Music industry legend Jimmy Iovine's stunning art-meets-music project is a "celebration of culture"
CBSN
From sweeping a grimy New York studio to presiding over an interactive, innovative exhibit gracing the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA), it's been a journey for music industry legend Jimmy Iovine.
The New Yorker's hardworking longshoreman father once boasted to friends that his son had "magic ears. He can hear what you're thinking." It turned out to be true – Iovine engineered some of the catchiest, most iconic albums of the 1970s and early '80s, before putting those magic ears to work coaxing out the talent that defined a generation of music.
After his early days in those grimy studios, Iovine scored the break to end all breaks, engineering records for a roster of artists that sounds like a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination list: Lennon. Springsteen. Patti Smith. Tom Petty.
The story of America can be told through the lyrics of folk music – songs of the Great Depression, the civil rights era, and the social revolutions of the 1960s. As folk singer Pete Seeger put it in 1967, "A song isn't a speech; a song is not an editorial. If a song tries to be an editorial or a speech, often it fails as a song. The best songs tell a story, paint a picture, and leave the conclusion up actually to the listener."