAYING]

[SINGING] I want you, babe

Can't you see?

[BEAT PLAYING]

Yeah!

[LAUGHING]

We're really doing this shit, man!

[JANET MORMILE] Jimmy Lovine, my little brother.

We used to call him the guy who fell to Earth,

because he was so unlike anyone else.

[JIMMY] I was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in 1953.

My grandparents came from Italy.

And my mother's father, he was a longshoreman.

My dad went to work down at the piers as well, as a longshoreman.

There wasn't a lot of talk about being a doctor or a lawyer.

But I was a very fortunate guy, you know?

I had a mother and father that loved me a lot,

and my sister and my grandmother and my aunts and my uncles.

[JANET] I don't know how old he was when he started walking.

He never had to.

Because my mother and I would do everything for him.

And then, of course, we were so worried when he started school.

I don't remember one moment of high school that I enjoyed.

Catholic school, nuns, suits, jacket, tie, no girls, all guys.

I hated every second of it.

- I would make his tie every morning. - [JIMMY] I hated it.

I used to have a lot of trouble reading.

And I would do his homework.

I was below average.

I wanted to get out of school.

[SCHOOL BELL RINGS]

So I bought a guitar, 14 to 16 was my band.

And we would all go to these dinky little dark places.

Couple of really nice clubs in New York City.

[JANET] You should never put the lights on in places like this.

[JIMMY] We were rock stars or somethin'. [JANET] He was amazing.

[JIMMY] We weren't very good

And that's when frustration first set in, you know?

Like, Oh, okay, this is, um... This is tough.

They're not gonna ask you to join the Rolling Stones.

So then I was thinkin' not what I was gonna do,

I was thinkin' what I wasn't gonna do.

'Cause my father had planned for me to go down to the docks,

where he had a job for me, you know?

I was just... I wanted to do somethin' that felt special.

[DR. DRE] Yeah, he was really interesting.

And most people I've bumped into still don't know

what their real passion is, whereas I was really blessed to find hip-hop.

[VERNA] At an early age, Andre had a focus.

[UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING]

At first, it was dancing, the Freak Patrol.

Damn, Freak Patrol. You're takin' me back now, okay.

They had it together.

It was terrible.

And I'm actually embarrassed talkin' about that shit right now, man.

[VERNA] I would always say, You can't get no job pop-Iockin'.

You need to find you a job.

And he was always comin' in second.

And I remember him sayin' that he needed to do something that he could be first in.

[DR. DRE] There was a club in the neighborhood called Eve After Dark.

One of my uncles was a bouncer at this club,

and he snuck me in one night.

Kurtis Blow was performin'.

And his little brother, Davy DMX, was the DJ.

This is the first time in my life that I saw scratching '.

Just fucked me up.

I knew that this was my cal/in'.

There was a friend of mine, and he put together two turntables.

And he used a balance knob to be able to go from turntable to turntable.

I started doin' this thing.

- And I just fell in love with it. - [SCRATCHING]

[MAN] All right, are you ready to go off?

Well, check it out. Right about now, Dr. Dre is on the wheels.

And I'm about to cold tear shit up.

[WOMAN] Here we go.

[DR. DRE] Whenever was home, I was practicin'.

My mother was really happy about it, because...

When you can hear them, you know where they're at.

[DR. DRE] Christmas, my mom bought me a Numark 1150 mixer.

I have the ability to make tapes now.

One of the best gifts I ever got in my life.

[VERNA] We lived a couple of blocks from Eric Eazy-E.

[DR. DRE] One of the first times that I performed for an audience

was in Eazy-E's backyard after a block party.

Next thing I know,

all the kids in the neighborhood were comin' over to my house to get their tape.

I would shout your name out on the tape or you could talk on your own tape.

This is the first way I started hustlin' and makin' money.

[VERNA] And it just grew. You could just see it growing.

And he's just, like, soaking it in, wanting more.

All day, he was in that room.

I'd go in there and I could hear the music blastin'.

He asleep with the headphones on.

I just took 'em off. I didn't know how to turn anything off.

[NEWS ANCHOR] Of course, we're talkin' about Dr. Dre.

He started N. W.A., remember that?

Now he's taking his success and a lot of his money

to build a new academy with music mogul, Jimmy Lovine,

who donated about $70 million together

to foster entrepreneurship that brings students entertainment,

technology, and business skills over at USC.

It's amazing, he doesn't have a college degree.

But yet, he has an academy with his name on it.

[FEMALE NEWS ANCHOR] Yeah, it's fantastic.

To all of today's graduates, I can't imagine what's going through your minds right now.

I never had the opportunity to go to a great university like this.

I didn't get here today like you did by studying hard and excelling in school.

Yet, here I stand before you at this amazing crossroads in your life.

[JIMMY] When I graduated high school, my mother and father said,

You have to go to college.

I said, No kidding, because the draft.

I knew if I hated high school, I was really gonna hate Vietnam.

So they accepted me in John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

I thought it sounded good, like maybe that's what Alfred was in Batman.

I had no idea.

Maybe I was dyslexic.

I don't want to find out now, 'cause that'll only rock the boat.

Things are kind of good.

But this was the first time somebody said, You're a nice kid.

You need to go do something else.

[JANET] So he would stay up in his room and listen to music for hours on end.

[JIMMY] I would read the back of album covers.

I learned about producing.

That's so cool.

He would make you a super fan of whatever he was a fan of.

Do you hear that sound? And do you know why you hear that sound?

[JANET] And he wanted to try the music business.

[JIMMY] And I met, through my cousin,

this incredible songwriter, Ellie Greenwich, who got me my first studio job.

[JANET] Jimmy got a job sweeping out the studio,

but somehow he got fired from sweeping.

[JIMMY] She got me another job, and I had a 90-day trial.

- On the 89th day... - He got fired.

You get a kid a job and he gets fired, you're not gonna get him another job.

So on the way home, I called Ellie Greenwich.

She said, Don't get on the train. Go down to the Record Plant.

And it turns out there were these two Italian guys.

And this guy Roy Cicala, who owned the studio,

was a really groundbreaking recording engineer.

And how he would teach you was to work through you.

And we just hit it off.

[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]

He sits you at the console.

And he'd say, Give me a compressor on the vocal, 2 dB at 10,000 cycles.

No, try three. No, two sounds better.

And as you're turning the knob, you're hearing the vocal get brighter.

Or you put the echo on, the tape delay.

[ECHOING] And you actually hear it. He goes, No, that's too much.

Have it... All right, slow the tape machine up a little bit.

[DISTORTED] Okay, do you hear why that's workin'?

And you get a feel for how to make a record, because I didn't have any skills.

And then one day, Roy called me at home.

It was Easter Sunday.

And he said, I need you to come in today to answer the phones.

I went to my mother. I said, Mom, I gotta go to work.

She said, Are you crazy? It's Easter Sunday. Your family's comin' over.

Your aunts, your uncles, all your cousins are coming here.

We have to go to church. We have to...

So I went into work.

And when I got there,

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I went, Okay.

Roy said, I just wanted to see if you would come in on Easter Sunday.

The assistant engineer can't make it.

And John and I want you to do it.

Like anyone from my generation, ground zero was the Beatles.

The Beatles!

[JIMMY] I was just plain old terrified.

I was in way above my head.

But my father was a real cheerleader.

He always told me that every room you go into

is better because you're there.

So I never felt like nobody wants me here or I don't belong.

Fear's a powerful thing.

I mean, it's got a lot of firepower.

And that was the beginning of makin' fear a tailwind

instead of a headwind.

[SINGING] Old dirt road

[JANET] That was the beginning.

He went from sweeping the floors to workin' the board with John Lennon.

It made him believe, you know,

If John Lennon thinks I can do it, I really can.

That's when I graduated to second engineer.

Easter Sunday, 1973.

[SINGING] This is where I leave you

[SIREN WAILING]

In the city of Compton This is where I leave you

[DR. DRE] I like bein' in the control room.

I like sittin' behind those buttons.

That's my comfort area.

That's where I've fought to remain, right in front of those buttons.

I never considered myself a rapper.

I still don't necessarily like the way I sound on the mic.

And it's a hell of a career choice for a person with all these issues.

[ICE CUBE] Dre is still one of the most confident dudes I know.

Anybody that go in the studio with Dre,

I don't care if they're in there one session, a month,

the session with Dre

is the session that you will pull from the most.

[RAPPING]

You know my name You know my reputation

Ride through the time You know my name

You know my reputation

[DR. DRE] That's all I need. It's good.

Rock with the whole line, though.

[RAPPING] Survive through the time

You know my name You know my reputation

- I think that's money. - Moolah.

[RAPPING] Me and Dre, you don't like it, you can lay

[ICE CUBE] At the time I met him, he was Dr. Dre, one of the best DJs in I.A.

Back then, the DJ was the man.

[RAPPING] Today was a good day

MC: Anybody ever been to a videotaping before?

Huh? Who is the DJ?

That's the new guy we got.

- We call him Dr. Dre. - [CHEERS]

All right.

Dr. Dre,

let it rip.

[TURNTABLE SCRATCHING]

[ALONZO WILLIAMS] This is the entrance to the Eve After Dark.

This was a teenage nightclub, back in '79.

This was where it all started.

Mirrors on the wall.

On a good Saturday night, if it was packed,

the mirrors would sweat like it was rainin' out.

And the ceiling would get hot and moist, and then start to sag.

And we built a stage out front so that Yella could be seen.

It was just off the chain.

[DJ YELLA] Wreckin' Cru, we were a crew of DJs.

And we had it goin' on.

We were just hot.

But we was always every weekend for a couple of years.

[DR. DRE] Alonzo was the club owner.

[ALONZO] I was the big dog.

[DR. DRE] That was the guy that you wanted to know if you wanted to DJ.

[ALONZO] One of my boys on the cleanup crew, kept on,

Hey, man, you wanna hear my boy, Dre? You wanna hear my boy, Dre?

I'm like, Well, I got enough DJs. I got four DJs already.

I don't need no fuckin' more DJs.

[DR. DRE] At that time, my whole mission was to get on the turntables.

I didn't give a fuck about anything else that was goin' on in the club.

I wasn't trippin' on no girls, nothin'.

I wanted to be able to get in there and rock.

And Alonzo used to always be standin' out in front of the club.

[ALONZO] 'Cause the club was technically 18 and over,

and I tried to keep it that way.

Him and Eazy came up. They wasn't dressed right.

So I was like, No, no, no.

Dre started talkin' to me.

You know, Dre's a smooth-talkin' motherfucker, okay?

So I said, Look, man, change your clothes. Come back and see me next week.

Dre changed clothes.

Eazy didn't.

So just to piss Eazy off, I let Dre in, made Eazy's ass stand outside.

And how Dre got on the turntables,

if you waterboarded my ass, I couldn't tell you.

'Cause all I know is Eazy's talkin' shit to me downstairs.

You Jheri-curled motherfucker. I had a perm.

I had a Jheri curl, whatever it was back then.

And I came in, like, What the fuck is goin' on?

[SINGING] Please, Mr. Postman, look and see

If there's a letter in your bag for me

[ALONZO] Understand this, we had never put two different tempos with each other.

Dre was the first person I'd ever heard do that.

And people stopped dancin' to look.

[SINGING] There must be some word today

From my boyfriend so far away

[YELLA] Mr. Postman and Jive Rhythm Trax 122.

Puttin' the old '60s song onto the new song, caught everybody off-guard.

It was like some musical, magical shit.

[TURNTABLE SCRATCHING]

[ALONZO] People were still groovin'.

They was groovin' confused though.

I know why they confused. I'm confused my damn self.

That was one of the most famous mixes I've ever heard.

First time he DJed in the club.

Right there on the stage right here. Right there.

[VERNA] This particular night, I went to pick him up.

And he wouldn't stop talkin'.

Man, the crowd was goin' wild.

And then the manager drives up and says, How would you like a job? [LAUGHS]

[DR. DRE] That was a great night for me.

From that point, me and Yella became really good friends.

[YELLA] Once we met, me and Dre were like Batman and Robin.

[DR. DRE] Wrecking Cru was a travelin' show also.

It was just genuine good fun, man.

Innocent

Please check it and see just one more time for me

I actually got some turntables last year.

They're still in the box.

[LAUGHS]

[MAN] When's the last time?

In public?

- Shit. - Just for fun.

I don't know, 20 years? Gotta dust 'em off.

- [MAN] Word. - [LAUGHS]

Absolutely.

We want to put together a show designed by yourself

that says what you want to say,

I.a. takes people as far back to the history of it as you want to go,

but also as up-to-date with the new stuff as you want to go.

We believe that shows like yours need to be on every other week.

So what we have here is we're looking across the week from Monday to Thursday.

That's all of that. Look for the lines.

A good horizontal in a radio schedule means good clarity.

Can't you just tell me what happened?

I can tell you what happened.

[LAUGHTER]

[JIMMY] When I was growin' up, the way people worked,

you had no choice but to work really hard or you get fired.

And you couldn't wait for it to end.

[BRUCE] You had two kinds of guys we ran into at that time.

There were the kinds of guys that wanted to go home at 5:00.

And their interest in what you were doing

didn't exceed the normal demands of the day for them.

And those guys never lasted.

Because when you're tryin' to push the boundaries on things

and when you're moving into different types of frontiers,

you need to be surrounded by people who really believe in what you're doing.

[JIMMY] And I had never witnessed anything like that before.

I had never understood that.

Everything I ever did in my life, I wanted to stop doing it.

Lovine.

[JON] 'Cause I couldn't hear myself in the damn headphones.

- What else is new? - [LAUGHS]

[TAPE SLOWING]

[JIMMY] Bruce taught me a work ethic.

[TRUMPET MUSIC PLAYING]

[BRUCE] In 1975, we're tryin' to make Born to Run.

And we were having great difficulty doing so.

Walked into the Record Plant.

This was our first step inside a professional recording studio.

There was a skinny, little Italian kid, sitting at the tape machine.

Basic job was to take the tape on and off, push the stop and start button.

That was Jimmy Lovine.

He came with the furniture.

- [JIMMY] I did come with the furniture. - [LAUGHTER]

[BRUCE] Then I came in a few nights later, and our engineer was gone.

[JIMMY] Landau looked to me and said, Can you do this?

And I wasn't really sure if I could do it or not, but I said, Yeah, why not?

And that was my first solo flight.

[BRUCE] [SINGING] We gotta stay cool tonight, Eddie

'Cause, man We got ourselves out on that line

And if we blow this one

They ain't gonna be looking for just me this time

[JON] Bruce is a whole other story.

The center of what he's doing is to try and create an artistic vision.

There was an intellectual aspect to it.

[BRUCE] We were just very, very determined.

So I suppose if you were new to our club,

the relentless pursuit of your idea would have probably exhausted you.

[RECORDING NOISE]

But it was simply understood

that you're there because you believe what we're doing is worth it.

And my job was to make sure that it was.

[GUITAR DISTORTION]

[JON] Bruce used to have this thing where he simply lost track of time.

A lot of experimenting going on.

Sometimes we would really seem like we were spinnin' our wheels.

We worried every little detail to death.

[BRUCE] No, I think we spent three weeks trying to get drum sounds,

which is indulgent.

But sometimes you need to be indulged.

[CYMBALS CRASH]

[JIMMY] Bruce would stand over me, say one word over and over again.

Stick.

Which became shorthand for not hearing resonance and size and power.

- Stick. - [JIMMY] I couldn't hear anymore.

The speakers were so loud for so many days.

And I would get overwhelmingly tired.

- Stick. - [JON] Jimmy would get impatient.

And all of us, including Bruce, would be feelin' that.

But I wasn't sayin', I'm sorry, to anybody that I was draggin' through the mill.

[JIMMY] Coffee wasn't workin' anymore.

- Coca-Cola wasn't workin' anymore. - [BRUCE] Stick.

There were hours when he would simply fall asleep

at the sound board. [LAUGHS]

You'd give him a nudge, he would wake...

It was brutal.

[BRUCE] The engineer would take the blame.

And I was not above laying it upon him until we got our sounds.

[JIMMY] It's a stick hitting a drum.

Stick. Stick.

- Stick. - Three weeks.

Stick. Stick. Stick.

So when I'd get him alone, I said, Jimmy, stay in the fucking saddle.

You don't get thrown.

I said, Landau, I'm done. I quit.

[JIMMY] I said, I'm done.

This guy... I kill myself for this guy.

And I work really hard.

And I do everything I possibly can.

And it's unacceptable.

He said, Calm down.

I said, Jimmy, you're missin' the big picture.

What are we here for?

We are here to help Bruce make the best record he can.

That's the job.

We're not here to make you happy. We're not here to make me happy.

We're here to contribute to the project. And it's Bruce's project.

[JIMMY] He said, If you go back in and say to Bruce, 'I'm here to support you.

'This is not about me. It's about the album, '

you will have a friend for the rest of your life.

And you'll have learned a big lesson.

That's the big picture, right?

He said, Yes, it is.

- [BAND PLAYING] - [CROWD CHEERING]

[SINGING]

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream

At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines

[JIMMY] Everybody on that album bonded.

You never forget your first experiences like that.

And I learned so much.

And then having it come out and be Born to Run

and be on the cover of Time and Newsweek,

and it was just an incredible, incredible experience.

'Cause tramps like us Baby, we were born to run

[VOCALIZING]

[JIMMY] Everybody won. The studio was tellin' me how terrific it is,

and it's number one.

And, you know, it's a big deal to somebody who's 23 years old, I guess, right?

So I was really feelin' myself, you know?

What I call breathing my own exhaust.

[ALONZO] World Class Wreckin' Cru made several records.

See, records are like children.

You never met a mother with an ugly baby, okay?

I never had a flop.

They just wasn't as popular as the other ones, okay?

[MAN SPEAKING OVER MUSIC] Records, mixer, turntables, speakers

[ALONZO] Right now, you in my backyard.

We call it Lonzoland. That's the studio.

Everybody came through here at one point in time.

[ICE CUBE] And we were all learnin' on the fly.

Yella would read instructions.

And Dre was like, What do I do next?

Uh...

Hit start and press the 'metronome' at the same time.

And that's how we learned how to mix.

And Dre was a perfectionist.

Always a step ahead of everybody.

[ICE CUBE] Dre wanted to do hip-hop.

But Alonzo had him doin' slow jams and fast music.

[DR. DRE] Yeah, Surgery, it, uh...

To be perfectly honest with you, you know what, I...

I don't want to say anything bad about that record, you know?

It was my opening.

But, um... Yeah, it was... Record was...

Corny as fuck, you know what I mean? It's...

[SINGING] Dr. Dre, Dr. Dre...

Dr. Dre...

Dr. Dre, Dre, Dre, Dre, Dre, Dre, Dre

[ALONZO] World Class Wreckin' Cru made several records.

We had to do what we had to do at that time.

This was no bullshit, okay?

[SINGING] Dre, Dre, Dre, Dre, Dre, Dre

We some pretty motherfuckers. We colorful.

That was in the Prince days.

We was a decent-lookin' group.

I was the lead keyboard holder.

Holder. I didn't play the motherfucker, I just held it. [LAUGHS]

There was too much pussy around us not to be on stage.

I'm not stupid, okay?

[VOCALIZING]

We had more orgies at my house, after parties.

Remember that shit, Dre? Remember Cathy? You remember that?

Shit.

[ALONZO] The Wreckin' Cru went up, peaked a little bit, then it was comin' down.

The music, the clothing.

I had to go get me a job valetin' cars.

[DR. DRE] I felt like I was bein' suffocated-

You know, respect is very high on the list of my priorities.

I have to know that you respect me,

and I respect you. The way I operate is completely on how I feel.

How do you make me feel?

How does this record make me feel?

How does this environment make me feel?

If it makes me feel fucked up, I'm outta here.

[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]

[SINGING] Slow ride, take it easy

[JIMMY] The first project I produced, Foghat, I did it for the money.

At the time, you got paid three points to be a producer.

And their last album sold four million.

So I immediately said,

Twenty cents a record, that's $800,000.

I'm getting $10 an hour as an engineer.

I'm like, I'm in. And I wasn't ready.

It was the wrong kind of music for me.

I mean, I brought my girlfriend to some of the sessions, you know what I mean?

I was like... I was a Knucklehead.

I wasn't good yet.

They were great and really talented.

But I was not doin' my job right.

And I got fired.

And I remember feeling like,

Oh, my God, I'm gonna be embarrassed to my friends, my family.

They're gonna say, 'Oh, my God, he got fired.'

You automatically think that everybody's paying attention to your life,

which is complete bullshit.

So I went back to the Record Plant,

'cause that was the only place I really felt safe.

I knew myself in the Record Plant.

And I walk in...

And Patti Smith is there.

Patti was really ground zero for punk music.

Her, the Ramones, you know?

Great poet and really respected.

She was around on Born to Run.

I used to see her in the hallway and stuff, you know?

And she thought I was workin' really hard, 'cause I was workin' really hard.

And she says, I want you to produce my album.

And I said, Well, you know, I just got fired from this gig.

And she goes, Whatever.

[PATTI] I didn't care whether he was liked by Foghat.

He made an impression on me immediately.

If Bruce wasn't there workin',

he would stay for hours and study other people's mixes, other albums-

He'd find some old tape to see if he could improve that.

He worked all the time.

[JIMMY] I said to myself, No fun, no life, no nothing.

You're gonna give up everything and put 100% into this.

That's the kind of guy I wanted.

[JON] So Jimmy, unbeknownst to us,

is working with Patti as a producer while he's engineering our record.

She was comin' in in the middle of the night.

[PATTI] I had had a serious accident in the beginning of '77.

And I was way behind preparing for the album.

We didn't have a whole lot of songs.

[JIMMY] We didn't have a single to get you into the album.

[JON] Now, Bruce had this song that was not quite

at the center of the album that he was making.

But he suspected that if it was on there, that might be the focus.

He didn't want it.

I really don't know to this day how Jimmy wangled this song out of Bruce.

[BRUCE] He took me out to Coney Island for a drive.

And somehow he let slip, Hey, I'm producing now.

Great.

You know that song, Because the Night?

Yes, I do.

Are you gonna use it?

No, I don't think I am.

Do you mind if I give it to Patti Smith?

Bruce, this song... I mean, we...

How could we give... How could we pass on this song bein' on your album?

You crazy?

He says, Yeah, but, you know, it's...

So I brought it to Patti.

Would you listen to it?

Maybe you wanna, you know, collaborate.

And I was like, Jimmy, you know, I only want to write my own songs.

So I took this cassette, and I went back to my little apartment,

and I put it on the mantle. And then forgot about it.

Even now it makes me laugh.

Every day I'd come to the studio, he wouldn't say hello to me.

He'd say, Did you listen to the song? Listen to the song?

I said, I didn't listen to it yet.

Should we go back to your apartment, listen to the song?

For days, Did you listen to the song?

At that time, I was building a romance with my future husband, Fred Sonic Smith.

And he lived in Detroit. So I only got to talk to him once a week.

I'm home, and I'm waitin' for Fred to call.

7:30 comes. He doesn't call. 8:00 comes. I was getting really agitated.

And I noticed the tape sittin' on the mantle.

And I thought, I'll listen to that darn song-

[SINGING] Take me now, baby, here as I am

Pull me close, try and understand

I put it on,

and it's flawlessly produced, great chorus.

It's in my key. It's anthemic.

[SINGING] Come on now, try and understand

The way I feel...

[JIMMY] So Fred finally calls me, at like, almost midnight.

But by midnight, I had written all the lyrics.

Have I doubt, when I'm alone, love is a ring, the telephone.

I was waiting for Fred.

[SINGING] Because the night belongs to lovers

Because the night belongs to love

Because the night belongs to lovers

Because the night belongs to love

The next day, Jimmy goes,

Did you listen to the song?

I said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What'd you think? I wrote lyrics to it.

What? Where are they? In, like, two days, we recorded it.

[JON] Now, Bruce had accomplished a great deal by then.

One thing he hadn't had was a top ten single.

We hadn't finished with Darkness.

So while Jimmy is engineering our album, this comes out.

And the single goes to top ten.

[BRUCE] There is the talent of Jimmy Lovine.

He eases in, and in his very slippery way,

greases all the wheels so things happen at a certain moment.

And Jimmy Lovine works his magic.

So exciting.

I mean, I'd walk down the street in the Village in New York,

and it would be coming out of boom boxes or every record store.

In fact, I got flack for that because people were saying,

You know, you sold out. You're a punk rocker.

And you have a hit song.

And I said, Punk rock is about freedom. It's not about your chart position.

And I'll sing any fucking song I want.

[SONG ENDS]

[PATTI] It wasn't that Jimmy wanted to be the number-one guy.

It was like he was ambitious for you.

And he was ambitious for me.

You always felt that his whole goal was for the world to see what he was seeing.

[WOMAN] It's beautiful.

- [DR. DRE] Lovine. - Yes, sir.

[JIMMY] Good idea, right? [DR. DRE] This is nutso.

[JIMMY] See that roundish building over there?

Like, the end of this block, it sort of curves at the end?

When I was 23 years old, I had an apartment in that building.

Really? It was overlooking the park?

Yep, it was $1,400 a month.

[CHUCKLES] Shit. Times have changed.

Yeah, $1,400 a month.

[BRUCE] You know, people become successful,

and they get locked into the behaviors that led them to be a success.

Jimmy was very, very good at letting go

of the things that might have made him a success to this point.

He's willing to shed that and go for something completely else.

And not afraid to partner with other very visionary people.

So Jimmy's career is based on a tremendous lack of fear of moving forward.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[DR. DRE] It was scaly for me, leaving the group, 'cause I was separatin' myself

from this thing that taught me everything I knew up till then,

and just takin' that little bit of knowledge that I had

and tryin' to go off on my own and create somethin' entirely new.

But I knew I had this talent.

And I knew I gotta just step up, be my own man.

So I took the gamble.

But I was limited on equipment.

And the only person I knew that had money at that time was Eazy.

He was sellin' drugs, and, you know...

[YELLA] He was a hustler. [ICE CUBE] Eazy had money.

Eazy wanted to get into the music business, to be a label owner.

[DR. DRE] So me and Eazy, we decided to start a label called Ruthless Records.

And I wanted to do somethin' for the streets,

somethin' that the guys in the park were gonna be able to relate to,

'cause New York had everything covered as far as hip-hop.

But West Coast hip-hop in '86 was pretty much nonexistent.

So I convinced Cube to write a song for us.

And I wrote Boyz N The Hood for him.

[DR. DRE] Los Angeles has a car culture.

If you didn't have sub-woofers in your car, you wasn't shit.

That's what made me start pa yin' attention to sonics and clarity.

And when we did Boyz N The Hood,

I wanted to make sure that those sub-woofers were working.

It was so powerful, your jaw dropped.

[DR. DRE] I'm much better and much more comfortable

directin' an artist than bein' an artist myself.

And Eazy had this creative part about him that was just so street.

So I decided, I'm gonna talk Eazy into recordin' this record.

He looked at me like I was nuts.

He kept sayin', I'm not a rapper. I've never rapped before in my life.

But I had a baby at the time. I needed money.

I was determined to get him to do this song.

I had no idea how it was gonna come out.

As a matter of fact, I didn't think it was gonna work.

But I spent two hours talkin' him into gettin' on the microphone.

And finally, he makes me turn the lights off.

He puts on dark glasses.

And we got started.

[TAPE WINDING]

[CLICKS]

[EAZY RAPPING] Cruisin' down the street in my six-fo'

Jockin' the bitches, slappin' the hoes

Went to the park to get the scoop

Knuckleheads out there cold-shootin' some hoops

A car pulls up, who can it be?

A fresh El Camino rolling kilo G

He rolled down his window and he started to say

It's all about makin' that GTA

'Cause the boys in the hood are always hard

You come talkin' that trash We'll pull your card

Knowin' nothin' in life but to be legit

Don't quote me, boy, 'cause I ain't said shit

Yo, man

Yo, man

Yo, man Yo, man, yo, man

Get the fuck out

Pump that beat, pump that beat

Motherfucker, say what

Donald B's in the place to give me the pace

He said my man JD is on freebase

The boy JD was a friend of mine

Till I caught him in my car tryin' to steal an Alpine

Chased him up the street to call a truce

The silly motherfucker pulls out a deuce-deuce

Little did he know I had a loaded 12-gauge

One sucker dead, LA Times front page

'Cause the boys in the hood are always hard

You come talkin' that trash We'll pull your card

Knowin' nothin' in life but to be legit

Don't quote me, boy, 'cause I ain't said shit

Yo, Leroy! Yo, Leroy!

Yo, Leroy! Yo, Leroy!

Yo, Leroy!

Beer drinkin', beer drinkin', beer drinkin'

Beer drinkin', breath stinkin', sniffin' glue

Yeah, I kicked a little ass

But that was a blast from the past, motherfucker

Get busy, y'all! Get busy, y'all!

[MUSIC FADES]