Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs (29 page)

Tears begin streaming down my face. I can’t help it. I turn to the window.

“All those people,” I say. “Billions of them. The whole world. They have no idea what is coming. This product—this changes everything.”

“Everything,” Lars says, nodding.

“The world,” Mike Dinsmore says, “will never be the same.”

Mike looks at me. I look at him. All of the bad blood, all of the fighting, all of the heartaches and struggles are behind us now. I reach out to him. We embrace. Then Lars joins in too. For a long time the three of us just stand there, holding each other in a three-way man hug. It’s one of the most powerful moments of my life.

November flies by
in a blur. I’m totally back in charge again, running things at headquarters, putting in long hours in planning meetings and putting the finishing touches on our advertising and marketing campaign around the iPhone.

Up in San Francisco, Doyle has convened a grand jury, or so we’ve been told. The whole thing is top secret, and frankly I can’t be bothered to worry about it. For now they’re leaving me alone, and that’s all I care about. Our sales are going crazy. Every morning I get a report that rolls up our business from the day before, breaking things down by make and model and market—iPods in India, iMacs in Brazil, whatever. Everything’s booming. There’s not a weak spot in the lineup.

On Thanksgiving we’ve got a big crowd: Larry and Mrs. Larry; Bono and The Edge; Sting and Trudie Styler; Tom Bow-ditch; Lars Aki and some guy named Michael that he met at a club; Al Gore, who’s on the outs with Tipper because she says he’s “gone Hollywood” and so he’s living in California for the time being, and wearing sandals letting himself get fat again; Ja’Red and his girlfriend, the smoothie maker slash modern dancer; Sergey Brin from Google and his Uncle Fetya, who arrived in a bus with a dozen Stanford coeds.

We put out a big spread, with Tofurky and butternut squash and cranberry sauce and three kinds of brown rice, followed by organic apple pie with soy-based ice cream, then some digestion yoga in the backyard. It’s a totally intense and eclectic salon-type gathering with loads of really brilliant conversation and philosophical debates over huge issues like net neutrality and the long tail theory and the patent system and digital rights management.

The highlight of the evening comes when I break out some iPhones, which everyone just raves about, except for The Edge, who has had a wee bit too much to drink and is asleep outside in a lawn chair, and Uncle Fetya, who seems to believe the iPhone is a miniature television and hands it back in disgust after Sergey, in Russian, explains that he cannot change the channel to a Russian-language station.

During the first week
of December I fly into New York on a snowy day to meet with Yoko Ono at her apartment in the Dakota. This time she actually keeps the appointment, and she’s as crazy as ever. We’re drinking green tea on the floor of her living room and watching snow pile up on the window ledges and she’s acting all Zen and telling me how she prays for my soul and how she’s glad that my Apple and “the real Apple” are trying to make peace.

“I know this is what John would have wanted,” she says. “He cared so much about peace. Not war, but peace. Yes. That was John’s way. And so it is mine as well.”

She insists, as she has before, that if we put Beatles music up on iTunes the band must be called “John Lennon and the Beatles” and that Yoko Ono must be listed as a member of the group, even on the early albums, which were recorded before John met her.

But then she tells me she’s opposed to the iTunes deal altogether, because she believes the Internet is an unholy space filled with pornography and sexual deviants. She also says it would be wrong for John’s music to be “smashed into these tiny bits and sprayed around on these wires.”

I explain that it’s just a distribution deal, just like when the Beatles put out their music on cassette tapes, and eight-track tapes, and compact discs.

“It’s just a new format,” I tell her.

“But it is an evil format. This Internet, I don’t like it. It is not human. John was against computers. I am against them too. I do not allow them in my home. You see, they are not good things, Steven. I say this with all respect, but to me you represent everything that is evil about the modern world. Not only with music. You have cheapened movies too, by making them with computers. These are machines, Steven. These are not human. And the stories you tell in your movies, these do not uplift people. They only pander.”

I tell her I’m a little bit taken aback by this criticism, considering that it’s coming from a woman who once hung pictures of a giant vagina all over Liverpool.

“That was one of my favorite installations,” she says. “The vagina is so beautiful, don’t you think? It is where all of us enter the world. You should make a Pixar children’s movie about a vagina. It would be a tribute to motherhood.”

She starts going on for the millionth time about how she wants to guard John’s legacy and what a precious gift to the world John was. Yoko’s thing is just to repeat things over and over in a monotone voice, to wear you down. It’s a Japanese business tactic; they all do it. For a while I’m just agreeing with everything she says and trying to be all Zen about it, and Yoko is giving me the Zen right back, and we’re both working our Zen and trying to be more passive aggressive and monotone and repetitive than the other one.

But then I take her in a different direction—down the route that Ivan Arsim recommended. To be honest, even when I walked in the door today I wasn’t sure I would do this. But here we are.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say, in my softest Zen-master voice. “I want you to hear it from me rather than from someone else. I’m buying the catalog from Sony.”

She knows what I mean. I’m talking about the publishing catalog that Michael Jackson bought twenty years ago and then sold to Sony. Yoko has been trying to buy it for years, but Sony wants a billion and a half dollars and she doesn’t have that kind of money.

“We’re going to record the songs all over again, fresh, using all digital equipment, so it’s totally high resolution. Way better than CD quality. It’s so exciting. Paul’s going to take the lead on the project. He’s got Ringo signed up to do the drum tracks. Paul says he can play the guitar parts himself, or we can get guest stars to do some tracks. Eric Clapton wants to get involved. George Martin says he’ll produce.”

She smiles. “This is a wonderful fantasy,” she says, “but I’m afraid it is quite impossible.”

She’s trying to look all Zen and detached and bemused, as if I’m some lunatic proposing that we should all go live on the moon. But I can see in her eyes that she’s freaked out.

“Actually,” I say, “Paul says it’s very doable.”

In fact that’s only half true. Paul did look into it, but there are some questions about legal issues. At the very least Yoko could turn herself into a very huge pain in the ass, which as we all know is something she very much likes to do. So we’re bluffing. Nevertheless Paul says he’ll back me up on this and that we should push Yoko as hard as we have to. He’s dying to sell the songs on iTunes. And he hates Yoko even more than I do.

“Paul is a fool,” she says. “He has no talent. He never had any talent. John always said that. John was the soul of the Beatles. Without John there is no Beatles. And you won’t have John.”

“Well, see, that’s the beauty of it. Paul and George Martin have got all these old master tapes, and we can take John’s voice off those tapes. Granted, he’ll sound like shit compared to the other voices, because his recordings will be grainy and low quality. But we can alter his voice with digital tools.”

“No,” she says. “No digital tools. John was opposed to digital.”

“John died before digital recording was invented.”

“But he saw it coming. He told me he would never do this.”

“Well, the fall-back is that Paul says he can just sing John’s parts.”

That does it. Now she’s left her Zen behind and she’s just plain furious.

“Paul is a criminal. Paul stole John’s work and presented it as his own. Now he’s going to do this? I hate Paul. I always did. This is a ridiculous project. What’s the point? It would take years record all these songs all over again.”

“Five years,” I say. “We’ve worked out the schedule. We’ll have different teams working all around the world and sharing files over the Internet. Paul will be the artistic director overseeing the project. And yes, it’s daunting, but think about how much money we’ll make. Do you have any idea how popular these albums will be?”

“I’m sure that appeals to Paul. He loves money. More than anything else he loves money.”

“But the beauty is that there’s also such great artistic merit to the project. It’s way better than just re-releasing the old songs for downloads. You’ve said it yourself, people already own these songs. Why buy them again? But this? This would be all new material. This would be the songs recorded the way they were meant to be recorded. This will become the new definitive Beatles catalog. It’s not just about the money. Paul says that with a lot of John’s songs he always hated the way John mixed them, and he’s been dying to take another crack at them.”

“That’s outrageous. That’s a sacrilege. I will not allow this. Absolutely not.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much you can do.”

“You cannot record John Lennon’s songs without John Lennon.”

“Well, see, you can, actually. That’s why I’m buying the catalog. I’ll own the rights, so then I can license the rights to Paul. And to myself, actually, because I’m going to get involved as a co-producer.”

“You really would do this?”

“I intend to do it.”

“You said you loved John.”

“I do love him. More than anyone in all of history.”

This is true, sort of. Sometimes it’s John Lennon, though more often it’s Dylan. I go back and forth. But there’s no sense splitting hairs at a moment like this.

“You even wear glasses like his.”

“Yes,” I say. “As a tribute to him.”

“Yet you would do this to him? To his memory? You would spend a billion and a half dollars to buy the catalog, and then spend years in a studio, and you would erase John Lennon from the Beatles, just to spite me?”

“It’s not about spite. It’s about the money. The stuff we’re talking about goes way beyond this project with Paul. There’s huge interest in the catalog from other artists. The whole asset has just been terribly underutilized at Sony. You can’t believe the offers they’ve had, and they’ve always turned them down because they don’t think they’re classy enough. Britney Spears wants to do an album of all-girl Beatles duets with guest stars like Madonna and Christina Aguilera. Garth Brooks wants to do country-western Beatles. Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy want to do a Beatles hip-hop album. Then there are the advertising deals. The Stones have been all over that market. But the Beatles? Nowhere to be seen. On commercials alone I’ll earn back my investment in two years. You know the company that makes Depends? Those adult diapers? They want to use “When I’m Sixty-Four” as an ad jingle. So do Viagra and Cialis and Levitra. They’re all bidding against each other. There’s just huge interest, and it’s never been exploited.”

I let that last word hang in the air. I chose it on purpose. We sit there in silence. She’s beaten, and she knows it.

Finally she says, in a soft voice, “Let me understand you. If I permit you to have the digital rights, you will drop this threat of desecrating John’s memory? You will not re-record the songs?”

“There wouldn’t be much point in distributing two versions,” I say.

“I see. Well.” She toys with her cup of tea. Her bottom lip begins to quiver. “It appears I am in an impossible position. I am placed between two bad choices.”

She sighs, and puts her hands to her face, and starts to sob. I start thinking about all the shit this poor woman has been put through in her life. No wonder she’s so friggin nuts. I suppose she’s thinking that too. Or maybe she’s thinking about John. She starts to shiver, and shake. Her shoulders are heaving. When she looks up at me her mascara is running and her face is streaked with black tears. For a tiny moment I feel a flicker of guilt about doing this to the widow of the person I sometimes admire more than anyone else in the world. But this is my job. This is my fate. Because of who I am, because of what I do, this nasty piece of work has fallen to me.

“I was right about you,” she says. “You are an evil man.”

“I suppose I am.”

“Please go,” she says.

The lifts in the Dakota are the old-fashioned kind, rickety and slow-moving, with glass-paned wooden doors and an operator who drives the car with a brass shift lever. The operator is a squat, ugly old man dressed in a bellman’s uniform and cap. He smells of liquor. He eyes me but says nothing. The old lift grumbles and groans its way down through the floors. The wooden floor creaks. The light flickers. I close my eyes and feel myself descending. I think about Yoko, sprawled out on the floor, crying. For a moment I have the sense that this monkey-faced bellman is taking me not to the lobby, but farther still, down through the basement, down through the sewers, all the way down into hell. And you know what? I wouldn’t blame him. It’s what I deserve.