Dozens of forgotten tapes of interviews with Steve Jobs have been discovered by Brent Schlender, who has worked for Fortune and The Wall Street Journal since 1985, when he first started to report on Mr. Jobs. The tapes cover a variety of topics and are of various lengths with some as long as three hours. Mr. Schlender considers the interviews during the time that Steve Jobs was not with Apple to be some of the most interesting.
Writing for Fast Company, Mr. Schlender described the newly discovered tapes as, “some three dozen tapes holding recordings of extended interviews—some lasting as long as three hours—that I’d conducted with him periodically over the past 25 years.
He added, “Many I had never replayed—a couple hadn’t even been transcribed before now. Some were interrupted by his kids bolting into the kitchen as we talked. During others, he would hit the pause button himself before saying something he feared might come back to bite him. Listening to them again with the benefit of hindsight, the ones that took place during that interregnum jump out as especially enlightening.”
Schlender has published highlights from the interviews as well as a summary of his impression of Jobs’ growth over the years. The new material will certainly add to the legacy of Steve Jobs and be a resource used by many for years to come.