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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
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