A SOUND REBOUND

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The gold is Field's. His father owned the Chicago-based Marshall Field's department stores, leaving him a fortune. A ponytailed, multimillionaire socialite, Ted Field enjoyed the usual rich-boy playthings--racing cars and producing films--but chafed at his playboy image. Bored with collecting dividend checks, he asked his friend U2 manager Paul McGuinness about getting into the record business. "You can have all the money in the world and be the unhappiest guy in the world," says Field. "I wanted to do something that meant something in my life." And what would that be? Making hard-core rap records, it turned out. McGuinness introduced him to Iovine. Venture met capital. Flatbush met Beverly Hills.

The things that set Iovine and Field apart make them a formidable business duo. Iovine's nose for the unconventional enables him to sniff out promising bands before anyone else. "I don't care if it's eight donkeys in a row playing harmonicas," he says. "If they all look great and sound great, I'll sign 'em."

Field's fat wallet and experience managing money made it easier for Interscope to attract capital. He is also an amateur drummer who loves attending concerts and sizing up bands. "The magic in this dynamic between me and Jimmy is that all my life people saw me as a kid who inherited money," Field explains. "Jimmy was one of the first to see that I had creative ability in addition to business ability, and I helped Jimmy because I saw that he had incredible business instincts." Iovine's ease with musicians helped Interscope strike up several profitable partnerships with subsidiary labels, including Trauma Records, through which Interscope signed multimillion-seller Bush; Nothing Records, which brought Manson and industrial-rock innovator Trent Reznor; and Death Row, through which it co-financed discs by Snoop and producer Dr. Dre.

Iovine often sees hits where others see only whiffs. In early 1991 he heard a tape by a scuffling California punk-ska band called No Doubt. The band had been struggling since the late 1980s with little to show for it. Iovine recognized that No Doubt's alternative pop sound offered a fresh twist on rock, and that singer Gwen Stefani had star power. "All the pieces fit together, even if the music wasn't that far advanced," he says. "We felt they could be big, with a little work and grooming." Iovine and Interscope president Tom Whalley sharpened the band's songs and encouraged Stefani to take a much more prominent role. No Doubt's third album, Tragic Kingdom, became a smash, selling 8 million copies.

Iovine and Field ran Interscope without a net, rejecting marketing reports and giving musicians leeway to direct their own careers--sometimes with combustible results. In May, Trauma sued Interscope over control of No Doubt, a spat settled with a $3 million payment.

Interscope still has a management problem with Death Row Records, given that the label's president, Knight, isn't making many meetings from his jail cell in San Luis Obispo. Suge is doing nine years on parole violations for stomping a man in a Las Vegas hotel shortly before Shakur was gunned down. A few weeks later, the Los Angeles Times reported that the fbi was investigating allegations of organized crime at Death Row. Then, in April, Shakur's mother Afeni sued Death Row over money allegedly owed her son. She won several million dollars and control of Tupac's master tapes.