Prior to the Apple acquisition of Beats in 2014, Iovine became chairman of Interscope-Geffen-A&M, an umbrella unit merged by the then-newly-reincarnated Universal Music Group in 1999.\n', '

James Iovine was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an Italian working-class family. His mother was a secretary and his father, Vincent "Jimmy" Iovine, worked in the docks as a longshoreman. His father\'s passing and his love for Christmas inspired Jimmy to record A Very Special Christmas 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 19, he was a college dropout. He was introduced to music production after he met a songwriter who got him a job cleaning a recording studio. He began working as a studio professional around 1972. Since the start of his career, Iovine has been involved in the production of more than 250 albums.\n', '

In the early 1970s, Iovine became a recording engineer, working with John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen, among others. By 1973, Iovine was on staff at the New York studio the Record Plant, where he worked on Springsteen\'s Born to Run and Meat Loaf\'s Bat Out of Hell albums. He came to prominence via his work on the 1978 Patti Smith album Easter, which included her Top 40 hit "Because the Night". He teamed 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 for Stevie Nicks), Making Movies for Dire Straits, and Get Close for The Pretenders.\n', '

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